I was just reading a fantastic essay by Timothy Love, a principal at Utile, called "Urban Design After Battery Park City." Love traces the history of contemporary urban design graphics, and by extension, the outcome of dozens of middling development projects in the United States. Historically, Battery Park City came at a time when Colin Rowe and his colleagues at Cornell had ignited a new interest in the figure ground of buildings. This view of urbanism, inspired by the Nolli Map, privileged the master plan. Combined with the logic of real estate investment analysis, master planning in the fashion of Battery Park City became ubiquitous. Love even traces the pink buildings that one sees in so many plans to the Ecole Des Beaux Arts.
Saturday, August 14, 2010
Sunday, July 25, 2010
Spina Centrale - Turin Italy
The Central Spine project by Gregotti e Associati was a clever way to deal with industrial-era infrastructure.
I like the clarity of this axon, and I am a sucker for these shades of red and green.
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| Spina 4 |
Saturday, July 24, 2010
2 hour park
My friend Logan just sent this link about Rebar, a group that finds a place with a dearth of open space, pays a meter, and then builds a temporary park. As it turns out, there is also a yearly event, and a satirical Onion article. It must have had some impact, though, because the Better Streets Plan talks a lot about pocket parks, median parks and sidewalk parks.
Los Angeles' Future Imagined
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| Connected Rooftops |
There's an app for that: Visualize NYC
San Francisco Better Streets Plan
San Francisco just announced its Better Streets Plan, an effort that cut across departments to produce a fairly robust document. I'm glad this is the first post because San Francisco is my favorite city in the world.
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| overview |
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