Last week was a big week; a somewhat smaller event on the Monday before the elections was the AIA (American Institute of Architects) Honor Awards for Washington state. The theme this year was "Perform/Transform", and the jurors were looking for more than just buildings that look great in glossy photographs. Among other comments, they admonished submitters and the audience to give contextual information on their projects, photos or images that show how they fit in with their neighbors and surrounding environment.
Some of us are more interested in the spaces between the buildings than the buildings themselves; the buildings should inform, define, and serve the public space, the arteries and veins that feed our urban environment. William Whyte spoke of this in The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces, as did Jan Gehl in Life Between Buildings. Gehl Architects has been preparing a Public Places Public Life study for Seattle. They have been using local university students to count pedestrians and cyclists and to interview them for surveys (I was interviewed in July). One tidbit they released has to do with how underutilized our waterfront is. Since the 1950s, our waterfront has been walled off from our downtown by a double-decker elevated highway structure. As a result, on a good summer day we might get 16,000 pedestrians on the waterfront, whereas San Francisco will get 90,000. Many people love driving on the viaduct because there are fantastic views of Elliott Bay and the Olympic mountains. I think there might be other ways to enjoy the view besides from a car window. For those of us who live here, the viaduct is a blight in many respects. It was damaged in the Nisqually quake and will have to come down but there is no final decision on what will replace it.
Another thing that Gehl Architects (or someone they quote who did a study with brain scans) has determined is that our brains need a new impression every 4 seconds in order to keep our interest, or to keep our conscious mind engaged. That translates to a new impression every 10 meters or 33 feet, at a pedestrian pace (seems brisk - I'm not sure I walk that fast). It's a good rule of thumb for modulating facades, differentiating shop windows, placing entryways, street trees and furnishings, etc. This is what we have to do, in modern times - recreate the vernacular wisdom of the ages, which we seem to have lost with the coming of the car, through scientific proofs.
