Determinative? Even promotive?

In a discussion at 2blowhards.com about "modern" versus "classical" architecture I ran into this comment:  

"...one element of classical design that is "determinative [well, promotive, at least] in creating pedestrian-friendly streets": the colonnade."

I have been pondering the statement; it is of a piece with others' views which seem to me to be a mis-guided infatuation with "classical" architecture as a key element in creating a comfortable city. Such views fascinate because they are so disconnected from the world I see. So for the past few days I have been on the lookout for colonnades, which while few and far between in my neck of the woods are admired. I had been visualizing places like this:

Much as I like and admire this one -- who wouldn't!? -- I couldn't quite see how a colonnade was particularly determinative or even promotive of walkable neighborhoods. They are grand and lovely but not really even a key factor. My position had been (and now even more so, is) that the facade style is largely irrelevant if your goal is promoting pedestrian-friendly cities. In the case of weather-protection, for instance, the colonnade is nice but a canvas awning also works well -- if it enfronts the sidewalk.
 

Then by chance I ran across this building:

QED. No?

Comments

[Matthew Amster-Burton]

Ha! "Touche" doesn't even begin to sum this up.

[clew]

That is a notably hideous building, but I think it would have been even *more* pedestrian-unfriendly without the colonnade. (where are the doors???)

Pillars are better than awnings because cars are afraid of pillars and people feel safe behind them. Bollards do almost as well, and a surprising number of them are reminiscent of the classical Herm...

On the other hand, pillars and colonnades that are too heavy restrict vision and mobility; a Seattle example would be the arcade on the side of the UW CE building that faces the Engineering library. Big, thick columns, narrow walkway, resulting feeling is very rat-in-the-wall. They continue the lines of the building down to the ground, and the walk parallels a driveway and faces no great view, but it's not great execution.

Street awnings regularly annoy me by dumping water onto the sidewalk.

[Chris Burd]

Hi David,

You know, if you're going to scatter mathematical tags like "QED" in your posts, people are going to subject your arguments to a higher standard of logic than otherwise.

Your main argument here is that when I claim colonnades are promotive of urbanism, I'm effectively claiming that any colonnade will create an urbanistic environment under any circumstances, even in the absence of all other urban-friendly elements. So apparently, I'm committed to saying that building a colonnade around a derelict building in a run-down industrial area will automatically generate little district of cafes, interesting bookstores and restaurants, couples strolling arm-in-arm, street musicians, flaneurs enjoying the passing crowd... Well, no one believes that. The argument doesn't rise to the straw-man level.

But ask Clew's question: Does your woebegone little colonnade add *any* urbanistic/pedestrian-friendly character to your woebegone little apartment building? (It is an apartment building, right?) Let's note, btw, that the building is an almost ingenious contradiction of all of your Three Rules. The answer is, yes, of course it does. If you were a teenage girl waiting for a taxi in the rain at night, it would be much nicer to have that colonnade than to have nothing. It does many of the things a colonnade is supposed to do. It keeps off the rain and it provides a sense of enclosure while permitting you to survey the surrounding outdoor space. Now, it doesn't do this very well, and there are other things you might expect a colonnade to do that it doesn't do at all (facilitate informal socialising, for example). But then, it's not a very good colonnade, and the environment works against it.

Here's another, less dire example:

http://skyscraperpage.com/gallery/showphoto.php?photo=13418&papass=&sort=1

This is an office building in Victoria, B.C., where I used to work. There is (or was) a colonnade on the side facing the red mailboxes. It's far from being as nice as your first colonnade above, but, you know, it actually worked pretty well. People would come out for their smoke breaks, people carrying coffees back from the cafe across the street or parking their bikes in the bike rack might run into their colleagues and stand around talking. It also provided shelter for people waiting for the bus.

