Tel Aviv

I thought I'd blog a little more about the precedent project. Specifically, I'll talk about what I found about Tel Aviv's urban plan.

Several articles I initially read for the project mentioned Tel Aviv along with Chandigarh and Brasilia as the most famous examples of a modernist city. Once I really looked into Tel Aviv, however, it seemed the city was more of a garden city with modernist architecture.

The city planner, Patrick Geddes, said it himself that the plan is derived mostly from garden city ideals but with a more urban character. The city is divided into superblocks like the other modernist cities, but in Tel Aviv the dividing roads are tree-lined boulevards rather than high speed highways. The buildings fronting onto these boulevards are mixed-use with commercial space on the first floor and residential units on the upper floors. The superblock is then further divided by a network of secondary roads that form an irregular pattern. These roads calm traffic similar to cul-de-sacs but without the disruption of traffic associated with cul-de-sacs. It is along these roads that the houses are found. Then in the very center of the block is a common green, or "village green" as Geddes called it. The neighborhood's civic buildings, schools, and other public buildings are located around this green.

Farish Street

Wouldn't it be nice if this street in Jackson could ever take off? I think the intention is for it to be a mini-Beale Street. From what I hear, it's been under development since the 1980s, but it's gone through multiple developers and delays of all sorts. I wonder if it could be successful with ordinary businesses for nearby residents, instead of trying to cater to the tourist crowd? I guess the earning potential with tourists is much higher, even though the risk of failure is also probably much higher.

The complete photo gallery is at:

http://www.jacksonfreepress.com/photos/galleries/2012/sep/25/here-and-now-farish-street/



Tire gardens

This looks like an interesting way to recycle old tires. The original article is at http://gothamist.com/2011/08/15/check_out_this_1907_ferry_two_new_y.php#photo-1.

Le Corbusier and urban planning

I thought I'd blog a little more about Le Corbusier's ideas on urban planning. I think most of his ideas were a reaction against the crowded, congested cities of his era. He wanted wide, high-speed highways cutting across the city. These highways would either be elevated or depressed so that they would be completely separated from the pedestrian network. Housing in Le Corbusier's ideal city would be in high-rise apartment buildings, often raised above the ground on pilotis to provide sheltered space underneath.

In essence, Le Corbusier's cities turned their back to the street. This strategy has been tried in many American cities, which resulted in the decline of those particular neighborhoods. One of the most spectacular failures (not designed by Le Corbusier but still following  his theories) of this sort was the Pruitt-Igoe housing project in Saint Louis, Missouri. This low-income housing replaced many blocks of nineteenth-century tenement housing, but began experiencing problems almost immediately after its completion. Within 20 years of its construction, most of the development was demolished.

Precedent Project

Here's my poster from a presentation I gave last week. It was part of a precedent study on modernist urban planning.

An interesting street

This is a Lexus commercial I recently saw. The street they filmed it on looks really slick. The lighting, the trees, the planters, the architecture...even the "looks like it just rained look" all works together nicely. I believe this street is somewhere in Vancouver.

Check it out: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7HrYmTOYFN0

African Wisdom in Image and Proverb

The student union's art gallery is currently displaying the photography exhibit Betty Press: African Wisdom in Image and Proverb. These black and white images show moments of people's daily lives that the photographer witnessed while traveling across Africa.

I sketched one that I particularly liked:

The accompanying proverb, from Kenya, read: "A calabash with holes cannot be filled."

The photo's caption said that the image was from Mbao, Senegal, in 1988. About the image the photographer wrote:

"While visiting a women's group that was setting up a dried fish business, I saw this woman sitting in a courtyard cleaning rice. As she was doing this most mundane job, she was beautifully dressed and so composed that even having her picture taken did not distract her from her work."

