The Art (& Science) of Placemaking

This is a first of a series of blogs that I want to write about something that I feel very passionate about and have spent a good part of my life trying to understand. Why do I like a certain location? What makes me comeback? How does it work?

I want to organize my ideas, discover and document connections and concepts that I intuitively know and learned through my professional career, and publish it all in a book later.

What's a Place? According to dictionary.com, there are 29 different meanings to the word Place. For the proposes of our discussion and in an architectural sense a Place is a designed environment with components that make it a destination, a location of interest, where people like to go to and visit.

Architects use the word Place to denote something that's more than a building. A Place may include a building (or buildings) and their surrounding environment or it may not. Some architects go as far as using the term Placemaking to describe the brand of work that they do.

Jon Jerde , President of the Jerde Partnership and one of the pioneers of placemaking, coined the phrase "Experience makes the place" which they proudly print on their business cards to communicate what they do to their clients.

Walt Disney understood how to create a Place very well, by creating a transformational environment. A magical world.

Ustad Ahmad Lahauri created one of the most visited monuments on earth. The Taj Mahal is not just the mausoleum of Mumtaz Mahal; people go there to experience Taj Mahal the Place; the mausoleum is only a part of it.

It's clear that the definition of Place is loose, fluid and hard to put in a container. Precisely why I am writing this series of blogs/articles to analyze, document the ideas, components and methodology of the Art of Placemaking and (hopefully) make a science out of it in the process.

My intention is to keep this series of blogs interactive and look forward to your input in the comments area. Your comments will definitely improve and enhance the discussion as well as our understanding of the topic.

Buildings = Objects?

If you look at new buildings design in recent years you’ll notice that buildings don’t look like buildings anymore; they’re becoming objects. They’re objectified.

Just change the scale of these towers and you’ll have beautiful candelabra for your dining table. Add a few buttons to this building and voila; here’s your next generation wireless device.

Dancing towers, z-shaped office buildings, and rotating floors, buildings are toys!

With the advance of 3D modeling software, it’s easy to create, document and construct impossible forms and that’s great. But. This doesn’t mean that we should build them.

The stretched forms and tortured angles are insufferably excruciating to look at and show a misplaced strive for individuality at all cost. Architects are creating look-at-me-screaming monsters that societies will have to endure for decades to come and will spend fortunes to take them down in the future.

Yes, Frank Gehry’s Bilbao Museum and Disney Concert Hall are masterpieces, but for every prince there are tens of frogs that make you look and wonder; what were they thinking?

Where do the children play?

Rummaging through old music. Reminiscing. Looking for some solid nuggets to share with my eleven-year old. With all the sonic junk on the waves today. Sew a good seed; I say. And…there it jumps at me.

Where do the children play? I heard this before, I’m sure. Or did I?

“Well I think it's fine, building jumbo planes. Or taking a ride on a cosmic train. Switch on summer from a slot machine. Yes, get what you want to if you want, 'cause you can get anything.
I know we've come a long way, We're changing day to day, But tell me, where do the children play?
Well you roll on roads over fresh green grass. For your lorry loads pumping petrol gas. And you make them long, and you make them tough. But they just go on and on, and it seems that you can't get off.
Oh, I know we've come a long way, We're changing day to day, But tell me, where do the children play?
Well you've cracked the sky, scrapers fill the air. But will you keep on building higher 'til there's no more room up there? Will you make us laugh, will you make us cry? Will you tell us when to live, will you tell us when to die?
I know we've come a long way, We're changing day to day, But tell me, where do the children play?”

Still current and relevant as ever.

Yusuf (Cat Stevens) a closet environmentalist?

Only the relevant survive.

One thing is clear; this recession changed the architectural practice forever.  The economic stress exposed weakness in firm's hierarchy and structural cracks that are beyond repair.  

Staff discovered (to their horror) that their leaders, the ones behind the glass walls and personal secretaries, know no more than they do.   And when the rain stopped the rainmakers could not conjure a drop of rain to save their lives.

The lesson of this recession is; only the relevant survive.  And some of the big names in the business are obsolete and lost their relevance.  Sadly, some of these firms will limp along for a while but may not survive.