Just back from two not-quite-back-to-back but double-booked lectures on architecture at University of Washington’s Kane Hall.
The first was Copenhagen-based public space designer Lars Gemzøe of GehlArchitects.dk. He’s a partner at Gehl, a Danish firm that consults with cities across the globe on how to make better public spaces.
The second was UW professor Jeffrey Ochsner. His information-packed slideshow lecture ‘History of Seattle Architecture and Urbanism: 1880 - present’ was dense and yet intriguing. [Significant note: Power point was not used!]
One person asked Ochsner if Seattle design had somehow influenced architecture in other places. “I hate to puncture balloons,” the professor replied. “But yes. The shopping center.” Northgate shopping center—the first design to set buildings close together with a thin arcade between them and parking spaces all around—set an example for shopping malls across America, he said. See Northgate design essay at Historylink.org
I learned in Gemzøe’s lecture just upstairs half an hour before that shopping malls really took the wind out of the sails of public spaces. Malls replaced public squares. Yet they administered private rules. Shirts and shoes required. No playing radios. No sitting on the lawn, planters or sidewalks. “If you go to a city, these are the places people sit,” Gemzøe said.
Privatizing public space spelled doom for pedestrian-centered planning, and spawned a sprawling suburbia. In Gemzøe’s lecture, we saw examples of abandoned cities, with no people out and about and only parked cars. I liked how our lecturer stated the facts plain: “There can be no public space if there’s no public.”
But we also saw reclaimed cities. Gemzøe cited Portland as a city that’s turned itself around, by doing “heart surgery” to create a meeting place downtown and give people a reason to go there. He also talked about CPH’s own reclamation.
Enjoyed hearing from a local and an urban planning specialist how CPH made a conscious effort to close traffic on what’s today a 10m-wide strip of pedestrian-only thoroughfare. Even more interesting because I was just in Copenhagen to look for design inspiration last fall.
Seeing slides of CPH resembling some of the shots I took when I was there made me smile. I recognized the pedestrian-only street, of course, it’s pretty much what you run into no matter what direction you head. And I recognized the cut-off name of the department store Magasin, which I learned today owned the streetfront that’s got outdoor tables all year, where I had dinner with some strangers who asked me all about the life and times of… New Delhi.
Flashback to Raleigh 1998
I recalled hearing Dan Burden speak in Raleigh about Creating Walkable Communities in 1998. I asked the company I worked for if I could go to the workshop because my project had to do with building a master plan for a community college. After, instead of driving to the train station a few blocks away, I walked. I was late picking up a friend, but happy to be in the warm humidity of summer outdoors in downtown Raleigh, NC, and mulling all the way how sidewalks could be tree-ified and made more friendly.
Sponsors and things
Ochsner’s lecture was sponsored by the University of Washington Alumnae Association, College of Architecture and Urban Planning and the Seattle Architecture Foundation. Gemzøe’s was sponsored by: the Scan|Design Foundation; The Northwest Danish Foundation; Green Futures Research and Design Lab; International Sustainable Solutions; UW College of Architecture and Urban Planning; and the UW Scandinavian Studies Department. —DK
For upcoming lectures, see Caup.Washington.Edu/Lectureseries
Also see DK’s posts:
On another Kane Hall lecture, ‘Translation in Wartime’
Design Kompany visits the Danish Design Center in Copenhagen
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