Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Revised Photo
My new hair cut- yes hair cut!
5,000 square foot office space
Model on watercolored site plan
Section
Energy Saving roof and light at core.
Element Detail #1
Detail of the Overhead Display and Utility Module
First Floor Plan
Intersection of Dartmouth and Bolyston Streets
Second/Third Floor Plans
Ramps-Commerce and Experiencing the store culture for new and senior users of the products.
5 comments:
What "environment" are you referring to? I just finished "An Inconveinent Truth" ... so my first thought was that you are talking about the literal loss of land when the seas rise ... but that is not really a "shrinking" ... rather a re-distribution ... less land = more water. But is that the "environment" are you referring to?
The idea that that humans are continuing to pursue the habitation of previously undesireable coastal and farm lands indicates that less and less land is available. It is not just the development of these lands but also the ways it is built. Each new building on a site provides a design opportunity to "fit" into the exisitng context (be it urban or rural). What I see in the United Sates, which is were I have the most relational concern, is the lack of consideration for the surfeit of architectural principals, which have been provided by others and are tried and true.
Unless I have sufficient scientific proof of the seas rising that provide irrefutable evidence of the loss of total land, I am not one to raise the alarmist flag just yet. What has continued to be of critical importance to me is the ability to form these conditions into usable interior and exterior spaces for the use of mankind.
Space is both a positive and negative form.
Oregon developed an interesting planning code back in the early '70s, called "Urban Growth Boundaries." The idea was that every incorporated community had a ring drawn around it, and that all of its residential, commercial, and industrial development had to be within that ring. The rest of what was outside was zoned for farming and recreation.
What more often happens is that people buy house lots far apart from one another, and then the subsequent houses are halfway between, and then the subsequent houses are halfway between that, and so on. In the end, everyone has their four acres fenced in, no one is close to anyone else, and there isn't much unbroken countryside anymore.
The "ring" concept is very similar to that proposed in England at the turn of the Century by Mr. Abocombie with the "Utopian"City concept of rings of different land use around an urban core. The principal is good, I feel, since FLW also proposed this decentralized concept when he suggested 'Broadacre'. However, practically speaking with current zoning and the freedom to use as individually we see fit has been the problem.
With the ever increasing densities of our urban centers and infrastructure that is necessary the development of land will take a new approach to policy and design. This topic is an often overlooked and subliminal problem about the free market economy!
Post a Comment