Mass Production and Place

Introduction

In the preface to Genius Loci, Towards a Phenomenology of Architecture, Christian Norberg-Schulz writes that space and character – the two elements that combine to create place – are “directly related to architecture, following the definition of architecture as a ‘concretization of existential space’” (Norberg-Schulz, 5). The author then asserts that concretization should be understood in the same way as gathering, in the Heideggerian sense that things “gather the world.” To illustrate this concept, Norberg-Schulz employs two of Heidegger’s examples of man-made objects gathering the natural world: the first is the bridge from Building Dwelling Thinking, where the philosopher asserts that building a bridge between two general locations “causes [the banks] to lie across from each other; with the banks, the bridge brings to the stream the one and the other expanse of landscape lying beyond them” (Norberg-Schulz, 18). The second example is the jug from Heidegger’s essay The Thing: by bringing water into the home it gathers both the earth and sky – “in the spring the rock dwells, and in the rock dwells the dark slumbers of the earth, which receives the rain and dew of the sky. In the water of the spring dwells the marriage of sky and earth…” (Norberg-Schulz, 168) – and is therefore a thing that connects man to his life-world.

It is this concretization of the natural environment that is a prerequisite for dwelling, which occurs when man can “orientate himself within and identify himself with an environment” (Norberg-Schulz, 5). It follows that when man dwells within a meaningful environment, he is not simply existing in a random location, but actively living and interacting in a unique place.

In a traditional setting, where the buildings and objects (things) of daily use are extensions of the immediate surroundings, a relationship between the individual and place is likely to form. Conversely, in the contemporary world – where architecture does not necessarily reflect the surrounding natural environment, where mass-produced objects are often sold thousands of miles from the sources of material and labor that create the products, and where people move freely between cities and countries – such relationships may be more difficult to develop. Edward S. Casey terms this loss of place displacement – as opposed to implacement, which he considers essential to human well-being and “an ongoing cultural process [that] acculturates whatever ingredients it borrows from the natural world, whether these ingredients are bodies or landscapes or ordinary ‘things’” (Casey, 31) – and regards nostalgia a preeminent symptom of being displaced. Thus, unsurprisingly, Victor Papanek writes of the “simple, modest dwellings of the past [that] exert a strong fascination, and offer a beguiling area for research and study” (Papanek, 113). In light of this “fascination” with traditional, pre-industrial times, the intention of this paper is to explore some of the fundamentals that have historically promoted a strong “sense of place,” and to examine how the modern mode of life, namely the mass production and consumption cycles, has affected the relationship between humankind and place.

Place

J.B. Jackson asserts that the term “sense of place” is “an awkward and ambiguous modern translation of the Latin term genius loci” (Jackson, 24) that actually refers to the guardian divinity of a place, rather than the place itself. On-site rituals and celebrations that paid homage to the divinity thus imbued the place with a special status that, in the modern world, has come to be understood as the atmosphere of a place, or “the quality of its environment” (Jackson, 24). Norberg-Schulz insists that atmosphere, or character, is what distinguishes a place from mere space, and asserts that place is a “qualitative ‘total’ phenomenon,” which cannot be reduced “to any of its properties…without losing its concrete nature” (Norberg-Schulz, 8). Due to the concrete nature of place and its components, Norberg-Schulz turns to the qualitative method of phenomenology – “a return to things, as opposed to abstractions and mental constructions” (Norberg-Schulz, 8) – to analyze place. His analysis leads to a framework for understanding the elements that compose both natural and man-made places.

The first of the two basic components of place that Norberg-Schulz examines is space. Rather than focusing on “space as a three-dimensional geometry [or] space as a perceptual field,” both of which he considers abstractions of everyday lived space, the author calls for a “concrete space,” which is the setting for “concrete human actions [and is] distinguished by qualitative differences” (Norberg-Schulz, 11). Interiority and exteriority are two characteristics implicit in the description of concrete space and, therefore, Norberg-Schulz asserts that extension and enclosure are qualities inherent to any concrete space.
While extension and enclosure can be understood at many scales ranging from the interior of a room to the limits of a city, it is helpful to use Norberg-Schulz’s conception of a landscape (extension) containing settlements (enclosures). Landscapes are also enclosed by topography and/or the horizon, and settlements have their own extensions, but this model is especially relevant as a segue to the concept of environmental scales. As the name suggests, spaces can contain other spaces, as demonstrated by a house within a city, located within an encompassing landscape. It is within this hierarchy that the sense of a place is “gathered” by the buildings and things within it. Thus Heidegger’s aforementioned jug – constructed of clay from the region in which it is used – brings water that is part of an extensive hydrological system to a table in an enclosed room. The jug “‘explains’ the environment and make[s] its character manifest,” (Norberg-Schulz, 16) and thereby becomes meaningful since the place itself meaningful.

Character, the second component of place, is, paradoxically, “a more general and a more concrete concept than space” (Norberg-Schulz, 13), in that it can convey both the general atmosphere of a place as well as distinct properties of the boundaries and elements of a space. Norberg-Schulz asserts that the character of natural and man-made places can be understood by asking “how” is a place; general adjectives such as “safe” or “confusing” can describe atmosphere, while distinct objects, such as boundaries – or facades, in the case of buildings – should be examined with respect to their material and “formal articulation” (Norberg-Schulz, 14). In the case of material, the different visual and tactile qualities of, say, stone and vinyl siding would be considered. The former is imperfectly colored by nature and coarse to the touch; the color of the latter is uniform and it is mechanically planed smooth. Formal articulation can be understood as how something is built – hand-crafted or by machine – and how it visually relates to its surrounding environment.

It is through the combination of space and character that the “spirit of place,” or genius loci, can be understood “as an environment consisting of definite characters” (Norberg-Schulz, 18). In a time of global interconnectivity, vanishing local traditions and accents, and increased urbanization, it is important to keep in mind the existential importance of being from somewhere in particular, and, in the interest of well-being, being able to return home for rest and repose.


Nature, Mass-produced Objects and Place

Following Norberg-Schulz’s assertion that it is through concrete things that we understand place, it will be illuminating to focus on several concrete examples of mass-produced objects and examine if and how they “gather” the surrounding environment. Two “products” of industrialization will be investigated: the railroad system and the modern coffee shop. Each of these is a product that also requires buildings (stations and the coffee shop itself). But before addressing these concrete things, it is worth revisiting the concept of environmental levels and exploring the all-encompassing level of nature, specifically the unspoiled landscape of North America from the colonial years up to the dawn of the industrial revolution.

At two extremes, there is the landscape as the overarching environmental level and the body as the most compact. Casey considers the body “the primary agent in the landscape” (Casey, 26) and considers that which exists between the body and the landscape “place.” He then asserts that place has a “distinctively cultural dimension” (Casey, 29). This cultural bridge between body and nature is clearly represented by the garden, which can be understood as a cultivated middle ground – or boundary (enclosure) – between civilization and nature, and can serve as a dwelling place. This sort of dwelling can be understood informally as wandering throughout a cultivated place, like a park, or more formally as the perambulation rituals – the inspection of the boundaries of a place – that Casey dates back to ancient Rome (Casey, 155). This garden metaphor is especially poignant when considering the industrialization of the bucolic North American continent.

In The Machine in the Garden, Leo Marx writes that “the European mind was dazzled by the prospect” of “withdraw[ing] from the great world and begin[ning] a new life in a fresh, green landscape” (Marx, 3). Previously, this opportunity was merely the stuff of dreams, dating back the gentlemanly shepherd of Virgil’s Ecologues. The resulting pastoralism, which Marx describes as having two manifestations – popular and sentimental on one hand, imaginative and complex on the other – was thus embodied in the American culture from the beginning. Moreover, opposing conceptions of the land as cultivated and threatening arose, but both were seen as freedom from the complexities of civil society. Marx cites Shakespeare’s The Tempest – written during the age of exploration – as an imaginative and complex work that explores these disparate points of view, and ultimately “affirms the impulse of civilized man to renew himself by immersion in the simple, spontaneous instinctual life” (Marx, 60) found in nature. Almost two centuries later, Thomas Jefferson was of the same opinion. He was a proponent of rural virtues that saw mechanization as a means to unburden the worker, but despised the factories and cities required to create the machines (he later admitted domestic industrial production was better than falling behind Europe economically). Ralph Waldo Emerson took a similar position: he, somewhat surprisingly, supported the construction of the railroad since it would give urban dwellers access to the cleansing power of nature.

Railroads

As the railroad network grew – spurred by open land, vast resources, technological ingenuity, and “a democracy which invites every man to enhance his own comfort and status” (Marx, 204) – it “gathered” settlements once separated by great distances and captivated the popular imagination. Like Heidegger’s bridge, it created important places at each terminus. For instance, in the 1860s, before the railroad arrived, Denver was losing residents who were not as successful in mining for gold as they had been previously. But with the arrival of the Denver Pacific Railroad, Denver established itself as the hub in the Rocky Mountain region. Industrial works popped up all over the city and “by 1900, a hundred trains a day snorted in and out of Denver’s Union Station” (Noel, “Mile High City”). In Norberg-Schulz’s terms of extension and enclosure, the railroad extended westward the flexible boundary of the place called the United States: for example, in 1869, the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans were connected by rail, thus concretizing the concept of Manifest Destiny, and giving future settlers a direct route to the west.

