It is not the low speed which makes urban driving so maddening. It is the herky-jerky stop-and-go nature of urban traffic. The Modern Roundabout provides the opportunity for a low-speed but continuous flow.

What is a Modern Roundabout?
A Modern Roundabout is a type of circular intersection that has been successfully implemented in Europe and Australia, and more recently in the USA. Despite the tens of thousands of roundabouts in operation around the world, there are only a few in Canada. Until recently, roundabouts have been slow to gain support in this country. The lack of acceptance can generally be attributed to the negative experience with traffic circles or rotaries built in the earlier half of the twentieth century. Safety and operational problems caused these traffic circles to fall out of favor by the 1950's. However, substantial progress has been achieved in the subsequent design of circular intersections, and a Modern Roundabout should not be confused with the traffic circles of the past.

See also RoundaboutsUSA
Posted 7:32 AM by David

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THE NEW CRITERION is an interesting and learned journal of a conservative bent. It writes encouragingly often and smoothly on the built environment, and I appreciate that. I have a sense that I would agree with its authors on specifics, if they ever got down to specifics.

Perhaps I am overly-enthusiastic for practical solutions, so I when I read an article such as Architecture & ideology by Roger Kimball, my reaction is to ask "And? Yes? What is to be done? How does this essay inform a local government writing a new comprehensive plan or zoning code? How does it help a developer build more urbanely?" Of course, it doesn't. It's engaging, to be sure; but where does one go with an insight such as:

There is a large retrospective, even autumnal, ingredient in the current celebration of work by Peter Eisenman and Leon Krier. We are invited to look back a couple of decades or more to explore the work of two energetic architects whose words and whose work helped set the agenda for important aspects of contemporary architectural theory and practice. It is, in all senses of the word, heady stuff, full of breath-taking ideas. Are they, for all that, good ideas? Well, I will leave you all to answer that question; or to leave it unanswered if that course seems more expedient. Leaving it unanswered, I suspect, is what Brendan Gill would have done, if for no other reason than that he wanted to keep the fun of architecture going as long as possible. Fun is nice. I like fun. But fun remains most fun when it keeps to its appropriate place. The ambition to transform all of life into a playground is a prescription for the ruin of fun. Brendan knew this, too, fortunately. I am convinced that he would have approved of my concluding quotation, from the nineteenth-century American historian William Hickling Prescott. "The surest test of the civilization of a people," Prescott wrote, "is to be found in their architecture, which presents so noble a field for the display of the grand and the beautiful; and which, at the same time, is so intimately connected with the essential comforts of life." It's a lot to live up to. But the alternative is having a lot to live down.

It's fabulous stuff but it is so far removed from the daily issues that face a planning commission or city council in their decisions on physical development as to be comical. Does it offer any guidance except thunderingly abstract pieties? It is indeed the mirror image of what it detests the most: abstractions meant to guide the concrete.

Even when Kimball tries to get into specifics, he leaves one hanging:

The third admonition concerns what we might call the 'pudding test': architecture must be not only looked at but lived with, indeed lived in, and so what works marvelously on paper may fail utterly on the street. The proof of architecture is concrete, not abstract. Seductive theories do not necessarily produce gratifying buildings.

And I happen to agree with him, very strongly in fact, (to the degree I can interpret his words and translate them into rules for the job site.) But if you substitute the term "architectural criticism" for "architecture" --- and that's a fair test, I think --- what do you get?

The third admonition concerns what we might call the 'pudding test': architectural criticism must be not only looked at but lived with, indeed lived in, and so what works marvelously on paper may fail utterly on the street. The proof of architectural criticism is concrete, not abstract. Seductive theories do not necessarily produce gratifying buildings.(italics added)

Kimball is on the right track but he needs to follow his own advice --- get concrete --- before his criticism will have the punch it deserves to have.
Posted 2:00 AM by David

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Stumbled on this at Stumbling Tongue

Paris by Ear
Paris is the most beautiful city in the world.
Surely this is at least partly the work of the talented French elites who, one hears, are funneled into French government jobs, as smoothly and automatically as their American counterparts are funneled into business.
How else to explain an act as forward-looking as publishing a sound map of the city? Witness how the 1st arrondissement looks to the ear:

Posted 1:18 PM by David

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Of glancing relevance to the ongoing discussion at 2Blowhards about The Book-Besotted is this post about Books in Transit:

Reykjavik: Iceland's capital city has a decent bus network, as is expected in Scandinavia, with an interesting twist: On several seats on each bus, there is a popular paperback book attached by a cord to give passengers something to read on their daily commute. Of course, in a less law-abiding country I can't imagine the books lasting long, but it's not very costly and a brilliant effort if you ask me!"

