Urbanized

I just finished a great documentary on urban design by Gary Hustwit. He’s pretty well known in design circles for his other design documentaries on typography and industrial design. In Urbanized, he covers the design of cities. Anyone who knows me well, knows I have a strong interest in architecture. So, the subject is a natural interest of mine. The film didn’t dwell too much on the failure of cities, but rather their challenges for the future. One interesting point, that with the huge growth of China and India, that much of the most interesting innovation will likely be coming from those countries in this century. That’s pretty exciting and a big shift from the US dominated 20th century. A couple of parts of the movie that were meaningful to me:

• Modernism - Jan Gehl, an architect from Copenhagen talked in the DVD extras about the modernists who came out of WWI (think Mies van der Rohe, Le Corbusier and later Louis Kahn, Marcel Breuer) who thought you should separate workplace, living and communication. You want to make free standing buildings, but not necessarily in cities, so you could have open space and pack in lots of people. The city works like a machine. But what the movement ignored, according to what people later told him, was a focus on individuals. Certainly seeing big housing projects, that some aspects of the movement inspired, in places like Chicago and New York are depressing. But I do think great architecture can inspire. Some of the buildings created from the modernist movement do inspire me. But I can’t say the modernists ideas around urban design are necessarily right, as the documentary seems to suggest.
• Public Transportation – Probably the most charismatic character in the film was Enrique Penaslosa, the former mayor of Bogota. He said the only way to restrict traffic jams is to restrict car use. The most obvious way to do that is by restricting parking. He said people seem to think parking is a right–but what constitution has the right to park as a main tenet? Parking isn’t a government problem, but people are. They created a bus based public transportation system.  Buses operate in exclusive lanes so they don’t have to deal with traffic. And commuters enter/exit them from elevated stations just like subways. Here’s the key, for the same price of a 25km light rail system, they can put in 400km of bus way. With all the nonsense that we’ve dealt with in Seattle over the years with our various public transportation proposals, this seemed like a real pragmatic way of looking at moving lots of people in a cost effective way. He ended with public good prevailing over private interests. A bus with a 100 people has a free lane and gets people to places faster than a car with a single person. Great stuff.
• Cycling – OK, a little biased here as I’m a bike commuter, but seeing cycling design in Copenhagen was inspiring.  They have bike lanes next to side walks. Side walks are for slow traffic, bike lanes allow a bit faster flow, and then you have car-ways. But in-between the bike lane and roadway, you have parked cars. This way parked cars act as a natural barrier for protecting cyclists. I feel like riding in that sort of environment would be heaven. 37% of everyone in Copenhagen commutes to work by bike. The percentage in Seattle is around 3% and we’re one of the biggest cycling cities in the US. Pretty phenomenal.

There’s tons more examples like those throughout the film. What was missing from the film was more thinking from those opposed to many of the ideas presented. For example, there was just one person I recall, a real-estate developer from Phoenix in a section on suburban sprawl, who offered some thoughts on why suburbanization wasn’t a bad thing . I would have liked to see more counter arguments to what seemed like a more liberal view point on urbanism. But the film was still excellent and inspiring for what your own city could be. On IMDb, I rated it 8 out of 10 stars.

Starbucks going a little Apple

Dezeen has published a few pretty interesting Starbuck store concepts recently. There’s a store in Japan and another in Amsterdam that are pretty stunning. They remind me of Apple Stores in a way where the store experience is as important as the products consumed in them. Right now, Starbuck stores are pretty bland for the most part. But the brand is super powerful and seen pretty positively by most people. Imagine if every (major) Starbucks had a beautiful, contemporary store design. Starbucks could commission local architects in every major city–every city gets a “flagship” store design. Since I’d imagine it being impossible to have a custom designed store in every nook that Starbucks inhabits across a city, maybe smaller stores in the same city can take on design elements from the flagship, tying together a theme throughout the city to keep design costs down. I think beautiful, inspired stores could definitely revitalize the brand. I tend to inhabit the indie coffee houses in Seattle. But a beautiful Starbucks store would definitely attract me.

