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More Poor Richard | Part 8

More Poor Richard, Part 8
by Dr. Mark David Major, AICP, CNU-A, The Outlaw Urbanist contributor

Courteous Reader,

I attempted to win your favor when I wrote my first Almanac for Architects and Planners, in the name of the public good and professional betterment, by way of earning some profit and a wife. I am gratified by your expression of encouragement for my tireless efforts dedicated to these aims. Alas, my circumstances still find me exceedingly poor and, unluckily, exceedingly wifeless. I am required to earn some profit to address both problems whilst now addressing a third, namely testing the proposition that insanity is “doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” To satisfy my own particular brand of insanity, I have written more proverbs and whimsical sayings for your benefit and, hopefully, my own.

As before on The Outlaw Urbanist, I write this new Almanac in increments of ten, according to the dictates of Moses and the Almighty. However, once published as an Almanac for Architects and Planners, the proverbs and witticisms were gathered into a number equal to the days of the week, after being reliably informed that both seven and ten are sacred numbers. My desired requirement for a wife is sufficient motive to write this new Almanac in the hope it will find your favor and retweets as a means of demonstrating the usefulness of my continued efforts but also your charity to this sane Friend and poor Servant,

Richard

On Architects and Planners

71.       Urban planners need to design the plan, not plan the plan.

72.       Architects and planners without poetry in their heart are the serial killers of the built environment.

73.       Urban planners should be far less concerned with highways and far more concerned about grids.

74.       Architecture is not the unknowable alchemy of the One but the knowable synthesis of the Many.

75.       The absence of quality signifies the presence of apathy.

76.       Architect and planner are jobs. Design is a calling.

77.       An architect’s best building should always be the one they are designing right now.

78.       Architecture feeds the ego. Ego consumes the architecture.

79.       Architects or planners only operating on PCs with Microsoft Windows are Yankee traders. Let the buyer beware.

80.       If an urban planner is half-right, then they are also half-wrong. Our cities and citizens deserve 100% rightness.

Issue 9 of More Poor Richard for Architects and Planners cometh soon!

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Genius of ‘Poor Richard’ Laughs Our Way to Great Cities

Genius of ‘Poor Richard’ Laughs Our Way to Great Cities

“You have to out-think the box before you can think outside of it.” – Poor Richard

JACKSONVILLE, FLORIDA – Architect, urban planner and entrepreneur Mark David Major has seen a lot over 20 years of professional experience in academia and the public and private sector spanning the United States, Europe and other parts of the world. And much of it is bad… or worse. Major was born and raised in the Tower Grove neighborhood of St. Louis and attended Collinsville High School. He is a graduate of Clemson University in South Carolina and the University of London in the United Kingdom with Bachelors, a Masters, and PhD in Architecture.

Frustrated with the sprawling state of our cities and complicity of professionals charged with shepherding them, he decided to do something when he established The Outlaw Urbanist, a blog dedicated to architecture, urban design and planning issues. Then he began posting on Twitter, to date, more than 600 proverbs and witticisms to help professionals and laymen better understand what makes a great city, great architecture and good practice. The result is a series of sometimes biting, sometimes obscure, but always insightful proverbs using Benjamin Franklin’s 18th century Poor Richard pen name (“A penny saved is a penny earned”). Major admits the Poor Richard moniker is a homage to the wisdom of one of the America’s most famous Founding Fathers but also a subtle dig at American urban studies theorist, Richard Florida, who was recently named the World’s Most Influential Thinker in a published ranking by MIT Technology Review. Major points out, crucially, MIT’s ranking was based on the frequency of online social media mentions and not the content of those mentions. “Too often, we confuse talking with thinking,” said Major, “and we’re too thankful for half-wrong measures when it comes to our cities and architecture because we hope they are also half-right. The results are seldom satisfying.”

Major’s Twitter postings generated such a positive response that he collected together the first 366 proverbs in Poor Richard, An Almanac for Architects and Planners, first published in Spring 2013 but now available in digital format in Apple iBooks. The book contains a witticism for each day of the year plus one for years “in a state of leaping.” Major has continued writing and posting proverbs on Twitter. He plans to publish a follow-up book, Poor Richard, Another Almanac for Architects and Planners in 2014.

Drawing inspiration from Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson and many others, Major crafts anew a series of general rules of thumb for anyone interested in the architecture, urban design and planning of our cities. The result is a stunning book marked as much by its breadth and depth as the brevity of its words on the subject. According to leading New Urbanist architect Julia Starr Sanford, in her Foreword to Major’s Poor Richard, the book represents “genius, extraordinary wit, passion for good design and mastery of the history of planning (in a) hilariously righteous epitome of 21st century sense and sensibility.” The unmistakable message of Major’s Poor Richard is we can do better for our cities, we must do better for our cities, and, before the 20th century, we did do better for our cities.

“Thomas Jefferson gave Americans the regular grid. A committee of roadway engineers gave us suburban sprawl. Always walk with giants, never ride in the clown car.” – Poor Richard

Poor Richard, An Almanac for Architects and Planners is a 136-page book with black and white illustrations published by Forum Books, available in print from Amazon, CreateSpace, and other online retailers and digital format from the Apple iTunes Store. Visit the author’s architecture, urban design and planning blog The Outlaw Urbanist for more information.

This article originally appeared on www.stltoday.com.

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More Poor Richard | Part 7

More Poor Richard, Part 7
by Dr. Mark David Major, AICP, CNU-A, The Outlaw Urbanist contributor

Courteous Reader,

I attempted to win your favor when I wrote my first Almanac for Architects and Planners, in the name of the public good and professional betterment, by way of earning some profit and a wife. I am gratified by your expression of encouragement for my tireless efforts dedicated to these aims. Alas, my circumstances still find me exceedingly poor and, unluckily, exceedingly wifeless. I am required to earn some profit to address both problems whilst now addressing a third, namely testing the proposition that insanity is “doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” To satisfy my own particular brand of insanity, I have written more proverbs and whimsical sayings for your benefit and, hopefully, my own.