I'd prefer it if it was not the transit authority (as appears to be the case) which chose the book.
Posted 8:42 AM by David

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As if she actually turned a spade of dirt.

I could never understand why "colorization" of old B&W films was at the discretion of the director, only. As if there was no one else involved in making a movie, such as maybe a cameraman or editor or maybe even a scriptwriter etc etc. Just like a movie, a building is above all a team effort. Oh I guess except if you are a genius, marketing or otherwise. Read yet another article on Ms. Hadid:

"Zaha looks at the screen, and notices some pictures hung on the wall behind the Ice Storm. Turning to another of her staff, Woody Yao, she wanted to know what this 'rubbish' was doing on the wall. Within seconds she was suggesting he should 'get on a flight' and remove them at once. As for any thought that she might be hard to contact, 'What do you think you have a mobile phone for?'

This was all pretty excruciating. I found myself looking at the carpet (pitch black, of course) and wondering how long it would be before Schumacher and Yao threw up their hands in horror and headed for the door. But it soon emerges that all this is completely normal. The point is confirmed by colleagues. Zaha may indeed rage and storm, but you can't make great buildings, let alone the 'new architecture' that is increasingly claimed for Hadid, out of nice smiles and polite consensus."

Oh, the old "genius" excuse for poor manners. Here applied to the "architect auteur." Hadid is now the "architect du jour." How these fashions come and go. Mind you, I think I even like this Hadid design. But to speak of its designer as some cartoon out of an Ayn Rand novel is curious.

I'm wondering if the fascination with star architecture is simply because the public, and even some architecture critics, simply don't know what to say about buildings. I wonder how many of them have experience (besides as a user, and not to diminish that) in building them. Any role would do to add unique insight: architect, structural engineer, land use attorney, municipal zoning official, etc. etc. Maybe even general contractor.

I remember reading a Paul Goldberger piece in which he spent half the article describing who "went to school" with whom and who was wearing what color shirt (and tie) before he got to the building itself. It was as much People gossip as serious crit. But maybe that's what the readers want because it is too difficult to comprehend a building. Of course that's what critics are supposed to do: help their readers to comprehend. So, too, The Guardian desn't overlook the obligatory clothing review:

Clad in a great swirl of black designer wear, she's wearing a ring you probably couldn't board a plane with nowadays and seriously high-heeled shoes, secured, as the Cincinnati Enquirer duly notes on its front page, with "lime green Day-Glo straps".

Posted 7:12 AM by David

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Vulgar as it may be to actually say it in public, and except for the unusual circumstance in which there is no required parking (definitely rare in North America) urban design starts with parking. You may not want to believe it, but that is the cold hard reality.

I was chatting with an architect. We were discussing a small condominium project. Very large buildings came up. I happened to ask him if he had worked on one.
"Yes when I a young associate at a big firm."
"Oh, they must be exceedingly difficult to design."
"No not really."
"Really?"
"No it's true. For one thing most of the work is done by the structural engineer and contractor who lay out the basic grid. The architect's fundamental job is getting the cars onto and off the site. You can route people up ramps and stairs and so forth. But cars are much more difficult. There are consideration of grades and transitions and turning radii. The real design turns on parking."
"Amazing!"
"No, look at it with this project, here. What's the very first thing we did? Long before we even started to look at the apartment layouts? We looked at how we would get cars onto and off the site...and how we could arrange the parking layout. Only then did we look at the building itself. Parking is the tail that wags the building."
Posted 7:07 AM by David

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I have been fascinated that no one ever hires a starchitect to design a parking garage as it is obvious that modern urbanism starts with parking:

"One of the stars of the downtown regeneration is, of all things, the New Street Parking Garage. The design for the garage, by Staunton-based Frazier Associates, came out of an inclusive team approach: the designers worked closely with government officials and local citizens (in a city known for its resistance to change) through an intensive public design process.

