current feature: new approaches for planning and participation

Planning projects abound in Bermuda at present. Some are more imaginary than real but, importantly, we are being asked for our opinions on a few of them. Is the method of asking imaginative? Attention grabbing? Meaningful? Not really. Can we do better in getting the island's community engaged and participating in discussions and actions that impact our way of life? Yes, we can and here's how.

The Venice Architectural Biennale is taking place right now through 25 November 2012 on the theme Common Ground. In the words of the Biennale director, architect David Chipperfield:

I wanted to encourage my colleagues to react to the prevalent professional and cultural tendencies of our time that place such emphasis on individual and isolated actions. I encouraged them instead to demonstrate the importance of influence and of the continuity of cultural endeavour, to illustrate common and shared ideas that form the basis of an architectural culture.

Love it or hate it, the US has received an Honourable Mention for National  Participation from the jury for its Pavillion, SpontaneousInterventions: design actions for the Common Good. As self-described:

Spontaneous Interventions [frames] an archive of compelling, actionable strategies, ranging from urban farms to guerilla bike lanes, temporary architecture to poster campaigns, urban navigation apps to crowdsourced city planning. These efforts cut across boundaries, addressing architecture, landscape, infrastructure, and the digital universe, and run the gamut from symbolic to practical, physical to virtual, whimsical to serious. But they share an optimistic willingness to venture outside conventional practice and to deploy fresh tactics to make cities more sustainable, accessible, and inclusive.

The Pavillion displays 124 innovative and actionable projects for our consideration. Below are three that can be implemented in Bermuda - there are more; check the Pavillion website. Are you up for the challenge?

Project descriptions courtesy of spontaneousinterventions.org. 

image: spontaneousinterventions.org I Wish This Was

Vacant storefronts are an urban mainstay. But while passersby may dream of what they wish would fill the void, rarely do they get any say in the matter. Combining street art and city planning, I Wish This Was is an interactive public art project that invites residents to voice their ideas about improving the neighborhood. Trained in architecture, graphic design, and urban planning, Candy Chang posts grids of blank stickers on vacant buildings so that residents can write their thoughts on future use, provid- ing a fun, low-barrier tool to spark civic engagement and a way to showcase the city’s collective imagination. The project was launched in New Orleans, but stickers are available online and have been appearing in cities around the world.

Imagination Playground

When architect David Rockwell started spending time in playgrounds with his young children, he was image: spontaneousinterventions.org disturbed by the lack of imagination and variation in the way kids interact with standardized playground equipment. He spent five years developing the Imagination Playground, seeking private-public partnerships to see it realized. Inspired by Froebel blocks and adventure playgrounds, the Imagination Playground features a wide range of elements that allows children to create their own environments and their own course of play. Since the first Imagination Playground opened in Manhattan (with the support of several city agencies), Rockwell has developed a more portable, scalable version – packed into a cart or box – that can quickly transform small, unused spaces into dynamic playgrounds. It has been deployed in hundreds of locations worldwide, including Haiti and Bangladesh. 

image: spontaneousinterventions.orgStreetfilms

We all know how powerful a well-made viral video can be to advance a cause. Streetfilms has harnessed that power to promote smart transportation design and policy and its potential to create happy, healthy places to live. The New York nonprofit Streetfilms (sister organization of OpenPlans) has produced over 400 short films on subjects ranging from bikeway design to sustainable transport to parking reform, shot in locations all over the world. One of its most-viewed films is about Ciclovía, a weekly “open streets” event in Bogotá, Colombia, in which over 70 miles of streets are closed for leisurely cycling. The video has received over 200,000 hits and has helped advocates everywhere to convince their own city officials to implement ciclovías.

do our parks pass the test? victoria park, city of hamilton

In the headspace of landscape architecture, urban planning and architecture William Whyte is victoria park bandstandfamous. He began acutely observing the substance of urban public life whilst working with the New York Planning Commission in the late sixties, early seventies. These observations became the 'Street Life Project' - a study of pedestrian behaviour and city dynamics - and, eventually, led to a book (and film), 'The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces'.

Distilling Whyte's work into a list of seven patterns or features does not do it justice but, out of curiousity, I wanted to see how Victoria Park, the City of Hamilton's first park, measured up.

Victoria Park occupies a city block and is bordered by roads on all four sides: Cedar Avenue, Victoria Street, Dundonald Street and Washington Street. For relaxation and recreation the park offers manicured flower beds and lawns, with benches dotted throughout. Also, in the centre of the Park, is a bandstand purchased to commemorate the Golden Jubilee of Queen Victoria in 1887. Prior to that, Victoria Park was a somewhat marshy informal play area known as Dean's Bottom. 

Whyte identified seven feautures of successful urban spaces (to be exact, he studied plazas rather than parks): their relationship to the street, 'sittable' areas, position relative to the sun, impact of wind, presence of water features, options for food and 'triangulation' or the external stimulus that prompts strangers to speak with each other. 

view from southwest cornerStreet: For Victoria Park, it's relationship to the street is not wonderful. Surrounded by a wrought iron fence on top of a low stone wall on all four sides, there is little opportunity for interation between activity in the park and passers-by. Entrances to the park are located on the northwest and northeast corners, as well as at the mid-point of the east and west sides, and all are quite narrow. While the sidewalks at the corner entrances of the park are generously proportioned, this was done for vehicular safety and not to draw people into the park.

Seating: There are benches throughout the park, usually along the walkways. These are heavy and not built to be moved in a manner that would encourage groups to sit together. People in groups must sit on the grass - the sturdy but slightly uncomfortable Bermuda crab grass.

Sun: Victoria Park has both great sunny spots for everyone to enjoy, as well asview from west entrance welcome shady areas. The bandstand provides another opportunity for shade whilst using the park. 

Wind: The prevailing winds in Bermuda are from the southwest and, as the Park is substantially below the grade level of Victoria Street on its south boundary, it is quite sheltered.

Water: There is no water feature in the Park.

Food: There are no food vendors in the Park.

Triangulation: There are no permanent features in or around the Park that might stimulate conversation between strangers. During the summer months the City of Hamilton regularly stages musical events in the Park that can work as a catalyst of the type Whyte observed was desirable.

Taken at face value, it may seem as though Victoria Park 'fails' the Whyte 'test' but that would be a facile conclusion. It is a park used often by nursery school groups and others seeking a quiet oasis to read and these groups do not necessarily require all the features Whyte identified. Having said that, it would seem there is scope for improvement if the objective of the park planners is to create a lively, vibrant space of human connectivity.

new designs in historic settings

Historic buildings are on my mind these days, so this new design in an historic residential area in Madison (Wisconsin, I presume), USA caught my eye - Compact Family Home in Madison Inspiring Warmth and Sophistication featured in freshome.com. 

Particularly, Johnsen Schmaling Architects's explanation of the design approach made me smile:

Successfully contesting the local preservation ordinance whose strict guidelines advocated stylistic mimicry while failing to recognize the neighborhood’s rich architectural diversity, we designed a quiet but unapologetically contemporary building...

This building is set between a one hundred year old Spanish Colonial and a house dating back to 1896, which is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. It would be wonderful to see more of the hisortic setting to truly assess the architect's claim. Nonetheless, what do you think?