Our Urban Environment
Paths, edges, districts, nodes, landmarks
A collection of villages
Illa de la Discòrdia
Urban form and grain
One square mile of different cities' street networks, held at the same scale to compare the urban form and grain.
Names vs. The Nothing
This is the first site along the tour. In here we have a void. I remember the building that used to stand here, it was painted blue. Passing through it, you can imagine how us, as ghosts – should the building be standing here – would have to actually be invisible to pass through these walls and now it’s the reverse. The building is the ghost and we’re passing through these walls.
The linear city
The linear city was an urban plan for an elongated urban formation. The city would consist of a series of functionally specialized parallel sectors.
As the city expanded, additional sectors would be added to the end of each band, so that the city would become ever longer, without growing wider.
A dialogue between homogeneity and exception
All cities can be described as a dialogue between homogeneity and exception, and each strikes a particular balance that is at the core of its character.
Ground displaced upward
Imagine that our rooftops were parkland, that the area of ground occupied by buildings was, in effect, simply displaced upward. Imagine that the city enacted legislation requiring that the equivalent of 100 percent of the surface area of New York were to be green. A 100 percent requirement would not simply oblige green roofs. It would also demand that compensatory greenery be added to make up for such ungreenable areas as roadways, runways, and other unplantable places. Perhaps the requirement would be satisfied with road narrowings, cantilevered gardens, or green floors in buildings (utilities on the order of the mechanical floors that occur in almost all tall buildings).
Same name in the same basket
Does a concert hall ask to be next to an opera house? Can the two feed on one another? Will anybody ever visit them both, gluttonously, in a single evening, or even buy tickets from one after going to a performance in the other?
In Vienna, London, Paris, each of the performing arts has found its own place, because all are not mixed randomly. The only reason that these functions have all been brought together in Lincoln Center is that the concept of performing art links them to one another. The organization is born of the mania every simple-minded person has for putting things with the same name into the same basket.
A city cannot be a work of art
There is a basic esthetic limitation on what can be done with cities: A city cannot be a work of art.
The kind of problem a city is
Dr. Weaver lists three stages of development in the history of scientific thought: (1) ability to deal with problems of simplicity; (2) ability to deal with problems of disorganized complexity; and (3) ability to deal with problems of organized complexity.
The history of modern thought about cities is unfortunately very different from the history of modern thought about the life sciences. The theorists of conventional modern city planning have consistently mistaken cities as problems of simplicity and of disorganized complexity, and have tried to analyze and treat them thus.
These loose notes
These loose notes are one possible description of our city. A city that, as in Constantin Cavafy's poem The City, is and always will be the same, in the same city again.
Strands of life
For the human mind, the tree is the easiest vehicle for complex thoughts. But the city is not, cannot, and must not be a tree. The city is a receptacle for life. If the receptacle severs the overlap of the strands of life within it, because it is a tree, it will be like a bowl full of razor blades on edge, ready to cut up whatever is entrusted to it. In such a receptacle life will be cut to pieces. If we make cities which are trees, they will cut our life within to pieces.
Natural and artificial cities
I want to call those cities which have arisen more or less spontaneously over many, many years natural cities. And I shall call those cities and parts of cities which have been spontaneously created by designers and planners artificial cities. Siena, Liverpool, Kyoto, and Manhattan are examples of natural cities. Levittown, Chandigarh, and the British New Towns are examples of artificial cities.
It is more and more widely recognized today that there is some essential ingredient missing from artificial cities.
Tree, leaf, house, city
"Tree is leaf and leaf is tree – house is city and city is house. A city is not a city unless it is also a huge house – a house is a house only if it is also a tiny city."
— Aldo van Eyck
To become completely lost
To become completely lost is perhaps a rather rare experience for most people in the modern city. We are supported by the presence of others and by special way-finding devices: maps, street numbers, route signs, bus placards. But let the mishap of disorientation once occur, and the sense of anxiety and even terror that accompanies it reveals to us how closely it is linked to our sense of balance and well-being. The very word "lost" in our language means much more than simple geographical uncertainty; it carries overtones of utter disaster.
