Mar 10 2007
Design Method
An informal Urban Design Advisory Group started talking in November of 2004. These online efforts and related “off line” actions began in early 2007, thus the date on this introduction. Please explore the posts and pages in the sidebar and comment. You may also request full access to develop posts and pages on this personal blog or set up links to urban design sites to encourage other discussions or project development work using “workshop” and cloud computing.
As far as this site is concerned I am organizing along the original five objectives outlined of the UDC for development and exploration:
Public Policy Education Project Input (see below and sidebar) Outreach Links to communities: LinkedIn Google Groups Calendar
Course of Action: Public Place/Public Process
If criticism is a method that gets to the truth then so be it. But, when it does not, then what? (See Criticism. ) The APA-Urban Design Discussion group put together “Public Place Public Process” to get started on the question of engagement methods. After all, criticism begins and ends with a public that is by many accounts in a coma. This link opens up a 40 page summary of submissions to APA-Urban Design Committeee. It is a PowerPoint (2.4M pdf): San Antonio Presentation.
The Urban Design Committee is a part of this discussion. It sought to combine the thinking of professional planners, designers and architects to accomplish one thing – to move social and environmental equity forward on the nation’s list of priorities. The solution to the global challenge is urban (or is it?).
This link is to a group discussion of serveral examples, many of which are drawn from the following 50 Projects:
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In 2006, fifty projects identified by New York Magazine (NYM) offered a start by scrunching some of the “world’s best architects” into a group to stimulate the mind’s eye. The signatures are clear in the image pictured left. There is coherence “as individuality”, but could an advanced public process improve it as a statement “of community“? The lack of reciprocity between the tightly defined image of the developer’s market research and the experience the public is disconnected. See “Rolling Process”. The most active areas are: |
- Atlantic Yards, Brooklyn, 2010 & 2016 (changing) See Sidebar Atlantic Yards (Superblogs)
- The New Museum, Chelsea — so now what? Its done.
- 80 South Street, Downtown, future (changing) approved in 05…. so now what?
- IAC Headquarters, High Line, 2007 (see Wired Discussion) dominated by “art questions” but how about those ceramic pebbles in the glass to save energy)
- Silvercup West, Queens, 2009 (changing)
- Freedom Tower, Downtown, 2011 (it will on time one of these days)
One Response to “Design Method”
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Using the NY Magazine article is as reasonable a place to start as any on the influence of “signature architecture” on the city’s urban design landscape. High profile sites often set a high standard.
Good place to focus some energy is on number one above (Forest City). Or, how to sell 5-7,000 apartments as a sports complex deal. Perhaps starting a listing of points regarding the perils of “superblocking” would be inorder:
1. creation of dead zones
2. grid disruptions increase hazard potential
3. people just don’t like them
and so on…
The demolition of the buildings on the Ratner project will begin on April 23, 2007