Touching the City E-Book

Timothy Makower

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Serie: Architectural Design Primer
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 281

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2014

Beschreibung

Scale in cities is relative and absolute. It has the ability to make us feel at home in the world or alien from it; connected or disconnected. Both large and small scale in cities can be beautiful; both are right, neither is wrong. Whilst accepting that prescription is no answer, 'getting the scale right' – at an intuitive and sensual level – is a fundamental part of the magic of architecture and urban design. Touching the City explores how scale is manifested in cities, exploring scale in buildings, in the space between them and in their details. It asks how scale makes a difference.

Travelling from Detroit to Chandigarh, via New York, London, Paris, Rome and Doha, Tim Makower explores cities with the analytical eye of a designer and with the experiential eye of the urban dweller. Looking at historic cities, he asks what is good about them: what can we learn from the old to inform the new? The book zooms in from the macro scale of surfing Google Earth to micro moments such as finding fossils in a weathered wall. It examines the dynamics and movement patterns of cities, the making of streets and skylines, the formation of thresholds and facades, and it also touches on the process of design and the importance of drawing. As the book's title, Touching the City, suggests, it also emphasises the tactile – that the city is indeed something physical, something we can touch and be touched by, alive and ever changing.

Leseprobe

Contents

Acknowledgements

Foreword

Scaling the XXL

Introduction

Zooming In

Under the Table

Intermediary Scale

To Connect or Dis-connect

References

1: On Scale and Size

Detroit

Centredness

Motor City

Definitions

The American Dream

After the Boom

Moving Out

Today and Tomorrow

References

2: On Scale and Movement

Paris 1925

Absolutes and Relativities

The Car: A Deceptive Measure

The Train: Recalibrating the City

Bikes and Neighbourhoods

Walkable City – Msheireb, Doha

Air and Ether

References

3: On Scale and Edges

Far Too Far

City Carved

Liquid Space

Stitching the City

At Home in the City

Outdoor Rooms

References

4: On Scale and Grain

Jigsaws and Patchworks

New Order and the Dangers of Repetition

On Fine and Coarse Grain

Urban Jazz

On Grain and Directionality

History Speeded Up

On Patina

References

5: On Scale and Form

On Footprint

Responsive Form

Grandeur and Intimacy

Blow Up

Two Big Domes

On Drawing

References

6: On Scale, Skeletons and Surface

Skin and Bones

The Unité d’Habitation

Le Modulor

Geometry and Proportion

The Grand Order

Micro-Order

References

7: On Scale and Detail

Within the Thickness of the Wall

Montepulciano and Todi: Muscle or Frill

Venice, Rome and Doha

Like Nature

References

Conclusion

From Nature

All Change

Reprise

Epilogue

References

Select Bibliography

Index

Picture Credit

End User License Agreement

Guide

Cover

Table of Contents

Foreword

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Touching the City

Thoughts on Urban Scale

TIMOTHY MAKOWER

©2014 John Wiley & Sons Ltd

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ISBN 978-1-118-73772-9 (paperback)ISBN 978-1-118-73758-3 (ebk)ISBN 978-1-118-73769-9 (ebk)ISBN 978-1-118-73770-5 (ebk)ISBN 978-1-118-94769-2 (ebk)

Acknowledgements

It is impossible to put into words my gratitude to Sibella, Noah, Sylvie and Bonnie for the support they have given to this project, and for putting up with me writing while eating porridge at the breakfast table. Graciela Moreno of UCL and Helen Castle of John Wiley & Sons have been central to the work; without them it would not have happened. Also thanks are due to Miriam Murphy, Caroline Ellerby, Calver Lezama and Edward Denison. I would specially like to thank my parents Peter and Katharine, my brother Andrew and his family, Richard and Anne, and Randle and Amanda, Charlotte and Alice Baker Wilbraham and Paul Randour for their cherished encouragement.

Great thanks go to Bob Allies and Graham Morrison for giving me my foundation in architecture and urbanism, and to all those at Allies and Morrison whom I have worked with over the years. I would also like to thank Mike Hussey of Almacantar, Greg Tillotson and Alastair Baird of Barratt London, Roger Madelin and David Partridge of Argent, Shem Krey and Ramez and Motaz Al Khayyat of UrbaCon, Yousef Al Horr of GORD, Saad Al Muhannadi of Qatar Foundation and Issa Al Mohannadi of Qatar Tourism Authority, Alaa Larri and Fatima Fawzi and my other former colleagues at Msheireb Properties, and Bassam al Mannai and Othman Zarzour of the Supreme Committee for Delivery and Legacy.