The result is a new landmark building at the entrance to downtown Staunton. In the past, architects designed beautiful buildings for visitors to arrive in, says design lead Kathy Frazier, AIA. Somehow that didn't get translated to parking garages, and people grew accustomed to parking in these ugly utilitarian buildings. The question we asked ourselves is "Why can't we make a parking garage beautiful and celebrate the arrival sequence like we used to with train stations?"

Indeed, why not?
Posted 6:50 AM by David

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According to a report from the National Arts Journalism Program at the Columbia University School of Journalism on the architecture critiC (though I don't get the capital C at the end of critiC) here are the built environment's

Ten Most Influential Writers and Theorists

Jane Jacobs
Ada Louise Huxtable
Vincent Scully
Lewis Mumford
Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown
Andres Duany and Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk
Le Corbusier
Herbert Muschamp
Charles Moore
Rem Koolhaas

Definitely more on this later.


Posted 12:03 PM by David

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People are intrigued (nothing new) with large scale geographic changes:

"The Israel and Jordan governments are planning to link up the Dead sea to the Red sea. The main reason for this is because the dead sea is dying- water levels have dropped as much as 8 m below average levels. Also the two governments plan to desalinate water as well as use the pressure difference (the dead sea is also the lowest point on earth) to generate electricity (click here for a detailed description of the plan). The dead sea is itself an anomaly, and whenever i drive to the Arava Valley, i see traces of its presence everywhere. The surrounding area has such a bizarre landscape that it seems to belong only at the bottom of some water body. The Israeli Govt had a plan to connect the dead sea to the Meditteranean but the plan was dropped. I am most worried about the ecological impact. The salinity of the dead sea will decrease and there is no saying how it will affect the surrounding region. Maybe floating in the Dead Sea will be a thing of the past. Apart from that the canal will also probably affect the entire Arava valley unless they use pipelines.

I am usually a bit apprehensive when people try to play with huge water bodies. In India currently there is a plan to link the Ganges in the north to the Kaveri in the south, but this is such a complicated project that the plan is revived for political reasons in times of drought. I hope they don't succeed in implementing this, linking rivers seems to be foolhardy at best and in the flood prone northern plains, it is just asking for trouble. Also in Russia , there seems to be revival in the plan to turn the Ob river from its bed and send the water towards the Asian republics. Again a plan that thrives on political considerations. Left to me, i would suggest modeling the entire scenario for say a hundred thousand years and then assess the plan. By which time, hopefully the leadership would have changed."

Read the book Man's Role in Changing the Face of the Earth. I read it as a graduate student in geography and it was mind-changing. I highly recommend it.
Posted 11:40 AM by David

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I dislike the term. It is one of the vapidisms of urban planning babble.

"Open space" is not "park" or "preserve" or anything of substance. It is the absence of something i.e. human buildings (and usually a real rasion d'etre as well.) It is the product of disliking buildings, or of allowing such awful buildings to be built that "nothing" is better than more of them.

Don't misunderstand. I love parks and preserves and "forests." I usually vote my tax dollars for them and I am all for putting as much of the North American continent as possible in a "lock box" until we can do a better job of building in already-developed areas.

It's just the language I find empty.

Of course there is good reason for it when the public is too cheap to authorize its government to simply pay for land for public use. "Open space" is a deliberately-vague term when used as a zoning requirement.

"No sir. We don't have any requirement to make some of your land into park. It's just an 'open space' dedication."

To be fair, such requirements usually do NOT also require that the public be allowed on the property...right now.
Posted 7:53 AM by David

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A friend asked me if every good urban building had to come up precisely to the property line i.e. the sidewalk, in accordance with the Three Rules. I can understand his concern.

The answer is "No."

