Quote:Imagine waking up to the gentle noises of the city, and moving through your day with complete confidence that you will get where you need to go quickly and efficiently. Soft City is about ease and comfort, where density has a human dimension, adapting to our ever-changing needs, nurturing relationships, and accommodating the pleasures of everyday life. How do we move from the current reality in most cites-separated uses and lengthy commutes in single-occupancy vehicles that drain human, environmental, and community resources-to support a soft city approach?

In Soft City David Sim, partner and creative director at Gehl, shows how this is possible, presenting ideas and graphic examples from around the globe. He draws from his vast design experience to make a case for a dense and diverse built environment at a human scale, which he presents through a series of observations of older and newer places, and a range of simple built phenomena, some traditional and some totally new inventions.

Sim shows that increasing density is not enough. The soft city must consider the organization and layout of the built environment for more fluid movement and comfort, a diversity of building types, and thoughtful design to ensure a sustainable urban environment and society.

Soft City begins with the big ideas of happiness and quality of life, and then shows how they are tied to the way we live. The heart of the book is highly visual and shows the building blocks for neighborhoods: building types and their organization and orientation; how we can get along as we get around a city; and living with the weather. As every citizen deals with the reality of a changing climate, Soft City explores how the built environment can adapt and respond.

Soft City offers inspiration, ideas, and guidance for anyone interested in city building. Sim shows how to make any city more efficient, more livable, and better connected to the environment.

(07-01-2022, 11:49 PM)jwilliamson Wrote: I've been reading Lewis Mumford's "The Culture of Cities". I'm about halfway through, so I can only comment on the first half.

He's basically reviewed the last 800 years or so of urban planning, and what he thinks is good or bad in each era. He claims that Medieval cities were fantastic, with fairly high living standards, civic institutions that generally operated for the benefit of the people, plenty of open space, access to nature, strong social networks. It's been down hill ever since. Renaissance-Baroque cities were constrained by their more complex walls, causing overcrowding and overbuilding; increasing state power removed authority from civic institutions; architecture was more concerned about making a statement about the state's power than being beautiful and functional. Industrial cities were polluted hell-holes, and modern (late 19th-early 20th century) cities strip away all human elements to serve the centralizing state.

(07-02-2022, 09:14 AM)ijmorlan Wrote:

(07-01-2022, 11:49 PM)jwilliamson Wrote: I've been reading Lewis Mumford's "The Culture of Cities". I'm about halfway through, so I can only comment on the first half.

He's basically reviewed the last 800 years or so of urban planning, and what he thinks is good or bad in each era. He claims that Medieval cities were fantastic, with fairly high living standards, civic institutions that generally operated for the benefit of the people, plenty of open space, access to nature, strong social networks. It's been down hill ever since. Renaissance-Baroque cities were constrained by their more complex walls, causing overcrowding and overbuilding; increasing state power removed authority from civic institutions; architecture was more concerned about making a statement about the state's power than being beautiful and functional. Industrial cities were polluted hell-holes, and modern (late 19th-early 20th century) cities strip away all human elements to serve the centralizing state.

Do you mean 20th/21st? I’m just wondering because most of the best parts of the cities with which I am familiar were built in the late 1800s or early 1900s, whereas most of what has been built after World War II is somewhere between mediocre and atrocious.

Without reading the book, I must admit to being a bit skeptical of the “to serve the centralizing state” bit. Are modern suburbs really designed to serve the centralizing state? I think they’re designed on the severely flawed assumptions that everybody should have a car and that everything should be separated from everything else. I don’t think there is a need to invoke something that starts to look more like a conspiracy theory.

(07-03-2022, 08:23 AM)jwilliamson Wrote:

(07-02-2022, 09:14 AM)ijmorlan Wrote: Do you mean 20th/21st? I’m just wondering because most of the best parts of the cities with which I am familiar were built in the late 1800s or early 1900s, whereas most of what has been built after World War II is somewhere between mediocre and atrocious.

Without reading the book, I must admit to being a bit skeptical of the “to serve the centralizing state” bit. Are modern suburbs really designed to serve the centralizing state? I think they’re designed on the severely flawed assumptions that everybody should have a car and that everything should be separated from everything else. I don’t think there is a need to invoke something that starts to look more like a conspiracy theory.

It was published in 1938; so definitely 19th/20th.

I think "centralizing state" was a poor choice of wording on my part. Mumford would probably instead say that metropolitan interests (the state, but also large capitalists, financial interests, publishers, industrialists) all have an interest in concentrating activity in one area, and in formalizing it.

Regarding suburbs, they are clearly designed to centralize activity within the city. Why build a suburb? Because downtown businesses need workers and customers, and people can live in the suburb while still orienting their life towards the city. The suburb doesn't need its own businesses, its own newspapers, its own festivals; it can simply consume whatever is produced in the city.

(07-03-2022, 08:23 AM)jwilliamson Wrote:

(07-02-2022, 09:14 AM)ijmorlan Wrote: Do you mean 20th/21st? I’m just wondering because most of the best parts of the cities with which I am familiar were built in the late 1800s or early 1900s, whereas most of what has been built after World War II is somewhere between mediocre and atrocious.

