COP15

So what is all this COP15 business about? Well – the BBC have a handy introductory guide… and some graphs and images too! Now you have a better idea… how does it all link in with planning and urban design? Take a look at this page over at RUDI as a pretty good start… specifically the Spring 2007 issue of Urban Design Quarterly article ‘Adapting to Climate Change’.

 

…then let’s stop TALKING about it all and start DOING the changes needed to secure a sustainable future… because if you believe global warming is human-caused or not… it’s happening… and inefficiency of energy and resources is just plain wasteful… please!?

 

 

 

Ever wanted...

…to know ALL ABOUT the Danish Planning system?  Now you can!: read this.

 

A little tongue-in-cheek of me perhaps but in all seriousness it’s more than a little interesting. Especially considering how well known Denmark is for it’s reduction in car use in city centres, green approaches to spatial development and the Copenhagen Finger Plan. International case studies keep those clogs turning…

But is this urban art?

The Design Against Crime Research Centre have planned a series of 6 talks called “A Dialogue with Graffiti”:

‘Why do designers love graffiti and why is it a hot topic with art and design students/staff?  What activities (or none) should be criminalised?’

‘The first talk “In Defence of Illegal Graffiti” will take place at the Cochrane Theatre, Holborn on Thursday 3rd December 2009 at 6pm, by Patrick Turner (Centre for Urban and Community Research, Goldsmiths University). He suggests:

‘Progressive’ discussion of the merits or otherwise of illegal street art and graffiti frequently revolves around whether such expression justifies tolerance on aesthetic grounds – ‘is it art and by what measure’ or whether it perhaps offers the potential for channelling delinquent energies in a constructive, ‘pro-social’ direction.  In this talk I will mount a defence of illegal graffiti and street art as practices that potentially foster informal association and self-organisation, do not ask for permission, and represent struggles over the nature of public space, its policing and ownership.’

 

Religion and the Built Environment

Today, in a national referendum, Switzlerland voted to ban the building of minarets:

1) What role does religion play in the built environment?
2) Should the urban realm adopt a seperation from religion such as the French state sperates religion and education? - What sort of city-scape would this create?
3) Do religious buildings bring about problems of exclusion?...
4) ...or do religious buildings aid inclusion and an essence on conviviality?...

Currently reading:

'Is it not time for a re-understanding and a re-formulation of the disciplines and, above all, of the participants involved in making space? Is it not time for urbanism to undergo a transformation similar to that of sociology opened up through cultural studies, or art history re-examined in the light of visual cultures? This is not a moment to bemoan or react against the current structures that are thought to be limiting and limited, but an opportunity to produce new conditions'.

Deepa Naik and Trenton Olfield (2009) in 'Emergent Agitation - Knowledge as Urban Politics' in 'Critical Cities - Ideas, Knowledge and agiation from Emerging Urbanists, Volume 1', London, Myrdle Court Press.

'Bird' by Zhili Liu

‘Bird’ by designer Zhili Liu has started flying around the web this week… Core 77 amongst other have picked up on the ‘Shanghai-based designer[‘s] lighting series [that] was inspired by gatherings of birds, which becomes obvious when you see them’… Obviously thought for indoor use, I just like them.  But more to the point I like them because they are down-to-earth, playful and enjoyable.  I wish this sort of thought was put into street lighting all the time…

Should I stay or should I go?

The image above (taken by hartlandmartin on flickr) is of Birmingham’s Central library, a somewhat iconic feature of the city centre, built in 1974 and designed by native architect John Madin.  There’s quite a lot on the building on Wikipedia covering it’s Brutalist style and position as one of the cities Modernist buildings.

 

I was in Birmingham a few weeks ago for urban design work with UCL and got aquatinted with it up-close-and-personal – and I am confused.  I can’t decide if I love it or hate it.  On one hand it joins a collection of 1960’s and 1970’s Brutalist/Modernist buildings that are, quite simply, starting to look good in their dystopian, Orwellian historical context.  On the other hand, by its nature, it does just seem ugly.