The railroad also expressed the character of the young country, which was embroiled with the idea of “progress,” in both the technological and social spheres of life. “The railroad, animated by its powerful locomotive, appears to be the personification of the American,” wrote Guillaume Poussin in the mid-nineteenth century, after visiting from France (Marx, 208). In his speeches, Daniel Webster, the eminent New England politician, celebrated the national unity and social equality that the new technology would bring. As “a mode of conveyance available to the rich and poor alike” (Marx, 210), Webster’s tenant farmers considered it “their railroad,” upon seeing construction materials along the future alignment. This “visual possession” of the landscape, of which the railroad was becoming a part (Figure 1), evokes what Humphrey Breton considered appropriation of the landscape through the gaze. Commenting on Breton’s idea, Casey writes, “one appropriates one’s own property not just legally but by looking at it from the windows of one’s house” (Casey, 170). Though the tenant farmer does not literally own either the land or the railroad, this concept partially explains how the popular imagination could become enamored with the expanding railroad.

In his speeches, Webster mocked the idea that the railroad disturbed the peace of the countryside and desecrated the landscape, and encouraged its proliferation to aid serious, profit-seeking enterprises. While reluctant supporters like Thomas Jefferson would have likely envisioned the sort of human-scale harmony between industry and nature that Tony Garnier later expressed in Une Cite Industrielle, the result was much different. Rather than the careful integration of industry within the natural landscape, the result was industrial zones that developed around railroad tracks in urban areas; zones that Jane Jacobs considers border vacuums. She asserts that “by oversimplifying the use of the city at one place, on a large scale, [border vacuums] tend to simplify the use which people give to the adjoining territory” (Jacobs, 259). This simplification, which appears visually as a homogenous expanse of indistinct buildings, is anathema to the diversity that she considers a driver of vibrant cross-use and a resulting strong character.



To understand the impacts of such an area on the sense of place, it is helpful to return to Norberg-Schulz. He writes, “when man dwells, he is simultaneously located in space and exposed to a certain environmental character,” and that to “to gain an existential foothold, man must be able to orientate and identify himself with the environment” (Norberg-Schulz, 19). The concept of orientation depends on understanding the spatial structure of the surrounding environment, or, in other words, creating a mental image. In The Image of the City, Kevin Lynch christens the ability of an area to produce mental images imageability and seeks to determine which elements promote it. He identifies five categories – paths, edges, districts, nodes and landmarks – by which to understand places, and asserts that “they must be patterned together to provide a satisfying form” (Lynch, 83), or, as Norberg-Schulz might say, a qualitative total phenomenon.

An industrial zone, built up around the railroad, can be considered a district since it has some common characteristics and can be entered mentally (Lynch, 66). While an industrial district, such as South Seattle, does have a sort of continuity between the building types – single story metal structures, in the case of Seattle – that is required to define a district, there is no set interrelation between them, and therefore is not particularly memorable. Furthermore, the district is checkered with parking and vacant lots, crisscrossed by homogenous paths (roads), and lacks distinct landmarks or nodes that serve as gathering places. Per Lynch’s criteria, the image of such an area is weak and therefore orienting oneself within it is difficult. Lynch, evoking Norberg-Schulz, writes that “if the environment is visibly organized and sharply identified, then the citizen can inform it with his own meanings and conceptions. Then it will become a true place, remarkable and unmistakable” (Lynch, 92). Furthermore, as a purely utilitarian construct that does not reflect the natural environment, it fails to connect citizens to the higher environmental levels, and thus further neglects the role of an authentic man-made place.

Conversely, a train station – a node and an often a landmark, in Lynch’s terminology – can be an imageable place and contribute to the sense of place of a larger district or city. Lynch writes that such places are important as junctions, where people must make choices and therefore perceive their surroundings with greater clarity, and as thematic concentrations. A classic American example of such a node/landmark is the Grand Central Terminal in New York City. Functionally, it gathers workers from the surrounding bedroom communities; it is a junction where commuters can enter the city and either make their way out on to the surface streets or transfer to the subway in the adjacent station. Thematically, the terminal is important as a transit hub, a retail concentration, a tourist attraction and as an enduring example of Beaux-Arts style architecture.

It is also helpful to analyze Grand Central Terminal with respect to Norberg-Schulz’s five phenomena by which humans understand natural and man-made places: (natural) things, (cosmic) order, character, light and time. The limestone façade reflects the natural world out of which the station was built, while the classical style of the building and its orientation on the gridiron structure of Manhattan’s street system evoke the Roman cardo-decumanus system that pays homage to the four cardinal directions. The building projects a bold character: it appears “serious,” to use Webster’s adjective for such railroad and industrial enterprises, and rests atop the earth, signifying that the rail system has conquered space and time. Light is also an essential feature of the building, whether reflecting off the white exterior or famously entering the lobby through the grand windows (Figure 2). Time, too, is represented explicitly, via the exterior clock and train timetables, and implicitly through the classical architecture and the nod to times past in which the railroad was the dominant form of transportation.

Furthermore, the terminal confirms Norberg-Schulz’s position that “places conserve their identity during a certain stretch of time” and “should have the ‘capacity’ of receiving different ‘contents’” (Norberg-Schulz, 18), as is demonstrated by its current incarnation as a functional node for travel, as a tourist destination – the terminal “gathers” tourists – and even as a stage for public performance art.



From the brief examination above, it should be evident that the railroad – America’s first foray into industrialization and mass production – has had a remarkable influence on the sense of place of the nation and its cities. Many options for further study of sense of place with relation to the railroad could be pursued: one could be an examination of the small communities that grew up around the railroad and how they have responded to urban growth at the termini that have, in many cases, “gathered” the later generations of small-town citizens; another possible thread to explore could be the sense of place that Beat Generation wanderers felt for the railroad itself, rather than for – or in addition to – the cities that the railroad connected.

Coffee

That ubiquitous white paper cup with the green circle around the crowned siren can be interpreted as a contemporary version of Heidegger’s jug. Rather than gathering the world through the water from a nearby spring, the (disposable) Starbucks cup gathers water from the municipal system, coffee beans from afar and, depending on the customer’s order, a wide variety of dairy and artificial flavorings from diverse natural and artificial origins (and that is not even counting the labor and resources consumed to create and ship the ingredients, build the store or bring the customers to the cash register). The extent to which that paper cup gathers – whether one is enjoying a beverage in Seattle, Paris or Beijing – is not just the local slices of earth underfoot and sky overhead, but a synthesis of places that would be best measured by latitude and longitude.

The question of whether this complex mode of gathering helps concretize the surrounding world, of whether it promotes understanding of the enclosing natural environment and therefore promotes dwelling, remains. Norberg-Schulz writes that “if a thing does not [concretize or reveal life it its various aspects], it is not a thing but a mere commodity” (Norberg-Schulz, 169). To answer this question, the cup of coffee must be further scrutinized.

Ignoring for a moment that this particular cup is disposable and emblazoned with a logo, it can be considered what Le Corbusier terms a type-object. According to his definition, such an object supplements our natural capabilities by serving typical human needs, or type-needs; it is “a docile servant [that is] discreet and self-effacing” (Le Corbusier, 79). A Corbusian cup would likely fall somewhere between Heidegger’s jug (as the work of a craftsman) and the disposable Starbucks cup. It would differ from the former in material (likely metal in lieu of clay) and production (mass-produced rather than hand-crafted); it would differ from the latter in material (metal rather than paper), be free of logos and intended for reuse. And while Le Corbusier would likely consider his mass-produced type-object an improvement over the vernacular jug, he would almost certainly consider the Starbucks cup a piece of disposable junk to be hidden beneath decoration (as his Industrialist suggests in “A Hurricane,” the chapter on the Industrial Revolution in The Decorative Art of Today), in the same manner that a coffee connoisseur would accuse the chain of “burying bad [coffee] flavor under [flavored] syrups” (Clark, 213). Therefore neither the beverages nor the container clearly concretize the immediate natural environment.

However, Starbucks coffee shops are undoubtedly successful at gathering people, both as a daily ritual and, in the case of the original store in Pike Place Market, a tourist destination. Promoting their shops as a third place, Starbucks strives to “capture a unique warmth that sets it apart from the first two places in most people’s lives: work and home” (Michelli, 11). And while Starbucks has been successful at establishing itself as such, the effects of their distribution (layout within concrete space) and design (character) on the sense of place – in the urban fabric and within the store itself, respectively – should be examined.

Above all else, Starbucks prides itself on being convenient. For instance, when driving toward an urban center, the majority of the Starbucks outlets will be on the right-hand side of the road, making them easily accessible to commuters (Clark, 117). This convenience also extends to the function of the store: if the lines are becoming too long in any one location, the company will often open another nearby. Such development patterns parallel suburbanization in their ostensible devotion to immediate satisfaction, and consequently mesh well with the decentralized layout of such areas. However, with regard to developing a strong sense of place, coffee shops distributed in such a manner – namely those with drive-thru windows – do not promote dwelling. The drive-thru window is much like the hotel room that Casey describes as “the very essence of transiency, of not dwelling somewhere, of merely passing through on one’s way to somewhere else” (Casey, 114). Moreover, he continues to explore the etymology of the verb “to dwell,” and notes that the Old Norse dvelja means “to linger,” a concept that is antithetical to the drive-thru window. By integrating such a feature into its outlets, Starbucks reduces its chances of creating a true place. Furthermore, by virtue of their omnipresence – which some critics say homogenizes neighborhoods; in some cases two shops have been opened across the street from one another (Figure 3) – the shops also contribute heavily to the character of the areas in which they are located. Namely, the joy of discovering something new from among many choices is supplanted by the expectation of the old standby.



Of course, the “unique warmth” that Starbucks strives to project is typically inside the shop rather than on the outside, much like a typical suburban home, and does invite the customer to linger. The interior is a concrete space, enclosed by glass, and is designed by staff architects to create the desired atmosphere. In a maneuver very similar to that of AEG under Peter Behrens, Starbucks carefully designs everything from the interior finish color palette and lighting down to the napkins and music. The color palette endeavors to reconnect the store interior, the product and natural environment by using green, red, blue and yellow, which correspond to ancient four elements of the earth: earth (growing beans), fire (roasting beans), water (brewing coffee) and wind (aroma of coffee) (Clark, 104). Starbucks’ standard layout also evokes Behrens’ design philosophy that expresses function as part of the aesthetic by placing the espresso machine front and center (Clark, 102).

