November 25, 2009 at 10:02 am (pattern language, politics)
Tags: cars, components, ecological, parameters, pattern language, pedestrian, settlements, sustainability
A parameter is not a component, but this is the first post in an effort to use words to describe what I have clearly in my mind relating to the creation of new settlements. Here I simply want to begin noting parameters of such settlements.
1. They will contain within their bounds most if not all the elements of ecological sustainability. Their own recycling capacity for all or most waste. Collection and distribution and recycling of water. The elements we associated with ”green” communities. It is important to understand that we are talking about creating duplicable elements that could be used in many settlements.
2. They will have no private automobiles and trucks within their borders. Most transportation will be pedestrian with all mechanized transportation limited to public and service vehicles. Communities will be designed to make access to private vehicles possible only outside of their boundaries. Important that this not be seen as a complete rejection of private vehicles. They will have a place, but they will not dictate design as they now do.
More parameters will be discussed in future posts, setting the stage for a discussion of actual components.. In essence, the parameters will be suggestive of the components.
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November 23, 2009 at 1:47 pm (pattern language)
Tags: colors, pattern language
[Index] [Previous] [Next] [Group] (Page reference: 1153)
Warm Colours
May be part of Good Materials (207), Floor Surface (233), Soft Inside Walls (235)
Conflict
The greens and greys of hospitals and office corridors are depressing and cold. Natural wood, sunlight, bright colours are warm. In some way, the warmth of the colours in a room makes a great deal of difference between comfort and discomfort.
Resolution
Choose surface colours which, together with the colour of the natural light, reflected light, and artificial lights, create a warm light in the rooms.
May contain Half-inch Trim (240), Ornament (249), Soft Tile and Brick (248), Canvas Roofs (244).
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So reified (thing-ified) is our world that we risk simply trying to color up the current structures and thinking we have humanized things. Any effort to move toward pattern language is to the good, but I believe we need some subtlety in colors. I have two crayon drawings by the artist Joseph Yoakum on my walls and they are more earth tone than anything else and I doubt they would look good on a bare wall, minus Yoakum’s stellar organization of his work. I guess I am wanting to move in the direction or replacement as against refurbishing. I would rather see metrosprawl replaced than tweaked.
Which is why my next post and subsequent ones — in a series — will be titled Components of New Settlements.
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November 18, 2009 at 6:24 pm (pattern language)
Tags: chairs, christopher alexander, pattern language, public, seating
[Index] [Previous] [Next] [Group] (Page reference: 1157)
Different Chairs
May be part of Sequence of Sitting Spaces (142), Sitting Circle (185), Built-In Seats (202)
Conflict
People are different sizes; they sit in different ways. And yet there is a tendency in modern times to make all chairs alike.
Resolution
Never furnish any place with chairs that are identically the same. Choose a variety of different chairs, some big, some small, some softer than others, some with rockers, some very old, some with arms, some wicker, some wood, some cloth.
May contain Pools of Light (252).
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Or chairs, period.
Starbucks tried something like this, but generally public places avoid catering to the natural desire to have a place to sit. Down the block glass started to fall from the high rise and the sitting area has been closed ever since. A block sourh they had tables and chairs and then took them away. We could make thousands of jobs just taking care of tables and chairs.
There is hope. On the street below me traffic has been zapped and there are tables and chairs. It;’s a party every night. One day public space will improve. It has to. As to inside the places where we dwell, the above is apposite.
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November 17, 2009 at 4:34 pm (pattern language)
Tags: illumination, lighting, pattern language
Nothing underlines the way that design and architecture despise human beings more that the treatment of illumination as something that should be uniform. As Christopher Alexander points out in the excerpt below, this is the exact opposite of the way illumination should be used.
Pools of Light
Conflict
Uniform illumination- the sweetheart of the lighting engineers- serves no useful purpose whatsoever. in fact, it destroys the social nature of space, and makes people feel disoriented and unbounded.
Resolution
Place the lights low, and apart, to form individual pools of light which encompass chairs and tables like bubbles to reinforce the social character of the spaces which they form. Remember that you can’t have pools of light without the darker places in between.
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Really though, the uniform inhumanity of illumination is simply the logical complement to the office or institutional building. These are not built for people. They are built for units who can be treated as such, measured, divided, multiplied and otherwise reified — made into things. That people overcome these conditions is a testament to human strength, not to the ingenuity of those who are responsible for creating such spaces.
The settlements and redesigned communities that I advocate make for a breaking up of mega-spaces into smaller institutional or commercial units that will serve as nodes in a residence dense area. We bring back the best of the traditional, pre-automobile conformation and apply advanced technology to the replication of quality spaces and modular (lego-like) communities.
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November 17, 2009 at 11:42 am (pattern language)
Tags: communities, future, investing, new, nodes, pattern language, settlements
I can see it but I cannot draw it. I will link to anyone who can create graphic representations of communities of the future.
A future worth investing in will involve US in the creation of every element, from the contents and packaging of products, to the creation and distribution of jobs (and pay for them) in a community.
A future worth investing in will create economies of scale in new and redesigned settlements with populations between 5-10K. These can be neighborhoods in existing cities. They can be reordered elements of suburbia. They can be inventive new settlements in and beyond existing metropolitan areas.
A future worth investing in will decide at the outset to begin phasing out the private automobile as the default method of moving about. Ideally, new settlements and reclaimed ones will be limited to walkers and riders of bikes and other conveyances to be developed — creating new jobs and markets. Communities will be linked by light rail and other conveyances to be developed or adapted.
A future worth investing in will challenge 100 years of zoning that has served the interests of the automobile economy, elongating distances, vitiating density and separating essential elements of life and wreaking havoc with essential scales.
Here are a few of the businesses and services that should be within walking distance of the dwellings of a pattern language sort of human settlement:
preventive health nodes,
cybernodes,
indoor and outdoor food kiosks and sitting areas,
educational nodes for all ages.
entertainment nodes,
fitness nodes.
And so forth.
Residences should afford privacy, be noise free, be secure against theft and invasions of privacy. In general, they should be connected with common spaces in the form of walk esplanades, small parks, playgrounds, indoor and outdoor cafes, etc. Plus, close by, the nodes above and others, scaled to market analysis. For example a health node to serve 500 persons. Etc.
A future worth investing in will streamline and advance prefabrication until a choice of pre-built spaces — that have quality and inventiveness — are readily available and integrated with systems for their modular placement and replacement in existing and new communities.
Continuing…
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