Do We Need Piazzas?
In class, it was briefly mentioned that piazzas are not necessarily needed, especially in America, when everyone to too busy watching TV to use them. This begs the questions: should we really only design exactly what is asked for? And to what extend can architects say they know better than the user?
If piazzas were never made, we would be following what has
been asked, but could it be users and clients don’t know to ask for it because
they haven’t had access to it? You can’t know the benefits of something you
have never experienced. Early architects tended to build what they wanted how
they wanted it to look. Now that we have turned more toward user-based design,
when can we justify building what we want and what we think is needed? So much design
is limited by money and what the client finds useful, when can you say ‘We need
to add a piazza’.
You're asking good questions, as architects we spend the most amount of time thinking about good urban space and how to design it but aren't typically the ones with the money driving those construction decisions, and working with developers tends to be a soul crushing endeavor. Perhaps more classically trained architects need to be the ones going into the development business as a way to drive positive change.
ReplyDeleteI think you made a key point here - you can't know the benefits of something you have never experienced. How can we keep this in mind when developing spaces that are public, for people who may have or may not have experienced a true piazza space? Was the piazza more of a design template that we have transformed in modernity in various formal ways? What makes a piazza different than a courtyard or public park may not be common knowledge, so do architects need to make those distinctions in each design phase or leave it up to the users? Public space will always be a topic for debate in architecture.
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