Tag Archives: Urban

Architecture, Mark David Major, Poor Richard, Urban Planning

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!

Share the knowledge!
Share
Architecture, Mark David Major, Poor Richard, Urban Planning

More Poor Richard | Part 4

More Poor Richard, Part 4
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 Architecture

31.       Standardization is a blessing for quantity and a curse for quality in architecture.

32.       Poor is the architect whose responsibility ends when the drawing is complete.

33.       Modernism is the Dr. Frankenstein, Post-Modernism is the Monster, and Deconstructivism is the “Abby Normal” (witty but, ultimately, derivative of the real Monster) of 20th century Architecture.

34.       Architecture in the absence of art is construction. Architecture in the absence of science is art.

35.       The three-dimensional context for all buildings is the playful absence and presence of light.

36.       Building may be in the details but architecture is in the questions.

37.       Beauty made lie in the eyes of the beholder but some eyes beholden better than others whilst some are better liars.

38.       Architecture should always be naked.

39.       Refining in architecture is about ‘re-finding’ the essential purity of the thing momentarily lost to the initial excesses of the architect.

40.       Building is never ‘more’ and always a bore. Architecture is to adore.

Issue 5 of More Poor Richard for Architects and Planners cometh soon!

Share the knowledge!
Share
Mark David Major, On Space, Phenomenology, Philosophy

On Space | Antecedens est Precedent

On Space | Antecedens est Precedent
by Dr. Mark David Major, AICP, CNU-A

The premise is precedent. Space is not a neutral field against which the societal is randomly played out. Space is more than a mere reflection of independent and discrete socio-economic and cultural variables. It is a living organism, constructed piece-by-piece as a machine for living, seeing, and being that has achieved its own particular form of consciousness, a spark of life more than the sum of its parts and more than the parts contributing to the Corpus Spatium. For too long, knowledge of space has been characterized by apathy, obscurely a superficial reaction against the heroic Modernists but really a deep, substantive fear of constructing knowledge and understanding, of releasing inhibitions that continue to reward failure, keeping food on the table as opposed to providing nutrition for the soul. The hypocrite’s feast is the city’s famine. Knowledge has been stagnant, without evolution, to the point where the vocal heretics now call for revolution. Space is both dependent and independent, a variable mixture of cause, effect, and react that demands our evaluation and our respect. Without so, we diminish the most valuable commodity the city has to offer, in exchange for our empathy it can provide rewards beyond imagining, of happenstance and serendipity, of casual encounter, of formal beginnings, and a lifetime of companions to share the journey with us.

When we view the space of the city as a neutral variable, we devalue the beingness of the city as an object of analysis and curiosity. Our knowledge becomes tainted with a paralysis that is both confiding and liberating, imprisoned within dogma and freed of moral or ethical consequences. The game is played with the chess pieces but the board sets the parameters of the rules. Our cities thus have become lawless, without rules catering to the urban object but in service to the greed of the self. When we view the space of the city as isotropic, we artificially impose uniformity where it does not manifestly exist. We attempt to impose rather than derive meaning from city places. It is a fallacy. We inflate the importance of individual action and deflate the status of collective significance without really comprehending either whilst the kinetic and potential energy of urban space becomes lost in a primordial soup of fashionable theory. Actuality and potentially are ignored at its peril, and we become lost in a uniform monstrosity of development patterns that ‘follow the rules’ but want for a logical existence. When we view the space of the city as mere reflection we judge through a mirror darkly. We assign a value lacking any quantity. We concede quality without calculation. The city more than reflects, it embodies. It consumes and births, it is nurture and nature surely melted, an elegant synthesis of meaning where past and future are simultaneously read and written into a spatial harmony. The space of the city is a systematic thing and we are the blood coursing through the veins of its streets, both sustaining of and existing at its heart. There is a logic to its arrangement and an organization to its reason for being. Space is alive and lives within and without in the city. Antecedens est, est exemplum.

On Space is a regular series of philosophical posts from The Outlaw Urbanist. These short articles (usually about 500 words) are in draft form so ideas, suggestions, thoughts and constructive criticism are welcome.