Though many of the design features are present in all the stores, “leadership chose to consciously meld [the] consistent environmental features in its store designs with community-based nuances” (Michelli, 57), in a sort of customization that evokes Kieran and Timberlake’s ideas for an evolution in mass-produced housing, and also reflects the popular beverage customization – “two-pump vanilla, half-caf, soy latte” – that supposedly personalizes a drink that comes off a miniaturized production line. On the surface, this idea seems to jibe with Norberg-Schulz’s call for “modern architecture [to] give buildings and places individuality, with regard to space and character” by “tak[ing] the circumstantial conditions of locality and building task into consideration” (Norberg-Schulz, 195). However, his examples of successful local adaptations are reserved to landmark projects by the likes of Alvar Aalto, Le Corbusier and Louis Kahn, which are all distinctly different types of projects than a typical strip mall Starbucks outlet. Nevertheless, Starbucks has, according to Lawrence Cheek, the architecture critic at the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, adapted some its stores to their surroundings. Specifically he discusses a store on Mercer Island that is “a dramatic Northwest contemporary shed with a high-rise roofline, an inviting lattice-sheltered drive-thru queue, and structural biceps strutting nakedly and exuberantly on the outside” (Cheek, “On Architecture.”). Though this case is encouraging, the fact remains that most outlets are more similar than not, and questions about the resulting “place-ness” remain unanswered.

Jean Baudrillard shines some light on the concept of reproductions in his essays on simulacra and simulation. In discussing an exact replica of the Lascaux caves, which was constructed to save the original from tourist traffic, he writes that “from now on there is no longer any difference: the duplication suffices to render both artificial” (Baudrillard, 9). With the “disappearance” of the original, it is impossible to determine which came first and what now remains is two “copies” – the very definition of a simulacrum: “a real without origin or reality” (Baudrillard, 1). While Starbucks outlets are certainly not “exact replicas,” this situation seems applicable since they are often indistinguishable. Baudrillard continues to describe the homogenizing affect of such places on visitors as “controlled socialization: retotalization in a homogenous space-time of all dispersed functions of the body and of social life (media, leisure, media culture)” (Baudrillard, 67). Though this statement is undoubtedly hyperbolic, when one considers that Starbucks are typically opened in areas with similar demographics – levels of high income, population and education (Clark, 119) – and that the employees are encouraged to interact with customers in a similar manner, the homogenizing force is evident. Or consider the books and music that many outlets are now selling: each selection could be described as innocuous or wholesome – “feel-good” Mitch Albom books rather than fatwah-inducing, thought-provoking works like Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses; universally-accessible jazz by Norah Jones instead of, say, the politically-charged stylings of Rage Against the Machine – and is directed at customers that might rightly be described as “the Starbucks type.” Such a place may in fact exude a strong sense of place and concretize an existential space, but one is left wondering if that is necessarily a good thing.

Casey also offers an interpretation of replicated places; returning his discussion on cultivating gardens, he writes that “cultivation as caring-for extends to the architectural realm as well” (Casey, 173). He insists that to become dwelling-places, buildings must be cultivated – personalized, cared-for and settled-into by the users – and that this process begins when the place is constructed. The care required to undertake such a construction process evokes the vernacular craftsmanship that Modernists seek to replace by mass-production: according to Casey, the builder must consider the materials, the immediate surrounding of the future building, the entire landscape and even the desires of the future end-users (Casey, 174).
While this degree of care is rarely taken in contemporary construction, on a spectrum of the resulting “place-ness” of a building, it could be considered the ideal. The opposite end of the spectrum would be Kieran and Timberlake’s mass-produced/mass-customized building: “places destined for dwelling are neither merely presented to us as already made…nor can they be built instantly or ex nihilo [italics added]” (Casey, 174). A typical Starbucks outlet, with its mass-produced, standardized design features, would probably fall closer to the Kieran and Timberlake model than to the Casey model, thus making it less of a distinct place than upper management would like to believe.

In conclusion, the widely reproduced Starbucks experience – though it can take place in an environment that is distinct when compared with other places, excluding other Starbucks outlets – seems to be without significant qualitative differences and a standardized product of mass production, meant for mass consumption, which is essentially the definition of a commodity. And while that paper cup does, in a way, concretize the complex, globalized modern world, its nature as a piece of such an entangled web prohibits it from concretizing the nature of a unique place.

Conclusion

As can be seen by the extent of this discussion, the effect of mass production on the concept of “sense of place” is both complex and far-reaching. It is, nevertheless, a relationship that has implications on the well-being of humanity, the aesthetic quality of the built environment and, though it was not explicitly examined in this study, the ecological health of the planet. And while the chosen examples of railroads and Starbucks coffee shops could be investigated further, as could many other staples, past and present, of American culture, an interesting direction to extend this study would be into the realm of high-technology. An especially interesting angle to take would be a study of the worldwide “gathering” capability of portable communication devices, and the resulting effect on place, considering that users can be both in a concrete, physical place and an abstract, virtual place.

Works Cited

Baudrillard, Jean. Simulacra and Simulation
Casey, Edward S. Getting Back Into Place
Cheek, Lawrence. “On Architecture: Starbucks puts a double shot of hometown flavor into every store”
Clark, Taylor. Starbucked: A Double Tall Tale of Caffeine, Commerce, and Culture
Jackson, J.B. A Sense of Place, a Sense of Time
Jacobs, Jane. The Death and Life of Great American Cities
Kieran, Stephen, and Timberlake, James. Refabricating Architecture
Le Corbusier. The Decorative Art of Today. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1987
Lynch, Kevin. The Image of the City
Marx, Leo. The Machine in the Garden
Michelli, Joseph. The Starbucks Experience: 5 Principles for Turning Ordinary Into Extraordinary
Noel, Thomas J. “Mile High City”
Norberg-Schulz, Christian. Genius Loci: Towards a Phenomenology of Architecture
Papanek, Victor. The Green Imperative

Understanding Las Vegas

Works referenced:
Learning From Las Vegas, Robert Venturi et al
Neon Metropolis, Hal Rothman

Understanding Las Vegas

While Venturi et al’s “study of method, not content” (6) is an incredibly valuable investigation of a tangible, concretely expressed Las Vegas, it falls short of laying a groundwork for the new intellectual organization that Rothman insists is necessary to understand Las Vegas. Rather, their study could perhaps be better understood as a catalogue of specific visual symptoms endemic to a society mired in the unreality of the postmodern world. This situation is nothing new: In his essay, From Salvation to Self-Realization: Advertising and the Therapeutic Roots of the Consumer Culture, 1880-1930, T.J. Jackson Lears asserts “the first and simplest source of a sense of unreality was the urban-industrial transformation” (6) that drew workers from the traditional social moorings of agrarian communities to nineteenth century industrial centers. Rothman’s characterization of Las Vegas as a site for the consumption of experience is a contemporary incarnation of the “commodified titillation [of] cabarets and amusement parks” that modern-era workers sought as therapy for their feelings of alienation. It follows that in addition to exploring visual signs, as do Venturi et al, another element of a fruitful strategy for understanding Las Vegas would focus on the causes of feelings of displacement, both in Las Vegas itself and in other locales that are points of departure for the desert oasis.

One starting point would be addressing the rapid development of Las Vegas itself, as Rothman does, and examining how it relates to the implacement – to borrow a concept from Edward S. Casey – of the individual. As the photos that accompany Venturi et al’s study demonstrate, one hundred years ago the city was hardly more than a railroad depot and a few haphazardly constructed houses and buildings around what is now downtown Fremont Street. Rothman notes that the history of (the citizens of) Las Vegas is elsewhere, in the coastal cities that became too expensive, or the Rust Belt cities that ceded their industrial activity to developing nations. He continues to illustrate the suburbanization of the area and the ensuing atomization of society that is manifested in gated communities, status-seeking through material acquisition, and notably, in the “space for crowds of anonymous individuals without explicit connection with each other” (50) that Venturi et al describe. In such an environment, a human connection with the “place” would be very difficult to foster and therefore feelings of alienation would likely abound. Of course, most cities have not and never will expand at the same rate as Las Vegas, but with similar development patterns being the norm, it is helpful to consider Las Vegas as model of what could potentially happen if unchecked suburbanization is permitted.

Lears remarks that in the late nineteenth century, the burgeoning urban leisure industry served “the anxious businessman as well as the bored shop girl.” Similarly, the Las Vegas of today, as a hermetic place in the desert, designed around rapid movement via automobile and itinerant visitors arriving and departing by plane, that presents itself as an alternate reality – “What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas,” according to a recent advertising campaign – is a favorite destination for professional conventions and personal vacations. These forms of tourism are the backbone of Las Vegas’s economy and are increasingly important ingredient of local economies around the country. One needs to look no further than the recent and planned expansions of the Washington State Trade and Convention Center, the “starchitect”-designed Seattle Public Library and Experience Music Project, or the perpetuation of luxury hotels (The W Seattle, Four Seasons) and fine arts venues (Seattle Art Museum expansion, Olympic Sculpture Park, Benaroya Hall) to see how important impressing well-heeled and classy visitors to Seattle has become. Moreover, faced with a rapidly declining population and increase in crime, Detroit recently chose to emulate Las Vegas’s success by legalizing gambling and encouraging resort construction to attract the convention crowds. As these cities become tourist destinations and development that caters to outside money trumps the needs and desires of residents, it is likely that feelings of displacement will increase, thus exacerbating the need for new forms of leisure and escape.