Today it's gone. The owner filled it in, either from greed or because he didn't like the street kids who used to sleep under it sometimes. You notice the absence. The office workers *could* cluster on the sidewalk around the doorway, but they don't. Now the smokers (and no one else, really) go out to the grubby little quadrangle behind the building. The colonnade, due to its formal characteristics (and NOTA BENE, David Sucher, NOT its aesthetic characterisics) constituted a space that promoted a kind of urbanistic interaction. It wasn't the colonnade around St Mark's Square, OK, but it was a good thing.

As Bob Hillier puts it, Space Is The Machine. Facade style is not the machine, obviously.

You've got a second argument, sort of. You say: "In the case of weather-protection, the colonnade is nice but a canvas awning also works well -- if it enfronts the sidewalk." That's true, but what's your point? Is it, "The claim that Element A promotes Condition X fails because Element B also promotes Condition X"? Stated like that, it loses some of its force.

But still, you bring up an interesting point -- again, a point about form, not aesthetics. What do you think of the following urbanistic elements?

- A row of trees planted in the boulevard between the sidewalk and the roadway.

- On-street parking on busy multi-lane streets.

The usual urbanist response (which I agree with) is that they both a good thing, because they form a barrier between the pedestrians and the traffic, creating a sense of protection. (It's just a *sense* of protection, mind you; the 3 ft wide unshielded sideway along Toronto's Avenue Road is perfectly *safe* - cars don't careen onto the sidewalk with any regularity - but walking along it during rush hour makes you horribly edgy.)

Obviously, besides protecting you from the rain or sun, a colonnade can *also* provide this kind of psychologically protective barrier? Again, form, not aesthetics. (Have I beaten that point into the ground enough?)

I'm not saying, by the way, that the urbanism of the future is going rely on the colonnade as a major organising element, the way Bologna's urbanism does:

http://bellquel.bo.cnr.it/attivita/ecomove/bologna_3.html

You asked for an element of classical design that was "determinative" of a walkable environment, which was maybe setting the bar too high; so I gave you one that was "promotive" of a walkable environment. I'll give you another one: the palazzo block.

Cheers,

Chris Burd

[David Sucher]

Chris, I am satisfied that the two photos demonstrate my point: that the colonnade by itself is irrelevant. It is where the colonnade is located on a site that is determinative/promotive. So whether a building has a classical element per se -- and that is the issue at hand -- is not important.

Yes, colonnades are nice. Please try to understand that I do not dislike classical elements. But they are simply a second or even third order issue. In fact I am all in favor of columns, colonnades etc etc but the infatuation in some circles with such elemnts is a straightforward misunderstanding of urban dynamics. Classicism, per se, is irrelevant to making walkable cities.

[Michael Blowhard]

Bologna, city of colonnades.

[David Sucher]

I agree 100%, Michael. Maybe even 110%.

When used appropriately i.e. at the sidewalk, colonnades can be lovely and provide the rain and sun protection which promotes walkable cities. (Colonnades within a college or religious campus are yet another issue.)

Of course colonnades can also be used in a shopping center set in a "sea of parking" where the walk to the nearest arterial (much less another shopping center) is a walk of a quarter mile.

[Michael Blowhard]

David -- I'm happy to agree that classicism per se doesn't ensure terrific cities, and that your Three Rules are hugely important. I think you're doing a disservice, though, to a couple of things.