Without reading the book, I must admit to being a bit skeptical of the “to serve the centralizing state” bit. Are modern suburbs really designed to serve the centralizing state? I think they’re designed on the severely flawed assumptions that everybody should have a car and that everything should be separated from everything else. I don’t think there is a need to invoke something that starts to look more like a conspiracy theory.

It was published in 1938; so definitely 19th/20th.

I think "centralizing state" was a poor choice of wording on my part. Mumford would probably instead say that metropolitan interests (the state, but also large capitalists, financial interests, publishers, industrialists) all have an interest in concentrating activity in one area, and in formalizing it.

Regarding suburbs, they are clearly designed to centralize activity within the city. Why build a suburb? Because downtown businesses need workers and customers, and people can live in the suburb while still orienting their life towards the city. The suburb doesn't need its own businesses, its own newspapers, its own festivals; it can simply consume whatever is produced in the city.

Quote:When We Live Alone explores the ways in which we live alone together in contemporary cities. The unprecedented rise of urban dwellers living on their own challenges normative ideas about home and raises questions about how this change in social structure and lifestyle affects cities as a whole. While the causes of living alone seem apparent—shifting social values, the flexibilization of labour, new demographics, increased wealth, and changes to normative gender roles—the effects on society and its spatial configurations remain uncertain. Through a series of interconnected vignettes, the film interrogates this new urban condition, offering glimpses into the lives of individuals inhabiting singleton homes and the extended domestic sphere. Urban dwellers living on their own, architect Takahashi Ippei, and sociologist Yoshikazu Nango navigate the audience through a series of sole spaces in Tokyo. If living alone is our new reality, the film asks what does it look like?

Quote:No one is quite sure who the Trickster is, where it came from, what it is, or what purpose it serves, but it tends to unexpectedly show up in cultural narratives, often exposing human flaws and reminding us of our collective interactions, including exposing our unscrupulous behaviors. By no fault of its own, the Trickster is the shadow victim of the precarious light it carries in helping us to see things differently. Yet it’s also a psychological force, a rule maker and a rule breaker who thrives in the space of human conflict, exposing new distinctions, or as Susan White says, “keeping the world lively and giving cultures the flexibility to endure.”

As an architectural visage, this Indigenous Trickster goes by the name LeCreebusier (LeCreeb, for short); an Indian Agent provocateur with a flair for design criticism. Gifted with situational awareness, LeCreeb is challenged with having to “make sense” of the human actions of a band of Cree people who occupy a swath of boreal forest across the northern shield. LeCreeb is not quite sure how the Swampy Cree, who live on both sides of James Bay, got their political clanship braids tied in a knot or how their active fur traplines got all tangled up, but one thing is certain: it was the Canadian government’s introduction of a series of imaginary provincial borders that divided the Cree from their homeland. From northern Quebec to northern Alberta, the Cree territory is vast. This context is key to understanding the situation.

A closer look reveals a layering of sorts by the “Other.” By this I mean that Settler societies have layered on top of Indigenous peoples’ stories of place, including Indigenous landmarks and the erasure of Indigenous place names. It’s the kind of presencing that Canadian architecture likes to describe as “found potential” in places that have always existed with a certain kind of being in the world. It’s unfortunate that this labeling of the Other was enshrined in Canadian politics by way of planning and design, as Indigenous people continue to be looked upon as the alternative, those situated in the margins, away from the center, less privileged, and hopefully, forgotten. Alas, the Trickster is there, but not. Due to their longstanding inferiority complex, Settler societies have yet to come to terms with their unscrupulous behavior. However, we are nonetheless witnessing an attempt to simply smooth things over by way of truth and economic reconciliation—as though Indigenous peoples didn’t pay and sacrifice enough! If (Indigenous) knowledge is power, then Settlers were and still are indebted to Indigenous societies for the former’s longstanding occupation and existence on Indigenous lands.

Quote:Through a series of exhibitions, lectures, book talks, panel discussions and symposia, we aim to foster dialogue and knowledge exchange among our local and international communities on important social, political and environmental challenges confronting our disciplines and the world today. 

Our Public Program this semester addresses a range of pertinent issues concerning the natural and built environments, including design and social justice, urbanization and housing, art and media, and ecology and landscape resilience.

Quote:The word “method”—or in Norwegian, metode—comes from Ancient Greek and means “the way to follow.” In the field of art and architecture, the term refers to the work process behind the work, while in a research context the term refers to the work process behind the research result. Although the term is often associated with precision, planning, and positioning, the term also implies challenges, unpredictability, and the unknown. Metode by ROM for kunst og arkitektur is a gathering place for work‑ and text-based thinking in art and architecture where the path is more important than the ultimate goal.

The online journal platform Metode publishes essays in the fields of art and architecture. The essays are developed through experimental, intellectual co-creation, and collaborative methods. The journal’s open, in-depth peer review method aims to offer theorists and practitioners a discursive platform for generating original and compelling critical thinking on art, architecture, design, and aesthetics that challenges conventional academic publication formats and disseminations.

Quote:How do we think surfaces today? Are they living membranes, hermetic layers of superficiality, “hyperobjects,” systemic tissues, or something entirely different? How to make visible that which withdraws but still exists all around us, and perhaps with us?