A third lesson to learn from Las Vegas could revolve around uniqueness. While Madison Avenue advertisers encourage each and every one of us to express our individuality – a concept that, as Rothman explains, many visitors to and residents of Las Vegas have taken to heart – the fact remains that Las Vegas actually is a unique city, like Seattle, New York or Chicago. The real danger facing Las Vegas and other cities – both developing and established – seems to be the importing and exporting of successful forms and economic models, rather than expressing local nature and culture (the indoor ski slope in Dubai comes to mind). Though some may not approve of its identity as an ever-changing place where hedonism is encouraged, that is what Las Vegas is, and it should express – not necessarily export – this and any other unique characteristics. For example, it could be said that the temporary nature of a visit to an impermanent, always-changing place like Las Vegas reflects the ephemeral nature of life itself. This very aspect of its identity stands in stark contrast to the more established cities of Europe and the East Coast, and should be celebrated.

It is in regard to the concept of uniqueness that Venturi et al’s work shines. Where some would argue for more trees and grass in the medians along a major thoroughfare, the authors conclude that making these changes would be detrimental to the city. They consider the signs one of the best (read: most unique) parts of the city and do not want to block them with foliage; they note that grass in the medians would be difficult to maintain and suggest that they be paved in gold, in homage to the identity of the place. Combining such an examination of the visual aspects of Las Vegas with other social, economic and political studies reinforces the need for interdisciplinary education and could lead to an intellectual organization robust enough to understand Las Vegas and other developing cities.

Indigenous Modernities

In a chapter entitled “Concerning Violence,” Frantz Fanon characterizes the successful decolonization process as changing the “whole social structure…from the bottom up” (The Wretched of the Earth, 35). While the only mention of violence in the Metcalf and Hosagrahar readings is the bomb tossed at Lord Hardinge by an Indian nationalist, as the Englishman entered the new capital, Hosagrahar’s concept of “indigenous modernities” could perhaps be seen as a peaceful – yet still rebellious – analogue of transforming the social structure. By undertaking their own program of modernization, which was more appropriate to their daily living situation and cultural values than the British version of “an idealized and universal modernity” (Hosagrahar, 221), the residents of Delhi adapted to the changing social situation while peacefully asserting their independence via the built environment.

The Delhi Improvement Trust (DIT) was formed in 1936 with the objective of “reforming and modernizing the city” by “relieving congestion, improving living conditions, and developing new areas as planned extensions to the city” (225). In short, the DIT had free reign to westernize the areas that the government considered slums, many of which had blossomed as “modern” industry grew and attracted more workers. Since these “slums” were without adequate water and sanitary sewer infrastructure, and had a population density that was 30 times greater than that of New Delhi, the colonial administration could attempt to “improve” them under the auspices of public health. However, as Hosagrahar asserts, the proposed layout of the DIT projects provided a much more open layout that would be easier to police for “deviant behavior and insurgency” (239). Similarly, by disrupting the existing communities and thinning out the crowds, it would likely be possible to prevent social organization that could lead to an upheaval of colonial rule.

Hosagrahar introduces the physical manifestations that represent the social divide between the government and the property owners by describing the savvy manner by which the latter set about building what would later be considered slums. Spurred by the modern economic policies that made land a commodity, property owners found ways around strict building regulations. They built irregular additions to their buildings and then used the court system and regulatory structures to make the illegal structures legal. For example, they continuously renewed permit applications, appealed to higher courts for decisions in their favor and banded together and asserted that controversial structures had always been there (224). Attempts to demolish existing structures were thwarted by inhabitants that obtained restraining orders and appeared in court (223). Moreover, many of the lower level inspectors were residents, extended family members or fellow churchgoers and therefore had loyalties to the neighborhoods as well as the government, and thus fueled the haphazard construction (224). In true modern fashion, monetary and political incentives from the new entrepreneurs convinced many inspectors and building officials to look the other way or approve construction plans (225). By utilizing such modern means and driven by modern capitalist intentions, the property owners and inhabitants of Delhi essentially defined Hosagrahar’s concept of “indigenous modernity” by propagating a style of housing that reflects the everyday situation of the citizens.

Increasing the divide between the government and the citizenry was the DIT’s effort to “unslum” the center of walled Delhi with a scientific approach of reducing complex “tight-knit families and cultural communities” (232) to population statistics that needed to be spread out. Though the residents frowned upon these development schemes, they were aware of the monetary returns that could be reaped by selling their property. Dissatisfied with offers for their land, they often banded together and made legal appeals, sometimes resulting in the property remaining theirs and unchanged. Hosagrahar asserts that the intention of the property owners was to maximize their personal gains but realized that selling their land for the offered price would destroy their community (235).

Of course, some DIT projects, which completely ignored traditional Indian living arrangements, such as the interior courtyard that provided an escape from the heat or layouts conducive to housing extended family members, were completed. But rather than decongesting the slum areas as planned, new immigrants from elsewhere moved in and often “indigenized” the buildings, which resulted in a reflection of the area’s cultural context rather than the intended European ideal of modernity. As a result, the high density and strong social ties within the communities remained in spite of the new construction.

Furthermore, the same capitalistic spirit that created much of the overcrowding remained and was likely exacerbated by the DIT’s development program. Property owners continued to expand their buildings into the public streets, thus resulting in the increasingly narrow avenues and hodgepodge architecture that defines Delhi. In doing so they preserved their cultural values privately but, as in most entrepreneurial endeavors, “sometimes sacrificed public good” (238). Hosagrahar notes that these “petty entrepreneurs” both followed and manipulated the law by “appropriating space by stealth, negotiating compensations, pressurizing (sic) inspectors, screaming injustice and seeking the protection of law” (239) and even though the outcomes were not what the citizens wanted, the new buildings grew to resemble the existing cityscape.

In the end, the complex diversity of the Indian culture and the willingness to adapt to the new economic and political environment proved too resilient for rational European modernism to overcome. The original landscape created in response to the industrialization of Delhi seems to remain largely intact while the completed DIT projects have taken on a form similar to that of the consciously hybridized buildings of New Delhi: they are essentially a western architecture that has elements of Indian culture added to better fit within the surrounding context. However, the buildings that rose out of the walled central city represent an entirely different degree of social participation and should therefore be considered the true expression of the adaptable culture of Delhi.

Mass-produced Housing

Below is another reading response for my class. There are three class readings cited:
Fuller ("Designing a New Industry")
Jacobs (The Death and Life of Great American Cities)
Duany et al (Suburban Nation: The Rise of Sprawl and the Decline of the American Dream) -- we only read about twenty pages but this seems to be a great book, in the same vein as Jacobs.

In writing this I realized, perhaps for the first time, that mass-produced housing does not explicitly lead to insular suburbs. I think it is the way mass-produced housing is used that produces the suburbs we tend to scorn. For example, if someone were to streamline the construction of high-quality, green and affordable multifamily buildings that could be adapted to fit neighborhood context, I think they would be reaching the goal that I had in starting this blog.

Mass-produced Housing

Though Buckminster Fuller’s idea of retooling airplane-building operations to mass produce light, metal-framed houses never came to be, he correctly identified a nascent peace-time economy that would grow out of the war machine. The postwar housing boom – fueled by increased consumer spending and New Deal legislation designed to promote home ownership – provided many Americans with the suburban accommodations that Ebenezer Howard considered an escape from the terribly unnatural city. However, the effects of suburban lifestyles on both the environment and social relations are largely detrimental. And though the environmental assaults are myriad – highways clogged with commuter traffic, clear-cut swaths through forests for future construction, erosion along streams from increased impermeable paving – they at least tend to be visible, while declining social relations remain somewhat more veiled.

In asserting that “Americans may have the finest private realm in the developed world, but our public realm is brutal,” Duany, Plater-Zyberk and Speck (41) address a physical representation of the social relations that are either created or reflected by mass-produced suburban housing. For example, upon leaving the house, the suburban dweller is typically relegated to travel by automobile – which is, in itself, isolating – and must jockey for position with other drivers for a simple trip to the supermarket. Compared to Jane Jacobs’ description of Boston’s North End, where “working places and commerce [mingle] in the greatest complexity with its residences,” (8) the suburban layout offers far fewer chances for regular interaction with neighbors running errands or going to work. The importance of diverse of land use is a continuous theme of her book and doubles as a call for diverse built environments that promote cross-use and human interaction.

Duany et al continue to describe suburban developments in which housing clusters are built according to selling price. This, the authors stress, is a contemporary example of segregation that follows in the vein of racism, classism and scorn for immigrants – “[The North End is] still getting immigrants!” says a Boston banker to Jacobs (11), citing this as reason to consider the area a slum – and has plagued American cities over time. The authors also assert that clusters are a way to sell “the concept of exclusivity,” since many mass-produced homes are indistinguishable by any other metric. The apotheosis of this segregation is the gated community, where a physical boundary is constructed to separate the wealthy from the not-so-wealthy.

Segregation is becoming increasingly widespread as former suburban residents are relocating to urban cores, where luxury high-rise condominium developments – the urbanized gated community or “islands within the city,” as Jacobs calls them – are sprouting. With block-long podiums housing private amenities and garages in which residents park their cars, these new urban denizens need not interact with other city-dwellers much more than when they were suburbanites. In their article Soft Urbanism: Safeguarding the Private City, Füller and Marquardt posit that private security forces, such as the Metropolitan Improvement District (MID) in Seattle, are necessary because “the production of safe and clean, exciting and lively, convenient and healthy spaces for the former suburbanites does not always get along easily with the so called ‘edgy urban experience’” (7). These modifications to the city are examples of social values from the arena of mass-produced houses colonizing the place where the informal “ballet of the good city sidewalk” (Jacobs, 50) reflects healthy social interaction.