Many thanks also for support and help from Mohammad Ali Abdullah, Ibtehaj Al Ahmadani, Bez Baik, Ben Barber, Oliver Barratt, Adrian and Vero Biddell, Peter Bishop, Alain de Botton, Claire Bufflier, Ed Carr, Mark Cazalet, Annie Chillingworth, Chris Choa, Alan Cobb, Tom Cornford, Kees Christiaanse, Hina Farooqi, Terry Farrell, Paul Fisher, Simon Gathercole, Clare Gerrard, Daniel and Olivia Gerrard, Kerry Glencorse, Ana Gonzalez, Mariana Heilmann, Jerry Herron, Mark Hewitt, Hendrik Heyns, Niall Hobhouse, Kelly Hutzell, Ibrahim Jaidah, Charles Jencks, Shalini John, Anna Joynt, Crispin Kelly, Sasha and James Kennedy, Chris Lee, Annabel Lord, Donna MacFadyen, James Meek, Chris Millard, James and Mary Miller, Velina Mirincheva, Lucy Mori, Mohsen Mostafavi, Jean Nouvel, Chris Panfil, Tom and Katie Parsons, Fred Pilbrow, Jorn Rabach, Hafid Rakem, John Rose, Martin and Harriet Roth, Fatma Al Sahlawi, Rami al Samahy, Paulo Sousa, Stephen Taylor, Pete Veale, Tim Wells, Oliver Wong and Carter Worth.

Foreword

Scaling the XXL

The essence of scale is that it is simultaneously finite and infinite. When we observe a building from the perspective of scale, we observe it as it is, embedded in its localised context. But we are also aware of the fact that at the lower end of the scale its details do not end with the doorknob, and that at the upper end of the scale it is part of a neighbourhood, a city, a country and a greater economic and political region.

In architecture and urbanism, scale thus oscillates between the tangible and the material on the one hand and the abstract and the conceptual on the other. Good design reflects this parallel (in-)finite quality, the relation between the scale of observation and the universe, and the relation between the detail and the overarching concept. Bad design is merely S, M, L, XL or even XXL!

Proportion plays a key role in this reciprocal reflection. When, as a continental European, I first saw English and American early 20th-century architecture, I asked myself why is it mediated by such a strong feeling of scale, until I realised that it was designed in feet and inches, whereas continental modernist buildings were designed using millimetres, centimetres and metres, which in its minutiae is proportionally dead. I then understood Le Corbusier’s urge to conceive the Modulor.

Billboard in Chelsea, New York, 2013Manhattan vacillates successfully between scales like no other city in the world, with its urban grid providing an essential touchstone. Chelsea – once an industrial area of wharfs, distilleries and factories – is now an ‘upscale’ residential, retail and gallery district.

The awareness of this parallel (in-)finity may also be the reason that most successful urban design projects are designed by architects and not by planners. Urban designers tend to grow out of architects, as their projects become larger and more complex, constantly calibrating their work with multiple scale-levels, from the strategic or tactical and the material to the abstract and conceptual. In this way they can even make their XXL project become tangible at a giant scale, or, as Tim Makower asserts here in his Conclusion, have the potential to bring together ‘the notion of the child and the giant in us all’.

Kees Christiaanse

Kees Christiaanse is Chair of Architecture and Urban Design at ETH Zurich and Programme Leader of the Future Cities Laboratory Singapore ETH Centre for Sustainable Development. Previously a Partner at OMA in Rotterdam, Christiaanse founded KCAP Architects&Planners in 1989. KCAP is based in Rotterdam and has two branch offices in Zurich and Shanghai.

Introduction

‘No pattern is an isolated entity. Each pattern can exist in the world, only to the extent that it is supported by other patterns: the larger patterns in which it is embedded, the patterns of the same size that surround it, and the smaller patterns which are embedded in it.’

Christopher Alexander, A Pattern Language, 19771

London from the air, 2012Big shapes: river, Roman roads and parks.

Richard Rogers and Renzo Piano, Centre Pompidou and Place Beaubourg, Paris, 1977 (photographed in 2012)