Three Levels of Public in Urban Design

Text and sketchcard by architect Ron Stanford addressing public-use design considerations for greenhouse and urban landscape at Hayes Valley Farm in the midst of a hip and active neighborhood in San Francisco:

"The First 'Public' is made up of the end users, those who actually engage a project as first person participants.  In our case, these are the people who actually  come to the farm and volunteer, take advantage of the many activities, events, the food distribution, those who physically engage the mission, on site.

"Second, there are many who 'see' the farm, drive past it, live next to it, walk past it, but who do not ever come in.  For this sector, this Second 'Public', and it is a large number, much larger than the actual number of first person participants, the farm is a regular visual event. It may be the view outside their front door, the view they hit at minute 7 in the drive or ride home.  It serves as a marker, a neighborhood signifier, a process signifier, occupying psycho-cultural place, possibility (both positive & negative), and identity, in individual and collective-collected constructions of the city.

"A Third 'Public' is comprised of those who may never see the project in person, but who will see it, experience it, process it,  via media.  They may read about it, see it published, photographed, talked about, blogged about.  For even a relatively successful project in this 'media' propagated sense, this third 'public' is almost always larger than the first, and can easily exceed the second, and an additional set of zeitgeist constructions attends their processing of that media presence."


http://www.hayesvalleyfarm.com/blog/336-place-a-public.html

Placed Based Architecture vis-a-vis Other Architectural Approaches

Design as Art ... Frank Gehry - one of my personal favorite architects - is praised and vilified. He designs by playing with paper and coming up with various curvilinear shapes, then getting his closest associate to put those into actual scale drawings.

Design as Functionality ... Developers who create McMansions, pre-designed templated subdivisions, faceless apartment buildings, etc. Some of this is driven by safety considerations which drive codes in various counties and municipalities - standardization is the easiest way to make sure that each subsystem is going to not cause harm to any one - safe electric, leak free plumbing, etc. - and besides, we can do UL testing on safety with numbers and charts, but who can agree on aesthetics.

People Based Design ... Emphasis here is on ease and access. Closeness of shopping to housing, proximity of parks, easing parking and walkability, and design of open areas that are protective of privacy and/or conducive of conversation with neighbors.

Place Based Design ... Probably the most neglected approach - and probably the approach we'd most like to see - alongside an ecological preserve / no-build open space. Place based design starts with the site. Starts with the kinds of sensitivities the three of us share with regards to the five senses, a sense of being and connecting, awareness of the elements and the views, respect for ground and soil, consideration of the humblest of plants and other life forms, a sense of sky as well as land based surroundings, etc. 

Architecture for years has depended, for example, on cheap energy, and architects were for a long time not even taught that southwest orientation maximizes solar gain through glass. In fact, subdivisions are largely based on the old Roman war camps - easier to check on your soldiers when tents and so on are organized in rows. So houses face sidewalks and streets (car culture) and each other (ease of trash pickup and deliveries but don't say hi to your neighbors) - not oriented to ... sun / wind / land / earth / soil / water / and people in that context.

Architect Louis Kahn "Gave Us Our Democracy"

If you're an architect enthusiast who also enjoys biography, the DVD of the documentary "My Architect, a Son's Journey" is well worth time and attention. 


http://www.myarchitectfilm.com/


Louis Kahn's master work was the National Assembly Building in Dacca, Bangladesh. It is a great example of how a building can provide an environment which informs the senses and inspires the human spirit.

Though in many ways a very modern building, it summoned such an ancient and traditional sense of architecture that it was spared by bomber pilots during war.


http://www.greatbuildings.com/buildings/National_Assembly_in_Dacc.html 


The DVD is worth watching, alone, for the saga of the son discovering his father, and worth watching, alone, for the saga of the father, the architect, discovering his true calling within his already true calling as an architect. There is also great footage around the "gentleman's agreement" among architects in Philadelphia not to exceed a certain height of buildings, and how that agreement was broken. This segment includes the late great Philadelphia architect, Edmund Bacon.


http://designmuseum.org/design/louis-kahn

Ecosystem Ecology, General Systems Theory, Energy Accounting

"Howard Thomas Odum (1924, Chapel Hill, North Carolina–2002 Gainesville, Florida) (also known as Tom or just H.T.) was an American ecologist. He is known for his pioneering work on ecosystem ecology, and for his provocative proposals for additional laws of thermodynamics, informed by his work on general systems theory."


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Howard_T._Odum

"Energy accounting is a system used within industry, where measuring and analyzing the energy consumption of different activities is done to improve energy efficiency.


"Energy accounting is a system used in energy management systems where measuring and analyzing energy consumption is done to improve energy efficiency within an organization."


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_accounting


"Sponsored by Sun Microsystems, this free online community is designed to help participants calculate, track and reduce their organization's carbon footprint.  The GHG calculation tool currently focuses on emissions from electricity and natural gas use in buildings.  The new OpenEco.org Version 2 also provides a top-level organization dashboard where users can track a broad spectrum of emission sources to provide a comprehensive view of an organization's (or individual's) carbon footprint."


https://www.openeco.org/faq

Farms in Detroit and Green Architecture in the Heart of Dallas

"Organic Architect" Eric Corey Freed sums up much that is going on these days in trying to make our future more sustainable both in food and buildings, in the context of urbanization and city living.

http://vimeo.com/12073980

Build New or Restore Old, Which is More Eco-Friendly?

A topic worth reviewing again and again. Here's one thoughtful link on this subject:

“Embodied Energy”: “The greenest building is one that’s already built.”

http://retrorenovation.com/2008/05/22/embodied-energy-the-greenest-building-is-one-thats-already-built/

User Friendly Architectural Design

An architect once described in a lecture how he suddenly realized that working on a team renovating an apartment housing community, no one on the team invested much time in visiting and talking with the people who would utilize that housing the most. He recognized that he was in a mostly male team, and that most of the people using the environment would be moms and children during daytime.


This startled him into sensing that much design is created in an aloof environment away from the site environment. A friend, trained as an architect, later a project manager in online applications and web design, realized much the same; experts design often for the thrill of turning out the next great thing, and then move on, eager for the next and the next, to take on challenges, prove skills, build a portfolio - and get paid. The end-user of technology often gets shorted in the process.


Perhaps there is a trinity of design, use and nature in any building project. It seems we usually think primarily in terms of developers, architects, government agencies, contractors plus brokers and agents, and buyers, renters or lessees.


People in the business of building have been looked to as the developers of practical solutions. Now it is becoming clearly functional and effective to save energy, including embodied energy, in our buildings. 


http://www.architecture2030.org/
http://www.eoearth.org/article/Net_energy_analysis


Add beauty and use, and we may see that architecture emerges in fresh celebration of the natural.