Junctions
The junction, or place of a break in transportation, has compelling importance for the city observer. Because decisions must be made at junctions, people heighten their attention at such place and perceive elements with more than normal clarity. This tendency was confirmed so repeatedly that elements located at junctions may automatically be assumed to derive special prominence from their location.
A certain plasticity
There are dangers in a highly specialized visible form; there is a need for a certain plasticity in the perceptual environment. If there is only one dominant path to a destination, a few sacred focal points, or an ironclad set of rigidly separated regions, then there is only one way to image the city without considerable strain. This one may suit neither the needs of all people, nor even the needs of one person as they vary from time to time. An unusual trip becomes awkward or dangerous; interpersonal relations may tend to compartmentalize themselves; the scene becomes monotonous or restrictive.
A metropolis for hydrocarbons
An oil refinery suggests the image of a metropolis for hydrocarbons, the pipe manifolds like expressways, the distillation towers like skyscrapers.
Roads to nowhere
Among real-estate developers, straight lines and right angles went out of fashion sometime in the middle of the twentieth century. If you look at a town or a residential neighborhood laid out since then, you are more likely to find sinuous, serpentine roads—whether or not the topography offers any excuse for such curves. Many of these roads go nowhere: they are loops that bring you back to where you started, or they are cul-de-sacs. Making it easy to find your way through the network of streets is obviously not a high priority. This is an interesting development in urban geography: having redesigned the city to accommodate the automobile, we now search for ways to discourage people from driving on the streets.
Dead cities
If you can understand a city, then that city is dead.
NYLA
"See, what I've always liked about Los Angeles is that it's one of the least restrictive towns in the world. You can pretty much live any way you want to here. And part of that is because the place has no tradition and no history in that sense. It doesn't have any image of itself, which is exactly its loss and gain. That's why it's such a great place to do art and to build your ideas about culture. In New York, it's like an echo chamber: its overwhelming sense of itself, of its past and its present and its mission, becomes utterly restricting."
Tokyo
20 Minutes in Manhattan
A Book by Michael SorkinThe Death and Life of Great American Cities
A Book by Jane JacobsA City Is Not a Tree
An Essay by Christopher Alexander- Strands of life
- Impending destruction
- The right overlap
- The difficulty of designing complexity
- Political chains of influence
The Image of the City
A Book by Kevin Lynch- To become completely lost
- Apparency
- On the edge of something else
- Nothing there, after all
- Paths, edges, districts, nodes, landmarks
Soft City
A Book by David SimDesign of Cities
A Book by Edmund BaconA Burglar's Guide to the City
A Book by Geoff ManaughSuburban Nation
A Book by Andres Duany, Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk & Jeff SpeckAt Home: A Short History of Private Life
A Book by Bill BrysonUnderstanding Architecture
A Book by Robert McCarter & Juhani PallasmaaWhy I Walk
An Article by Chris ArnadeOn my first day I literally walk across the city, to the extent it can be done…The next day I do another cross town walk, but in a different direction, filling in the blanks from the prior day’s walk.
Then, over the next week(s), I walk between 10 to 20 miles per day, picking and choosing from what I have seen before, highlighting what I like, what I want to know more about, refining the path, till by the end of my trip, I have a daily route that is roughly the same.
While that is certainly not the most efficient way to see a city, it is the most pleasant, insightful, and human. I don’t think you can know a place unless you walk it, because it isn’t about distance, but about content.
Why buses represent democracy in action
A Talk by Enrique PeñalosaAn advanced city is not one where even the poor use cars, but rather one where even the rich use public transport.
Tilted Arc
An Artwork by Richard SerraIn the 1980s, Serra found himself in the center of a public controversy over his piece titled Tilted Arc. While it was the government that approached him to create the work for downtown Manhattan’s Federal Plaza, the unveiling of the piece in 1981 was met with sharp criticism. The monumental sculpture was said to disrupt rush hour and the pedestrians who had to cut through the plaza daily. To the dismay of art lovers, the 120-foot-long, 12-foot-tall Tilted Arc was ultimately disassembled in 1989.
