Jane Jacobs
I was immediately curious about reading Jane Jacobs because my studio professor of two semesters, (Peter Lawrence) has written a book on her.
I was even more surprised to discover she was not a trained designer, but a concerned citizen that struck a chord with the American public.
Diving into her reading about sidewalks, it became more of an expose on the American psyche at the time, as the reading was all about the safety of streets.
As I was reading, my mind drifted into a projector room, in Lee 3, Spring of 2020.
We were giving presentations of our Asheville site, and there was a clear fissure in philosophy between students.
Our two peers that had studied in China, Litian and Bing, both put significant focus into crime rates in the urban environment and proper safety design for the streetscape.
After asking Litian more questions about his schooling, I discovered there was a large difference in value systems between the architecture schools he attended in China and the school we are in.
His undergrad school valued efficiency more than the US, which devalues the flip side - exploration.
I'm not sure if directly, indirectly, or coincidentally, Jane Jacobs's viewpoint was responded to by Litian and Bing, while none of the other analyses considered it. I thought that was interesting.
Baker,
ReplyDeleteI think it is really interesting how you were able to connect Jane Jacobs's thoughts and views directly to an experience you had in studio. It is amazing how different cultures value certain things more than others. I think Jane Jacobs gives a viewpoint from the side of architecture we strive to seek advise from; the public.
I do think it is important to remember the time, place, and societal happenings that spurred Jacobs into writing "The Uses of Sidewalks", that is, focusing on safety of the city's inhabitants. Although safety is still a relevant concern in society today, we perhaps need to look deeper into how sidewalks function comparatively. It is my belief that creating successful cities lies in studying the user [of the city] and interpreting the findings within (and outside of) the built environment. Then we focus on functionality, rather than the utilitarian approach of safety and sidewalks.
ReplyDeleteI think you have identified what some would deem as an "attitude" toward the built environment. I appreciate you pointing this out specifically because I wish to study it at some length. There seems to be a perception, especially in the west that the world is quite homogenous but as Zach Si pointed out, the users get to "animate" the use case of an object, machine, or building. These "attitudes" are more useful in discovering who we are and how we interact with the world. I think there are some deeper questions to ask like, "How do attitudes in the built environment affect culture over time?" "What processes lead to question of small details and what processes lead to question of greater scale?" "Can completely different attitudes and cultural histories lead to the exactly the same answer?". I wonder.
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