Peter Katz: The New Urbanism - Toward an Architecture of Community

A review of the 1994 book by Marwa Al- Nahlawi


This book comprises a widely illustrated collection of articles and essays put forward by the leading figures of the New Urbanism movement that emerged in the United States in the late 1970s. Split into two parts, “The New Urbanism” demonstrates how the principles of this movement can be applied to both infill and new development sites at a variety of ranges and scales in the city. The author claims that it “couldn’t have come at a better time” following the unsustainable suburban sprawl that had risen in the mid 20th Century after the Second World War. The advent of the automobile, along with the deterioration of city centres, encouraged more people to leave and disperse to the suburbs for privacy, mobility, security and home ownership. Despite there being many advantages to this move, it resulted in the fragmentation of society of which the consequences went by unnoticed for a long time.

The New Urbanism movement came forward as a response to this, in order to try and reintegrate the components of modern urban and suburban life into compact pedestrian-friendly communities efficiently linked with the larger regional infrastructure. According to Peter Calthorpe, one of the founding members of the Congress for New Urbanism, there are two ways in which the principles of the New Urbanism are to be employed in a region. First, they should be applied in cities as well as suburbs and new growth areas. Second, the entire region should be treated as a whole (socially, economically and ecologically), using the same design principles throughout. With regards to a growing region, Calthorpe rejects any attempt to limit overall growth or allow it to expand uncontrollably, claiming that both actions would result in either further sprawl or undesirable traffic and congestion. Alternatively, he states that growth should be accommodated first in redevelopment and infill locations and then in new growth areas that are within transit proximity to the city centre. Peter Calthorpe’s work is based mainly on TOD (Transit-oriented development), which is “an attempt to regroup the suburb into a density which makes public transit feasible”.

Andres Duany and Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk, both also co-founders of the Congress for New Urbanism, established the principles of TND (Traditional Neighbourhood Development) with the fundamental organizing elements being the neighbourhood, the district and the corridor. The neighbourhood is defined as an urbanized area with a balanced mix of human activity; it has a centre and an edge and is based on a network of interconnecting streets where people live, work, play, shop, to go to school, etc. In a neighbourhood, the public realm rules over the private. A district has a similar structure to that of a neighbourhood and also relies on its relationship to transit but is usually an area of a single primary function around which other supporting activities may take place. Finally, the corridor, acts as a connector and separator of neighbourhoods and districts, and it is characterized by its visual continuity. Its technological intensity and close-by densities determine the location and type of a corridor.

In their essay, Elizabeth Moule and Stefanos Polyzoides – also members of the Congress for New Urbanism -take Architecture and Urbanism back to its most elemental scale in which a plan is first laid out followed by the regulation of public and private realms and finally, the introduction of buildings and open spaces that ultimately define the character of a city. Their application of the New Urbanism principles is to ensure the existence of a public realm through individual buildings by taking the street, the building and the block as mutually dependent entities. Rather than dividing lines, the streets in a city are seen as communal spaces and passages within an interconnected network. Along with the basic design principles of streets, there should exist a hierarchy in their types, according to their required vehicular and pedestrian load. Blocks illustrate the urban fabric of a city and define the public realm, revealing the relationship between the pedestrian, the vehicle and the building. Ultimately, they should be designed and configured around the pedestrian before anything else. The building is considered to be “the smallest increment of growth” in the city. Moule and Polyzaides argue that, in building design, functionalism and flexibility alone result in exclusive zoning and fragmentation; therefore, design should include type as well as function to allow for more sustainable and adaptable architecture.

In the afterword, Vincent Scully, suggests that although the principles of the New Urbanism claim to be applicable to the city centre as well as the suburbs – and a couple of examples were illustrated in the book – it deals mainly with suburban settings and therefore “The new Suburbanism” may have been more fitting for a title. However, he also mentions that in any case, the book is more about bringing back the sense of community into architecture, a characteristic that had been gradually declining over the course of the century. This disintegration he confirms is owed mostly to the automobile above all else.