Can there be any setbacks and small plazas here and there? "Absolutely yes."

The Three Rules outline a "default position." In legal terms (and since we assume the continued existence of zoning etc etc., that's not an inconsiderable consideration) Rule #1 ("build to the sidewalk") is a "rebuttable presumption." That means that the expectation is that a building will adhere to a consistent streetfront. But if the developer wants, for his own reasons, to set back from the property line to create a plaza, the legal burden will be on him to show that such a deviation from the default position will create a successful pedestrian environment.

Sounds legalistic and bureaucratic. And it is. No way around that. But it lays out a clear expectation of how a streetfront is to be built, makes permitting "as-of-right" under that condition, and reasonably places the effort on anyone who wishes to do something different. Doesn't mean you can't create an open space of some kind but you certainly don't get any bonus points and you actually have to demonstrate why and how it works to create a better streetfront.

The end result will be fewer huge plazas (most of which were created to satisfy a "bonus" program in which the developer was able to build a bigger building in exchange for providing the public with useless "open space") and thus a more traditional pedestrian environment.
Posted 2:09 AM by David

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Idealists make me somewhat nervous. I become especially nervous when it comes to city planning and when I read of someone's desire to "design a city from the ground up." Clean slate thinking can lead to awful things, if the actor is an evil genius. Or because the world is such a complex place, it can lead to frustration of the majority of us, the well-intentioned mediocrity. Only under despotic rule are societies able to make dramatic changes. To hope for dramatic change leaves one open to the lure of dictatorship.

I think a better way to look at city planning is by considering the narrative technique known as "in medias res."

Lynch, Literary Terms -- "in medias res"

In medias res is Latin for "into the middle of things." It usually describes a narrative that begins, not at the beginning of a story, but somewhere in the middle -- usually at some crucial point in the action. The term comes from the ancient Roman poet Horace, who advised the aspiring epic poet to go straight to the heart of the story instead of beginning at the beginning.

and

Encyclopedia Britannica Online Article -- "in medias res":

(Latin "in the midst of things") In narrative technique, the recommended practice of beginning an epic or other fictional form by plunging into a crucial situation that is part of a related chain of events; the situation is an extension of previous events and will be developed in later action. The narrative then goes directly forward, and exposition of earlier events is supplied by flashbacks.

City planning is done "in medias res." To accept that we are plunged into the middle of things, into a raging "urban narrative," moving (per Churchill) "full force irresistible," is a useful approach with cities. We do not have the "luxury" of building and designing whole cities from scratch on some systematic basis. Thank god. We'd better get used to it and work building-by-building, brick-by-brick. That's why I have always been rather put off by Burnham's urging to "Make no little plans. They have no magic to stir men's blood." I would say just the opposite. Move by increments so as to avoid the demagogues and massive error. (Of course that does NOT mean that "no change is the best change." There is a happy medium with which wise Goldilocks would be happy.)

Of course building by increments is not as dramatic and exciting as starting from scratch. True. And I guess if you want urban excitement, there is always Brasilia.
Posted 2:05 AM by David

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Someone actually likes what Herbert Muschamp writes:

"No, the opinion of the common man controlling aesthetic design decisions of public moment just won't do. We need gifted specialists -- trained and qualified experts, the very best possible -- making all such decisions. And we need gifted specialists -- trained and qualified experts, the very best possible -- keeping tabs on those decision makers: encouraging, scolding, and goading them on from journalistically privileged critical positions, and offering as well trenchant, sharp-eyed, and informed public commentary in and for the public interest on their doings.

You know. Experts like Herbert Muschamp."

I guess there is indeed absolutely no accounting for popular taste.

Posted 8:03 AM by David

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Playing into Planners' Hands

The idea behind congestion pricing is that you charge for the use of the road, at a rate constantly updated to keep traffic moving. No congestion = no toll; high congestion = high tolls. Those people willing to pay for the privilege of using the road under free-flow conditions during peak demand will get to use it, while those unwilling will take other routes, find other modes (the bus, carpools), or commute at other times.