As Duany et al profess, “the segregationist pattern is self-perpetuating” (45). They note that those raised in homogenous enclaves are less likely to be empathetic to people of differing socio-economic status. Rather than having daily interaction with diverse society, these children are socialized “through the sensationalizing eye” (46) of the media. In such an arrangement, the cohesiveness of a diverse society of the future is threatened, even as this has been a goal for which many generations of minorities and activists have striven. Moreover, the authors suggest that segregation is also inconvenient: In a diverse neighborhood, teachers, shopkeepers, businesspeople, and doctors can interact daily, thus helping to establish the elusive “community” that fosters social interaction.

Offering diverse housing options also increases the resilience of a community since “people buy the community first and the house second” (Duany et al, 48). In suburban developments, if one wants to upgrade or downsize, depending on their station in life, it is likely that the only option will be to relocate to another neighborhood. Conversely, in a neighborhood like Georgetown, where housing options range from apartments to townhouses to mansions, it is possible for an individual or family to change homes while remaining in the same community. Similarly, Jane Jacobs considers having “many individuals who stay put” (139) to be an attribute of stable neighborhoods; this assertion is reinforced by her example of Joe Cornacchia, the owner of a neighborhood deli with whom many residents leave their keys when expecting visitors at odd times. Joe gets this role in part because he has established himself in the neighborhood as a trusted individual.

The very possibility of this sort of interaction between neighborhood residents and local businesses can only exist in places where mixed-use development is legal. Duany et al note that the classic arrangements of apartments above retail, which provide customers and “eyes on the street,” and the store-below-the-house are largely illegal in suburban areas, due to “the lingering memory of industrial pollution blighting residential areas” (50). This arrangement stands in direct opposition to Jacobs’ call for the need of primary mixed uses that share the same streets and promote cross-use throughout the day.

While it is evident that many of the tears in the social fabric can be attributed to the rise of homogenous, mass-produced housing, it is important to remember that the mass production process cannot be explicitly blamed for the outcome. On the contrary, it seems as if the social situation that promoted insular suburban housing has been exacerbated by its perpetuation. Rather than merely critiquing the process of mass production, it may be more fruitful to address suburbanization from a sociological perspective, as Jacobs does.

Nonlinear Nature

In the introduction to A Thousand Years of Nonlinear History, Manuel De Landa writes, “human history did not follow a straight line, as if everything pointed toward civilized societies as humanity’s ultimate goal” (16). This statement, which is followed by myriad examples of nonlinear phenomena ranging from the evolution of language to economics to urbanization, stands in stark contrast to Le Corbusier’s assertion that “man, by reason of his very nature, practices order; his actions and his thoughts are dictated by the straight line and the right angle” (23). Though one of his cities was never constructed explicitly, Le Corbusier’s ideas influenced much of contemporary design; his tendency to pit humankind against nature also remains and is a problem with which civilization is still contending.

It should be noted that Le Corbusier is following in the Judeo-Christian tradition: “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it,” God said to Adam and Eve (Genesis 1: 28). By the time Le Corbusier wrote his words in 1925, agriculture and industry had further separated man from nature; Marx had extended the concept of the domination of nature to production sixty years prior in Das Kapital. In this vein, Le Corbusier asserts that man has taken to interpreting the laws of the universe and has “made of them a coherent scheme, a rational body of knowledge on which he can act, adapt and produce” (23). This, he says, is human nature and therefore humans are right to seek order in what they create.

Le Corbusier follows this argument by noting that humans surround themselves with a “zone of protection” consisting of objects they have created. Then, in a maneuver that seems to counter his own argument, he writes that the objects that come in close contact with the body are the least ordered, while those at a greater distance are more geometrical. In a geographical sense, this could be read as saying that the objects with which we have the greatest connection are those of a more organic shape, and that we tend to keep them closer. Unsurprisingly, the entire field of ergonomic design springs from this relationship and is cited by designers like Victor Papanek as a step toward imbuing products with the spiritual. It follows that the rigid geometry of more distant constructions is likely rooted in a specific culture rather than universally present in human nature. The discipline inherent in geometrical forms coupled with the desire to dominate a chaotic nature points to what Baudrillard calls “the most anthropocentric religion the world has ever known”: Christianity.

However, Le Corbusier does consider parts of nature valuable additions to his city, notably open green space and trees. He sees open space as having a salutary effect on the citizenry by serving as a setting for sports and games; trees are to be included in the setback areas of the residential buildings because they are aesthetically pleasing when viewed in conjunction with the concrete buildings. While some may consider nature to have an inherent value, Le Corbusier sees its utility.

The Situationists, on the other hand, envision a city that is less rationalized, though machines will free the citizens of work. They argue for a “city constituted of grand situations, between which the inhabitants would drift, endlessly” (117). The very selection of the word “drift” opposes the calls for speed and efficiency that Le Corbusier unapologetically repeats for three hundred pages, and hints at a more organic and natural experience. However, the very structure of the Situationist city is itself still separate from nature. The only mention of nature in the reading is when the new city is described as occupying the space above nature and agriculture (the control of nature). Constant’s New Babylon is envisioned not as space within the natural environment, but rather as a “creative game with an imaginary environment” (123). Sadler further distances New Babylon from nature when he writes that it “would be an exquisitely fabricated environment where everything would truly sing of humanity” (132), as well as when he compares the city to a windowless casino, in which the passing of days and seasons can go unnoticed, unless they are artificially reproduced to entertain occupants.

It is in Tony Garnier’s conception of the Cite Industrielle where nature is addressed more completely. Garnier sets two rules for his residential buildings link them to the natural environment and evoke contemporary ecological design. The first states that all bedrooms are required to have at least one south-facing window and the building must provide maximum sunlight throughout the structure. The second rule requires that all spaces are illuminated and ventilated from the outside. His sketches also show expansive green spaces and vegetation that appears to be manicured, thus continuing the domination of nature theme that connects the three readings. Furthermore, the factory that serves as the heart of the city is inherently devoted to transforming nature into material goods, and the schools concentrate on subjects such as metallurgy, which will lead to improved production. It is noted in Mariani’s introduction that Garnier does not include churches but it is clear that the religious legacy of controlling the nonhuman world remains.

Garnier manages to further connect his city to nature through the inclusion of the slaughterhouse and the hospital complex. The former embodies a connection to nature that sets Garnier apart from Le Corbusier and the Situationists, in that it explicitly addresses the role of nonhuman animals in the city. Similarly, the attention paid to hospitals and health in general serves as a reminder that the occupants of the Cite Industrielle are indeed mortal, which is a characteristic that might be lost while examining Le Corbusier’s and the Situationist’s work. Moreover, Garnier’s city is at the human scale, which seems to tilt the design back toward the natural. While none of these cities were ever built, and they each dominate nature, it is clear that Garnier’s conception pays it the most respect.

Not Just Art

Another reading response for the class I'm taking. This one concerns a statement by Herman Muthesius in which he suggests that painters, or other practitioners of fine arts, are the driving force behind architectural innovation.

Not just Art

While it is likely true that Peter Behrens’ training as a painter enabled him to envision an innovative architecture for AEG, and that IBM’s Rochester, Minnesota plant by Eero Saarinen had a new, lightweight presence manifested in its thin aluminum and glass walls, Muthesius should take care not to reduce the new aesthetics of these buildings to mere artistic expression. Each of these companies was a leader in the high technology of the day, and wished to convey that image in the everyday use of their products and workplaces. Moreover, technical expertise and understanding of construction processes made the realization of these buildings possible. Taking these three dimensions into consideration leads to a more well-rounded analytical framework with which to examine these historic examples, contemporary architecture and, by extension, urban planning, urban design and landscape architecture.

In the case of the AEG turbine hall, Behrens was seeking to “translate the complexity of…[the] building into an aesthetic analogy” (Buddensieg, 63). The ability to successfully complete this task seems to be as rooted in Behrens’ personality (a social consideration) as in his past in the fine arts: his willingness to utilize his artistic training for commercial ends and to collaborate with the civil engineer Karl Bernhard ultimately led to a building that was both functional and expressive. Buddensieg concludes that Behrens thus demonstrated the artistic virtues of the industrial materials that formed the building, but stops short of connecting this success to his past in the fine arts. In fact, Buddensieg goes as far as to cite technical developments as the seed of Behrens’ “inclination toward special clarity in the interior and simplicity on the exterior” (66) of his buildings. While it is plausible that a painter’s eye for detail led to Behrens’ success in transforming architecture, Muthesius seems to overemphasize the contribution of a background in arts and crafts, and discount the role of social relations, business concerns, and technology.

Fast forward to the present and turn to the relatively new WAMU Center in downtown Seattle. The concept for the almost entirely glass façade can be attributed to the architects but the realization is largely due to technical innovation. By utilizing performance-based design – that is, designing the building to meet performance objectives in a seismic event rather than designing for stresses limited by building codes – the structural designers laid out a bracing scheme that eliminated the need for a perimeter moment frame, which is typically required in steel construction in high seismic zones. The bands of opaque cladding that are seen on many Seattle skyscrapers are thus absent, creating a “lightness” owed to both the architects and engineers. Furthermore, there was an innovative financial interplay between the bank and the Seattle Art Museum – which inhabits the lower portion of the building – that made the entire project possible. In this example, the interplay of architects, engineers and focused business concerns again unites art and commerce via a progressive social relationship.

It naturally follows that ponderous architecture can lead to clumsily designed cities, but I find it hard to look solely to artists for salvation; considering the fields of urban planning and design, a quote from Jane Jacobs comes to mind: “A city cannot be a work of art” (The Death and Life of Great American Cities, 372). This assertion suggests that while nimble artistic disciplines such as painting may inform contemporary city design, proponents are ill-equipped to consider the diverse elements that constitute the real life functioning of the city. It follows that seeking to create an aesthetic analogy for a complex process, as Behrens does with the AEG turbine hall, is not a sufficient approach to solving problems at a scale much beyond that of the individual building. Jacobs continues to say that such an attempt leads to a place between life and art – taxidermy – and suggests that the real role of urban design is “helping to illuminate, clarify and explain the order of cities” (375). Artists, such as painters, photographers, filmmakers and writers are better equipped to play this role than to arrive at innovative solutions that are as based in technical and social sciences as they are in art.

