how to build a town(abstract)

8/12/2019 How to Build a Town(Abstract)

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from: Rob Krier / Christoph Kohl: Potsdam Kirchsteigfeld. Eine Stadt entsteht. The Making of a Town, Berlin 1997, p. 19-29.

Principles of Urban Design

Or: How to build a town

Rob Krier

A century of urban design experimentation, which was unique in architectural

history in terms of its magnitude and its distinctive predilection for cold,

awesome abstraction, has come to an end.

Despite the plethora of architectural utopias produced during the 20th

century,

the creation of a convincing and committed concept of a viable city of the

present or a city of the future was unsuccessful.

It is striking that all of the urban visions of the last hundred years were based

on abstract intellectual theories about the functioning of the urban fabric.

These diverse concepts of urban design share one thing in common in a

negative sense: their intentional departure from the traditional European city -

the kind of city increasingly seen as a very desirable place to live or work that

attracts tourists like a magnet.

Familiar cities and towns

None of these familiar cities and towns originated in the 20thcentury. They are not

brain-children or the products of an abstract idea. Rather, they derive from a basic

universal principle, namely perimeter block development (in its various forms: open,semi-detached, closed). This type of development results from the placement of like

individual units in a row, on parcels of property with quiet inner courtyards, fronted

by commercial streets.

The method of sectioning land between four streets can be found on all continents

and traces back to the origins of human settlement. The house itself has been

interpreted an infinite variety of ways, determined by patterns of living, climatic

conditions, and the natural availability of construction materials. In the same way,

urban design ideas were influenced by the geological properties of the land to be

developed as well as by the ordering of parcels, their allocation to certain functions,

and the differentiation between public and private property.

We owe the quality of the built ensemble, which in Europe is so rich in variety, to

exactly this respect for basic principles. We hold the view that the art of building

cities cannot be learned only from books, but also through the built reality wrought

by our cultural history into human settlements in the form of a complex

Gesamtkunstwerk.

The emptiness of our cities

For this reason we deliberately base our planning criteria on the experience providedby the successful cities of Europe. These are cities which throughout the centuries


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have demonstrated their ability to be flexible and accommodating, attractive and

valuable, by means of their pattern and layout as well as through their buildings.

Hidden behind such ideas is no sacred or nostalgic vision of the aesthetic qualities of

urban space, but rather the conviction that the loss or the mistrust of this civic art is

partly responsible for the social problems of our day. It is perhaps an undeniabletruth that the models of contemporary urbanism that have come unhinged are clearly

linked to the manifestations of the decay of modern society.

The point of departure for our design methodology is therefore the design of the

city, its built fabric, and its spatial and functional organization. We thus attempt to

create the preconditions for the establishment of an urbanity that will be the

foundation for people to live together in harmony.

Viable models for a city

Architectures history offers us viable models for a city in the form of the classic

European city cited above. It is often argued that these cities, together with all of

their acknowledged qualities, have grown organically and thus can no longer serve

as a precedent for urban design today.

This is an odd statement, implying that the cities of our ancestors were products of

chance and not the result of determined artistic and political activity. It is certainly

true that the urban tradition was essentially handed down by many separate families,

from the aristocracy, from the upper and middle classes, and from the artisan class,

and that each individual building was the conscious expression of a single builder.

Thus the many different faades reflect, for example, the drive toward self-portrayal,

personal ambition, striving for beauty, and also healthy competition. However, such

achievements are inconceivable in the absence of an overarching concept of urban

design which is carried out in detail, enhanced, and adapted to special situations.

Today the two essential functions of traditional urban design - city planning and

architecture - must be quite determinedly fulfilled by all participants in the planning

process, since the single private builder is hardly involved anymore.

Without question we are aware that our conceptual ideals tend to be located at theedge of what planners, political authorities, investors, contractors and business

people are used to supporting.

A city with good quality of life can only come about however in cases there those

involved in the building process have reached an understanding about this concept

and its inner meaning.


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22 principles of Urban Design:

How to build a town

In the following section we will endeavor to explain our most important concepts

and enlarge the portrait of a city that we would like to reclaim:

- A town differentiates itself clearly from its surrounding landscape. The transition

from land-scape to town-scape, therefore, is not flowing, but clearly

delineated by the buildings at the edges.

- The main component of any town is the building. Grouping individual buildings

into blocks produces smaller neighborhoods which in turn form residential quarters

as an interrelated system.

- Each quarter possesses a central square which is the focal point of its public

spaces.

- Each building, including its faade and roof, is conceived as an autonomous

aesthetic unit.

- There are binding norms of design for all built elements that form public spaces.

This primarily includes the faade materials, the proportion of openings, and the

profile of the roof.

- The space of the street is comprised by the accumulation of individual buildings in

conjunction with one another along the edge of a block. As a public space, the

street should be made in such a way that it can be physically experienced as

intensively as possible.

- Street spaces should be "enclosed" by the buildings flanking them as far as

possible. At the same time, the corner building or building composition at the

corner is assigned special significance.

- The cross section of the street space should be as narrow as possible. Accordingly,

the street should no longer function solely for the purpose of traffic; it should be

reactivated as the union of all dimensions of life in the town.

- The public space of a street must distinguish itself clearly from private space.

- The public space of a street takes on spatial, aesthetic, and functional meaning in

the form of a square. The built development bordering a square should offer the

greatest possible variety of uses: dwelling, shopping, services, "white commercial"

(low environmental impact), and an assortment of public amenities.

- The interconnection of the most variegated living and activity zones is an

important goal. The more dwellings, workplaces, and cultural facilities are brought

together in close spatial proximity, the more positively the general quality of life

will be affected.