Working with Brian Eno on design principles for streets
- Think like a gardener, not an architect: design beginnings, not endings
- Unfinished = fertile
- Artists are to cities what worms are to soil.
- A city’s waste should be on public display.
- Make places that are easy for people to change and adapt (wood and plaster, as opposed to steel and concrete.)
- Places which accommodate the very young and the very old are loved by everybody else too.
- Low rent = high life
- Make places for people to look at each other, to show off to each other.
- Shared public space is the crucible of community.
- A really smart city is the one that harnesses the intelligence and creativity of its inhabitants.
Towers in the Village
An Essay by Alfred TwuSince tall buildings have been around, there have been many ways they’ve fit into cities: towers in downtown, towers in the park, and most recently, towers on a whole-block development. Let’s look at a 4th way, the Tower in the Village.
Unlike the others, the Tower in the Village does not aim to be the center of attention. Instead, the upper floors are hidden behind a low front that fits in with the rest of the block. It faces a village green instead of a busy road.
Why highrise infill? Growing cities have two choices: 1) Redevelop a lot of sites to medium density, or 2) Redevelop a small number of sites to very high density. Highrise infill requires less demolition and can get more homes built faster.
Clues for software design in how we sketch maps of cities
An Article by Matt WebbGiven there’s an explosion in software to accrete and organise knowledge, is the page model really the best approach?
Perhaps the building blocks shouldn’t be pages or blocks, but
neighbourhoods
roads
rooms and doors
landmarks.Or rather, as a knowledge base or wiki develops, it should - just like a real city - encourage its users to gravitate towards these different fundamental elements. A page that starts to function a little bit like a road should transform into a slick navigation element, available on all its linked pages. A page which is functioning like a landmark should start being visible from two hops away.
The 99% Invisible City
A Book by Roman Mars & Kurt KohlstedtProposal to renovate a housing complex
A PhotographSimone and Lucien Kroll. Gennevilliers, France, 1990.
Cities and Ambition
An Essay by Paul GrahamCityspace series
A Gallery by Emily GarfieldPrimary series for imaginary map drawings, spanning 2008-present and using various materials and techniques.
Psychogeography
A Definition by Guy DebordPsychogeography is an exploration of urban environments that emphasizes playfulness and "drifting". It was defined in 1955 by Guy Debord as:
- "The study of the precise laws and specific effects of the geographical environment, consciously organized or not, on the emotions and behavior of individuals."
- "A total dissolution of boundaries between art and life."
- "A whole toy box full of playful, inventive strategies for exploring cities...just about anything that takes pedestrians off their predictable paths and jolts them into a new awareness of the urban landscape."
Title Cities
An Artwork by Nicholas RougeuxA book’s title page contains more than its namesake—including its author, contributors, publisher, and release date, and. Antiquarian books are known for having lengthy titles, especially those of a scientific nature. These books’ frequently unassuming title pages are gateways to a wealth of knowledge and the focal point of this project.
Title pages of antique influential scientific books covering a variety of subjects were coded and reimagined as colorful cityscapes based solely on their words to illustrate the unique body of knowledge readers would find within.
Boxes were drawn around each word of a title page and color-coded by its first letter (words beginning with “A” are one color, “B” another, and so on). Each title page has its own palette. Those boxes were then upended and arranged to form an abstract cityscape while maintaining their original sizes relative to each other.
Local Code: The Constitution of a City at 42º N Latitude
A Book by Michael SorkinLocal Code: 3,659 Proposals About Data, Design & The Nature of Cities
A Book by Nicholas de MonchauxLocal Code’s data-driven layout arranges drawings of 3,659 digitally tailored interventions for vacant public land in San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York City, and Venice, Italy. The natures of these found parcels is as particular as the cities that house them — land under billboards in Los Angeles, dead-end alleys in San Francisco, city-owned vacant lots in New York City, and abandoned islands in the Venetian lagoon — but have in common an unrecognized potential as a social and ecological resource.