As before on The Outlaw Urbanist, I write this new Almanac in increments of ten, according to the dictates of Moses and the Almighty. However, once published as an Almanac for Architects and Planners, the proverbs and witticisms were gathered into a number equal to the days of the week, after being reliably informed that both seven and ten are sacred numbers. My desired requirement for a wife is sufficient motive to write this new Almanac in the hope it will find your favor and retweets as a means of demonstrating the usefulness of my continued efforts but also your charity to this sane Friend and poor Servant,

Richard

On Form and Function in Architecture

61.       Logic is straight, curves are tangent.

62.       A circle has a no beginning, middle, or end. In itself, it has no story to tell.

63.       F-f=b where F is function, f is form, and b is building.

64.       f-F=a where F is function, f is form, and a is art.

65.       F+f=Ar where F is function, f is form, and Ar is Architecture.

66.       All color in architecture is ornamentation, even the color of a material in its natural state.

67.       Architects cannot afford or willfully choose to be color-blind lest they do things half-ass.

68.       All architects and planners “are living in a material world.”

69.       In isolation, a curve draws attention to itself. In association, curves create a rhythm to life and things.

70.     A building always stands so make sure it isn’t tired from the start.

Issue 8 of More Poor Richard for Architects and Planners cometh soon!

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Poor Richard

More Poor Richard | Part 6

More Poor Richard, Part 6
by Dr. Mark David Major, AICP, CNU-A, The Outlaw Urbanist contributor

Courteous Reader,

I attempted to win your favor when I wrote my first Almanac for Architects and Planners, in the name of the public good and professional betterment, by way of earning some profit and a wife. I am gratified by your expression of encouragement for my tireless efforts dedicated to these aims. Alas, my circumstances still find me exceedingly poor and, unluckily, exceedingly wifeless. I am required to earn some profit to address both problems whilst now addressing a third, namely testing the proposition that insanity is “doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” To satisfy my own particular brand of insanity, I have written more proverbs and whimsical sayings for your benefit and, hopefully, my own.

As before on The Outlaw Urbanist, I write this new Almanac in increments of ten, according to the dictates of Moses and the Almighty. However, once published as an Almanac for Architects and Planners, the proverbs and witticisms were gathered into a number equal to the days of the week, after being reliably informed that both seven and ten are sacred numbers. My desired requirement for a wife is sufficient motive to write this new Almanac in the hope it will find your favor and retweets as a means of demonstrating the usefulness of my continued efforts but also your charity to this sane Friend and poor Servant,

Richard

On Space and Light

51.     Quality of space is more important than quantity of space.

52.     Materials and space express the essential syntax of any architecture.

53.     There can be beauty in the mundane but never anything mundane about the beautiful.

54.     Architecture is a set of binary relationships permanently in dance between light and shadow, void and solid, and the vertical and the horizontal.

55.     Everybody designs in the light, nobody in the dark

56.     Ignoring the spatial in city planning is akin to discounting gravity to prove the Earth is flat.

57.     The sun always knew it was great. It doesn’t need architecture for enlightenment.

58.     Ordinary should always be found in extraordinary.

59.     Space is only a void until experienced. Only then does it become an object of curiosity.

60.     Architecture is the dimensional blending of horizontal and vertical space.

Issue 7 of More Poor Richard for Architects and Planners cometh soon!

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More Poor Richard | Part 5

More Poor Richard, Part 5
by Dr. Mark David Major, AICP, CNU-A The Outlaw Urbanist contributor

Courteous Reader,

I attempted to win your favor when I wrote my first Almanac for Architects and Planners, in the name of the public good and professional betterment, by way of earning some profit and a wife. I am gratified by your expression of encouragement for my tireless efforts dedicated to these aims. Alas, my circumstances still find me exceedingly poor and, unluckily, exceedingly wifeless. I am required to earn some profit to address both problems whilst now addressing a third, namely testing the proposition that insanity is “doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” To satisfy my own particular brand of insanity, I have written more proverbs and whimsical sayings for your benefit and, hopefully, my own.

As before on The Outlaw Urbanist, I write this new Almanac in increments of ten, according to the dictates of Moses and the Almighty. However, once published as an Almanac for Architects and Planners, the proverbs and witticisms were gathered into a number equal to the days of the week, after being reliably informed that both seven and ten are sacred numbers. My desired requirement for a wife is sufficient motive to write this new Almanac in the hope it will find your favor and retweets as a means of demonstrating the usefulness of my continued efforts but also your charity to this sane Friend and poor Servant,

Richard

On Cities, Utopia and Superheroes

41.       The greatest cities are probabilistic happenings that have already occurred and may again given the right conditions.

42.       A city can no more relate to only itself than it can only relate to the outside world. Neither inside nor outside exist in isolation.

43.       We need never fear Utopia as long as we are asking the right questions.

44.      Utopias are absurdly impractical flights of fancy, which are often the source for the best kind of dreams.

45.      Superheroes live in cities. Supervillains live in gated lairs. Do we want a nation of superheroes or supervillains?

46.      Superman would never find a phone booth in a suburban office park.

47.      Even Spiderman needs a car to get around suburban sprawl. No tall buildings to swing from, you see…

48.     Too many cities are built to be sanely mediocre when they should be designed to be “insanely great”*. (*Steve Jobs)

49.     Every city needs jazz hands.

50.     Every city should have that “boom boom pow”.

Issue 6 of More Poor Richard for Architects and Planners cometh soon!

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