MOD 3

In the lectures and readings this week there was a heavy focus on the understanding and benefits of  city.  One of the key figures in this area being Jane Jacobs.  While she never studied urban planning or architecture she did study people.  Jacobs was able to key into how the built environment affects people and the importance of creating and maintaining neighborhoods.  Jacobs raised awareness of these vital elements of urban design which were ignored by so many in the planning profession.  It is astonding to me that urban design wasn't considered in this high of regard until Jacobs, among others, brought it to light.  It is something that I think permeates into today's urban landscape immensely.  The importance of walkability and neighborhoods becoming more prominent with young professionals moving back to the city.   We are returning to the desire for great, rich urban design and we need to look to the work of Jacobs, Lynch and Alexander to push our urban city-scapes further.

With the lectures this week I couldn't help but tie together the work of Roland Barthes with Kevin Lynch and Christopher Alexander.  Lynch and Alexander both create a sort of system to understanding and creating built environments.  Alexander's most prominent work being Pattern Language; really delves into what individual elements create positive urban space, how they should be used and what makes them successful.  Whereas Lynch's work is about understanding a built environment and recognizing its key signifiers as a way of being able to "read" the city.  Barthes thoughts on language and the relationship of signs and signifiers is so easily translated to Lynch and Alexander's work.  The moment you begin to study the signs and elements of a city you can be dropped into a built environment and be able to “read” it.  Utilizing the elements identified of Lynch any city can be broken down and understood as a language.

From the lecture I become fascinated with Willian Whyte.  His work with The Street Life project investigated the dynamics of urbans spaces.  At the time he was working there had not been a great deal of study of modern urbans spaces in America.  Whyte took to New York to conduct his study of parks, plazas, and other informal gathering spaces; resulting in 16 plazas, 3 small parks and “a number of odds and ends.” 

Whyte was able to use his research to analyze why some spaces work and others don’t and what the implications of those differences were of the happiness of everyday life in a city.  Whyte was able to create a sort of “pattern language” for public spaces in the same way Alexander did for buildings.  I find this exploration so interesting because all too often in architecture site design isn’t designed.  It is an afterthought that is assumed to be populated rather than designed to encourage public use and gathering.  The plaza in front of the Seagram building is perfect evidence of this.  Its original design was a massive void separating the building from the street.  Its unrelenting exposure drove people away from it and it became barren.  After several iterations of designs it became obvious that part of the problem was a lack of attention to the relationship between the plaza and its host building.  It is so crucial that we as designers consider how every part of our site is being used and how it is affecting the larger whole of the urban fabric.