“The New Urbanism”, like many other publications, is not a flawless response to the sprawl and fragmentation that emerged in the United States, and nor is it a complete solution with no holes to be filled. However, it provides a utopian concept that, if applied thoroughly and conscientiously, can provide a holistic model for town and city planning, with minimal trade-offs. This concept seeks to revive the public realm, which has been increasingly dominated by the private, and revitalise the city that has deteriorated over time. The principles mentioned in the book instruct us to favour the pedestrian over the automobile, and design accordingly. They aim to regenerate the once existing community-based towns that have been replaced by modernism’s international style of architecture that is free from the restraints of the city, from the community, from the urban situation as a whole. Saying that, I also believe that upon embracing these principles, it is very easy to steer away from the primary intention of creating mixed use, diverse, pedestrianised communities and instead, create socially exclusive, sheltered developments that are far from being “public” per se.

Buried buildings, like icebergs in the ground

[Image: Watership Down by Maier Yagod and Jon Reed at the Cleveland Public Library].

In a project for the Cleveland Public Library, designed by Toronto-based architects Maier Yagod and Jon Reed, "domestic fragments" have been embedded in the pavement, forming a surreal new kind of public bench:

Watership Down creates a scenario where five houses are frozen for a moment in a process of complete submersion into the ground of the Eastman Garden. Placed throughout the Garden, the gables of these houses project out of the earth at various angles. These create focal points of interest within the garden and become follies to climb, sit and rest upon.

Taken too far in one direction, of course, this idea could very easily become a kind of postmodern joke—architectural theme-props for a children's playground—but the installation manages to avoid explicit dramaturgy, its fragments more like Gordon Matta-Clark's Building Cuts emerging from the surface of the city.

[Image: Watership Down by Maier Yagod and Jon Reed at the Cleveland Public Library].

A fever of roofs pushing up from below, breaching ground level with the archaeological buoyancy of lost ships.

[Image: Watership Down by Maier Yagod and Jon Reed at the Cleveland Public Library].

While the deliberate use of simulated building fragments can run the risk, mentioned earlier, of simply repeating the PoMo theatrics of things like "upside-down buildings," the evocation of underground architecture, like tombs, scratching through the earth, buried by an orderly landslide of the urban fabric around them, is an interesting direction to take.

A Daily Dose of Architecture, v2

Tonight and maybe tomorrow I'll be migrating this blog to one of Blogger's upgraded templates. (This is different than the migration I previously mentioned.) This change should make browsing the blog better, among other things, and it will take away some of the headaches I've had from using the old templates, modified by me beyond recognition (part of the problem).

The upgrade will look different but will have basically the same three-column layout. I'll need to research on keeping a few of the bells and whistles I've grown to like, namely the collapsing comments and sidebar truncation on individual posts. I'm also going to look into making "v2" work with mobile devices.

That said, bear with me over the weekend as this change happens.

Update, 45 minutes later: Flipped the switch and copied over the sidebar information. I'm digging the background image (corresponds with "this week's dose"), but it's not static on iPad (I like it static, with the content scrolling in front of it). Nevertheless the transparent boxes and background image are more readable on iPad than a laptop with Firefox.

Update, 2 hours 45 minutes later: Fixed the sidebar so the long list of links and recommended books don't show up on individual post pages. Another thing I noticed that could be improved is the differentiation between posts on the main and archive pages. Right now the posts bleed together, so it is hard to see, at least at a quick glance or scroll, where one post ends and the next begins.

Trenton Bath House Photos

I've uploaded photos from yesterday's "hard-hat" tour of the Trenton Bath House to my flickr account. I'll be posting about the restoration of the Louis I. Kahn-designed building in a few days, but check out the photo set (slideshow) in the meantime.

Working the Line

My current (re)fascination with the Center for Land Use Interpretation involves getting up to date on their latest events (as well as tearing through their bookstore and grabbing some gems to dig through - reviews/info coming soon). A recent announcement caught my eye.



The ideas of margins and borders is constantly fascinating, along with the markings we do to delineate these in physical space, so one I wish I could travel for is from 'independent interpreter'... "David Taylor's project "Working the Line" documents 276 obelisks, installed between the years 1892 and 1895, that mark the U.S./Mexico boundary from El Paso/Juarez to San Diego/ Tijuana"

Those in proximity should check it out...

The Walker Residence

One of the greatest surprises during my California adventure was coming across a little known Frank Lloyd Wright house in Carmel directly across Monterey Bay from Pebble Beach.