Another important element of urban planning and design that defines cities is infrastructure. Classically understood as the water and sewage systems, electrical grid and network of roads and bridges, these systems are inherently ponderous, given their utilitarian function and physicality. However, future infrastructure (read: communication and mass transit networks), which largely consists of wireless connections and light rail – the latter of which is even semantically distinguished from its heavier industrial predecessor – is much more graceful and functional. These developments seem to be spurred by technical and business innovation, not to mention social pressures, rather than by fine arts. Completing the loop, Kieran and Timberlake see this shift to technology as the next innovation in architecture and even cite the computer company Dell’s business plan as a model to be followed.

Landscape architecture finds itself in a similar position, straddling the line between an artistic and a scientific discipline, and seeking to integrate both human and nonhuman life. Business concerns are involved to the point that they often employ landscape architects to create an environment that will lead to greater productivity or circulation, ultimately bringing increased profits. In this field, the aesthetic sensibility of a painter would once again be a desirable attribute of the designer, but it is still only one piece of the whole.

In the end, contemporary designers would likely be best served by recognizing the interdependence of disciplines beyond their own specialty. While one’s concentration may be in the aesthetic, technical, or social realm, an educated awareness of the validity of the other disciplines seems essential to further innovation. Gropius’s call for the architect as facilitator of various aspects of design applies here and can be seen as a basis for interdisciplinary studies.

Standardization

So, this post isn't about green building, but Modernism. I wrote this in response to Walter Gropius' The New Architecture and the Bauhaus and the La Sarraz Declaration.

Standardization

Under the heading Standardization, and in the same vein as Rousseau’s Social Contract, where the political theorist suggests that society is formed on the idea that self-preservation comes easier when people cooperate, Walter Gropius asserts, “the elementary impulse of all national economy proceeds from the desire to meet the needs of the community at less cost and effort by the improvement of its productive organization” (30). Citing this as the basis for the rise of mechanization and industrialization, he continues to suggest that these new technologies can free the individual from physical toil and allow one to pursue higher order activities. Using reproducible standards is a method by which to increase manufacturing efficiency and, correspondingly, the amount of time for citizens to pursue higher order activities. Gropius thus sees it as a prerequisite for the development of civilization, rather than an impediment.

In the idealistic context in which he writes, this assertion is fairly easy to digest. Starting with his opinion that homogeneous town character is “the distinguishing mark of a superior urban culture” (38), one will likely accept that a built environment (read: buildings and cities) created from a catalog of high quality, low cost, mass-produced pieces, would lead to less time spent fussing over which ones to use, and more time combining them in a way that is both aesthetically pleasing and functional. From this point of view, by utilizing industrial technology to provide the basic building blocks, designers would be free to focus on the act of expression, which is akin to arranging musical notes into a symphony. It is this step of concentrating on the design, the assemblage, the expression, that Gropius sees as a higher order activity that is part of an evolving society.

With buildings and cities covered, one might be left wondering where is the creative process that goes into products themselves. Gropius would likely respond by saying that the higher order creative activity comes before mass production, in the design of the product prototypes. This reversal of the process for constructing buildings and cities from standard elements remains true to his position that standardization reduces the amount of time that a designer must toil away with material production. However, several pressing issues remain: What is a designer to do after all products have been standardized? Are standards updated regularly and, if so, were they ever really standards? By insisting that a designer removes himself from the product, as Gropius does, the ritual of creation that Walter Benjamin defines as making works of art disintegrates, and what is left is merely a simulacrum of the prototype. I am left wondering if this is what designers intend to create.

Unfortunately, it seems like part of this utopia of standardization has come true while the other has followed a different trajectory. Rather than creating a splendid assembly of expressive houses, built from high quality, mass-produced elements, we have managed to distort this dream and have covered much of our former farmland with homes based on standardized plans and built from, and later filled with, artless mass-produced material. And while the efficiency of mechanized production has increased the amount of time that can be devoted to higher order activities, we, as Americans, have not exactly chosen to do so. I mention this not to disparage the concept of standardization but to point out that – as Gropius later mentions in his discussion of the Bauhaus – a change in the material production system does not necessarily lead to the desired social outcome.

However, on the social front, Gropius makes a strong argument for the power of standardization with regard to standards of living. He sees the standardization of buildings as a way to increase quality at a lower cost, thereby raising living standards for people in lower socioeconomic categories. This idea can be extended both to products (in the sense that anything consumed or used is a product, whether natural or man-made) such as access to clean drinking water or the increasing reliance on personal automobiles, and to cities, where a standard of safety and cleanliness should be extended to all citizens. In these examples, it is abundantly clear that standardization is a prerequisite to the development and progress of civilization.

The fact that Gropius acknowledges that some may see standardization as an impediment reveals that not everyone agrees with his point of view. His dismissal of the position that standardization may crush individuality as a myth is troubling. It seems evident that the current state of suburban housing, in which many standards have been reduced to their price, has suffered immensely from standardization run amok. It follows that a major flaw with his position is that he neglects the fact that the designer is not the ultimate authority when it comes to decisions about products, buildings or the future layout of cities. His salvation comes in the form of the Bauhaus, where design education leads to a standard language that can inform the enlightened masses of the potential outcomes of good design.

The signatories of the La Sarraz Declaration would have likely been very strong supporters of Gropius’s position, as clearly evidenced by their statement that “architecture can spring only from the present time” (109). Given that their document was signed at a time defined by mass production, and that standardization is supported by mechanical production, the link between the signatories and Gropius is inescapable. Furthermore, the La Sarraz document defines economic efficiency as requiring minimal working effort and explicitly states that standardization and rationalization are the most efficient methods of production. In their section on Town Planning, the signatories call for “a collective and methodical land policy” (111) which could also be described as a policy based on agreed upon standards of use. Finally, the documents are linked in promotion of standardization through the goal of education: The La Sarraz Declaration calls for a domestic science that essentially standardizes everything from sunlight to hygiene to household economics, in a true rationalization of everyday life.

Economic Downturn

Well, the economic downturn has finally become a reality to me. I had been working as a structural engineer for the last five and a half years and was laid off yesterday.

Read about the experience here.

But, as a friend over a Pb Elemental said, now is a good time to devote more time to this blogging/organizing to build a co-op endeavor. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe everyone's favorite Modernist, Le Corbusier, did a lot of his theorizing while out of work. Not that I can be compared to him for many reasons, but you get the idea.

I am taking another course at UW this quarter, entitled The Contemporary Built Environment. It requires quite a bit of reading and written response to each assignment so expect some posts on that. We also have to give two presentations relating to the reading material. I have been blessed with giving presentations on Products, Buildings and the Global Economy and Built Environment and Place, both of which relate nicely to my interests in consumerism and development.

Participation vs. Consumption: The Search for a Contemporary Vernacular

In a chapter titled “The Lessons of Vernacular Architecture,” Victor Papanek writes, “it may be helpful to start from a process-oriented rather than a product-based viewpoint” when seeking to understand vernacular architecture (The Green Imperative, 118). Though this paper is not a study of the vernacular, the idea that architecture can be understood as part of dynamic processes rather than a purely material form is incredibly powerful, and can be used to envision an evolution in city-building that I will call a contemporary vernacular.

Consider the current development process in which buildings are produced (conceived, designed, and constructed) by professionals to be consumed (purchased or leased) by anonymous end-users: This system more closely resembles Henry Ford’s assembly line than it does a traditional community building process such as, say, an Amish barn raising. Therefore, if one is interested in designing built environments that contribute to the well-being of the natural world (including humans), rather than perpetuating mass-produced simulacra, it is a worthwhile endeavor to explore the processes that separate the former from the latter.

One such process is the participation by the end-users and community that is central to the barn raising and absent from typical construction projects. This participation in the social realm is rare in contemporary city-building and can be related to ubiquitous patterns of mass consumption where “the fixation on (obtaining) personal goods has denied the necessity of sacrifice beyond the family” and “has allowed little space for social conscience and confined aspiration to the personal realm” (An All-Consuming Century, 3). The idea of trading collective power for personal spending power is expressed neatly in Henry Ford’s five-dollar/eight-hour day, where production workers agreed to submit to extensive managerial control in exchange for a generous salary. By abandoning their right to organize and, instead, focusing on personal material gain, the workers set the stage for the atomized social structure famously described by William Whyte in The Organization Man, where social bonds are formed over common individual struggles rather than coalesced into a collective movement.

On the opposite end of the spectrum, one can turn to the ideas and accomplishments of the great community organizer Saul Alinsky, who asserts that “the complete man is one who is making a definite contribution to the general social welfare and who is a vital part of the community of interests, values, and purposes that makes life worth living” (Reveille For Radicals, 17). His conception of democracy is founded in the masses – which he considers the substance of society – and is defined as working from the bottom up.

The question then becomes how to elicit participation in a society that is increasingly insular and has moved from the social halls of yesteryear to the shopping malls and suburban homes of today. One answer can be traced back to Marx’s Grundrisse, where he notes that technology is a force that can overcome what seems to be an impassable limit and therefore exposes it as traversable barrier (Interview the David Harvey, n+1, issue eight, 45). With the widespread use of technology within the design and construction industry – Building Information Models (BIM), Geographic Information Systems (GIS), and online collaborative environments used for construction administration and project management – and the general computer fluency among the masses – manifested in what has been termed Web 2.0 and includes blogs and social networking sites – it seems that cyberspace would be an ideal venue for participation between end-users and professionals. The goal of this paper, then, is to explore the available technology in use today in both the professional and the public realms, examine any overlaps that may already be occurring between the two – paying special attention to research into increasing participation via technology – and, finally, building a scenario where end-users are an essential part of the development process, therefore tilting the process of development toward a new contemporary vernacular.