- Every opportunity must be taken to locate on public squares workplaces, offices,

laboratories, shops, communal and public services, recreational activities and


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restaurants. To achieve this, built elements must be arranged at logically pre-

designated sites, so that more of these kinds of uses can be added much later.

- Larger integrated retail spaces and shopping opportunities are to be organized as

rows of stores or in market halls. Specialty departments of a supermarket unit

should be detached from the inward-directed structure of its spatial organizationand oriented towards public space as attractive individual shops.

- Every street or every square should be given an individual, unmistakable formal

identity. These urban spaces are not merely unused areas, the leftover residue of

built blocks, but are independent spaces with discrete qualities.

- As a rule street spaces should be lined on both sides with trees, while squares may

be paved exclusively in stone.

- Streets and squares, i.e. the urban spaces, are to be laid out according to the

principle of conveying at once closure and openness. In order to achieve this, thespatial transition from squares to streets must be arranged so that the character of

"enclosure" is maintained, by means of tapering, staggering, or change of angle.

- Every neighborhood is to be given points of access other than those designed as

major architectural entrances. In this way, the openness of the spatial continuum is

guaranteed. This affords a diverse offering of alternative paths within the whole

street system.

- On the whole, streets are to be designed as two-way thoroughfares. One-way

streets unnecessarily lengthen travel routes, thus producing more traffic and

diminishing the orientation of the driver.

- Central squares are to be reserved mainly for pedestrians only.

- In order to reduce the amount of signage in public spaces as much as possible,

traffic indicators are to be determined solely through spatial design. Driving speeds

are primarily influenced by spatial geometries and by the design of the road

surface.

- Parking on public streets should be reduced to a minimum, and large parking

facilities are not generally desirable within the space of the city. Instead, largerprivate parking lots are to be laid out in the generously planted courtyard areas, so

that the vehicles will not be easily seen.

- Entrance to parking areas is provided by gate-houses or other types of

architecturally designed gateways.

- The courtyard spaces planned for parking spaces will be designed so that during

the day they are available for children to use as playgrounds. In a sense this

becomes playing in the street, which is more adventurous for children than using

specially designed play equipment.


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City and urbanity

The notions of "city" and "urban character" are not to be confused with such terms

as downtown, service center, galleria, plaza, and shopping mall.

Instead, the desired character will be guaranteed by relatively small scale buildinglots and the greatest possible selection of uses. This encompasses the idea of the

street as place just as it includes the possibility of direct voice contact with the street

from the highest story.

Nearly all traditional small towns and even villages welcome us with more urbanity

and a more exciting spatial intensity than we are able to experience in modern city

centers. Urbanity is thus not a question of a "metropolis" per se, nor does it mean a

"city of stone" or keeping to a single "cornice height". We believe urbanity to be a

notion with a positive association which we understand as the built frame that

unconsciously speaks to us through its human scale and which engenders a state of

spatial well-being.

Our philosophy obviously does not aim to simply reproduce the city of the past. But

we are convinced that awareness of public space must be reawakened through the

creation of new towns and cities, and that in order to do this, the model of the

traditional city cannot be rejected. What is crucial for this "sensitizing process" is to

first learn to understand the pre-existing model in order to translate it into

contemporary conditions. For the sake of this principle we must apply well-

established basic ideas and mediate them against the needs of today's society.

Diversity of a city

Along with striving in a businesslike manner to bring the greatest possible variety of

uses to public space, the task of achieving the greatest possible architectural

diversity must be given high priority.

The method that we have employed to create such a lively image elsewhere

(Ritterstrae and Rauchstrae in Berlin; Consuls de Mer, Montpellier; De Resident,

Den Haag; Meander and Noorderhof, Amsterdam; Brandevoort, Helmond) consists

of inviting several architects to design individual buildings within the fixed

framework of an urban design scheme.

In this process, individual design tasks are distributed among the various architects

participating, alternating them around a given block, so that these different creative

personalities can prepare plans for buildings as "infill" and thus provide the

foundations for a variegated streetscape.

Because our architecture schools and the common mode of commissioning

architects are increasingly oriented to specialized work as part of a team - no longer

a matter of building in ensemble - the planning process requires a special procedure.

One aspect of this is the initial selection of the architects. An additional aspect is the

design process itself.


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This kind of design practice allows us to realign ourselves to the city plans of the

traditional European city, which is characterized by a multiple array of a common

building type, interspersed with prominent buildings, and by the building's function

as form-giver in the creation of spaces of streets and squares. The individualbuildings are to be treated from the start as individuals. They are to follow specific

design guidelines. Through this, public space becomes a relatively neutral, but

heterogeneous place, which is not dominated by a single building or by large-scale

complexes.

The "myth of isolation" that came about in the last century (the dehumanizing "art

for art's sake" attitude of many planners) must be fundamentally challenged. A

critical investigation is long overdue of the highly questionable acclaim given to an

architecture which ultimately will have to share responsibility for the eradication of

the city as an environment for living. This planning tendency is reinforced by

fashion-oriented architecture journalism, which consistently favors precisely thekind of projects that are realized most radically as isolated products in a space

practically void of humans (effectively replacing the idea of a "built environment"

with the act of publication).

In order to continue to develop the "project of the city", the model of public space

handed down through the centuries along with its main elements - building, street,

square; dwelling, working, recreation - must be rediscovered.

from: Rob Krier / Christoph Kohl: Potsdam Kirchsteigfeld. Eine Stadt entsteht. The

Making of a Town, Berlin 1997, p. 19-29.

how to build a town(abstract)

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