 

I think the key is context.  Whilst it might need some better maintenance and some additional design work perhaps the problem isn’t the building but how it sits. At the moment, if I were to highlight 2 main problems they would be with the spaces around the library: 1) the entire area is devoid of greenery and 2) there is no legibility.  If I imagine the library shrouded in all new green infrastructure, mainly some grass, some flowers… some revitalising landscape architecture around it -  it becomes rather appealing.  This doesn’t distract from the slight ‘problem’ of the buildings scale – nor is ‘greenery’ the only solution - but it would be a big start. In terms of legibility, the ground floor of the library already forms a rather poor pedestrian link between two of the cities main central squares. The solution to this legibility problem according to Birmingham City Council? Demolish the old library!

 

Except, maybe they won’t. One moment BD are telling us it’s going to be listed, and the next moment, planning daily are saying it isn’t. So maybe they will.  I can’t help but think that it would be a little sad to see it go – it certainly has a quality.  Perhaps the other issue is use... the way in which the library interacts with it’s users and it’s surroundings… not just in terms of design but in people actually engaging with the building.  There just seems to be no interface between the physical elements of library and its users. No art, no cultural programming… in fact never mind that, no nothing.  People seem to respond to it almost as if it were a brick wall.

 

No wonder people seem not entirely sure what to do with it - reaction appears divided into love and hate.  There is Prince Charles commenting the library as ‘‘looking more like a place for burning books, than keeping them’’ on one hand, and, Jonathan Glancey commenting this on the other:

 

‘’The great inverted ziggurat of Birmingham, and its 30 miles of bookshelves .... owes its curious profile to US precedent, not to commercial design. Its architect, John Madin, a home-grown talent, based its design on that of Kallman, McKinnell and Knowles's Boston City Hall (1963-68). It has real presence, and it is not hard to imagine it being transformed, with the help of sympathetic and imaginative architects, artists and designers, into a popular hub of fresh cultural activity’’.

 

I can’t help but feel there’s a little case of wrong place wrong time… with emphasis on the place… watch this space.

 

 

 

Green Roof WIN

The ACROS Fukuoka Prefectural International Hall, Fukuoka, Japan by Emilio Ambasz & Associates.  

 

Total Green Roof WIN.

 

Check out this greenroofs.com page and this metaefficient.com post.

 

 

 

 

The 'Sleepbox'

Dezeen magazine has recently picked-up on Russia’s Arch Group’s ‘Sleepbox’.

 

‘[A] booth for taking a quick nap in busy urban environments’… it’s aimed at typically frenzied urban interchanges – so, railways stations, airports but also shopping centres.

 

There’s a definite novelty there, and I could image it working in some places akin to the Japanese capsule hotel …however I’m a tad cynical. I don’t think it’s quite the answer for those looking for a respite in busy urban spaces…

 

 

Grey to Green

This week, CABE launched their Grey to Green campaign, pushing for a shift in investment from grey infrastructure to green towards a more balanced existence in the urban realm… from roads and car parks to waterways, green roofs and street trees:

 

‘At present, for instance, flood protection requires supersized stormwater pipes. But a combination of living roofs, large trees and soft landscaping can absorb heavy rainfall, store and recycle it for summer irrigation; save energy through insulation; provide shade for offices to cut the need for air conditioning; and make cities more beautiful, so encouraging exercise and improving public health’.

 

The ‘key financial stats’ they have are:

 

‘Figures produced by PricewaterhouseCoopers show how a shift in spending from grey to green of just 0.5 per cent could increase investment in urban green space by 141 per cent’.

 

and

 

‘The £1.28 billion budget for widening a 63 mile section of the M25 could pay for 3.2 million trees to store three million tonnes of carbon, or 5,000 miles of greenways for cyclists and pedestrians’.

 

As part of the campaign launch, artist Morag Myerscough ‘used a combination of computer technology and painstaking hand rendering to select only the green elements from aerial photographs’ to attempt to map the green infrastructure of Gloucester, Liverpool and Hackney & Islington. The case for a need to map England’s green infrastructure network is made in the additional ‘The Green Information Gap’ publication and an open letter ‘Why we must map Green Infrastructure’.