Professional Technology

One of the most exciting emergent technologies in the architectural and engineering world is Building Information Modeling, or BIM. A BIM model is a three-dimensional computer model that organizes information from all the major design disciplines involved in the construction of a building. Each team member can upload and download information pertaining to their portion of the design, generate construction drawings, and check for conflicts between the building systems. BIM can also generate images that show the interactions of various systems, which can be very useful for designers trying to visualize complex relationships.

According to feature articles and advertisements in architecture and structural engineering magazines, BIM is the tool that is changing the industry. “BIM has great potential for helping produce better architecture, faster and for less cost” (Building Team Views Technological Tools as Best Chance For Change, http://www.enr.com); an ad for Bentley’s BIM system informs the reader that Change Is Good and urges the potential customer to make change good for themselves by using Bentley; Walter P. Moore, an elite structural engineering firm, uses BIM as an advertising and recruiting tool – BIM. It’s not about Buildings. It’s about people – and prizes itself as a leader in the revolution.

The cover of the November 2008 issue of Modern Steel Construction reads, “A Healthy Dose of BIM” and features several articles about the use of BIM for healthcare projects. This is fitting because design teams working in the healthcare sector stand to benefit from the collaborative nature of BIM, due to the complexity of mechanical, electrical, and plumbing (MEP) systems that are the infrastructure of a modern hospital and must fit within the space allocated by the architecture and structure. For this reason, Magnusson Klemencic Associates, another industry-leading structural engineering firm, has adopted BIM for all healthcare projects.

Another technology that promotes collaboration between the design team and the contractors is the online project management environment. It comes as no surprise that Autodesk, the company behind the ubiquitous drafting program AutoCad, and the most popular BIM system, Revit (Top Criteria for BIM Solutions, AECbytes, 3), has also created Constructware. This software is a web-based environment where members from each discipline can upload and download drawings, sketches, photographs, meeting minutes, etc. A basic use of Constructware that increases efficiency from the structural engineer’s perspective is answering requests for information (RFIs) from the contractor. Whereas this process has been conducted chronologically through mail, fax machine, and most recently email, with the architect serving as intermediary between the contractor and engineer, Constructware now serves as a virtual meeting place where the questions can be asked and answered by the appropriate parties.

Moving beyond individual buildings and into broader realms such as planning, infrastructure management, and ecology, one will find that a dominant technology is the Geographic Information System (GIS.) The real power of GIS lies in its ability to link maps – geographic data – with data sets such as land use, infrastructure services, or pollution levels, and thus creating a simulation of past, present, or potential future landscapes. GIS also has the capability to produce images such as specialized maps, three-dimensional renderings, and animations, all of which make scientific data more accessible to a nonscientific community. Apropos to the subject at hand, spatial data from a GIS can also be shared over the Internet, making it available to users in different locations (USGS GIS Poster, http://egsc.usgs.org).

While both BIM and GIS are powerful tools that could be used to include the public in the design process, they are, unsurprisingly, very expensive. Moreover, special training is required to implement, operate, and understand the both the structure of the systems, as well as the content that is input and produced. One technical solution to both of these problems would be the creation of an accessible interface that could utilize the power of these systems without requiring the purchase of the entire software suite or specialized training. The Internet is a likely avenue by which this sort of distribution could occur.

Public Technology

With the rise of Web 2.0 – that is, the Internet as a platform for expression and participation – millions of people have found new ways to spend their leisure time. For example, Wikipedia, the open source free encyclopedia has more 684 million visitors annually and at least 75,000 active contributors; Facebook, a social networking site, is the fourth most heavily trafficked website in the world and has over 120 million active users. Popular musical artists such as Radiohead, Nine Inch Nails, and Beck, have all held remix contests where different portions of their songs are released online for hobbyists to assemble in new ways and upload to the artists’ websites, where the public can listen to them and vote on their favorites.

Jeff Howe christened this process of tapping into the abilities of the masses crowdsourcing in an article for Wired (The Rise of Crowdsourcing, June 2006). Much of his article focuses on the economic aspects of using nonprofessionals for stock photography and research and development, namely the cost savings of using output from people who are producing out of sheer enjoyment. As a warning to any organization eager to implement crowdsourcing, he offers a list of common attributes of the participants, of which the most applicable to this study are the dispersion of the crowd, the fact that the crowd has a short attention span, and the tendency of the crowd to self-regulate so that the best “products” are acknowledged. These criteria should be kept in mind when constructing a framework for online participatory urban design.

Of course, there are pronounced differences between spending time online for entertainment, for work, or for more serious social activity that lies somewhere between these extremes. One example of a more politicized version of online activity is the authoring of weblogs, or blogs. For example, Huge Ass City (http://www.noisetank.com/hugeasscity) is a blog published by a Seattle urban planner that addresses issues such as transit, housing density, bicycle infrastructure, sustainable design, etc. In the last six months the site has had almost 42,000 unique site visits. While the site attracts many readers who are interested in these urban topics, and could very well influence their positions on these issues, it stops short of any Alinsky-esque organizational activity that could hope to influence policy. Blogs also serve as a one-to-many information distribution system, more like the radio, which Horkheimer and Adorno accuse of turning “all participants into listeners (consumers) and authoritatively subject(ing) them to broadcast programs which are all exactly the same” (The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception, 122), than a forum for discussion, or active participation, even though many have a feature where readers can comment on posts.

These examples reflect the power of the Internet to build communities. In their paper, Community-Driven Place Making, The Social Practice of Participatory Design in the Making of Union Point Park, Jeffrey Hou and Michael Rios focus on the community building process as an essential predecessor to “predominant participatory design approaches that focus narrowly on the binary interaction between designers and users” (Journal of Architectural Education, 2003). Their findings will be further explored in the discussion of real-life participation.

Public Participation via the Internet

Some technology-focused academics understandably see the Internet as an ideal platform for public participation. In his article Internet GIS for Public Participation, Zhong-Ren Peng discusses the need for public participation in environmental planning, the capabilities of a web-based GIS system, and proposes both a taxonomy and a system architecture that could implemented to involve users in the planning and decision making processes.

In his introduction, the traditional use of GIS as a presentation tool, rather than an interactive design tool, is discussed. This top-down method of participation, in which the public is only able to comment on what has been prepared by professionals, has been considered both elitist and antidemocratic, mainly due to the fact that the layperson has no exposure to GIS. An evolution in participatory capabilities, which has been termed Collaborative Spatial Decisionmaking (CSDM), accepts public input for the GIS model but encounters difficulty with equal access across socioeconomic groups and often requires a facilitator to operate the system efficiently. According to the author, the next evolution is the Internet GIS, which will be as powerful as the systems that professionals use but will include a user-friendly web-based interface that allows users to evaluate and comment on designs, select alternatives, and ultimately build their own alternative scenarios. He does not elaborate on how detailed the user input should be or how users will be educated to build practical scenarios but, assuming this could be done in a narrative format, it would be a democratic way to bring end-users into the design process.

The author argues that Internet GIS can overcome two obstacles that occur in traditional public forums: the vocal attendees that dominate the meetings and the inflexibility of meeting time (attributed to Kingston et al, Web-based public participation geographic information systems: an aid to local environmental decision making, 2000). Also promoted in this model of participation is the interactivity between users: the sharing of scenarios and analyses through chat rooms and discussion boards. The only downside mentioned is the ever-present problem of equal access to the Internet. While it is true that such a web-based system, accessible from the comfort of one’s own home, during one’s leisure time, is certainly convenient, this arrangement, paradoxically, seems to privatize public participation. Granted, such a system could be a valuable tool for generating interest or eliciting feedback during the conceptual stage or between benchmarks of the design process, but to suggest that ordinary citizens should virtually congregate in cyberspace to participate in city building seems to encourage further segregation of an already atomized society.

Peng’s proposed system evokes Baudrillard’s conception of the hyperreal – neither the real nor the unreal, but the continual simulation and electronic discussion of plans and scenarios that will likely never exist outside of the computer model, and which are not necessarily based on existing reality. However, a hybrid approach of web-based and real-life participation, such as CSDM – the previous evolution in GIS – more closely resembles a process that that is both human and social, and therefore part of a contemporary vernacular.


From Online to Reality

Though the Seattle Department of Planning and Development (DPD) does not keep statistics on the number of public comments it receives per project, it does publish this quantity in final land use decisions (personal correspondence with the DPD Public Resource Center), which are available online (http://web1.seattle.gov/dpd/luib/Default.aspx). While it is beyond the scope of this paper to sort and analyze the types of responses given for specific projects, it can be noted that larger projects – such as a new multistory mixed-use building in the Wallingford neighborhood (40 attendees at the public hearing), or a three-story office building in Queen Anne (24 written letters in the two week comment period) – tend to generate the most public concern, often regarding traffic congestion and loss of habitat. Projects that require the subdivision of lots for multifamily construction are popular but often only receive minimal comments, if any. Meanwhile, consider that the aforementioned blog Huge Ass City has averaged about 235 unique hits daily over the past six months. Though these numbers cannot be directly correlated, they do suggest that online interest in the developments around Seattle outnumbers actual social-political action that could actually influence what is (or isn’t) built. Therefore, a phenomenon worth exploring is the process of translating online interest to real-life action.

