Indeed it does take genius.

The rumor runs that

Frank Gehry is also an Urban Designer beyond being a media star.

The assertion is that

...it doesn't take a genius to see that the Disney Concert Hall works well in its urban context.  Insofar as it is an art form, the whole objective of architectural design is to produce works that succeed in unexpected, original ways.  The real merit of the L. A. Concert Hall is not just that it succeeds as a part of L. A.'s downtown (a claim which few would dispute); it's that it succeeds without conforming submissively to a set of rules.

It does take genius and imagination to conjur up what isn't there. Disney Hall has little to do with its urban context. It is a striking object -- maybe "art," maybe not: only time will trell -- but one which does not have much to do with the sidewalks around it. How Joe Clarke can suggest otherwise is a bit astonishing. Asserting does not make it so.

As well, Joes sneers at The Three Rules. Let's be clear: those are not my rules. They are a reflection of reality, of every pedestrian-oriented neighborhood and street in existence. Put another way, a walkable city built on anything but the default of The Three Rules does not exist. Don't like it? Don't like rules? Don't rail at me as I am merely reporting what is. And if anyone can offer an example of a pedestrian-oriented neighborhood (much less a whole city) built according to anything but the Three Rules, I would be curious to know of it.

•••

UPDATE: My impressions of Disney Hall after visiting it just before opening is here: Disney Hall: The Good, The Bad and...the Beautiful?

Comments

[Brian Miller]

But...But....But....what about the FUTURAMA CITIES OF THE FUTURE in all the 1930s-1950s movies? They don't have sidewalks, they have giant catwalks and things zooming here and there and everywhere! LOL!

[Joseph]

A response.

[David Sucher]

Joseph,
Please take a look at Disney Hall: The Good, The Bad and...the Beautiful?

[Joseph]

Fair enough. I'd forgotten about that post, but now I do remember reading it at the time.

But this doesn’t alter my thoughts on the building’s “having little to do with its urban context": the urban context is terrible, and the Hall ought to have as little to do with it as possible.

Your three rules are useful generalizations based on the characteristics of many good buildings. But the criterion of good urban designs is whether people actually use them, not whether they conform to rules. In the past (such as my comment on the Hadid museum in Cincinnati here), I've pointed out other buildings that use innovative urban strategies. The success of such buildings can never be reduced to rules (even though they may conform to them). These are the buildings that we can learn the most from, because they are not merely repeating old strategies but are proposing new ones. These are precisely the buildings that deserve awards for urban design.

[David Sucher]

Joseph,
Assume that one's priority goal is to create a pedestrian-friendly and "walkable" neighborhood. Is there any set of default rules which, if violated, will prevent such a neighborhood from coming into existence? Yes. The Three Rules. Can you think of any other such pattern generator which is so crucial? Can you offer me even one example of a district or town or city which is considered "walkable" but which is NOT built according to the Three Rules?

But as I have already raised this point and you and others refuse to directly join the question, we are obviously speaking past each other.

[Joseph]

I think we are speaking past each other and actually disagree on very few points.

I do believe that design is a creative, indeterminate process, not a formulaic one. So while I agree that violating the rules will generally preclude what we consider "walkable" neighborhoods, I wouldn't call the rules "pattern generators."

The distinction is not just splitting hairs. Formula-based design, even when it's walkable, tends to be mediocre and derivative. This is one of my gripes with a lot of New Urbanist design: it borrows old solutions (which might have been very innovative at one time), but rather than creatively manipulating them as precedents, it merely repeats them as formulas.

A design like Gehry's, on the other hand, may abide by the rules, but clearly was not generated by them. The urban design ideas in the building -- the series of roof terraces, the giant exterior staircase, and the carefully-detailed facade on Grand Ave that allows maximum connection between sidewalk and lobby -- are the result of more creative thinking.

Now I know that you are most concerned with how buildings function as urban structures, and functionally the distinction I'm making may appear moot. But when it comes to giving out urbanism awards, I think it makes sense to recognize the designers who are coming up with innovative solutions.

[David Sucher]

Joseph, I have no idea how you can ascribe "more creative thinking" to the only half-way decent streetfront at Disney. How, in fact, would you have any idea how the design of that frontage evolved? The reality is that that frontage more or less reflects the rules for creating a good urban street. Obviously Gehry knows how to do it. (Everyone knows how to do it -- it's incredibly simple.) The issue is that Gehry didn't have the urban sensibility to do it on any other frontage of this full-block project. And none of the clients had the nerve or brains to tell him. I hope you won't mind if i suggest that you are "searching." And more generally I am a bit perplexed by your apparent reluctance to accept what you sneringly characterize as "formula-based design." Does an architect not accept standard -- "formula-based design" -- when it comes to doorway height & width and stairway rise & run? (Within which there are variations but only subtly so.) What is wrong with a formula which works/ especially if it is the only formula which works?