Murph has put his finger on one of the practical problems (besides privacy of course, for which there is always offered yet another technological fix): a congestion pricing system must be dynamically priced to adjust to changing demands.

"...at a rate constantly updated to keep traffic moving."

To my understanding, NO congestion pricing proposal even remotely contemplates such a structure. The mechanics are daunting. In fact the politics are daunting, too. Moreover so much of what we perceive as congestion is caused by "breakdowns" and beyond the reach of pricing. Better to have a fleet of helicopters standing by to lift broken vehicles out of the way.
Posted 7:51 AM by David

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FAILED ARCHITECTURE is from his archive.

"In all my years of working in the immediate vicinity of the World Trade Center, no one every said to me, “Hey, lets go get a Sam’s falafel for lunch and go sit in the shadow of the World Trade Center.” (I wonder if Sam’s is back on the corner of Broadway? At noon the frustration of the mile long line was eased by the free, deep-fried, discarded ends of pita bread. There was no better way to spend two dollars in all of New York City.) The plaza at the WTC was bleak, cold, windswept, and uncomfortably sloping towards the center fountain. In later years the management tried to enhance it with live music at lunch, but the sound bounced off the towers in strange ways and by the time it reached the ear of the listener it was distorted beyond all recognition. Now it was windswept, bleak, and noisy. They finally added a few tables and chairs off to one side, but only a few furtive smokers ever sat there.

No doubt the modernists and postmodernists will tell me that I just don’t get it. Yamasaki’s minimalist sculpture was meant to be viewed from afar, approached through a tunnel into the basement, and appreciated from the inside up on the 110th floor. Don’t you see, they will say, Yamasaki was a great architect, and if he wanted to make the plaza inviting, he would have. If he actually wanted to make the building function as a building, he would have made it clear where the entrance was. He was making a statement. He was re-imagining and re-interpreting. Call me old-fashioned, but being around a building should be a pleasant experience. If a building is surrounded with grounds or a plaza, then sitting there on a bench should be enjoyable. If it is not, then the building fails as architecture.

Posted 5:49 AM by David

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And the possibilities are really crazy

"I believe of the main things driving new architecture is the systematic use of computers in architectural practice. This is a really profound change that people in the profession are just starting to get the grip of. The computer can do elaborate structural calculations that are too complex to do by hand. They can simulate the daylighting and thermal performance of a building or create complex shapes and then manufacture them. Today these techniques are mostly being used to create self conciously arty buildings (see frank gehry), but the possibilites that computers open up are really crazy. For example, the Swiss Re building that Brian wrote about a couple months ago - the shape is probably designed by computer to minimize wind loads and allow controlled wind to enter the building for ventilation. The plan (i am sure) is designed to provide maximum daylight to each space. I'm not sure, but i would guess that the shape would be caluculated by computer to allow a big level of repition of the construction elements.

The possibilities are endless really. Buildings that are lighter and cheaper to build. Aerodynamic forms that reduce structural loads while at the same time acting to minimize or maximize heat gain depending on the outside temperature. Or deliver conditioned air to the user by virtue of it's shape. Advanced computer controlled glass skins that generate electrical power for the building while at the same time adjusting it's transparency according to occupant need. All these things are real and being built right now."

Certainly the materials/computational revolution may have tremendous advantages for the architect/engineer. The idea of designing a building so that it ventilates itself by better computation of wind flows is a nice conceit -- "fresh air chasing away hot air". But we will absorb such changes with the same aplomb we adopt every other significant change i.e. "plus ca change etc..."

(What I mean by "plus ca change..." is simple and best answered by those at least 40: "Has your fundamental feeling of being alive been altered by your daily (I suspect if not more often) use of the personal computer?" For me the answer is not at all. Life is still a total mystery; the sense of wonder, awe and terror at life is as great (and maybe higher with age). Let's not confuse remarkable changes in our material situation with something which appears to be unchangeable: our sense of self.)

Will "materials/computational revolution" impact, in any essential way, the shape of our cities? I say 'No,' to the extent I understand it. (Gotta give myself an out when it comes to technology.) The "materials/computational revolution" is not even remotely as important as say, the computer in allowing distribution of organizational functions. And the computer has really had very little impact in decentralizing society; the major metropolitan areas everywhere on the globe are growing .