* One is the public discussion of architecture and urbanism. At the moment, the quality of this discussion really stinks, unless you're a modernist (po-mo, decon, etc) buff. In mainstream and insider-architecture publications (and at 99% of architecture schools), there's almost no discussion of classicism whatsoever. Its virtues, its deficits, its utility (or non-utility) to good living ... Nothin'. Even from a journalistic point of view, that's bizarre -- after all, there is a prospering neoclassical revival going on. When I yak about classicism at my blog, what I'm doing represents one guy's effort at introducing a much-underdiscussed topic into the discussion. Many people like classicism -- their idea of class is to live in a Georgian house, their idea of a nice vacation is a visit to a classical city. Yet the official architecture world doesn't address real people's real tastes one little bit. Instead, they promote the idea that "architecture" is something else -- something refined, detached, a sublime activity for specialists, something that exists in defiance of common tastes and preferences. As a consequence, the modes of life real people tend to prefer are relegated to interior-design and lifestyle magazines. They aren't part of "architecture." That's an absurd and sad state for the discussion of architecture and urbanism to be in. I submit that -- at this point, and so far as the public discussion of architecture and urbanism goes -- it's important to disrupt the architecture establishment's monopoly on the public discussion of archtitecture. Let people know that their house, their place of work, their town -- their tastes and pleasures -- are as worthy of attention and discussion as the latest shenanigans of the starchitects. I'm not promoting classicism; I'm promoting a better, more open discussion about architecture and urbanism. Classicism deserves to be part of it. A handful of visitors to 2Blowhards who once knew nothing about all this are now aware of it. How can this be a bad thing? Don't we need to start with awareness, enthusiasm, and attention?

* I'm puzzled by your aversion to aesthetics, even from a practical point of view. It may well be more important for shabby American cities and towns to pay attention to the Three Rules than to questions of style at this point. It's hyper-crucial to get the basics right. But questions of style and beauty -- soft and gooey though they are -- aren't unimportant. I don't even think they're unbasic. If a downtown is unattractive, it isn't going to appeal to people, and they'll be likely to avoid it. Bologna's beautiful -- that's a big part of why people visit the city. (And Bologna's colannades are part of its beauty.) So I see no reason to think that practical and modest discussions about beauty, attractiveness and style are in any way at war with your Three Rules. Do you? Also, I think you may be undervaluing the "fun" part of things. It's fun to yak about styles and tastes, and the fun-thing draws people into the general discussion and keeps 'em entertained and engaged. I suspect we both think that one of the reasons the built environment's in such bad shape these days is that people are disengaged from it -- they're tuned-out. If conversations about style and taste tune people in and make them feel part of what's going on, that's a good thing, no?

* I marvel a bit at your conception of classicism. You seem to think that what's meant by classicism is adding column or a volute here and there. As far as I've learned, classicism is a matter of far more than that. It's an entire language of building that can encompass everything from details and decoration to the layouts of entire towns. Classicism has elements that are analogous to words (urns, brackets, colonnades, columns, pilasters, plazas, etc), and it has traditions, typologies, and rules for the combining and recombining of these elements. The results are often real nice: Paris, Milan, Geneva. Classical cities aren't often really bad cities, from a "livable" point of view. That's an impressive record. Classicism may not have all the answers, but does anything? In any case, it seems unfair to claim that there's nothing to be learned from the tradition. Why not focus on that instead?

[Desmond Bliek]

I couldn't agree more that there is an undue emphasis on classicism in North American new or human-friendly urbanism. While I appreciate classical environments, I think it's unfortunate, if not autocratic, to insist upon any one style of architecture: either go local (as in inspired by extremely detailed examination of precedent in terms of materials, techniques, and architectural vocabulary), or let things be plural, but insist upon the following of the key syntactic relations (ie the three rules, and perhaps a few other principles to be found in the neighbourhood).

In the Netherlands, (Delft in my specific experience) there are some splendid examples of very modern architecture that follows the rules of its neighbourhood, and uses a modern vocabulary to express the same truths as the surrounding traditional architecture. Of course, if this was the only type of new or human-friendly urbanism going, I'd lament the lack of classicism, too. The problem with most contemporary urbanism is far greater than architectural style, as Mr Sucher's blog suggests so convincingly.

Desmond Bliek

[David Sucher]

Michael,
I think that my epitaph for "classicism" insofar as we are talking urbanism is simply "What does classicism say one should do with the car?"
Classicism is a language thousands of years old while the car is a practically brand new word. Unless I have missed something, classicism offers no solutions/suggestions/rubrics to integrating the car in cities. And since that is the central problem of cities and buildings, yet classicism is (understandably) silent about the car, I really can't get very excited about it.
But btw, as I tried to say quite clearly, I really do like classic exteriors. The photo above (thanks Tatyana!) is a stunner. Fabulous. But it offers no particular instructions on how to make a walkable city.
I have blogged on this before: Jeffreys and Scrutons "The future is classical" --- Yes, but site plan trumps architecture.
I will keep blogging on it if I must.

