About
Reverse Zone, weblog on urban planning, sustainability, and technology.
Martin Laplante
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- Planetizen
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Recent posts
- Border Adjustments: A Solution to Climate Change Action
- Direct Democracy vs. Intolerance - the Swiss Minaret Vote
- The New Urban/Rural Relationship
- Is Manhattan, New York, or Greater New York Sustainable?
- Criticizing Me Is Unconstitutional, Says Architect
- Will High Speed Rail Reduce GHGs?
- Suburban Retrofit
- Lateral Semantic Indexing
- Resistance From Residents Near Carbon Capture Sites
- LEED for Neighborhood Development (LEED-ND) Voting Is On
- $300K Fine for Astroturfing
- Carbon capture from coal plants
- What is the Proper Role of Villages in Smart Growth
- Green Buildings Need Design and Geographic Context
- Ontario Coal Generators Are Shut Down
- Canada and US Driving No Longer Dropping
- This Year Ontario No Longer Needs Coal
- Shaping the Public Realm
- The Days of Sprawl Are Officially Over
- The Telescope is Backward
- Stop The Earth
- Amazon CloudFront New Pricing, Cheap At A Million Dollars
- Canada Spends Billions in Energy INefficiency
- Density as Persons Plus Jobs Per Unit Area
- Now is the Time for New Transit Investments
- UNFCCC Confuses Journalists on Direction of Greenhouse Gases
- Canadian Business Prefers Carbon Tax
- Streets To Home: Down With Continuum of Care!
- Close Roads to Reduce Congestion
- Science and Economics of Climate Change
2008
2007
2006
2005
Complete List of Posts
Top Posts
- Close Roads to Reduce Congestion
- The Delicate Balancing Act of Downtowns and the Death of Griffintown
- Places to Grow - Pictures Tell the Story
- Why We Still Need Separation of Uses
- Dense Condos Do Not Revitalize
- Hot Air - How to Beat Climate Change By Burning More Coal
- What's Best for Renewables, Merton Rule or Feed-In Tariff?
- LEED for Neighborhood Development Pilot Rating System
- Main Arterial Woonerf
- More on Which is Greener, Houses or Apartments?
- Which is Greener, Houses or Apartments?
- Zoning Exceptions and the Failure of Planning
- 18th Century Planning is Still the State of the Art
- Ontario Municipal Board Says City Can't Plan for Mix or Density of Mixed Use
- Brownfield Brutalism - Urban Planning for Sale
- The Causes of Sprawl
- Energy Star Sprawl
- Is High Density the Cure for Transportation?
- Why not Build Medieval Towns Here?
- Vancouver has it right - Ecodensity
- Ontario has it wrong - Places to Grow
- Jane Jacobs, Christopher Alexander, and Barry Wellman
- Review of This Land: The Battle over Sprawl and the Future of America
- New York's Downzoning Uprising
- Community Planning - are citizens powerless?
- Paris riots and urban planning
- Minimize Greenhouse Gas Emissions through Reverse Zoning
- Social Sciences: So Much Left Undone
From John Massengale's Veritas and Venustas blog
In traditional architecture and urbanism, the first role of an urban building is to shape the public realm. In Modernism, the first role of a building can vary from being an interesting object, to being an expression of technology, to being a monument to the architect's genius, to being something cheap and big. Many Modern buildings do all four. All four frequently interfere with shaping the public realm and making an outdoor place where people want to be.There are three types of architects perspective drawings that get shown before a building is started. One is the bird's eye view, showing what a building would look like if you were suspended hundreds of feet in the air. I have always wondered why architects design interesting features to buildings that will only ever be seen by a crane operator. The second is the non-Euclidean perspective drawing. This is used especially where a proposed building has a scale out of proportion to the streetscape. In this drawing, small heritage buildings, trees, and pedestrians who wandered into the shot look big and the new building seems to be the same size as all of them. Requires a telephoto lens and a very deep hole. The third is the real estate brochure, where the building is new and the trees and landscaping are old and lush, and the surrounding buildings look drab.
Which begs the question, why not build something that looks appropriate in its context, is conceived based on its impact at ground level, and that gains some maturity as it weathers? I will remain ignorant about architecture, but positive space is something that requires only a small amount of humility on the part of the architect, and costs nothing to build.
Tags: Urban Design Architecture