While I agree with many other architects that Frank Lloyd Wright is overly regarded in general, one can't help but admit he was a tremdendously talented architect.The Walker Residence was designed in 1948 and completed in 1951 for Della Walker. It's a small house nestled into the beach rocks on the water side of Scenic Drive in Carmel. I loved the gates into the driveway / carport which almost feel like the backdoor as it has such a prominent face on the other side.As you can tell from these pictures, it's so perfectly sited that it blends into its surroundings. If you didn't know it was there, you might not notice it!It's small sizes gives it the nickname 'the cabin on the rocks' (Carmel is full of cottages or 'cabins') but it's definitely not small on design. Above you see a typical FLW element, the carport.Built originally for $125,000, FLW later added a master bedroom in 1956. He is known to have considered this amongst his favorite houses.

I would compare the siting of the house and its relationship to the water with Fallingwater. FLW took a beautiful piece of property and only improved it with his design.The one side of the house has stairs which go down onto a small secluded beach area, seen above.The design is based on a ship with a terrace off the liviing room becoming the prow, thrusting into Monterey Bay.

Such an elegant house and I love the stonework.The plantings on this side of the house look native to the area and really feel a part of the house itself. The house was featured in the 1959 movie "A Summer Place". Has anyone ever seen this? I'll have to add it to my netflix queue.

If you're ever in Carmel, make sure to pay special attention to the cabin on the rocks!

Quick Links 14

[Image: A film still from Wolfen].



<1> Reduced to Rubble | Cartographies of the Absolute:

There are a myriad of films that came out in the seventies and eighties that depicted, documented, exploited, and/or contributed to this dystopian image of a section of one of the world’s greatest cities reduced to rubble, not through aerial bombardment but so-called ‘benign neglect’ and ‘planned shrinkage’: Bonfire of the Vanities, Fort Apache, The Bronx, 80 Blocks from Tiffany’s, etc. Most of these, as well as a series of Hollywood films that use NY as a set for acts of shocking violence (one could add Death Wish, C.H.U.D., The Warriors, Escape from New York, Driller Killer, and innumerable others to the list) say little about what created the situations, usually implying that urban decline is a natural process and that the resulting depravity is the inevitable result of packing people together (especially non-white people).



One of the more ambitious and unusual films to fall under this rubric is the 1981 horror film Wolfen. An unusual mix of werewolf movie, police procedural, and serial killer thriller, Wolfen is based on a 1978 novel by Whitley Strieber, and directed by Michael Wadleigh, best known for directing the documentary Woodstock (1969). Entangled in a plot symptomatically torn between political history, capitalist practice and mythologies of the land, Wolfen is an odd and beguiling narrative about a critical moment in the collapse of radical politics and the emergence of a feral neoliberalism against a backdrop of urban dereliction and real estate speculation.

<2> Open Carry | L.A. Times:

More than a dozen people packing pistols on their hips strolled down the Hermosa Beach strand Saturday, picking up garbage and distributing fliers about the rights of gun owners.



The event was part of a burgeoning and controversial "open carry" movement nationwide promoting the right to carry guns in public. Although carrying a concealed weapon is illegal without a permit, California allows people to openly carry guns in many areas as long as they are unloaded, though they can keep ammunition with them.

[Image: A 20,000 square-foot underground shelter by Vivos; courtesy of Vivos].



<3> An Investment in Life | USA Today:

Jason Hodge, father of four children from Barstow, Calif., says he's "not paranoid" but he is concerned, and that's why he bought space in what might be labeled a doomsday shelter.



Hodge bought into the first of a proposed nationwide group of 20 fortified, underground shelters—the Vivos shelter network—that are intended to protect those inside for up to a year from catastrophes such as a nuclear attack, killer asteroids or tsunamis, according to the project's developers.



"It's an investment in life," says Hodge.

[Image: Photo by Spencer Weiner for the Los Angeles Times].



<4> The Mogi Doughnut | L.A. Times:

Seismologists call the possible pattern a Mogi doughnut. It's the outgrowth of a concept, developed in Japan, which holds that earthquakes sometimes occur in a circular pattern over decades—building up to one very large quake in the doughnut hole.

[Images: Emergent North by Lateral Office/InfraNet Lab].