 

CABE has several goals for the campaign, essentially distilled as:

 

- Engagement and development at the local level (through a city gardener, including young people, involvement of councillors etc)

- An information resource or ‘atlas’ of the nation’s green infrastructure

- A new national taskforce of experts to champion green infrastructure

 

Ultimately: ‘Nationally nobody knows how many green spaces there are, where they are, who owns them or what their quality is’. The promotion of, linking up of, and forward-thinking about the urban environments ‘green assets’ should surely, in my opinion, always be considered a fundamental corner-stone of urban design, planning and architecture.

 

Tonight, 20 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall… ‘The Mauer Mob’ plan a flash-mob event/human installation along the path of the former divide.

 

Mercedes Bunz in The Guardian’s ‘The Digital Content Blog’ writes:

'... British performance artist and curator Martin Butler is using the organisational power of today's online platforms for a wall made of people, a "temporary monument of reflection". 20 years after the wall came down 33,000 people are asked to stand united for 15 minutes to form a human chain marking the path where the wall once stood. The Mauer Mob used social media such as Facebook to reach out to the people and organise the event. On their website they rearranged the volunteers along 330 different sectors where they will start the flashmob tonight at 9.15 pm.

And these are only some social media approaches among others. Indeed, it will be interesting to evaluate afterwards if it really made sense to use social media, or if it was more or less just used, because it is a trendy idea’.

 

It’s quite exciting to see artistic events like this happen with the sort of historical backdrop that Berlin provides. It’s also interesting to take a look at the work and think about how social media/the internet continues to play a part in modern cities and how people navigate them both physically and in cyberspace. Whether it’s just a ‘trendy idea’ or not I think it reflects the very contemporary way in which people engage with modern urban environments that are covered in wi-fi, 3G networks and constantly geo-tagged.

 

The Spirit of the (LDN) Beehive

My eyes have been drawn to the Kosmograd blog by Martin Gittins, Creative Director of Interface New Media. In particular, some bits on (re-)branding London. 

 

He wrote an interesting post back in October last year about his visit to the ‘Shaping the Polycentric City’ exhibition – in which he starts to ask questions about how, as individual boroughs promote their individuality -  whether London is becoming fragmented:

 

‘Is the city becoming more fragmented? Or is there a framework emerging for a more coherent whole, within which each of the boroughs has a chance to establish a unique character?’

 

He follows this line of thought up more recently with a post relating to Felix Barber and Ralph Hyde's book ‘London as it might have been’.  He follows through their picking up of John Leighton's plan to divide London boroughs (in Victorian times) into a sort of ring of hexagons. Running with it further Gittins comes up with a ‘re-branding’ of London that relies on a hexagonal matrix and allowing each borough to adopt a three-letter ‘code’:

‘With a clear demarcation between boroughs, it becomes much easier to define transition from one border to another… Now the jumble of logos and graphical devices can be replaced with a consistent, uniform identity system… Within each borough, each individual hex can also be given it's own identity, further reinforcing the idea of London as a series of villages.’

I’ve previously mentioned the work of Legible London and their work on a new pedestrian way-finding system to help people walk around the Capital. Gittins’ sort of graphic design initiative links in very well with representing urban design ideas of ‘nodes’, ‘districts’ and the like as well as the concept of ‘urban villages’. It would be great to see this sort of clear visual thinking/design link in with the way in which we map and signpost our cities in the future.

 

The idea of a ‘united LDN’ made up of all its smaller boroughs, or urban villages, paves into thinking about the wider development of the city. Mainly through taking the drain away from transport and commuting into the more sustainable practices of working locally, shopping locally etc, as well as the promotion of under-used areas of London, and the reinvigoration and re-imagination of suburban districts.

 

This sort of ‘united and unique’ highly visually stimulating approach to London could be a key in-road into the future development of the city, and many others.

 

The Urban Canvas

This great piece of wall-painted animation called 'Muto' is by Blu, made in Buenos Aires and Baden.

The. Best. Library. Ever.

KARO Architekten's open-air public library in Magdeburg, East Germany. Community design participation, new public green space, donated books, completely open... regeneration through grass-roots approaches... I could go on and on.