I don't see how a swoopy building like Gehry's "Experience Music Project" here in Seattle --- which could only have been built with rapid computers ---is anything but a yawn once one has seen it a few time. So it has lots of compound curves. That's nice.
Posted 3:32 AM by David

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Jane Jacobs, The Anti-Planner:

"Jane Jacobs is one of those intellectuals who seem ever on the periphery of the libertarian movement. Her book, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, can be found on the shelves of many a libertarian, though often unread. Perhaps this is because her name tends to be associated with leftish intellectuals who decry the rise of the suburbs and the decline of the downtowns, even though Jacobs strongly resists being labeled by any ideological movement, left, right, or other.

What is not commonly known, however, is that her works are full of arguments and insights on the economic nature of communities, on central planning, and on ethics that libertarians would find original and enlightening."

Absolutely.
Posted 1:58 PM by David

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Beyond bricks:

"Roger Boothe, the city's director of urban design, said Cambridge has seen some ''awful'' proposals for this site. He's pleased this plan would extend streets through the site, reconnecting it to the neighborhood.

He also praises the unusual parking strategy.

''Ken's idea --- to have subgrade parking egress outside the buildings, instead of straight from the garage to the office --- will enliven the streets,'' Boothe said."

I'd sure like to know more about that parking arrangement.

UPDATE: Sorry about that. The link above "Beyond bricks" at the Boston Globe seems to be a "dynamic" one and has disappeared.
Posted 1:43 PM by David

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The New Criterion's weblog ARMAVIRUMQUE can't resist a little nasty fun.

"In pursuit of their ideals, the mistakes that some of those bright young people made included armed robbery, widespread kidnap, assassination and random murder. By the time the army carried out its coup in 1976, over 3,000 people had been killed in the political violence unleashed by the young idealists. The dirty war, terrible and unforgivable as it was, did not arise by spontaneous generation."

This gratuitous 'blame the victim' excuse for Argentine thuggery and criminality is beastly. Between the ignorant cant of The Nation and the pompous ignorance of The New Criterion I realize how empty I find the political wings. As to the built environment as well, to a large degree I find myself swimming between the Scylla and Charybdis of the so-called left and right, each of whose intellectual underpinning has as much solidity as those "Black" and "White" parties of Florentine politics, which themselves always reminded me of teams organized to play "steal the flag" at summer camp.

UPDATE: I probably should not have ascribed "ignorance" to The New Criterion. They are learned people there, indeed, which of course makes matters all the worse. The New Criterion is not the Fox Network and I expected grace and civility rather striving for "points." So perhaps, and this would have been better reflective of my initial disgust, the better term would have been "pompous callousness."

UPDATE here.
Posted 7:18 AM by David

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Expanding on earlier remarks here I'm going to use Libeskind's Spiral Extension as an example of how to handle the on-going political problem of: designing public and "institutional" buildings so that they contribute to a pedestrian-oriented city. The bottom line is simple: make even such an outrageous design as Libeskind's follow (as appropriate) the 3 Rules and thus contribute to street-life.

OK. To the building. You can't get much more shocking than the Spiral as a piece of urbanism, shown here as a Photoshop manipulation of the real street (the design is simply a proposal at this time):



It's Daniel Libeskind's Spiral Extension to the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. My initial reaction to the image was shock and then a slow smile. It's so obviously designed to epater le bourgeoisie and it's funny. I suspect that as a New Urbanist I am supposed to dislike it. But I can't. I think it's drole, surprising. A lot of people in London don't like it at all and don't think it's funny.

A building like this, dramatic and with a "name" architect, is a "raisin" in a field of "oatmeal."
"Raisins" = "precious object" buildings. Very, very "special."
"Oatmeal" = ordinary "background" buildings."

It is not merely a "matter of taste" to suggest that too many raisins in a bowl of oatmeal and you no longer have a bowl of oatmeal. Too much of a good thing...etc. etc. The power of this design stems in large measure from its contrast with the context. A whole city of "Spirals" and it would lose its impact.

