I would rather take a train to the office than drive. And given reasonable options, I would rather take a train than get on a plane. I like trains. So by default, it means that I'm interested in Christopher Beanland's new book, Station. In it, he profiles some of the best railway architecture from the 20th and 21st centuries. Places like Union Station in Los Angeles, Hauptbanhof in Berlin, and Byappanahalli in Bengaluru. But as cool as these places are on their own, I think it's important to keep in mind that trains exist as part of a network. And like all transport, they promote time-space convergence. This is part of what makes these spaces so interesting -- they're like a portal to somewhere else.
Designer Thomas Heatherwick has a book coming out this week that is about how most buildings suck:
Heatherwick’s reticence makes his latest work more surprising. He is launching a 10-year campaign against the “catastrophe” of how buildings are built. Our cities, he argues, are in the grip of an “epidemic of boringness”. Most modern buildings are too flat, too plain, too straight, too shiny, too monotonous, too anonymous and too serious. They make us unhappy and ill, they make us not want to come into the office.
In his book Humanise, out on Thursday, Heatherwick derides architects as members of a modernist “cult”, which indoctrinates them during their seven-year training into thinking they don’t need the public’s approval. The result is the UK’s commercial buildings are so unloved that they have an average lifespan of perhaps 50 years, leading to huge carbon emissions as they are replaced.
I haven't read it yet, but something tells me that I'll probably agree with some/many aspects of the book and be annoyed by others.
What I'll likely agree with is that our cities should be more playful, beautiful, and creative. They should be more human. And we should be more daring.
But what I'll likely be annoyed by is the impracticality of the proposed approach(es). There are markets. There exists money. And there are reasons why many of Heatherwick's projects are "luxury" ones.
Or maybe I'm just being cynical and I should wait and see.
Here's a link to the book.
I just ordered a copy of this book. So I haven't read it yet. But I did just read this Q&A with the authors (and it clearly piqued interested). The central idea is that Tokyo -- which is a massive city that is famous for somehow being both massive and exceedingly livable -- is the product of something that the authors refer to as emergent urbanism.
What they mean by this is that Tokyo's order, functionality, and livability is actually largely the result of emergent bottom-up actions, rather than top-down central planning. This isn't to say that some top-down planning isn't required for things like parks and transit. You still need some of that. But this is to say that Tokyo's approach to urbanism is very different from what you'll find in cities likes Paris and many others.
I would rather take a train to the office than drive. And given reasonable options, I would rather take a train than get on a plane. I like trains. So by default, it means that I'm interested in Christopher Beanland's new book, Station. In it, he profiles some of the best railway architecture from the 20th and 21st centuries. Places like Union Station in Los Angeles, Hauptbanhof in Berlin, and Byappanahalli in Bengaluru. But as cool as these places are on their own, I think it's important to keep in mind that trains exist as part of a network. And like all transport, they promote time-space convergence. This is part of what makes these spaces so interesting -- they're like a portal to somewhere else.
Designer Thomas Heatherwick has a book coming out this week that is about how most buildings suck:
Heatherwick’s reticence makes his latest work more surprising. He is launching a 10-year campaign against the “catastrophe” of how buildings are built. Our cities, he argues, are in the grip of an “epidemic of boringness”. Most modern buildings are too flat, too plain, too straight, too shiny, too monotonous, too anonymous and too serious. They make us unhappy and ill, they make us not want to come into the office.
In his book Humanise, out on Thursday, Heatherwick derides architects as members of a modernist “cult”, which indoctrinates them during their seven-year training into thinking they don’t need the public’s approval. The result is the UK’s commercial buildings are so unloved that they have an average lifespan of perhaps 50 years, leading to huge carbon emissions as they are replaced.
I haven't read it yet, but something tells me that I'll probably agree with some/many aspects of the book and be annoyed by others.
What I'll likely agree with is that our cities should be more playful, beautiful, and creative. They should be more human. And we should be more daring.
But what I'll likely be annoyed by is the impracticality of the proposed approach(es). There are markets. There exists money. And there are reasons why many of Heatherwick's projects are "luxury" ones.
Or maybe I'm just being cynical and I should wait and see.
Here's a link to the book.
I just ordered a copy of this book. So I haven't read it yet. But I did just read this Q&A with the authors (and it clearly piqued interested). The central idea is that Tokyo -- which is a massive city that is famous for somehow being both massive and exceedingly livable -- is the product of something that the authors refer to as emergent urbanism.
What they mean by this is that Tokyo's order, functionality, and livability is actually largely the result of emergent bottom-up actions, rather than top-down central planning. This isn't to say that some top-down planning isn't required for things like parks and transit. You still need some of that. But this is to say that Tokyo's approach to urbanism is very different from what you'll find in cities likes Paris and many others.
Here's an example of what I'm talking about (taken from the above Q&A):
This is going to sound wild to anyone who lives in the US, but for any two-story rowhouse in Tokyo, the owner can by right operate a bar, a restaurant, a boutique, a small workshop on the ground floor — even in the most residential zoned sections of the city. That means you have an incredible supply of potential microspaces. Any elderly homeowner could decide to rent out the bottom floor of their place to some young kid who wants to start a coffee shop, for example. When you look at what we call yokocho alleyways — charming, dingy alleyways that grew out of the black markets post-World War II, which are some of the the most iconic and beloved sections of the city now — it’s all of these tiny little bars and restaurants just crammed into every available space.
What's fascinating about all of this is that we're talking about a kind of self-organizing urbanism. One that goes against everything that traditional city planning stands for. Using the above example, instead of saying that retail should go here, bars should go here, and residences should go only over here, Tokyo is basically saying you can do whatever you'd like.
If you'd like to open a tiny 4-seater bar that only serves Long Island iced teas to people wearing cosplay outfits on neon pink plastic chairs, you are free to do that. Oh, and by the way, we're also going to make it a lot easier and cheaper for you to get a liquor license. This might sound chaotic, but it works for Tokyo. And it's evidence that maybe a lot of our cities would be better off if only we let them be what they want to be.
Here's an example of what I'm talking about (taken from the above Q&A):
This is going to sound wild to anyone who lives in the US, but for any two-story rowhouse in Tokyo, the owner can by right operate a bar, a restaurant, a boutique, a small workshop on the ground floor — even in the most residential zoned sections of the city. That means you have an incredible supply of potential microspaces. Any elderly homeowner could decide to rent out the bottom floor of their place to some young kid who wants to start a coffee shop, for example. When you look at what we call yokocho alleyways — charming, dingy alleyways that grew out of the black markets post-World War II, which are some of the the most iconic and beloved sections of the city now — it’s all of these tiny little bars and restaurants just crammed into every available space.
What's fascinating about all of this is that we're talking about a kind of self-organizing urbanism. One that goes against everything that traditional city planning stands for. Using the above example, instead of saying that retail should go here, bars should go here, and residences should go only over here, Tokyo is basically saying you can do whatever you'd like.
If you'd like to open a tiny 4-seater bar that only serves Long Island iced teas to people wearing cosplay outfits on neon pink plastic chairs, you are free to do that. Oh, and by the way, we're also going to make it a lot easier and cheaper for you to get a liquor license. This might sound chaotic, but it works for Tokyo. And it's evidence that maybe a lot of our cities would be better off if only we let them be what they want to be.
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