One example of a web-based group that spurs real-life activity is MoveOn.org (http://www.moveon.org). With over 3.2 million members nationwide, and funded solely by the donations of members, MoveOn endeavors to bring “real Americans back in to the political process” by circulating petitions, notifying members of upcoming ballot initiatives which could be influenced by constituents contacting their representatives, and organizing parties to watch films about current events. Another poignant example of the power of organization via the Internet that results in real-world consequences is the terrorist attacks of September 11th. According to an article in the Spring 2003 issue of Parameters, the US Army War College Quarterly, “evidence strongly suggests that terrorists used the Internet to plan their operations for 9/11” (Al-Qaeda and the Internet: The Danger of Cyberplanning). The article continues to illuminate other uses of the Internet for organizing terror attacks, gathering information about targets, recruiting, or using the web as a conduit for disrupting business or communications through hacking – all of which are mirror images of productive activities that could be undertaken by technology-based participatory design process: organizing real-life meetings, gathering information about the site of a proposed project, attracting new participants through social media, and using the web as a conduit for the exchange of design ideas.

It is these leaps from the virtual world to the real world where participation via technology begins to gain some momentum, where the hyperreal could be escaped and more process-oriented city-building practices could be developed. Peng’s proposed Internet GIS could be used in this context to “hook” potential participants via blogs, online versions of design magazines and newspapers, etc. Though I have not found any evidence of this transition in the context of urban planning, I have found two intriguing examples of integrating technology into the public forum.

In his article Public Participation: Technology and Democracy, Kheir Al-Kodmany, a researcher at the University of Illinois at Chicago, describes a method of using technology to increase public participation in the design process. Capitalizing on the power of the image as a way to understand the environment, the team used a GIS and an artist trained in depicting urban scenes, to facilitate discussions with citizens from the blighted Pilsen district of Chicago and explore revitalization goals, which included the development of a familiar incarnation of consumption: commercial tourism. Over four consecutive Saturdays, the group met in a church and, using GIS and digitized hand-sketched images projected on a screen, explored design options that help revitalize the neighborhood. The GIS proved to be a valuable resource because of its ability to display problem areas graphically, as well as data that reflected problems, such as the frequency of pedestrian and vehicle collisions in areas without sidewalks; besides sketching the new neighborhood that the citizens described, the artist, in one instance also helped extract local knowledge when she sketched some trees that residents knew could not be planted due to a shallow underground sewer system. Through this interactive mode of design, the team ended up with a plan that reflected the ideas of the professionals and the community, and could not have been generated by either group independently.

Of course this type of design process relies on many externalities, such as an interested and available group of citizens, a meeting location, the required equipment ranging from the GIS system to the projectors, and the expertise and availability of planners fluent in GIS. The author also notes other issues encountered such as the duration of the meetings, the transport of the equipment, the marginalization of communities without access to such technology, and the possible misuse of the technology to “blacklist” certain areas based on socioeconomic data. Regardless, the synthesis of the professional and local knowledge, coupled with the use of high technology and old-fashioned public participation, is a model that could form the backbone of a contemporary vernacular.

Another development in GIS that can be used to empower the public is the introduction of user-produced qualitative information into the system. Al-Kodmany mentions both narratives and oral histories as next generation data that “increases not only the richness and diversity of the information available, but also comes closer to the ways in which communities perceive their spaces.” In an article primarily authored by Steve Carter, titled Public Participation, GIS, and cyberdemocracy: evaluating on-line spatial decision support systems, the research team studies a Public Participation GIS (PPGIS) that was created for use over internet but was first tested a local fair, where the users could be observed. The GIS included a map of the English town of Slaithwaite and data fields that are activated as one clicks on features such as the river, buildings, or roads. After selecting a feature, the user can input unlimited text describing it, how they relate to it, or suggestions of how it may be improved.

These studies were successful because they connected the public to the design process using a language that transcends socioeconomic differences: the language of images and stories. Through this more level playing field, it seems likely that collective interests could materialize, as they did in the Pilsen study with regard to the need for sidewalks. The authors of the Union Point Park study refer to these “shared meanings and definitions that people bring to a situation or problem” as cultural framing, and note that social movement theory considers it one of three major factors behind social change, along with mobilization structure – “the formal and informal vehicles through which people mobilize and engage in collective actions” – and the more ephemeral political opportunity. Technology, as it has been described in this section, would thus be both a tool for mobilization and a method by which to discover shared interests.

What about BIM?

With the similarities between BIM and GIS, that is, the synthesis of graphic and descriptive data, it is feasible that BIM could also be used to include the public in the design process. One can envisage a scenario where a conceptual design of a public building, say, a library, is brought to the public in a fashion similar to the Pilsen neighborhood revitalization. The citizens could voice their concerns, a designer could digitally sketch out alternatives, and – borrowing the Slaithwaite example – comments could be archived in the system either at the meeting or afterward via the Internet. The advertised depth of BIM – the ability to coordinate the design disciplines – would not be utilized at this point, but a new dimension of user input, which could be encouraged by BIM’s power to generate images, could be incorporated. Virtual walkthroughs, “fit” of the new building into the neighborhood context, impacts on the view and more could be presented to the public, to help them understand the effects of design decisions. After all, as John Pastier, a former architecture critic at the Los Angeles Times says, it is the city – not an architect or the city elites – that produces great buildings. Unfortunately, I could find no examples or studies of BIM or similar technologies being used for participatory design of buildings.

One factor that could likely be an explanation for this lack of public participation could be the relative newness of BIM within the construction industry. Consequently most of the discourse in academia and professional publications concerns the barriers that must be crossed to use BIM to its full potential. In a paper authored by Carrie Dossick, the researcher concluded that the main barriers to widespread implementation are organizational, and revolve around “trust in leadership, information, technology, and skills of others” (Analyzing the Ramifications of Building Information Technologies for Collaboration in Architecture, Engineering, and Construction, 2008). It should be noted that part of her study is based on the observation of real-life meetings that incorporated a BIM model operated by one of the attendees, thus resembling the Pilsen revitalization meetings but with professionals instead of the community.

In the November 2008 issue of Modern Steel Construction, one of BIM-related editorials address this issue of trust as well as the financial investment required to purchase, train at least one office expert, and disseminate general working knowledge to employees (Technical Solutions are Just the Half of It). Another reason that is unrelated to BIM but pertains to participation in general could be that many buildings are developed by private companies, and thus are less likely than a public project, such as a park, to involve the public. However, despite these factors, the field of facilities management provides a great opportunity to incorporate end-user data into buildings that have been designed and built with BIM.

In a study of the renovation of the Pentagon, researchers from Pennsylvania State University note that the BIM model records performance data of all the mechanical and electrical systems but does not solicit feedback from the occupants (Pulling User Feedback into Renovation Design at the Pentagon, Dahl, 2006). The author proposes a using a post-occupancy evaluation (POE) to add subjective data to the information collected by the BIM system. Though his proposal is to use a survey that is separate from BIM, he suggests implementing a feedback system that directly links to end-user input to the model. However, building on Carter’s PPGIS and Clare Cooper Marcus’s work in San Francisco (Pink Palace to Rosa Parks Towers: High Rise Rehabilitation Using Environment and Behavior Research, 1988), which utilized interviews to obtain information from residents, a more powerful POE that captures a narrative of the everyday experience could be employed online. For example, building occupants could describe the fluctuations in temperature during the day and provide information that may not be collected by sensors connected to the BIM system, such as reflected sunlight off adjacent buildings. The Internet platform for project management that was introduced earlier is a good example of a venue where multiple users could provide both textual and graphical information. Of course, the interpretation of such information would be more involved than a simple survey, but could be employed after seasonal or operational changes to gain a clearer picture of the resulting environment. As such tools for the collection of qualitative data are developed for post-occupancy situations, similar tools could be used to involve the community in the design process.

A Contemporary Vernacular

It should be evident that while technology is certainly a tool that can be used to increase participation in the design process, it is not a panacea that will solve all of our design woes. It cannot substitute for social engagement and should evolve in such a way that it can be used by an average citizen who lacks the specialized training required to operate and understand complex systems such as BIM and GIS. This evolution will hopefully revolve around two attributes that are accessible to the majority of people: images and narrative.

A contemporary vernacular could be modeled on two of the research projects described in this paper. An effective conceptual framework could be based on the Hou and Rios paper that emphasizes community building as the step before any public participation. While this could have a significant online component, it is paramount that the transition is made to the real world, especially given the unequal distribution of Internet access and the fact that many groups, such as the elderly or non English-speaking immigrants, would likely be passed over if the organization depended too heavily on technology. Another lesson from Union Point Park is that many groups with varying interests came together over shared interests that resulted in a large pro-park presence.

A participatory design process such as that utilized in the Pilsen revitalization project would be an effective way to combine the social and technological experiences. It would be in this arena that images and narratives could be synthesized into a representation of how the community envisioned its future. In this study, the University played an integral role by providing the technological expertise to operate the GIS system, but this responsibility could perhaps be shifted to a non-profit organization that focused on community design.

It must also not be forgotten that after the building is built, or the park is constructed, end-user feedback should be constantly acquired in order to learn what design features were effective. As Paul Walker Clarke asserts, “it is false to assume that, once a physical evocation of (social) values is constructed, the desired sociability and participatory citizenship will ensue” (The Ideal of Community and Its Counterfeit Construction, Journal of Architectural Education, 2005). Rousseau says men create and government and government informs the next generation of men; Lefebvre says the same about space, but it must be recognized that public reactions will not necessarily be what was intended by the designer. A post-occupancy evaluation that can be completed online or in person would be one way to understand the success of the project.

Finally, referring back to the ubiquitous American culture of consumption, it should be noted that all of these processes require a certain amount of activity that cannot be easily classified as work or leisure. Participation falls somewhere between these extremes and likely resembles the former more than the latter, but that does not mean it has to be drab. As Papanek professes, “form follows fun”: A park or library meant for the enjoyment and enrichment of the community should not be discussed in stuffy church basements but, rather, in an environment and fashion that evokes the intended finished product. It is this sense of ritual in creation that Walter Benjamin attributes to real art, and given that one function of art is to reflect the current social situation, what better way can this be accomplished than by the democratic creation of places by the collective social body?