Tag Archives: Design

Poor Richard 2.0 | Planning Magazine

A review of Poor Richard: Another Almanac for Architects and Planners (or Book 2 of the Poor Richard series) appears in the April 2015 issue of Planning Magazine (pp 69-70).

Excerpt:

“As in life, some days are better than others… Two favorites: Week 13, Day 6 (In the city, buildings mate for life) and Week 29, Day 5 (Never go to an architect or planner whose office plants are artificial).”

Download the full review here.

PoorRichardv2_FrCoverPoor Richard, Another Almanac for Architects and Planners by Mark David Major
Foreword by Steve Mouzon, AIA
Paperback, 140 pages (5″ x 0.3″ x 8″, 7.4 ounces)
Forum Books (CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform; First edition)
November 30, 2014
English
ISBN-10: 150290182X<
ISBN-13: 978-1502901828

Poor Richard, Another Almanac for Architects and Planners (Volume 2 of the Poor Richard series) is available for purchase from CreateSpace, Amazon, iBooks, and other online retailers around the world. Be sure to check the online store in your country/currency (USA stores available below).

Purchase from CreateSpace here.
Purchase from Amazon here.
Purchase from Kindle Store here.
Purchase from iBooks Store here.

Share the knowledge!
Share

Planning Naked | April 2015

Planning Naked | April 2015
by Dr. Mark David Major, AICP, CNU-A, The Outlaw Urbanist contributor

Observations on the April 2015 issue of Planning Magazine.

1. APA President William Anderson in the Guest Column on page 5 says “that planning is relevant, alive, and needed now more than ever.” Planning, generic? Instead, what about saying we need good planning now more than ever? Bad planning is a waste of time and effort. The good intentions of “dedicated and earnest planners” are not enough. The road is Hell is paved with good intentions. Leadership is about setting a high standard for the profession and advocating to achieve that standard. Planners should always lead, not only “sometimes”. Let’s stop playing small ball with our language.

2. Man, there are a LOT of advertisements in this month’s issue. It’s like flipping through pages and pages of Cosmopolitan in search of  that interview with Anna Kendrick, which is the only reason you bought the issue…. oh, OK… and the quiz about improving your sex life.

3. Zones for Economic Development and Employment (ZEDEs) are discussed in the article “Honduras Tries Charter Cities”. This is an intriguing concept that appears to merge early 20th century New Towns in the UK with 19th century company town models in the USA into a new 21st century application. The article admits the track record of ZEDEs around the world is a mixed bag. Like everything else, the devil is in the details.

4. Pamela Ko and Patricia Salkin discuss incorporating the Health Impact Assessment (HIA) into land-use planning decisions in the “Legal Lessons” article. The word ‘walking’ is oddly absent from their article, which suggests HIAs (and the authors do discuss in terms of) are really a tool of exclusionary zoning. Let the buyer beware.

5. Goodness, that looks like a space syntax model of Portland, Oregon on page 27 in the “Big Data” article!!! I don’t think it is but it looks like someone has been reading about space syntax.

6. Any article that starts off with a rhetorical “what is planning?” question from The Editors (!) of Planning Magazine (page 36, 2015 National Planning Awards), I’m inclined to immediately skip. However, I glanced through the award winners and found them – for the most part – underwhelming.

7. C. Gregory Dale’s “Findings of Fact for Planning Commissioners” article presents an off-putting straw man public hearing scenario to jump into some otherwise good points. A good planning staff writes the finding of facts for approval AND denial on behalf of the Planning Commission. It’s the single most important tool that planning staffs have in their toolkit to guide their commissions to the best planning decisions.

8. Review of Poor Richard: Another Almanac for Architects and Planners by Mark David Major on page 69-70. Awesome sauce! This review is decidedly neutral but that’s OK since Volume 2 has more content about architects, architecture, and building than urban planning compared to Volume 1.

9. Jon Arason’s Viewpoint article about “The Planner’s Lament: Night Meetings” is only funny because it is true! I once did the same calculation about the amount of additional hours of unpaid work at night meetings while serving as a Senior Planner for a local Florida county. The revelation sent me straight into the private sector for good!

Planning Naked is a regular feature with observations and comments about a recent issue of Planning: The Magazine of the American Planning Association.

Share the knowledge!
Share

Poor Richard Volume 2 Review | Portland Book Review

Poor Richard, Another Almanac for Architects and Planners (Volume 2) by Mark David Major | Portland Book Review
by George Erdosh, April 20, 2015

The review of Poor Richard, Another Almanac for Architects and Planners by the Portland Book Review is available.