The aforementioned Inhabitat blog have a great post on it here (the photo's are by Anja Schlamann). Wow.

Inhabitat

Today I stumbled across Inhabitat - a green/sustainable design blog.

Some of most interesting recent posts include:

- A post on the architectural/design play with garden sheds (here).

- A great intro into Chicago's attempt at developing it's own public park in the sky, akin to New York's recent 'high line' (here)

- The info on Seoul's new living light sculpture (here)

- Getting excited about the COBE bike-friendly design for Copenhagen's new Norreport train station (here)

I'll be sure to check out this blog more often!

X marks the spot...

At last the hideous pedestrian guard-rails at London’s Oxford Circus have gone and the desire lines of walkers from around the globe can be realised by the long-needed opening of a new Japanese-inspired crossing.

 

It’s quite funny to note how un-used to being able to go diagonally across a road Brits appear to be – the video posted on this BBC article seems to show one or two pedestrians just avoid getting squished as they are herded by hi-vis vested personnel!

 

It also goes to show how well received the crossing is though – through the way in which it warranted an ‘opening ceremony’. Although I’m sure there was an extra incentive too in highlighting the shopping opportunities and excitements of the area in credit-crunch times.

 

I just hope, to quote Boris, that this ‘good old fashioned common sense’ spreads out onto the rest on London’s streets and beyond… Less clutter, pedestrian priority and appropriate shared surfaces please…

 

There’s more on the project here – at The Architect’s Journal.

 

 

999 days to go...

Until London 2012...

I caught the fireworks shooting out of the BT tower last night from a friends flat in Camden.

I can't pretend to not be a little bit excited.

The lesson from 'Poltergeist': Planning needs to be socially responsible

It was half-way through watching Poltergeist last night that I realised the message of the film was thus: Planners need to be socially responsible.

A 'typical' American family live in a house that is a carbon copy of all those around them in a bland, but not unpleasant, suburbia. Only - the planners were naughty. Not only did they use up lots of green-field land, not only did they build boring houses in unintelligable twisty unpedestrianised streets... they built over a graveyard.

Whoops.

The result? Well...



And what's worse, is the society is so car-orientated... that when they family flee the house... they jump into the car - only for the father to fumble about for the keys. Why didn't they cycle away or run down the street?

Perhaps these ghosts and gouls were angry about the amount of oil they were burning up too, or the lack of public transport, or...

Urban New Zealand: Natural Hazards Central.

Nigel Tisdall wrote an interesting piece in last Sunday’s Observer about the 1931 earthquake that struck Napier, New Zealand. Or, more to the point, the explosion of art-deco architecture that flowed out through the cities re-building:

‘If you believe clouds have silver linings, Napier's is surely rimmed with neon and chrome, the shiny new materials of the art-deco age. For this was an earthquake that also gave back, tilting the coast up by a couple of meters and draining a huge lagoon that is now filled with fertile farmland, the city airport, and some choice stretches of 30s and 40s suburbia. Downtown Napier, meanwhile, was quickly rebuilt in a colourful, confidence-raising art-deco style that married symbols of renewal – sunbursts, fountains, flowers – with robustly quake-proof buildings limited to two storeys. Out went brick parapets, gables and heavy facades; in came chrome speed-lines, ziggurats and naked women reaching for the stars’.

Indeed, as of 2007, Napier has been nominated for UNESCO World Heritage Site status, the first cultural site in New Zealand to be nominated. However, New Zealanders don’t seem to be ‘resting on their laurels’ though – an earthquake is all too likely to strike again. As well as obvious architectural limitations of building urban spaces in geological sensitive areas, Wendy Saunders of GNS science has been looking into urban design and natural hazard mitigation. Taking into consideration land-use, the need for community networks to reduce risk and respond to disaster as well as more direct (built) design measures that would mitigate the effects of an earthquake.

All interesting stuff if you’re both an urban design geek and also still pandering back to your undergrad natural hazards lectures…

 

Tokyo Picnic Club

I stumbled across a ’15 rules for a picnic’ leaflet by the Tokyo Picnic Club a few months ago, and forgot about them until today – when they randomly popped back into my head.