<5> Emergent North | Bustler:

Emergent North looks at the challenges and opportunities of the public realm, civic space, landscape, and infrastructure emerging from a unique geography. Ms. Sheppard and Mr. White will conduct two travel routes through Nunavut, Yukon, and Northwest Territories, as well as Alaska and Greenland, to gather first-hand knowledge and documentation of Far Northern settlements.

[Images: Photos by Linda Pollak, courtesy of Urban Omnibus].



<6> City of Alternate Signs | Urban Omnibus:

[Linda Pollak's] investigations into mysterious carvings in the granite sidewalks of Lower Manhattan have much to teach us about the ways natural forces determine urban form. They also have yielded photographic imagery that is visually arresting on its own. I happened to glance at one of these images in Linda’s office last winter, and immediately afterward I started seeing the “cuts and patches” they depict everywhere I went. Turns out many of them are coal chute covers, relics of a different era of energy infrastructure in formerly industrial neighborhoods like SoHo or TriBeCa.

<7> City of Acoustic Side-Effects | Local Ecologist:

If you stand at the edge of the inner most ledge of the spiral and utter "Ah" you are supposed to hear "Ah" as if you spoke it into an echoing microphone.

[Image: Institute of Oriental Studies, St. Petersburg/Giraudon/Art Resource, via Saudi Aramco World].



<8> Great Tent Cities in Muslim Lands | Saudi Aramco World:

From the Middle Ages onward, European travelers... wrote admiringly of great tent cities in Muslim lands—especially in Central Asia, but also in Turkey, Egypt and later Mughal India. They were astonished at the size and organization of these cities that at times numbered thousands and even tens of thousands of tents.



The cities that amazed Europeans were not simply the black camel-hair ridge tents of the Arab world or the domed yurts of the nomadic Central Asian tribes. They included movable palaces, some complete with mosques, that housed traveling royalty and their vast entourages, or were set up to mark important celebrations, such as the marriage or circumcision of members of the ruling house. And it was not just the size of these tents that caught western eyes, but their splendor and comfort, and the way they served as showcases for wonderful textiles: cloth of gold, brocade, ikat, embroideries, velvet, chintz and appliqué.

<9> The Man Who Moves Buildings | Guardian:

Jeremy Patterson moves large structures from place to place... Patterson's latest monster move involved a 19th-century brick mansion on a hill, which the owners wanted transported five miles south to their winery... Patterson and his crew dug out the foundations and cut holes in them at intervals, into which they slotted a lattice of 110-foot steel beams. Then they pumped the beams up on jacks, demolished the foundations, slid some wheels underneath and drove the whole thing away... He can't stop talking about what an insane idea moving a building is. He kept mentioning the threat of the house collapsing and killing everyone. A few minutes later he collapsed himself, of a suspected heart attack.

[Images: The SNOLAB neutrino detector and mine in Ontario, Canada].



<10> The Light Below | BBC:

Scientists are looking to relocate an underground experiment searching for dark matter to an even deeper site. Cosmic rays striking the Earth could completely mask the rare dark matter events sought by the experiment. Team members want to cut out as much of this cosmic ray interference as possible, even if it means moving the experiment 2km below ground. This could help them positively identify the particles thought to make up dark matter. Dr. Marek Kos, who is a team member on the Cryogenic Dark Matter Search II (CDMSII) project, outlined details at the International Conference on High Energy Physics (ICHEP) in Paris. He said the experiment could be relocated from a mine in Minnesota to a deeper facility in Ontario, Canada.

(Some links via Steve Silberman, Jim Rossignol, Nicola Twilley, and possibly others I've forgotten; don't miss Quick Links 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, and 13).

Firm Faces #15

ARCHIPELAGOS is one of the New Practices New York 2010 (NPNY) winners. Their web page features this humorous image of a few members of the office:



Are they moving? Hauling their presentation to the Center for Architecture for the NPNY exhibition? Paying homage to Mr. Bean?

Those interested can ask them on Thursday when they take part in the NYPNY2010 Winner's Panel Discussion.