Excerpt:

“Here is a strange paperback that some readers will love and others won’t read past page three. Poor Richard, Another Almanac for Architects and Planners consists of fifty-two pages of text, one for each week of the year, and a facing black-and-white high-contrast photo illustrations, somewhat related to the subject author Mark David Major selected for that week.”

Read the full review here: Poor Richard, Another Almanac for Architects and Planners (Volume 2) by Mark David Major | Portland Book Review

Down the full review here: Poor Richard, Another Almanac for Architects and Planners (Volume 2) by Mark David Major | Portland Book Review

PoorRichardv2_FrCoverPoor Richard, Another Almanac for Architects and Planners (Volume 2)
by Mark David Major, Foreword by Steve Mouzon
140 pages with black and white illustrations.

Available in print from Amazon, CreateSpace, and other online retailers.

Available on iBooks from the Apple iTunes Store and Kindle in the Kindle Store.

For the best digital eBook experience, the author recommends purchasing the iBook version of the book.

Share the knowledge!
Share

FROM THE VAULT | Creative Confessions | Paul Klee

FROM THE VAULT | Creative Confessions and other writings by Paul Klee
by Dr. Mark David Major, AICP, CNU-A, The Outlaw Urbanist contributor

Creative Confessions is a series of short essays (vignettes, really) by Modern abstract artist Paul Klee (1879-1940) on art and composition, which the artist wrote while teaching at the Bauhaus in Germany during the 1920s with a postscript essay by the editor, Matthew Gale. In this, it is a thought-provoking read that can be managed in a single sitting (in a real sense: perfect for the Internet Era). It is stuffed full with quotes that have direct bearing on composition in art (“art does not reproduce the visible; rather, it makes visible”). However, Klee’s vignettes also carry (perhaps indirect) importance for composition in architecture and urban planning. For example, “a tendency towards the abstract is inherent in linear expression” when you think of this concept in terms of movement in the city. When Klee discusses “the formal elements of graphic art are the dot, line, plane, and space – the last three charged with energy of various kind”, we can easily translate this into built environment terms (dot=location, line=axis of movement, plane=convex space, and space itself is self-explanatory). Klee means this in terms of the energy of artistic gesture but we can also easily understand how these things in an urban environment are similarly ‘charged with energy’ in terms of movement, avoidance, and encounter.

Indeed, it is easy to make transitions such as these from art to architecture/planning since Klee himself tends to express these ideas in terms of movement/counter movement in encounter and vision, i.e. a journey across “an unploughed field” or crossing a “river” or “walking across the deck of a steamer”, which are described in terms of linear expression. Klee’s explicitly acknowledges this, arguing that “movement is the source of all change” and “space, too, is a temporal concept.” “When a dot begins to move and becomes a line, this require time.” In planning terms, we can think of this as our location in space changing by the action of our movement and thus our experience of space evolves with that movement. This is not only expressed in terms of geospatial reality but also in time since we, as human beings, are bound in space and time.

“Movement is the basic datum” of the universe, Klee tells us. In understanding this (in art as well as the science of urbanism), we can “reveal the reality that is behind visible things”.  Klee argues “the object grows beyond its appearance through our knowledge that the thing is more than its outward aspect suggests”. Indeed, in discussing art, is Klee begins to tap into the inherent nature of observation and science itself.

Creative Confessions and other writings
by Paul Klee (Matthew Gale, Editor and Postscript)
32 pages
Tate; Act edition (May 6, 2014), London UK

You can purchase Creative Confessions and other writings from Amazon here.

 

Check out the Artsy.net Paul Klee page here.

From the Vault is a series from the Outlaw Urbanist in which we review art, architectural and urban design texts, with an emphasis on the obscure and forgotten, found in second-hand bookstores.

Share the knowledge!
Share

Virtual Exhibition on Urban Utopias | The mheu

The mheu (A historical museum of the urban environment) is a virtual museum that offers thematic exhibitions comprising a range of works including pictures, literature, sound and video.

Virtual exhibition on Urban Utopias

Excerpt:

“In urban planning, as elsewhere, the utopian ideal is more than an instinctive desire for a better world: it is also a source of progress. Even the wildest urban projects lend impetus to more efficient ways of living in one way or another… In the words of Lamartine: “Utopias are often simply premature truths.” The (exhibition) is an overview of cities whose bricks and mortar are the stuff of dreams, ideas and achievements.”

The Tower of Babel by Pieter Brueghel the Elder.

Visit the virtual exhibition here: The mheu | Virtual Exhibition on Urban Utopias.

Share the knowledge!
Share