Urban Street Network Orientation
An Article by Geoff BoeingThis study measures the entropy (or disordered-ness) of street bearings in each street network, along with each city’s typical street segment length, average circuity, average node degree, and the network’s proportions of four-way intersections and dead-ends. It also develops a new indicator of orientation-order that quantifies how a city’s street network follows the geometric ordering logic of a single grid. These indicators, taken in concert, reveal the extent and nuance of the grid.
New Urbanism and Beyond: Designing Cities for the Future
A Book by Tigran HaasAll the buildings in New York (that I've drawn so far)
The Shape of Design
Near and far
The creative process, in essence, is an individual in dialogue with themselves and the work. The painter, when at a distance from the easel, can assess and analyze the whole of the work from this vantage. He scrutinizes and listens, chooses the next stroke to make, then approaches the canvas to do it. Then, he steps back again to see what he’s done in relation to the whole. It is a dance of switching contexts, a pitter-patter pacing across the studio floor that produces a tight feedback loop between mark-making and mark-assessing. The artist, when near, is concerned with production; when far, he enters a mode of criticism where he judges the degree of benefit (or detriment) the previous choice has had on the full arrangement.
Painting’s near and far states are akin to How and Why: the artist, when close to the canvas, is asking How questions related to craft; when he steps back, he raises Why questions concerned with the whole of the work and its purpose. Near and Far may be rephrased as Craft and Analysis, which describe the kinds of questions the artist asks while in each mode. This relationship can be restated in many different ways, each addressing a necessary balance:
- How and Why
- Near and Far
- Making and Thinking
- Execution and Strategy
- Craft and Analysis
Why we should read
Unfortunately, the program met its end because the show’s approach opposed the contemporary standard format of children’s television: teaching kids how to read, rather than Reading Rainbow’s objective, which was to teach kids about why they should read.
Reading Rainbow had a long run, lasting twenty-three years, but its cancellation feels like a symbolic blow. Education, just like climbing the ladder, must be balanced between How and Why. We so quickly forget that people, especially children, will not willingly do what we teach them unless they are shown the joys of doing so. The things we don’t do out of necessity or responsibility we do for pleasure or love; if we wish children to read, they must know why.
We hear a voice whisper
The Shakers have a proverb that says, “Do not make something unless it is both necessary and useful; but if it is both, do not hesitate to make it beautiful.” We all believe that design’s primary job is to be useful. Our minds say that so long as the design works well, the work’s appearance does not necessarily matter. And yet, our hearts say otherwise. No matter how rational our thinking, we hear a voice whisper that beauty has an important role to play.
Needs more love
He held the phone to his chest, looked at me, and simply said, “Needs more love.” He pushed the portfolio back across his desk, smiled warmly, and shooed me out of his office.
I still think about this advice, and what exactly he might have meant when he said my work needed more love. At the time, I took it to mean that I should improve my craft, but I’ve come to realize that he was speaking of something more fundamental and vital. My work was flat, because it was missing the spark that comes from creating something you believe in for someone you care about. This is the source of the highest craft, because an affection for the audience produces the care necessary to make the work well.
One candle can light another
Lighting one candle
with another candle—
spring evening.Buson is saying that we accept the light contained in the work of others without darkening their efforts. One candle can light another, and the light may spread without its source being diminished.
A great leap of lightness
The first step of any process should be to define the objectives of the work with Why-based questions. The second step, however, should be to put those objectives in a drawer. Objectives guide the process toward an effective end, but they don’t do much to help one get going. In fact, the weight of the objectives can crush the seeds of thought necessary to begin down an adventurous path.
The creative process, like a good story, needs to start with a great leap of lightness, and that is only attainable through a suspension of disbelief. The objectives shouldn’t be ignored forever, but they should be defined ahead of time, set aside, and then deployed at the appropriate moment so that we may be audacious with our ideas.