[Chris Burd]

If you're going to take anything from this discussion, David, I suggest it be Michael Blowhard's statement:

"[Classicism is] an entire language of building that can encompass everything from details and decoration to the layouts of entire towns."

An architect can speak the classical language quite coherently without ever uttering a flute or a volute. Even from an aesthetic perspective, the defining characteristics of classicism involve proportion and massing, not decoration. (It might a good idea for the neoclassicists to stick to those two elements for a while, 'cos classical decoration seems to drive certain otherwise intelligent critics nuts.)

There is a whole traditional grammar of urban design. Some may be outdated, some isn't. The boulevard is not outdated. The grid is not outdated. The idea of continuous frontages holding to the line of the street is not outdated either, right? (See your Three Rules.)

What has gone stale very quickly is the modernist approach to city planning: the superblock, an exaggerated hierarchy of road types, complete separation of traffic and pedestrians, an overemphasis on the freestanding building detached from the street, massive creation of "dead space", and so on. The most appalling thing about this is that, although the approached was largely designed to accommodate the automobile, it doesn't really do a good job of it, while pretty much sacrificing all other urbanistic values.

Often enough, it's the older sections of cities that provide workable models of urban life. People who think about the future of cities often look to the older city districts for fresh ideas. If you think that approach is at all valid, then you should give the classical tradition another look, 'cos it is biggest stockpile of architectural and urbanist ideas you're going to find.

[David Sucher]

Chris,
Are you suggesting that building enfronting the street are part of a "classical" tradition? What does the "classical tradition" suggest about the arrangement of the auto on the site? "Classicism" predates the car so how can it speak about it?

To suggest that "classicism" says anything at all about such concerns is a debasement of the term "classical," an over-broadening of it and makes this discussion somewhat confusing to me as "classicism" simply becomes a blanket term for "good urbanism" with "mosdernism" simply being "bad urbanism." I think that's a disrespect to both approaches.

[Chris Burd]

Holding to the building line on a continuous front is characteristic of cities built under the influence of classical design. Surely you've encountered the notion that this is a key distinction between traditional and modernist cities. Surely you've heard the cliche about classicists only caring about getting the cornices to match up? You can't get the frigging cornices to match up, if you're not building to a continuous front. Is it a unique to the classical tradition? Of course not. But it is part of that tradition.

Man, when you blogged about that British library a few days ago, saying that it couldn't be classical because it didn't have columns, I thought you were joking. Now I'm not so sure.

[David Sucher]

Chris,
I am starting to see the difficulty in this conversation. When you speak of "classical" you mean "pre-automobile." No?

[David Sucher]

"It's an entire language of building that can encompass everything from details and decoration to the layouts of entire towns."

Michael, can you offer an example of how classicism says/suggests anything specific about the layout of entire towns? I have heard you say that more than once and I am puzzled by it. I leave open the possibility that it is so -- but could you please offer an example?

[Joseph Clarke]

My favorite classicist, Demetri Porphyrios, said this about classicism in a 1989 essay:

"...Classicism is not a style.

"Let me clarify what I mean here. The critique launched by contemporary Classicists starts, quite significantly, not with the aesthetics of architecture but with the strategies of urban design. In other words, the critique addresses the destruction of the traditional urban fabric, the progressive abstraction of the city through zoning and the excremental experience of the Las Vegas Strip. The twentieth-century city, argue the Classicists, works well from the sewers up to the sky-scrapers as long as one considers the wastage in human and natural resources as a concommittant to the sustaining of the overall edifice.

"Instead, the Classicists propose the wisdom of the traditional city: English, European, American, or otherwise. The issue here is not one of stylistics but of ecological balance: to control the sprawl of our cities, to reconsider the scale and measure of the urban block, to emphasise the typological significance of design, to establish hierarchies between public and private realms, and to re-think the constitution of the open spaces of the city."

