For some while now I have been interested in New Urbanism. Not so much the neo classical position taken by but the process of master planning undertaken by studios such as Urban Design Associates and Duanny Platter Zyberk. I like the plot driven approach, run in parallel with say something like a pattern book. With this approach we don’t have to rely too much on any place making attributes of
Last week my master plan for Manchester’s first low carbon community was awarded Outline Planning Permission by Manchester City Council. The master plan is a great example of how to ‘re-stitch’ a Radburn plan back into a more recognisable community. Re-linking roads, removing cul-de-sacs and reconfiguring blocks to ensure that there is clearly defined, defensible space, which is clear and unambiguous. In other words making sure there are proper fronts
We are working through interesting times. What ever we did before, we now need to be quicker, more decisive, while continuing to provide quality for smaller fees. I have been arguing for some time that the process driven, step-by-step master planning process, we inherited from the CABE, The Urban Design Compendium and most of the urban design profession needs to change. It‘s far too clunky, slow to respond, short of
The place only exists so that architect/urban designers can hide away from the rest of the family, find a bar in a small square, drink Bruin Leffe and draw…
The point about ‘feeling’ a sense of place is intuitively knowing where your place is and what defines it. Most of the time its about boundaries, event, time, enclosure and views. A great example of this can be seen in the painting. ‘A Courtyard of a House in Delft’. Pieter de Hooch (1658). I use this a lot. Just look at how its implied perspective draws you the view into