Book Review: New Directions in Contemporary Architecture

New Directions in Contemporary Architecture: Evolutions and Revolutions in Building Design Since 1988 by Luigi Prestinenza Puglisi
Wiley, 2008
Paperback, 240 pages



The year 1988 marks the beginning of Italian writer and critic Luigi Prestinenza Puglisi’s exploration of architecture in the last two decades. This date at first glance seems questionable, arbitrarily based on the book’s publication date, but it coincides with the Deconstructivist Architecture exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), curated by Philip Johnson and Mark Wigley. That show compiled primarily unbuilt work by the now household names Coop Himmelb(l)au, Peter Eisenman, Frank Gehry, Zaha Hadid, Rem Koolhaas, Daniel Libeskind, and Bernard Tschumi. Like Johnson’s much earlier International Style exhibition at the same venue, Deconstructivist Architecture was style over substance, image masquerading as shared values. Nevertheless it denotes a shift from postmodern architecture’s ersatz classicism towards a chaotic dynamism supposedly representative of its time. The following twenty years saw an unbridled expansion of architectural expression and diversity, an “unruly architectural landscape” that Puglisi attempts to make sense of here.

In four chapters the author traces the new directions, masterpieces and current trends that followed Deconstructivism. Like the book’s starting point, each chapter break coincides primarily with an event internal to architecture: 1993’s publication of Architectural Design’s “Folding in Architecture” issue; the opening of the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain by Frank Gehry four years later. Only the attacks of September 11, 2001 are external to architecture, though the master plan competition for Ground Zero comprises the start of the last chapter. These architecture mileposts exhibit a tendency by Puglisi to stay confined to the world of architectural theory and media, especially European magazines. This tendency means the formal aspects of architecture are of the utmost, at the expense of any exploration of the social, the political, or other influences on building.

But as somebody in undergraduate architectural school in the heyday of Deconstructivism, I was more than willing to be swept away on Puglisi’s ride through the movement and beyond. His writing is a readable mix of description and critique, where the latter is subtle yet sharp, and the former is accompanied by numerous illustrations and even more footnotes; the last could be described as half the book, occupying a third or more of each page’s space and highlighting more than just references. The hindsight afforded Puglisi is used to his advantage when describing and critiquing the theories of the time, but without being dismissive of original intentions. His solid critique of Deconstructivism takes aim at its parallels with postmodernism and modernism before it—as just another Capitalist style—yet without extinguishing his obvious excitement over the shaping of space in the architectural production of this period.

The second chapter focuses on the new directions of “Blobitecture” and Minimalism, two very different yet coincidental styles. The first is most intimately linked with Greg Lynn’s editing of “Folding in Architecture” and his integration of computers into the architectural process, while the second can be seen as a response to Deconstructivism and the explosive buildings of Zaha Hadid and her contemporaries. While not overt, Puglisi takes a stand on his style of preference, clear in his dismissal of Minimalism as generic and skin-deep and explicit in his chagrin for Yoshio Taniguchi’s winning design for the MoMA expansion.

The third and fourth chapters deal respectively with a “season of masterpieces” and post-9/11 trends in architecture. The former adds buildings by fellow Deconstructivists Koolhaas and Libeskind to Gehry’s Guggenheim in Bilbao, as well as ones by Jean Nouvel, UNStudio and a spate of Dutch architects. Landscape is the key word in this chapter, as various lines of thought influence the relationship between architecture and the environment. After a discussion of the WTC proposals at the start of the last chapter, Puglisi focuses on the role of media in the production of “starchitects” and the accompanying crisis of architectural criticism. A subsequent exploration of ten notable projects and their stylish strands leads Puglisi to ask, “What direction will architecture take in the near future?” He develops three new directions, but their brevity and general nature make them incomplete thoughts. It is the immediate history of contemporary architecture that takes precedent in Puglisi's text, not predictions about its future.

US: CA: UK:

Live and direct

As some of you might know, I am @bldgblog on Twitter—but I've also started an account called @bldgbloglive so that I can live-tweet events, lectures, sites, interviews, panel discussions, and more without clogging up @bldgblog and driving readers insane with an avalanche of instant messages.

So far, I've covered graduate research presentations here at the CCA given by Léa-Catherine Szacka, Zubin Singh, S. Faisal Hassan, and Molly Wright Steenson, but I hope to post at least a few live notes from Foodprint Toronto this Saturday—and then many more events and lectures to come.