There are many time-tested formulae which work very well and accord nicely with human behavior. The Three Rules of Urban Design are merely one example. Why do you (speaking to "you" as a surrogate for so many intelligent but misguided architects) have such a difficult time accepting that people in the past have stumbled upon good ways to do things and that one can reuse them without any loss of dignity and self-respect? What is this pointless insistence upon and infatuation with the "novel" and the supposedly "innovative?"

[James Cornetet]

Not to mention is it ridiculous to assume that there are rules used to govern the way that people will be affected by any kind of space. The quality which you mention is unmeasurable and can only be discovered through rigorous evaluation of the problem. Perhaps you might find yourself building something other than a strip mall if you were to search for order rather than rules that you tell a four year old to keep them from causing trouble.

[David Sucher]

James,
Are you actually meaning to state that it is "...ridiculous to assume that there are rules used to govern the way that people will be affected by any kind of space."
Am I understnding you correctly?

[Joseph]

James, that's a great principle -- "order rather than rules."

David, I love old things. Some of the best urban design I have seen is in the streets and piazzas of Rome, Siena, and Vicenza. But how do you think they were produced except by acts of creativity? That design should be creative is by no means a new or peculiarly modern idea. Innovation is not necessary for its own sake, but designs that are truly creative will turn out to be both innovative and historical.

I'm not suggesting that creative architecture needs to be big and glitzy like a Gehry building. But it does require some critical thought. Critical architecture is the antithesis of design by formula.

Of course architecture shouldn't ignore pedestrians or walkability. But really engaging with these problems requires that we look past the formulas at the issues themselves, which, as James points out, are oftem specific to the design problem.

In the case of the Gehry building, he decided to concentrate the pedestrian features along Grand Ave. because it is the focus of the revitalization effort. More articulation on the surrounding streets would have been nice, but they are probably not going to get a lot of pedestrian traffic anyway, so the expense probably could not be justified.

As for the Grand Ave facade, I think it clearly respects your Three Rules. But it goes far beyond them by providing a public sitting staircase, landscaped gardens, and street-level glass that can open to the lobby when the weather is nice. Surely you don't deny that these are creative urban design elements that greatly enhance the building's urban condition.

[Brian Miller]

But-why should it be assumed that the other streets should be sacrificed as dead zones? One of the reasons that Downtown LA struggles so much is that so many architects and property owners, driven by ideological and economic formulas as rigid as the Three Rules without their observational rigor, have created a dead city streetscape. And, this deadness is almost universal in modernist American city centers.

Why do architects worry about creating buildings that don't leak? That shelter their inhabitants? That have usable/leasable space? Are these "rules" not as rigid, as form-defining as David's? Unless you think a leaking building that is "daring" or "innovative" or "exciting" is somehow acceptable to anyone outside the academy/architectural press.

Of course, given the leaking disasters created by such superstars as Wright, Eisenman, etc. etc., maybe you DON'T care about basic comfort and functionality?

All that the three rules do is try to ensure basic comfort and habitability of city streets. Why is this so difficult to accept? Why do we have to reinvent EVERYTHING in every generation?

The Three Rules are ABSOLUTELY necessary because modern American architects and their clients, public and private, have PROVEN their inability ot create attractive, comfortable, pedestrian-friendly streets. LA just examplifies the deadening impulses of these blank-walled object buildings-no matter how swooping the titanium sun-blasters are.

[David Sucher]

Time out everyone!

The Three Rules are not my creation. They are simply a reflection of the default spatial form of walkable neighborhood -- every last one of them.

Once again, I ask all those who detest the banal, sensible-shoes bourgeois idiocy which you believe the Three Rules represent to name one specific pedestrian-oriented neighborhhod which does not, for the most part, reflect them.

I fear that once again I will hear only silence or the plaintive cry of the soulful artist being denied his "creativity."

[Joel Covarrubias]

As some have mentioned, maybe "rules" is not the perfect word, but the basic fact remains that there are some properties of urban developments, in whose absence the surrounding space will fail from a pedestrian perspective. This doesn't determine a particular design, except to say that if these properties are absent, you are pretty much guaranteed that the development will not integrate with the walking environment.

These properties are so elementary (analogous to the need for a shelter to keep the rain out), that you would think they don't even need to be said out loud. And for thousands of years, city designers took these simple rules for granted.

It is only in the modern era that we decided to deconstruct such old-fashioned notions and start from scratch. And guess what? We wound up with entire city centers that were unwalkable and unpleasant.

All we ask is that these basic "duh" principles be observed. On Disney Hall, three-fourths of the building are blank walls, so obviously somebody didn't get the message.

[David Sucher]

Of course the obvious thing I should have added is that in fact the only place where Disney Hall does succeed is where it conforms to the Three Rules.