I really liked the photo's contrast between the austere buildings of the fore and middle ground with the subtle ornament of the background's domed building, which is likely some sort of church or mosque. All this austerity contrasts sharply with the woman's richly patterened clothing, which I didn't sketch (of course). It makes me wonder what the building interiors look like--like the severe surfaces of the building exteriors or the richness of the clothing?

I've read that in many of the cultures in this area the buildings are focused inward toward a central courtyard and contribute little to their sides facing the streets. I'm not sure how this affects the street culture, having never witnessed these types of places. I do know that other cultures whose buildings are also inwardly-oriented include Arab cultures, the cultures of North Africa, the Middle East, and Spain.

For more of Betty Press's work, check out her website at http://www.bettypress.com/.

Changing it Yourself

I came upon this blog post the other day about people taking it upon themselves to improve their communities. Some of these fixes may be illegal, such as painting crosswalks yourself. I've heard of people going to jail for doing so, but I guess they couldn't wait around any longer for the government to take care of it. The painted intersection looks like the new one here in Starkville, and I thought the "free little library" that reclaims the setback was neat as well.

Congested Streets

I just read a blog post that reminded me of something I'd read earlier in Suburban Nation. In Suburban Nation the authors write that many of the strategies used to address heavy traffic situations end up increasing traffic in the long run. More roads and wider roads just invite more traffic and often more congestion as well.

This post by a former classmate of mine compares two streets in Chico, CA. One is an attractive, multi-way boulevard and the other is a typical strip mall type road, the "stroad." The strip mall road seems to have more traffic, but it actually carries less traffic than the multi-way boulevard. This is because of the "27 mph rule," which states that 27 mph is the most efficient speed for moving traffic. As speeds increase over 27 mph, vehicles start to spread out from one another and the street's carrying capacity is reduced. So not only is the multi-way boulevard more attractive, but it actually can carry more traffic than the "stroad."

Town and Highway Relationship

Here's an interesting picture from Suburban Nation by Andres Duany et al.:

Which one is your town? Starkville would definitely be the bottom one. Most of the important businesses are spread out along the highway, with more under construction. The businesses in the middle of town are more for when you have a little free time or a little extra spending money. Most of the civic buildings are still in the middle of town, but after a recent vote it looks like the people are wanting them moved out to the edge.

Some other nearby towns that fit the bottom image are Mathiston, West Point, Flowood, and almost everything in Desoto County. Oxford would definitely be one of the top images, and it seems they're proud to keep it that way.

MIT's Building 20

The way Stewart Brand described MIT's Building 20 in How Buildings Learn made it seem like a really neat place. It was a temporary building built during WWII to develop radar for the war effort. After the war it became the "magical incubator" with a variety of different kinds of activities happening inside. Student groups, small research projects, and people needing a hideout from the bustle of campus all found a place there. I thought I would look more into it but it looks like it was demolished in 1998.

It was replaced by Frank Gehry's Ray and Maria Stata Center:

facade.mit.edu

I'd still like to go and see this. It definitely looks like a place worth exploring.

Chapter 3 and 4 The Architecture of Community

Leon Krier is definitely coming across as a modernism hater. I think I understand where he's coming from, but it seems that he's mostly making his points using the worst examples of modernism. I'll have to admit that there's plenty of bad examples to pick from. However, one of my favorite things to look around for is examples of attractive, human-scaled modernist design. It can be tough to find, but it's out there. I'll see if I can get some good examples for my precedent paper.

Chapters 3 and 4 from Suburban Nation

After reading through these chapters of Suburban Nation, I feel that the authors are forgetting some of the drawbacks of the pre-WWII development that they seem to like so much. The way I understand it, one of the major reasons for sprawl was that it was a reaction against the terrible urban conditions of cities at the time. They were dark, crowded, unsanitary places, and the people needed to be spread out for their own health. These aren't major issues in our urban places anymore, but I can see it as one of the big reasons that the authorities wanted to move so many people out of city centers back then. At the same time, though, I do agree with most of the what the authors are saying about what needs to change about our current development patterns.