The vision is an answer to the fundamental question: what shall we build in any given place, where a project is to be undertaken. This question does not ask how it is organized, how it is designed, what character the architecture has…but simply the most fundamental question of all: what is it? What is going to be there?
In today’s development, this question is asked, and answered, almost exclusively in economic terms. What can pay for itself there? What can make money there?
Of course the projects which are built, in answer to this question, and after the necessary consumer surveys, are machine-like, abstract, lifeless. They are uninteresting, not vivid. They are incapable of exciting us, or moving us, because they are not human in their quality.
-Christopher Alexander, A New Theory of Urban Design (1987)
The discovery of building as a new paradigm in our work happened at the same time as a change in the situation of the western city, which involved the extensive reformulation of conditions affecting contemporary architecture as a whole : the gradual privatization of the public space of the city. Faced with a complete lack of public funds, cities and local authorities found themselves increasingly unable to play an active role in urban planning developments, and instead sold out to investors, who helped themselves to the biggest and best pieces of the city. It was a game whose end could be predicted: architecture would end up as infrastructure built to maximize the profits of a global economy.
-Wolf D. Prix, Coop Himmelblau - Philosophy
Both of these statements address the following phenomenon: the end of the era of master planning and a renewed interest in the piecemeal / naturally evolving urbanism that preceded the Modern Movement. Just through observation, one can recognize the the traces of corporate interest inhabit nearly every piece of American architecture [which encompasses all building construction] over the last fifty years, save a few exceptional examples. It will be fascinating to see how the relationship between economics and architecture - which at the moment is strained to the breaking point - changes over the next few years.
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| [Even existing innovative / experimental / controversial buildings like this (Buckhead Library, Scogin Elam & Bray, 1989) are under threat of demolition for economic concerns. Is there room for a shift in values for exceptional cases?] |
Master planning to me is reminiscent of the way the Nazi's did things ... to project a controlled atmosphere and image everything is planned from the macro to the micro with no room for organic or spontaneous growth ... to me it is fake, like the streetscape of a snowglobe, or an mgm western movie town set, or post riverside.
ReplyDeletepost riverside isn't "master planning," it's just site development that chose as its design engine a square in Princeton NJ (maybe Rafa could chime in on this, he worked on it I believe). Robert are you saying planning is fascist?! if everyone is left to their own devices, especially today when those with the funds or investors feel 'entitled' to do what they want where they want w/o thinking of a single square inch beyond their property lines, where will that get us? We need guides set up so neighborhoods can develop their desired identity, otherwise it's more of the same. The Market cannot design.
ReplyDeleteyeah PR is not a master plan in the sense that it's completely isolated from the city. It really doesn't attempt to prescribe community (in the larger context) improvements, or suggest changes in infrastructure, lifestyle, etc. or work towards a set of goals 10-15 years off.
ReplyDeletep.s. I'm getting rid of the email subscription list so people don't get inbox clutter. I'll still post so check it out.