Calatrava Satolas TGV

Can never get enough of Calatrava.

zeroHouse

Interesting prefab project. The home is completely self sufficient. It collects its own electricity and water. It processes its own waste and the entire home can be controlled via a laptop. And a contemporary design to beat. Pretty cool.

Steven Holl tour

Steven Holl gives a rare tour of his addition for the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City. It’s a spectacular project. See the video here.

AIA home of the year submissions

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My parents just recently went to the American Institute of Architects – Seattle project of the year awards. The AIA posts all the submissions online. The homes are very interesting. I especially found the Cavehill Residence interesting as it was a complete remodel but on the same footprint of the original house it replaced. That’s supposedly a much cheaper way to get a home built in Seattle versus building new.

Seattle Central Area library

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Several weeks ago, I swung by the opening of the new Seattle Central Area (Douglass-Truth) library. I came away quite impressed. I think it’s one of the most contemporary additions to the library system in Seattle sans the new Central Library of course. The PI just finished a review and came away disappointed that they didn’t tear down the old classical building and produce a far larger contemporary building. I think the merging of old and new is cool. Although, the article mentions the architects originally proposed a larger addition. I wonder what the original proposal looked like? In any event, happy to see the library bond continuing to introduce great architecture to the city.

Joshua Prince-Ramus

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Former Rem Koolhaas architect Joshua Prince-Ramus (now of Ramus Ella Architects) spoke at this year’s TED conference. Many of the talks from the conference were just posted. Ramus spends his talk covering the design of the Seattle Library and two other projects. Can’t say I like the architecture too much but I do like the pushing of boundaries and interesting approaches to solving clients requirements.

For example, for the Seattle Library their analysis identified the social responsibility of the library to act as a public space and pushed to design for it. Initially, the librarians weren’t at all interested in the public meeting place aspect of the project. That surprised me especially given all the public funds allocated to the library system. You’d think the city would have put some guidelines on how the library funds were to be allocated. Glad the architects were paying attention.

Since the debut of the Seattle Library, I’ve found I now enjoy bold architectural statements in some of the structures in our city even if I don’t totally agree with the design direction. Viva le difference! Video of his talk here.

James Cutler

Any architecture fans out there or if you’re looking for an architect, don’t miss James Culter speaking Wednesday 12/7, 6:30 pm at Design Within Reach on 1st Ave. downtown Seattle. He’s one of the top architects in the Pacific Northwest.

Charles Jencks

Wednesday night I went to a lecture to hear Charles Jencks speak. He’s a big architectural critic and was here to talk about “the building as icon” and an amazing garden he designed in Scotland.

The majority of the lecture was focused on comments on why iconic building like the Guggenheim in Bilbao are springing up all over the world. Sure there’s any economic bonus from these projects. It cost $100M to build the Guggenheim in Bilbao. The city brought in $100M the first year after it was built. $200 million the next year and the cash has been rolling in ever since. But this was a lesser factor from his perspective. According to him these buildings are now being funded because despite religious fundamentalist movements occurring all the world, it’s his belief that the world is becoming more and more agnostic. The iconic buildings of yesteryear where churches. No longer.

This brought up an intersting question during Q&A which was hosted by Peter Miller. He was asked why he thought religious fundamentalist movements were seemly gaining strength. Interestingly, he said fundamentalist movements were not attempts to take society back in time. Rather they were modernist movements. Surprised by that statement, I got home and looked up the definition of modernism in Wikipedia. He absolutely has a point:

The modernist movement emerged in the mid-19th century in France and was rooted in the idea that “traditional” forms of art, literature, social organization and daily life had become outdated, and that it was therefore essential to sweep them aside and reinvent culture. Modernism encouraged the idea of re-examination of every aspect of existence, from commerce to philosophy, with the goal of finding that which was “holding back” progress, and replacing it with new, and therefore better, ways of reaching the same end.

Jencks went on to say that, for example, muslim fundamentalism is a reaction to many poor of the world who are frustrated by being left behind. Very interesting perspective.

It’s been on my to-do list for some time to do some self study on modernism. I was mostly interesting in learning more about architects like Le Corbusier. But now I’d like to learn more about the movement it-self and contrast it to post modernism.