Insofar as this is the basis of classicism -- at least the critical classicism that is practiced today -- I agree wholeheartedly with it. Porphyrios goes on to describe the aesthetic principles of classicism which he believes are secondary (principles with which I disagree on a number of points that I'll be posting about soon over at my blog).

But good urbanism can certainly be accommodated by contemporary design. This goes for colonnades, too! I came across a particularly extreme one last summer at a public library designed by Will Alsop (img 1, img 2). Despite being a large plaza attached to a boxy building, the giant outdoor room defined by this zany colonnade is surprisingly successful and I observed a lot of locals using it. Its success is probably a result of Alsop's carefully studying the context and creating a design that responds to the existing pedestrian traffic patterns.

[David Sucher]

Well I think I see what some people mean as "classicism" -- it is simply "not modernism." I don't believe that such analysis offers very much.

Classicism in such a definition is so broad as to be meaningless and misleading -- and it is certainly NOT what, say, Jeffreys and Scruton, mean (in the post linked to above) in which they very specifically sing the glories of the column. Under the definition offered by Porphyrios (which of course I think is OK if a bit hackneyed and vague) "We are all Classicists now" just as we were all Keynesians under Nixon.

Could anyone seriously suggest that Jane Jacobs is a "classicist" though Porphyrios definition would include her? No, a definition of classicism which would include Jane Jacobs seems a misreading of her. Of course she is not a "modernist" either -- and that to me proves my point: it is a mis-use and debasement of the terms to pose the discussion as a matter of "classicism" versus "modernism." Under Porphyrios' definition even David Sucher would be a classicist! That's far too big a tent. I'd suggest a far more useful term might be "pre-automobile city" versus "automobile city"

[Chris Burd]

David,

By "classical", do I mean "pre-automobile"? Sort of, but not exactly. I'd describe what we have in pre-automobile North American cities as a vernacular style of city-building that is loosely informed by classical ideas. We don't have any pure classical cities in North America. (I can't say I've seen one in Europe, either - St Petersburg, maybe?) But ordinary builders had assimilated a lot of classical instincts. Building to a common frontage along an entire street, for example. You don't find in European medieval cities, with their irregular frontages, nor in traditional Muslim cities - even though both those city types are characterised by high ground coverage, the commonsense explanation for the uniform building frontages in older cities.

Superimposed on this vernacular-classical hybrid stuff that forms the bulk of our pre-automobile cities, there are usually some explicitly classical elements: a City Beautiful-style boulevard, some academically correct classical public buildings, maybe a precinct of them... that sort of thing.

You also get classical motifs in the vernacular buildings, a Greek Revival pediment slapped onto an otherwise conventional vernacular house, say. This isn't classicism used as a *language*, as the usual metaphor puts it; it's more like one of those T-shirts with nonsensical "Japlish" slogans; fragments of a language deployed for symbolic purposes.

Getting back to city planning, it might seem ridiculous to call the grid a classical element, when some speculator is using it to lay out a railroad town in the western United States. But, you know, the grid comes out of the classical heritage: used by the Greeks and Romans, fell out of use in the Middle Ages, was revived with classicism in the Renaissance, was swept away with neo-classicism in the 1930s or 40s. As used by the railway land speculator, it was another detached fragment of classicism. But when you visit the gridded French colonial extension of a traditional Arab, you realise, yeah, it's part of the classical repetoire.

That's about as much as I have to add to this thread, I think.

Cheers,

Chris Burd

[Chris Burd]

Oops, one more thing.

Yes, you are a classicist in a way. If I were to caricature you as a monomaniac whose sole concern was bringing the building line up to the sidewalk and putting the parking behind, I could say, Here's a fellow who's trying to create a pattern that integrates the automobile into a classical style of urban design. The fact that you're not much interested in columns and arches (which, pace Scruton et al., are only part of the classical repetoire, not defining elements) just means that you think plan is more important than elevation.