 

Their profile is here, and their website linked to above:

 

‘Tokyo Picnic Club (TPC) was founded in 2002 to celebrate the bicentennial anniversary of picnic, which became popular by the activities of "Pic-Nic Club" founded in London, March 1802. TPC members are over 80 people from various fields like the architect, urban designer, landscape designer, graphic designer, illustrator, photographer, food coordinator, editor, curator etc.. They are to dedicate their talents of creativity for re-defining the activities of picnic in the modern context of urban circumstance of Tokyo, from developing food menu of sandwiches and tea flavours, to renovating the park management systems and its landscape qualities. To criticize the narrowness of public spaces and their exclusive management, TPC is claiming the "Picnic Right", as the basic human right for the urban dwellers of Tokyo’.

 

Here’s a bit more on ‘picnic rights’ posted on newcastlegateshead.com:

 

‘Park area per person in Tokyo is only 5.2m2, while 29.1m2 in New York, 26.9m2 in London. In addition to that narrowness, the parks in Tokyo are poorly managed and exclude people, with far too many plants, "keep off the grass" signs, fixed benches and such early closing times of 17:00. In Tokyo, we rarely invite friends to our narrow houses in comfortable manners. Therefore, we expect public spaces to be the place for gathering. We rarely own private gardens with delightful flowers and trees. Therefore, we want to cherish urban nature as our shared gifts. That is the reason why Tokyo Picnic Club insists on the "Picnic Rights", as the basic human rights of the urban dwellers. If the "Greenfield" such as beautiful parks are open to us, picnic can be reminded as the art of encounter with rich wits and traditions. If the "Brownfield" such as ex-industrial sites or abandoned harbours are open to the public, we can try experimental picnic, with new meals, tools, manners and conversations to re-define our modern urban lifestyles. We want to pursue the possibility of picnic, 200 years after its birthday, here in developed Tokyo. To explore the frontier of city, to seek the tastes of modern feast, and to celebrate our precious encounters in the city’.

 

The most fun project they’ve had seems to be ‘grass on vacation’ when a strip of grass ‘took off from Tokyo’ and landed in Newcastle, UK, last summer. An interesting project from an interesting group that are certainly contributing to convivial public spaces in their own unique way. I especially hope someone picks up from the ‘grass on vacation’ idea and takes it further!…

 

 

 

 

The Oubliette

‘Q: Why do you think it's okay to occupy property owned by someone else?

 

A: The ability to squat is a social necessity - an important and greatly underestimated civil right. For those who have lost everything it is a safety net over the abyss, and for creative people subjugated by subsistence costs it allows a far more effective way of contributing to society, especially where the arts are concerned. Property left unattended can develop serious structural problems, attract crime, detract business, demoralise the local community and devalue neighbouring property prices by up to 18%. Conscientious occupiers ameliorate these problems, saving the community concern and the building owner and taxpayer a fortune.’

 

theoubliette.co.uk

 

I’m inclined to agree:

 

emptyhomes.com

 

 

Time out on the bench...

Many urban designers and planners are aware of the need to ensure places are made for people – and very often this involves just having somewhere to sit… although it’s perhaps surprising how easy it is to get it wrong.

 

I absolutely love this bench though, designed by StokkeAustad, which caught my recently. It’s a bit of an antidote to plain old boring street furniture and opens up quite a few possibilities for creative uses… as tables, play, stages/platforms etc – refreshing and fun!

 

This Is Not A Gateway 2009

It was this time last year that I missed out on the first TINAG festival:

'The festival brings together people, living and working in Europe, who's main preoccupation is the city. TINAG creates platforms for emerging academics, activists, human rights canvassers, artists, youth workers, filmmakers, architects, students and more, whose point of departure is the city'.

Yep, it was back again this year - and this time - I made it!

I popped into the Sonalle's exhibition of photography based on 'ethnic minorities coming out' - an interesting exploration into the individual tales and experiences of those that featured.

The exhibition did well to feed into the first of two sessions/workshops I attended - 'The City as Stage: Art, Narrative & Play'. The hidden narratives behind the experiences of the subject in Sonalle's images related directly to the discussion of the panel in the 'The city as stage' seminar.