New Urbanist dogma suggests that the non-commercial town hall and major religious structures are "raisins" and should have both a distinct location and shape to allow them to be easily distinguished. Such buildings should have a claim on the "higher ground," symbolically speaking and perhaps literally . Because they are "special" they are exempt from having to meet the Three Rules.

Sounds reasonable except that in our society the list of potential "special" buildings expands rapidly. The hospital, the library, the "government center," the museum, the educational institution,the courts (both local, state and Federal), the fire station...The list of non-profit institutions which have a legitimate claim to a "precious object" design goes on and on. Each one can claim immunity from the Three Rules --- and tries to --- because it would like to show in 3-D that it is unique, special, not soiled by trade.

But with too many buildings which strive to be unique and stand out and express the profound spiritual and artistic sensibility of their artiste designer...well you have a problem. You have the raisins overpowering the oatmeal, you have the exception devouring the rule.

But the problem is not so much that precious object buildings have unusual forms. The problem is that this sort of building almost invariably turns away from the sidewalk as if to form a psychological moat. "KEEP AWAY! THIS WORK OF ART ONLY FOR THE EXCEEDINGLY REFINED!" It seems to be part of the psychology of such "precious" buildings.

So there we have a political problem and Libeskind walks right into it.

The Victoria and Albert is a Museum. A high-profile architect like Libeskind is hired to give an institution some visibility to aid in, among other things, fund-raising. It worked in Bilbao in spades. Many, many institutions and even private speculative builders recognize that a distinctive design is money in the bank. Such designs are indeed produced to attract attention though their designers try to gussy-up the proceedings with florid but meaningless "design theory" language.

Libeskind's Spiral, it seems to me, is designed to shock, to make one stop sharp. And it does so. Within limits, that's OK. A few distinctive "raisins" are fun to have around.

The ongoing and unavoidable political problem is that these non-commercial institutions have a lot of money, prestige and in fact often do good work. They are almost entirely and generally positive forces in a community. The only problem is that in general they don't know how to build. In order to further their institutional goals, they hire as "starry" an architect as they can afford. Such luminaries rarely seem (this is just empirical observation) to care about the sidewalk. And non-commercial managing boards and councils get snowed as members dream of their building on the cover of a glossy.

So it's inevitable that the system of star architecture will proceed; the public relations benefit is too great. But even within that context, such buildings would simply be politically shrewd to create a positive relationship to the street. Indeed there is no reason they can't . Hadid's museum in Cincinnati is a gawker yet it looks to be a good urban building.

The question which solves a great deal (but admittedly not all) of the political contention about these 'special buildings" would be How does the building meet the sidewalk? Does it activate the sidewalk? Does it follow (in an appropriate fashion) the Three Rules of Urban Design?

So too with the Spiral. The photo doesn't show what is happening at street-grade. It could be terrible or it could be fine. I think it regrettable that so many people misunderstand the core elements of what makes a good street and argue against designs like the Spiral for essentially the wrong reasons. One reason to attack the Spiral would be that its neighborhood has enough "special" buildings and the exception will soon sink the rule. Too many special buildings, isolated from the sidewalk as they typically are, and you have an office-park suburb of Anywhere.

The solution for Libeskind and designers of similar precious object buildings is to make the building a good urban building at the sidewalk i.e. make it enfront the sidewalk in the traditional fashion. That then gives the designer the political cover to do any weird and goofy thing that he likes and his client can afford.

So I am agnostic on the Spiral right now; it's impossible to tell from the image what is happening at sidewalk grade. It could be great; it could be awful. But that's where the action is. Thirty feet is just about the magic number, as this page from the forthcoming second edition of City Comforts shows:



Adhere to the Three Rules within 30 feet or so and do whatever you like elsewhere.

I've written to Libeskind's office to find out the state of the plans and to determine how his design works at the sidewalk. I hope it's good as the basic design is growing on me; the only issue is whether it is good urban building at the sidewalk.