[clew]

I was going to say what Chris Burd just said about the grid being classical even if you think it's obvious. I'd go a little further and say that the enthusiasm that built the courthouses and public squares in the gridded railroad towns was often consciously, if naively, classicist.

About how classicists would deal with the urban car: there's precedent, of course. The city is built to be navigated on foot, and wheeled traffic for heavy deliveries is limited to after dark. Works for me. Heck, it might take the Eleusinian Rites to build transit in Seattle. (I am mixing my references. Sorry.)

Seriously, though, you could consult Vitruvius to see if the canonical classical architect is concerned with plan as well as elevation. One summary of Book V, put up by Bill Thayer, runs:

"In which the author warns you that architecture is highly technical, then proves it in spades in his exposition of civil public spaces: the forum, the basilica, the theatre and its porticos, the palaestra and the baths; harbors. "

There are specific measurements for pillars and so forth, but part of the Classic habit was the reasoning given for the standardized site designs. Particularly 3-Rules-relevant stuff:

"for the convenience of the spectators, the intercolumniations must be wider; and the bankers' shops are situated in the surrounding porticos with apartments on the floors over them, which are constructed for the use of the parties, and as a depôt of the public revenue. "

"The basilica should be situated adjoining the forum, on the warmest side, so that the merchants may assemble there in winter, without being inconvenienced by the cold. "

"The tribunal is in the shape of a segment of a circle; the front dimension of which is forty-six feet, that of its depth fifteen feet; and is so contrived, that the merchants who are in the basilica may not interfere with those who have business before the magistrates. "

And, my favorite; a completely utilitarian reason given for a cornice:

"The [curia] walls, moreover, at half their height, are to have cornices run round them of wood or plaster. For if such be not provided, the voices of the disputants meeting with no check in their ascent, will not be intelligible to the audience."

Later he worries about the walkways of the city; they should ideally be protected, verdurant, well-drained, and made of charcoal that will serve as fuel during sieges.

In book VI he considers private buildings. He also manages to explain why every climate except that of Italy develops inferior people, but the discussion of climate starts with:

"These [private buildings] are properly designed, when due regard is had to the country and climate in which they are erected. For the method of building which is suited to Egypt would be very improper in Spain, and that in use in Pontus would be absurd at Rome: so in other parts of the world a style suitable to one climate, would be very unsuitable to another..."

Practical argument for arches: beams sag and are very hard to repair in place. The upper story, he says, can be built as you like, because it can be redone if you get it wrong.

[David Sucher]

As to Clew's remark:
Specific. Vivid. Excellent.
Thanks.

[clew]

You're welcome!

Oh, I thought of another Seattle colonnade, or anyway arcade: the Pike Place Market, at the main level running north from the clock. We might not think of something so filled-in as an arcade, but I bet that's how the markets always looked, canvas awnings and all. But it's protected, outdoors, pedestrian, easy to get in and out of, densely used: Arcadia.

[David Sucher]

But Clew, you could also be describing a shopping center!

You see that's what concerns me: this look to "classicism" doesn't really get at what ails us.

[clew]

Eh? IME shopping centers are either not outdoors or not pedestrian.

We don't need just to know what ails us, we need to know what works and not scorn it even if our absolute least favorite scheme also uses it. (That scorn is one if the things I associate with Modernism.)

[David Sucher]

You are right,Clew.
I shouldn't have implied through the use of the term "ails" that there is some sort "moral" element to our urban issues. Jim Kunstler may say that "We are a wicked people, and we deserve to be punished." I say nonsense and that our major issue is that we don't know how to park the car.
Nontheless I stand by my point that most shopping centers are build around rather traditional even classical elements such as the arcade. The Pike Place Market is lovely but its arcade is repeated in many places where it is not nearly as successful. So to look to the "language" of classicism -- such as the arcade or colonnade -- for answers is useless as we have clear evidence that those elements can be misused to produce the most auto-oriented suburban environment.