Artist Lottie Child and Dan Hon a media technologist joined additional speakers from the world of theatre (notably the Soho Theatre) to talk about their experiences in using the built environment as both stage and stimulus. Most interestingly, as slightly reassuring for anyone thinking of using the city as stage on the micro and macro scales… Lottie’s comparison of Rio De Janero to London highlighted that in Brazil issues of permission and authorisation were non-existent. This was not the case with the UK. They highlighted a real case for a guerrilla approach to using the city as a stage and in drawing from the built environment to develop narratives and multiple discourse.

The second session I got to join was ‘The City And The Transnational Commons’. European Alternatives discussed the themes from Polis 21, a series of transnational interventions and discussions run over the month of November in Athens, Zagreb and Belgrade. The session explored the idea of how cities can become urban containers and how with merging with notions of post-national cities, new ethno-spaces and post-national social forms hybrid cultures can form and lead to a deconstructed, or, an ‘un-built’ state.

The festival’s strength is obviously in its ‘mix and match’ interdisciplinary approach to the city. The opportunity for attendees to jump into such diffusive avenues of discussion and make their own interconnections acts as a catalyst for thought and energises ideas. My only criticism of the festival was the feeling of a lack of an opportunity to meet others and enter into a larger discussion surrounding the various strings that made up the event.

Roll on next year though…

Rome was built in a year...

...or at least, the initial infrastructure was, if the analogy applies to my blog.

Just over a year ago I set out to start the 'The Urban Composition' blog. My aim was to do a series of test posts and play with how I could use the interwebs to express and explore my ideas surrounding urban issues.

Turns out a year goes by quickly, and whilst the blog fell recently dormant, it's now roaring back into life!

Whilst I've continued to work at CABE over the past year and start the MSc International Planning at The Bartlett, UCL, I've expanded my knowledge of the built environment, and expanded the focus of this blog from 4 areas to 7 - the:

1) geographically-spatial
2) iconographically-visual
3) dramatically-kinetic
4) artistically-tangible
5) politically-infused
6) environmentally-underpinned
7) culturally-enveloped

So here we go, after a very busy 12 months and with an even busier 12 ahead - I'd like to welcome you to the full-running, full-steam 'The Urban Composition blog'!

I'm planning on staying ad-hoc with posts - from as many as a few a day to at least once or twice a month (depending on what pops up)... links will break, discourse will change... but the city never sleeps...

m

Do cities... evovle?

Cities are widely recognised for their 'organic' qualities. However, the idea that 'a city is an organism' does not translate easily into a practical design strategy: how do you design an organism? An alternative is to regard the city as something that is organic in an evolutionary sense... in his book 'Cities, Design and Evolution', Dr Stephen Marshall draws from recent research into evolutionary interpretations of urbanism, suggesting lessons for planning and design.

Stephen Fry on Oscar Wilde on the value of good design:

From Stephens Fry's Podgramme 'Episode 3: Wallpaper' dated 9th April 2008 (wherein which Stephen Fry is talking about an answer Oscar Wilde gave to a question whilst touring America:

'“Why, Mr. Wilde, do you think America is such a violent country?”

“I can tell you why,” he said. “It’s susceptible readily of an explanation. America is such a violent country because your wallpaper is so ugly.”

Now that seems, you might snort with laughter at first and say, “Well, how amusing.” Part you you may say, “Well this is just a typical peacocking primped camp remark from a shallow and trivial man who thinks it’s amusing to say things like that.”

But actually, to understand what the Aesthetic Movement is all about, one has to take that quite seriously. Instead of judging things as being good or bad, things are judged by whether they are beautiful or ugly. And we may say beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but actually it’s a lot easier to judge when things are beautiful than it is when things are bad or good. We spend our time puzzling dreadfully over whether we can interpret something as being wicked or whether it’s virtuous. However, beauty, beauty, beauty acts on us in a very real way, and what Wilde was partly saying was, if we look out of the window into our world, we see things that are universally and entirely beautiful from nature. Whether they be palm trees swaying in an island, whether they be the arctic wastes, whether they be deserts, tundra steps. It doesn’t matter where you look in the world, we see nothing but beauty. Unconditional, remarkable beauty.