So if you want to see occasional, quantitatively intense bursts of descriptive micro-messages sent live from the front lines of the lecture hall, consider adding @bldgbloglive to your list of sources; if you'd prefer—or would also like—the odd link to good articles here and there, don't miss @bldgblog. And, of course, if you are wondering why you might also consider using Twitter, here are some random thoughts about its note-taking potential.

Urban Topographies

From Urban Omnibus, Linda Pollak's simple 'Cuts & Patches' explores remnant disturbances within the urban environment as 'topographies' (which more often than not tend to be coal chute covers from a long-gone infrastructure). Check out the great photos and interview.


:: image via Urban Omnibus

"As traces, these cuts and patches allow us to perceive physical and social dynamics of an urban site over time. Looking at them together, they are like a kind of archaeology without physical excavation: they register different eras of construction and settlement, the movement of water, the movement of pedestrians."

:: image via Urban Omnibus

Peter G. Rowe: Civic Realism

A review by Pardip Bansal of the 1999 book published by M.I.T. Press


Rowe is a professor of Architecture and Urban Design at Harvard University, where he has taught since 1985. Since then he has also been the Dean, the Chairman, Vice Chairman, Director, and Vice President of various programmes, departments and faculties of various other institutions. In addition he is an honorary professor at many universities across the world. Rowe has written many books generally focused on the evolving cultural considerations of modernity, especially as they apply in various regions and aspects of the built environment.

In Civic Realism Rowe looks at the shape and appearance of civic places, and at the mixture of social, political and cultural circumstances of societies that bring them into existence. This book is as much about the making and reshaping of civic places as it is about urban architecture. The book is organised into five main parts, which are the main themes of civic realism (according to Rowe), the five being…
Reexamining the Public Realm,
Civic Realms and Public Spaces,
Realism and World Making,
Individual Spaces and Collective Places,
and Representation and Constitution of Spatial Meanings.
These themes are discussed using examples or case studies to detail each point. The final part The Practice of Civic Realism aims to pull all the themes together.

Rowe begins by re-examining the public realm and explores Siena and its Piazza del Campo from the 13th and 14th Century and states “Siena and its Piazza del Campo stand out as a place where civic life, civic aspirations, and civic responsibilities have been inscribed indelibly...” This is because everyday and special activities have taken place there,
helped by its changing governments over time to make the space work, even to the present day.

In the Civic Realism and Public Spaces section Rowe opens up the idea of power sharing interests between government and various elements of civic society by introducing the modern and restricted interpretation of civil society, normally referring to social organisations being apart from the state. However at the best of times interests can converge in examples where normally between the state and civil society they would diverge, which allows the creation of something with civic impact. The first example is the urban public spaces of Barcelona, completed between 1981 and 1987 to represent a large and impressive body of public bodies at widely different scales, spread throughout the city of some 1.7 million people. These were highly specific and much needed open space projects, both to establish a strong public presence and to help renovate the city. Emphasis was placed on multiple uses of public spaces, in part to accommodate the daily rituals of meeting, strolling, and simply being together in a public place all strong characteristics of Barcelona’s life. A second example the Parisian Grands Projets of François Mitterrand, like the urban spaces of Barcelona…” also represents the synergy between the state and society at large". In this case Rowe claims here that these state developed and managed projects have to be able to provide multiple meanings to a mixture of user groups to be enjoyed by everyone and ultimately to be prosperous.

Next in the third chapter Realism and World Making Rowe, in the context of figurative arts, defines the term realism where context and subject matter are the sign of truth. He presents this theme throughout the analysis of the urban design solution of the Rockerfeller Centre in New York. Rowe continues to attempt to define architectural realism and also defines realist places where civil society and state can conduct their business on an everyday basis co‐operatively. In the fourth chapter Individual Spaces and Collective Places Rowe debates the social and cultural reworking of Soho and Central Park in New York, where he finds individual means, practices, culture, and background bestow to the locale the characteristic formation of local identity.

Moving on to the final theme Representation and Constitution of Spatial Meanings, here Rowe delves into the political and historic events in the former Yugoslavia and brings in the work of Joze Pecnik, who transformed the city showing urban architecture to be part of a broad civic project on behalf of society. His public infrastructure improvements set a civic tone for public life helping to establish and celebrate the course of Slovenian cultural autonomy. Plecnik achieved this by harmonising the old and new morphological landscape and architectural elements together.

