The Quote of the week. Bernard Rudofsky

From an academic erudite as Vidler to a more down to earth Rudofsky. Streets for People

"...for the street is not an area but a volume. It cannot exist in the vacuum; it is inseparable from its environment. In other words, it is no better than the company of houses it keeps. The street is the matrix: urban chamber, fertile soil, and breeding ground. Its viability depends as much on the right kind of architecture as on the right kind of humanity."

Rudofsky, Bernard, Streets for People: a primer for Americans, van Nostrand Reinhold Company, 1982,1969, p20

Perhaps not as well known as his contemporaries Jane Jacobs and Kevin Lynch, Rudofsky is as ruthless a critic of American and British post war urbanism as them. Better known for his groundbreaking: Architecture without Architects, he is also an insightful observer of the public realm. He uses streets as his weapon of choice and confronts American examples with European ones, mainly Italian.  Through his experience,  living in both Europe and North America, he can speak as an insider and outsider. There is a balance in his observations between the formal and the social, which bridges a gap that still needs more analysis. Rudofsky's observations are valid now, and should be a useful source for practitioners in architecture and urban disciplines.

Motorways removed

This is worth a share. Increasing numbers of cities accross the world rethinking public space through the demolition of motorways. Ideas for Belfast?

http://gizmodo.com/6-freeway-demolitions-that-changed-their-cities-forever-1548314937

The quote of the week. Tony Vidler

This is the first of a series on streets. Each week I will introduce one author and one quote, to continue the discussion on streets as the link, bound and connection between buildings and the urban landscape.
I will start with Tony Vidler's last collection of essays.

"To confine architecture to the role of designing a single building in a context that is largely defined by the interplay of economic development and urban policy leaves the question of the form of the public realm unanswered.  In this period of global urbanization, the single building has become increasingly isolated as an icon of progress rising amid a sea of urban blight, a designer accessory masking the rampant spoliaton of traditional urban fabric and the unsustainable expansion of urban areas."

Vidler, Anthony, The Scenes of the Street and Other Essays, The Monacelli Press, New York, 2011, p6

Vidler is one of the most insightful scholars in the field of architecture and urbanism. His last collection of essays might not be an overarching analysis of streets in history, as the title may suggest, but it gives a thorough and deep view on certain moments of city streets in history. Paris is the protagonist, from 19th century urban development, through Tony Garnier and Le Corbusier to Guy Debord's psychogeographies. However, the collection does cover other gems like urban photography, museums, libraries and the obelisk.
Vidler's style is impecable and his observations shed light on the main driver of the book: the tight relationship between city planning, urban design, urbanism and architecture. This includes the distiction between all of these concepts. The focus of the book may be on certain times and spaces in history, but the ideas behind it are as current and useful for understanding urban spaces as they can ever be.
This approach should help us understand the need to analyse architecture not as buildings within a context, but urbanism and architecture as integral parts of a whole.

Back. Bernardo Secchi

After a break from my blog due to maternity leave, what better way to come back than a tribute to Bernardo Secchi, one of the great European urbanists of the 20th/21st century.

http://societyandspace.com/material/interviews/the-new-urban-question-a-converstion-on-the-legacy-of-bernardo-secchi-with-paola-pellegrini/

Alley activism!

http://gizmodo.com/how-alleys-are-becoming-pathways-to-urban-revitalizatio-1575922287

NYC. Sweden. Traffic. Belfast should learn

More on road safety. New York City follows the Swedish example of aiming to zero deaths by traffic. Something to learn from Belfast?

Http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/13/nyregion/de-blasio-looks-toward-sweden-for-road-safety.html?hp&_r=2

Cars vs people. Finally Jacobs is being considered by the mainstream

For more than half a century now the car has reigned over the streets of cities, not allowing them to be public spaces. Slowly some examples appear of the demolition of motorways to replace them with pedestrian areas. This one in Seoul is one of them.
http://m.theatlanticcities.com/commute/2014/04/tearing-down-urban-highway-can-give-rise-whole-new-city/8924/