Except where man has intervened.

And what Wilde is saying is, imagine belonging to a species where all you believe that all you can do to the world is to uglify it. To make it worse. To despoil it. Which is what we do. We know that now in real and profound and terrible ways that Wilde couldn’t have known about because the science hadn’t yet discovered quite how harmful we are as a species to our planet. But he could see that we were harmful to our planet in terms of its aesthetics. That we were making the earth uglier. Uglier with bad architecture, uglier with badly designed factories, uglier with badly stamped out tin trays and cheap ornaments, ugly with appalling wallpaper. And if you’re someone who grows up in such an environment, who is surrounded by badly made ugly things, then you think ugly thoughts of yourself and world. You think ugly thoughts of your whole species. There is nothing for you to do but to, to, to crap in your own nest. It’s what we do when we don’t believe in ourselves. And so although it seems a cheap response to a question about violence, the aesthetic point if view is actually I think a very valuable one, a very profound one, a very extraordinary one. And it makes people think beyond the knee-jerk reflexes of conventional morality, of revealed texts, whether they be the Bible, the Koran or the Communist Manifesto. It doesn’t matter. You’ve got to think harder than that, Wilde was arguing'.

The weather outside is frightful...‏

…but the streets are so delightful. A little late, perhaps, to be using puns based on Christmas themed songs but, in London at least, it is still winter.

January, a month people tend to loathe… why? Well here in the UK, people tend to have less money just after the expense of the Christmas and New Years holidays, there is no public holidays until Easter and in January you are only half-way through winter with short days (although lengthening) and miserable weather still plentiful. A lot of time and money is spent on Christmas markets, street-lights, festive entertainment and public space decoration in the build up to December 25th and January 1st… but shortly after, it all disappears to leave a cityscape that feels bland, boring and, well, harsh in comparison.

A bulletin by the US based ‘Projects for Public Spaces’ examines the animation of cities in the build up to traditional European winter holidays and then follows these lessons in looking at how certain conurbations apply these creative placemaking techniques to form winter-long programmes. Alarmingly notes Walljasper, author of the piece:


‘A common and tragic mistake that many North American winter cities have made in recent decades is to try and engineer winter out of existence. This is seen most prominently in second-story walkways (called "plus fifteens" in Calgary, "skywalks" in Winnipeg, "skyways" in Minneapolis and Des Moines, "pedways" in Chicago and Edmonton) that allow people to circulate around downtown areas without stepping outside. A good idea on paper, perhaps, but in practice, the life of the city is removed from the streets and eventually disappears’.

With examples of ice-skating in Paris, seasonal lighting in Salzburg and sculpture exhibits in New York - it is clearly important to remember that cities need attractive and varied cultural programming to create welcoming, interesting, curious, comfortable, accessible and innovative spaces. The weather or climate shouldn’t be seen as an obstacle to this, and with the correct thinking behind any socially convivial planning, should be an active, positive central element in any outcome. Lessons to be learnt for all manner of built environments facing a less temperate climate at some point throughout the year:

‘A frequent mistake made in winter cities is to overemphasize the impact of the weather, using it as a rationale for why they don't have great public spaces. "When people in a city use the climate as an excuse for mediocrity--and that happens in hot places where we work, too, like Dubai and Tempe, Arizona--" says Nikitin, "then I know the problem is not weather but the need for a bigger vision in that place’’.’

A call-to-arms for urban designers, planners, landscape architects, architects, councils and so on to enage with and/or consider the likes of artists, theatre companies and local business in responding to inclement weather with imagination and ingenuity... Lets just remind ourselves that we are thinking about climate's link with daily weather, and unlike weather alone it is longer lasting and paints more the annual picture and patterns of weather over many years.

Any investment in evolving public space to be just as useable during more adverse conditions, or in using public space full stop, to be fully successful, should be met with a long-term, broad vision – rather than just with advent in mind.