Going evil
To begin, we must build momentum and then reintroduce the objectives to steer the motion. I find the best way to gain momentum is to think of the worst possible way to tackle the project. Quality may be elusive, but stupidity is always easily accessible; absurdity is fine, maybe even desired. If the project is a business card for an optician, perhaps you imagine it is illegible. (This is in the spirit, but you can do better.) If it is a brochure for an insurance agency, imagine otters on the cover and deranged handwriting on the inside for the copy. (Further!) If it is design for an exhibition of Ming Dynasty vases, brand it as an interactive show for kids, and put the vases on precariously balanced pedestals made of a shiny metal that asks to be touched. (Yes!)
The important realization to have from this fun—though fruitless–exercise is that every idea you have after these will be better. Your ideas must improve, because there is no conceivable way that you could come up with anything worse.
The momentum of making
Limitations narrow a big process into a smaller, more understandable space to explore. It’s the difference between swimming in a pool and being dropped off in the middle of the ocean with no land in sight. Those limitations also become the basis for the crucial first steps in improvisation. After those, the momentum of making accelerates as ideas are quickly generated without judgment.
Let the body wander
If the mind needs to wander, best let the body do the same. A short walk is more effective in coming up with an idea than pouring all the coffee in the world down your gullet.
Message, tone, format
All design work seems to have three common traits: there is a message to the work, the tone of that message, and the format that the work takes. Successful design has all three elements working in co-dependence to achieve a whole greater than the sum of the individual parts.
Asking why
Most inventions are recombinations of existing things, but where do the sparks for those combinations come from? What instigates that magic to make hybrids, to use them for unimagined purposes, and to inspire new settings for the three levers? Certain advancements seem logical and inevitable—smaller cellphones, faster computers, more reliable medical technology—while others seem to come out of nowhere. Turning avocado into caviar, for example, is not a logical conclusion in the kitchen. That choice is an inspired one. You can always spot these brilliant inventions as instances of magic, because our reaction, much like Achatz’s first meal at elBulli, is always disbelief.
Henry Ford famously said that if he had asked his customers what they wanted, they would have said a faster horse. Of course, we know that the faster horse is a testament to the limited imagination of customers, but I’d suggest that it’s more representational of not reassessing the objectives of the work in light of new opportunities. The faster horse is a recombination of the three levers in a predictable way: the customer’s answer is staunchly loyal to the horse, the already established format of transportation. They are inside of the adjacent possible, and ask a How question: How can horses be better?
Asking a Why question leads us to a different conclusion: Why are horses important? Because they quickly and reliably get us from one place to another. A Why question defines our need and uses an objective to create a satisfactory outcome for the work. This type of question is specific enough to be observable, but flexible enough to be approached in a variety of different ways. It’s easy to think that the way to improve life is to iterate on the things that we already have, but that is a trap of limited imagination. We should be iterating on how we answer our needs, and not necessarily on the way our old solutions have taken shape. The root of our practice is located in the usefulness of the work, not the form that it takes.
Outcomes and consequences
The primary purpose of the design is to have it do something particular, not be any particular thing. All of this implies that design is a field of outcomes and consequences more than one of artifacts. The forms that designers produce are flexible, so long as the results serve the need.
The source of delight
Design doesn’t need to be delightful for it to work, but that’s like saying food doesn’t need to be tasty to keep us alive. The pedigree of great design isn’t solely based on aesthetics or utility, but also the sensation it creates when it is seen or used. It’s a bit like food: plating a dish adds beauty to the experience, but the testament to the quality of the cooking is in its taste. It’s the same for design, in that the source of a delightful experience comes from the design’s use.
Every exit is an entrance somewhere
At the Ace Hotel in New York, a required exit sign over a door was an eyesore, and a stark contrast from the considered, detailed wall where it was mounted. Rather than accept the wart as it was, the sign was embraced as a chance to create an experience for the hotel’s guests by integrating the exit sign into the space. Now, surrounding the sign are other letters painted on the wall in a similar condensed style.
Every requirement is an opportunity for delight, even the ugly ones. Sometimes the creative treatment of these warts are the most enjoyable parts of a design.