New Track Homes?

Dongtan, located on an island off of Shanghai, China, is one of the world's
first truly green cities. It's still in early development but the bridge and
tunnel link to the mainland is now being built. This planned, zero-waste, energy-efficient community is to reach 500,000 residents by 2050, all the while maintaining much of the natural wetlands that provide one of the few remaining refuges for birds in a constantly developing country. The city will be powered mainly by sea breezes and only clean-running vehicles will be permitted.
It is so good to see a new brand of planned community.

New Urban Centers Coming

We are unable to live without each other. Even on a practical level, it is probably a million years since any human being was entirely and convincingly self-sufficient: able to survive without trading his skills for those of his fellow humans.
- Matt Ridley (1998), Zoologist & Science Writer

Babies instinctively know what is most important to human survival: connection. The little ones unable to connect emotionally with a caretaker fail to thrive. But emotional connectivity skills need constant maintenance throughout life and different skills are needed throughout different life stages. A baby's sustained gaze with eyes, bright like little lights hooks you in. Eye contact is the base of all in-vivo human connection. But a ten year old that hooks you with his eyes needs to do more to maintain the connection.
Human connections, of course, go way beyond person to person emotional communicating. We are the most complex social beings on the planet. Our web of connectedness is vast, intricate and so tied to our humanity that a person not securely connected experiences the negative physical systems of extreme loneliness. Today, humans are forging more and more virtual connections that are productive and time consuming. But real life connections seem to be decreasing. This trend cannot be blamed on technology. But may be, at least partly, linked to the way our living spaces have been structured.
Since the 1950's, when William Levitt and his brother Alfred, designed the first American suburb, Levittown, with long term mortgages and community pools, live connections in the United States have become increasingly trite. As people moved from urban centers, day to day contact with others decreased substantially, especially for women.

With increased physical distance other forms of human connection decrease. Now with the Internet, where you live matters less in so many ways, but connections based solely on technology do not meet a person's human emotional needs. As we become more connected through technology, people with means will choose to live physically closer to other humans, not only to meet their emotional needs for human contact but to increase the capacity of their creative pursuits. Sprawling suburbs, and especially the more recent McMansions, are on their way out of popularity. People want to see each other face to face, more often, and for longer periods of time. Cities are back.

A Vision of Correct Proportions

Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing.

-Benjamin Franklin

The ancient Roman architect Marcus Vitruvius Pollio (50 B.C.) did both. He designed aqueducts, highways and magnificent buildings that still stand 2,000 years later and he wrote books. He recorded battles and the interactions of principalities. He detailed grand plans for efficient city living; plans which lay buried under rubble in Alexandria but were dug up and hidden for thirteen centuries. In the 15th century, Leonardo Da Vinci read the ancient Vitruvius and incorporated his ideals to compose the Vitruvian Man. In that same century, a future conquistador also picked up Vitruvius and designed the first city with modern proportions, Cuenca in South America. Cuenca, establish in 1533, was the first city to ever be master-planned with a grid layout. It's cobblestone streets are wide enough to allow two lanes of car traffic today. Too bad Vitruvius never got to see his dream city come true.

School Filled With Light

The Sidwell Friends School in Washington D.C. chosen by Michelle and Barack Obama for their daughters, Malia (10) and Sasha (7) was one of The American Institute of Architecture's top ten green projects for 2007. The project included massive additions and some remodeling of historic buildings. The two biggest considerations in the design were the maximization of natural light and ease of ventilation. The changes were funded in part by a grant undertaken by the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies to determine the effect of the school's new green design on the performance and health of students, teachers and staff, whom were asessed pre- and post project.
Nice choice.

Does It Look Like a Jail To You?

The lack of attention to beauty and achitectural ideals in the engineering of public school buildings (especially post 1970's) belies the true educational philosophies at play. If your local high school looks like a jail, smells like a jail and feels like a jail...well then, is it a jail? It's not supposed to be. But what is the real message being sent to all who attend, teach, or even just drive by, such a facility?

An architectural website listing Great Buildings around the world, includes only a handful of schools. Certainly no school, public or private, in my small southern california city would qualify as "great" by any measure. So, we give lip service to lofty educational ideals, but our school buildings tell another story.

A Symphony of Community

Once upon a time, in far away Japan, a man had a dream. He dreamed he walked amongst tea trees on a cool Tokyo morning. He came upon a courtyard. Empty and still, it seemed to be waiting. He sat on a honey-hued wood bench, letting the fragrance of quiet peace fill his lungs. Clean air rushed in, his thoughts bright, his eyes now closed. Then he saw children. Walking in pairs. Sitting under trees. Running after one another, one playing Bach on an old cello. The man sat a long time, he saw nothing more, but heard. First the cello, then a warm voice speaking to a small one. "Yes, well, today we will discuss your idea with the others." Another voice, then another came, until the voices fell into each other as if written on a musical staff, ready to become a symphony. The man didn't try to understand the music, he knew what it meant. He knew what to do now. He would make this place happen. He would build a school.

The Eishin school in Japan is architecturally gorgeous. Honey-hued wood, plenty of natural light and meandering garden pathways between buildings placed strategically on its 18 acre campus. The faculty, students and staff all had input in its design and creation. This 1980's school-wide project, designed to build a deeper allegience to humane principles and create a new school culture was the brainchild of the then vice-principal of the school, Mr. Murakoshi. I'm not sure if he came up with the idea in a dream or if it had simmered in his conciousness for many years, but the initial vision was his. He shared his vision with architect Christopher Alexander, and so the Eishin school exists, almost exactly as Mr. Murakoshi envisioned it.

Tear It Down Baby

In today's New York Times, architecture critic Nicolai Ouroussoff proposed the demolition of the Met Life Building (formerly the Pan Am building) in New York City. These financially difficult times, Ouroussoff argues, are perfect for rethinking human spaces.

Instead of crying over what can't be built, why not refocus our energies on knocking down the structures that not only fail to bring us joy, but actually bring us down?

Nicolai Ouroussoff (2008), journalist

The idea of making the best of difficult times by clearing out the bad is not new. One must make room for beauty by removing clutter. Life becomes difficult, but the recovery is what matters. And the first step towards recovery may be destruction. Moving beyond the helpless stance of indifference, in some cases towards hate, is the first step towards some kind of action. This is what Ouroussoff is proposing: action against urban ugliness as a metaphor for healing from what has brought us down.

Things don't go wrong and break your heart so you can become bitter and give up. They happen to break you down and build you up so you can be all that you were intended to be.

Samuel Johnson (1750), English poet

Maybe now is the perfect time to break down. The sooner the better, so recovery can begin. Maybe ugly human spaces are concrete examples of ugly human activity. As a child, I always loved driving on Park Ave. towards the then Pan Am building. I would actually miss it if it disappeared from that landscape. But I appreciate Ouroussoff's idea that to make room for new beauty, sometimes, a wrecking ball must be used to destroy the ugly. Like a fire destroying an old forest to allow for new, if different life to thrive.