Los Angeles Plays Itself

Wednesday saw the latest screening in the Architecture Foundation's ‘Architecture on Film’ season at the Barbican in London. Thom Anderson’s ‘Los Angeles Plays Itself’ (2003, US), an essay inviting the audience to think about what has been referred to as Hollywood’s ‘war against modern architecture', reversed the audiences perception of how they have been directed to view film. Bringing out the architectural background of over 200 films featuring the city’s buildings, Anderson let these structures become the subject of the films he cites and instead of alienating them from the cinematic context they were in, analysed their positioning to begin discussion on how they have been manipulated by filmmakers to create all manner of cinematic places.

Further, in commenting on the frequent use of geographical licence in Hollywood cinema (something that is symptomatic of all cinemas), Anderson’s empirical observations of the both generalised and specified L.A. cityscape highlighted how urban spaces are ubiquitous to film. ‘Los Angeles Plays Itself’ lacked conclusion but was after all a call to thought more than a thesis leading to concrete closure. Anderson succeeded in drawing attention to elements of cinematic space that are often over-looked in comparison to plot, editing and other cinematic techniques. An audience consisting of both film-savvy individuals and built environment professionals responded to the film, as the director clearly would have hoped for, with thought and laughter.

The screening was followed by a short presentation by Kodwo Eshun, writer, theorist and founder of the artists collective Otolith Group – whom further highlighted Anderson’s key observations and examples and acted to facilitate the idea that the film was an exercise in opening up a wider reading of space and place on screen.

The sign-less city

I’ve stumbled across a blog post by Willie Miller Urban Design (WMUD), a Glasgow based ‘creative interdisciplinary consultancy’, which highlights the ‘Hidden Town’ work of Gregor Graf and it’s relationship to the question ‘How do we read a city without signs?’:

‘With a mixture of purist medium format photography and Photoshop, Graf has painstakingly deleted all traces of language and signage from view - as well as people and cars’.

The post is very interesting and I would just go onto repeat all of what they have said, word for word, so I won’t – but below are some eerie images of London from Graf’s work:

As WMUD highlight the ‘Hidden Towns’ images are a step-on from a radical ban on advertising implemented in São Paulo in 2007, leaving a cityscape vacant of, perhaps surprisingly, not just advertising but regularly used ‘mental nodes’ of navigation:

This links in quite well with the work of Legible London whom have not only identified the value of mental nodes in navigating around a city but also the confusion and clutter caused by excessive signage (to which advertising arguably adds). Graf's work strips away the deeply coded iconography of the urban domain and creates a blank canvas which is both disorientating but also revealing of the very essence of the shape, fluidity, depth and breath of part of a city. Of ‘Hidden Towns’ and the São Paulo ban, WMUD note:

‘The implication of these unreal and real examples is that in the absence of signs, people need to re-learn what was once recognisable city terrain, marked out urban space, defined focal points and obvious boundaries. One of the São Paulo experiences was that it was initially easy for people to get lost when well known reference points - such as 48-sheet hoardings - were removed. Of course, residents were quick to re-orientate themselves around landmarks, buildings and urban form very much in the way that architects, urbanists and writers on the city would like them to behave’.

Proof, therein, that urban realms are successfully navigated sans signage - but also, reminder of the potential for the unison of effective sign-posting which relates more directly to a conscious urban topography, that can produce places that are identifiable, welcoming and that work. Reason, to encourage not only good signage of the built-environment, but also of the need for ever-more effective and thoughtful urban design.

2009: An Under-the-Thames Odyssey of everday objects

Last weekend the newest station on the DLR opened with an all-new under-Thames tunnel. Most notably the opening of Woolwich Arsenal DLR station also saw the unveiling of a new piece of public art.

Michael Craig-Martin was comissioned to produce a major work for the new station, to be integrated with the fabric of the building, and needless to say I happened to go and have a look.

The BBC have video on the artist and the new station here, whilst Artdaily.org have posted a short insightful article.

'Craig-Martin explores the dialogue art opens between representation and reality and between artist and viewer. The set of everyday objects appearing regularly in his works are flattened and simplified, functioning as words do in language. The selection of these objects, their color, spatial relationships and juxtaposition provide the work's tension and narrative. Giving us his set of everyday objects as pictograms Craig-Martin describes the modern world we share'. - DLR art