Share the knowledge!
Share
Architecture, Editorial, Mark David Major, Poor Richard, Urban Planning

More Poor Richard | Part 3

1 Comment

More Poor Richard, Part 3
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 Creating and Creativity

21.       Planners with 20/20 foresight are more valuable than those with 20/20 hindsight.

22.       Organisms are machines for living. When it comes to creating machines, Nature is still infinitely superior to Man.

23.       Man assumes a God-like artifice compared to the machines he creates but, compared to the Nature of the Universe, Man is an ant.

24.       A little humility before Nature goes a long way.

25.      Creativity is a newly (re)discovered path that is often more important than the destination itself.

26.       Creativity and space flow with an energy born from the same source.

27.       For any true artist, a blank page is exciting and frightening in equal measure.

28.       Creativity is the vibrant symbiosis of courage to succeed and fear of failure. Too often, urban planners suffer from an abundance of the latter and deficiency in the former.

29.       Shame on the architect who does not design with love and builds that which is unloved by its own creator.

30.       For an architect or planner, doubt only marks the beginning of a path to wisdom. Doubt only marks hubris if it is treated as a destination unto itself. Take the path and never assume you have arrived.

Issue 4 of More Poor Richard for Architects and Planners cometh soon!

Share the knowledge!
Share
Mark David Major, On Space, Phenomenology, Philosophy

On Space | The Geometrical City

On Space | The Geometrical City
by Dr. Mark David Major, AICP, CNU-A

The geometrical city exists in and across time and space, a quantitative and describable pattern finitely persistent in its stability and infinitely malleable in its qualitative flexibility. The spatial geometry of the city flows, never halting and without beginning, it merges together into an intricate network of limitless possibilities and strategic offerings that guide the weary traveler to his destination. It is a tradition rooted in the instinctive nature of our being, stretching back into shadowy mists of the past and striding forward into the enchanted light of a promised future, bounded by the essential truth of living on a tiny sphere floating, awashed at the edges of a universal shore. The geometric city is the hearth of the community, the fertile land gathers around it, providing both sustenance to and sustaining from the urban ideal. At its center lies a sacred space, a place to gather for all, where insider and outsider mingle and exchange freely of their valued time and goods. This is the true Pilgrims’ pride of America, that which can be independently traced to worlds and cultures of Antiquity from east to west, south to north, following the path we emerged from African jungles to cross plains and rivers, the mountains and oceans. The geometrical city is the economy of the community, goods and services are exchanged in space and carried forth into the larger, unfamiliar world. It welcomes and reassures, it is questions with answers, offering solvable riddles to the observant and the observed.

19th century America represents the urban fruition of a geometrical order, a full expression of the possibilities for street, block, square, and plan in the geometrical city. In the virgin land of this milieu, the geometrical city attains its Renaissance ideal, ultimately a Spanish model of the rational city, relentless in its magnificence as a tapestry, woven by individual hands into a common entity, holistic and worthy of an ancestral past from which it sprouted. Until, at last, radial parts emerge from within or reach forth from center-to-edge to bring a structural wonder to the urban spectacle. The formal and informal, planned and unplanned, coincide in the spatial beauty of the rationally urbane, all shaped within a Jeffersonian framework leaving marks on the landscape to this day. 20th century America demands the ruination of the geometric city in its heedless pursuit of state control and private profit; the faceless bureaucrat and masked capitalist hidden beneath self-serving rubrics, all in the name of an artificial (public and personal) welfare, which taunts the instinctive nature of urban dwelling. Stability is exchanged for unpredictability, the malleable for the rigid, the persistent for the ephemeral, and a natural pattern for the awkwardly contrived forever haunted by an unnatural entropy. It is a doctrine that demands more and more at the expense of less and less (quantity and cost) whilst ignoring the concept of the better and the best (quality). It becomes an irrational anti-city.

On Space is a regular series of philosophical posts from The Outlaw Urbanist. These short articles (usually about 500 words) are in draft form so ideas, suggestions, thoughts and constructive criticism are welcome.

Share the knowledge!
Share