Finally we come to The Practice of Civic Realism. Rowe pulls the various themes of Civic Realism together and summarises the thesis that the civic realm lies between the public and private aspects of our lives although it tends to be produced by both. Derived from mainly informal networks of associations of society, favorable social and political conditions are required for good civic space to come about. Also the term civic represents a point of view about public conduct. Something civic is educational and worthy of being seen and heard in public, and furthermore something to be passed on to further generations with pride. Urbanistically architecturally speaking, civic realism represented within this book is not a style or specific aesthetic ideology. It is at first a descriptive state or condition of being in the world, and secondly an orientation or principles to be taken and implemented when making urban architecture into something that is civic, and is distinct from simply being public or personal experience. Civic realist places contain a pluralism of attitudes with a sense of common accord: they are adaptive, and support everyday life, and allow for group or individual expression.

Overall this book is researched in depth and goes far beyond the surface of the themes discussed. it generally lacked illustrations to back up some of its concepts. I also felt that sometimes this book would be enjoyed more so by social historians than by urban designers and architects, not to say they would not enjoy it especially if they were interested in
the usage and working of public and civic places.

More treasures

While I further indulge myself in a much needed little blogger break (please excuse me!) let me share with you some more treasures from the musee des arts decoratifs at the Louvre in Paris.

I loved these items best for the contrast they provided to the stark black background. Very modern, don't you think? The sumptuous bed, the ornate clock and the beautiful painting all in a dark, dramatically lit room on the 18th century floor.

Like so many places, it's all about the lighting.

Monday, Monday

My weekly page update:

This week's dose features House 6 in São Paulo, Brazil by StudioMK27 - Marcio Kogan:


The featured past dose is Marrom House in São Paulo, Brazil by Isay Weinfeld:


This week's book review is Territory: Architecture Beyond Environment: Architectural Design edited by David Gissen:


Some unrelated links for your enjoyment:

ArchitectureFeed
""The first news aggregator about Architecture and Design." (added to sidebar under blogs::aggregate)

Korean Architecture
"The first English website to discuss Korean architecture and related issues." (added to sidebar under architectural links::online journals)

new-territories
Blog of R&Sie(n). (added to sidebar under blogs::offices/architects)

Studioplex
"The site collects and displays architectural design projects of students created within a studio context and directed by an educator." (added to sidebar under architectural links::online journals)

word servents
A new blog featuring reviews, criticism. (added to sidebar under blogs::architecture)

+ Pool

"+ Pool is an initiative by a group of architects and designers to build a floating pool in the rivers of New York City ... The project was launched with the ambition to improve the use of the city's natural resources by providing a clean and safe way for the public to swim in New York's waters. ... [W]e are looking to build a team of interested organizations and professionals to continue the development of the project into a buildable proposal. "

[image description | image source]

Many readers may know that a floating pool in the waters of New York City has been done already, to a design by Jonathan Kirschenfeld that is still used today. So what does + Pool offer that the floating pool now being used doesn't? Looking at the images and explanation on the web page, it uses the + shape to offer more room for different uses: laps, sports, kids play area, and a "lounge." And unlike the floating pool, + Pool actually uses the river water it sits in. Yes, that's right: "+ Pool filters bacteria, pollutants and odors through concentric layers of water-cleansing materials integrated directly into the pool walls, leaving only safe and swimmable water that meets the CDC and EPA's standards of quality. " Like a "giant strainer dropped into the river."

While I kind of like the idea, especially the giant strainer, I'm a little perturbed by the anonymity of the proposal. Sure, it is a lot more feasible than last year's Manhattan Airport "proposal", but without a single name and only an info@ e-mail address, I'm wondering if this is also a hoax. The web page does not read like a critique of planning/design, like the Central Park airport one, but its anonymity doesn't help it towards being taken seriously. Nevertheless I think it wants to be built. I didn't contact them via the e-mail address, but a Whois Lookup may point to the people responsible.

(via Curbed)

Today's archidose #432

Here are some photos of 7800 Çeşme Residences and Hotel in Izmir, Turkey by Emre Arolat Architects, 2007. Photographs are by asli_aydin.

To contribute your Flickr images for consideration, just:

:: Join and add photos to the archidose pool, and/or
:: Tag your photos archidose