So far they have been very cooperative. (Photo above courtesy of the V&A. Thanks!) I'll report back here when I know more.
Posted 6:23 AM by David

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Jim Kunstler sets the record straight on prior post "Running out of oil":

David--
As usual, you draw the wrong conclusion.
True, the oil depletion curve is a slope not a cliff.
BUT, the systems breakdown occurs relative to tipping points, which are, in fact, cliff-like.
Jim

As usual, I will look forward to learning the truth.

Posted 4:35 PM by David

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At Samizdata, Brian Micklethwait writes interestingly about The Modern Movement (but without ever defining it). But since he is discussing a BBC TV show "High Rise Dreams" prior knowledge is reasonably assumed.

"The truth is that if (even) more money had been made available than was, the devastation cause by the Modern Movement in architecture in Britain would have been even more devastating.

The Modern Movement was animated by numerous seriously bad ideas (and by just sufficient good ones to make all the bad ones catch on seriously). It which it would require an entire specialist blog to do full justice to all these errors. I'll end this post by alluding to just two such ideas, among dozens.

The Modern Movement is shot through with the idea that to put up an 'experimentally designed' block of flats and immediately to invite actual people to live in it is a clever rather than a deeply stupid thing to do. Experimental-equals-good is the equation they swallowed whole. This is rubbish. Many experiments are excellent, as experiments. But what they mostly tell you, the way his numerous failed lightbulbs told Thomas Edison, is what not to do. Imagine if Edison had gone straight to production with his first idea of what a lightbulb might be. That was sixties housing in Britain. No wonder so much of it had to be dynamited."

See the BBC's page (referenced above) for more TV on buildings.

UPDATE from "Comments"

Modern Movement Architecture (which should be distinguished, I believe, from Modern Architecture, which is not all bad by any means) is not the only cause of trouble, but it is one of them, and you let it off far too lightly. This is not an either/or thing.

Posted 12:55 PM by David

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Armed Liberal gets at the essence of City Comforts (the book) and why I so detest star architecture, urban planning mega-projects and their various, mis-directing pretentions in his post here:

"Part of the philosophical change I'm going through is an appreciation of the pleasures of this kind of everyday life; in my own life it's a true gift to have learned that I can have as much fun sitting at Little League closing ceremonies chatting with my neighbors as I can have doing the other, higher-profile things I love.

Much of what I plan to write about in the next month or so is both critical - of the fact that we seem to have trouble with the mundane details of things, and that we look on them as obstacles to the grand Romantic gestures that too many of us convince ourselves are what matter - and hopeful, because when you get away form the Washington-New York-Los Angeles media axis, and out to the Little League fields, lots of people do center their lives around the small accomplishments that real life is made up of.

I don't deny the attraction of Romantic acts, or of introspection, or even of snobbery and elitism - and I think that a world made entirely of dutiful suburban communities would be horribly bland.

But somehow, the pendulum has swung a little to far from those kind of virtues, and I'd like to see it swing back."

Maybe another way to sum it up is "Do you prefer Tolstoy? Or Dostoevsky ?"
Posted 8:29 AM by David

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I was trying to determine if Robert Campbell of the Boston Globe had a website of his architectural writings when I stumbled on (that is one of the great things about the web -- the serendipitous connection) Robert Fulford's column about courthouse architecture which contained this little gem:

"In the design symposium, Arthur Erickson, the architect of the Vancouver courthouse complex and many other structures, demonstrated once more that after he talks for ten minutes about the immense store of wisdom he has accumulated over the decades, everyone feels that something important has just happened although no one can recall anything he said."

I have never heard Arthur Erickson hold forth but I use his Vancouver, British Columbia Robson Square (a sense of it at the extremely useful Great Buildings Online) as a perfect example of how good architecture (especially of the 'striving' type) can be very bad urban design.

Of course such a judgment is not my own personal visual conclusion but a behavioral one based on the actions of many, many others: walk around downtown Vancouver on a sunny day and see where the people hang-out. It won't be at sterile (yes that is a conclusion) Robson Square (which will be dead) but nearby along architecturally-mundane --- but human--- Robson Street, which will be teeming. People vote with their feet when it comes to comfortable spaces.
Posted 8:05 AM by David

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