LVNG SP∆CD

“Urban Renewal” / West End, Boston / 1950s

“The economic value of new buildings is replaceable in cities. It is replaceable by the spending of more construction money. But the economic value of old buildings is irreplaceable at will. It is created by time. This economic requisite for diversity is a requisite that vital city neighborhoods can only inherit, and then sustain over the years.”

Jane Jacobs / The Death and Life of Great American Cities

Studio MK27 / Vertical Itaim Building / São Paulo

"While walls provide privacy for interior spaces and serve as barriers that limit our movement, doorways and windows reestablish continuity with neighboring spaces and allow the passage of light, heat, and sound."

Francis D.K. Ching / Architecture: Form, Space, & Order

Pruitt-Igoe / Minoru Yamasaki / St. Louis

Pruitt-Igoe / Minoru Yamasaki / St. Louis

"Public housing actually has a very fine grain to the story. It's not a total failure or a total success. We don't want people to think of Pruitt-Igoe as a failure if they are going to then translate that failure to all public housing or all government programs or all social welfare or all modernism. That's what Pruitt-Igoe's been phrased with... The bigger story is in fact  the decline of the city overall... St. Louis lost half  its population and had a devastated tax base and a drained economy over the course of 50 years from  world war two even to the present. It's no wonder Pruitt-Igoe declined in those circumstances." 

Joseph Heathcott / The Pruitt-Igoe Myth

Pruitt-Igoe / St. Louis /  Minoru Yamasaki

"...what failed and why? In some ways Pruitt-Igoe failed because housing alone couldn't deal with the most basic issues that were troubling the American City. There is just no way to build your way out of that tragedy. I think we have a responsibility to understand those failures and to learn from them and to do better." 

Brian King / The Pruitt-Igoe Myth

Disneyland / California

In The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces, Whyte remarks how 'people pay good money just go to a replica of a good old-fashioned street.'

"How to write like an architect" / Doug Patt

School just started, and thing’s are already becoming concrete.

"This artifact is a design object, the purpose of which is to punctuate architectural photographs. It has some utility as a bench, but is usually placed in isolation. The dimensions are exquisitely wrong and not just for physical reasons, as important as they may be. Small benches are socially awkward. If there's a crowd, people will sit, but they're not very relaxed about it." 

City Hall Plaza, Boston // Piazza del Campo, Siena

bru·tal

Caixa Forum / Herzog & De Meuron / Madrid

Biophilic design

Rosa T. Sheng shared this image of her negotiation with Steve Jobs. Being an active designer for Apple's two flagship New York locations, Sheng was invited to a celebratory dinner. Jobs first offered one seat, only enough for Sheng. She declined. Then Jobs unsuccessfully offered her two seats, so as to include her husband as well. She declined again. Sheng held out until Jobs gave in and invited Sheng, her husband, and her 9 month old child included. 

Sheng discusses this episode allegorically, encouraging women to negotiate their needs in the workplace and be heard. 

Graphic from Rosa T. Sheng’s lecture Equity in Architecture: The Missing 32%. Sheng orchestrated a grassroots project to record the state of gender equity in the architecture profession. Sheng aims to actively eliminate unfair treatment, pay gaps, and leadership discrepancies on the basis of gender and promote greater workplace diversity and flexibility.

The missing 32% is a symbol of the underrepresentation of women in architecture. It refers to the discrepancy between equal representation with men (50%) and the actual percentage of practicing women architects (12-18%).  

Sheng started her national tour at the Boston Society of Architects’ Space this morning, discussing findings from her national research and giving greater momentum to the movement. I was lucky enough to be amongst the creative leaders of the audience.