City Comforts, the blog

The Turner Prize 2004

It’s May, and time for the British to rev up their annual debate on "What is Art?" also know as the Turner Prize. Finalists are Ben Langlands and Nikki Bell (a pair working as a team), Yinka Shonibare, Jeremy Deller, and Kutlug Ataman. Langland and Bell are noted for work that examines our relationship to architecture and interaction with the built environment. Worth a look is their Paddington Station Bridge.

What is most interesting about the 2004 group is that all of these artists are producing work with a deep connection to current social issues.

I also find it charming that almost article in the press includes the bookmakers odds on each finalists chances of winning. Can you imagine Americans betting on the outcome of an art museum award? The odds, btw, as reported in the Guardian, are currently Langlands and Bell 7/2, Deller 7/4, Ataman 3/1, and Shonibare 5/2. You can also join the fray, courtesy of the BBC.

---Tommer Peterson

Hello Columbus to the I-670 Cap

This is important:

Credit Meleca Architecture and Urban Planning of Columbus Ohio

What is it?
Here it is, from street-grade:

Credit Meleca Architecture and Urban Planning of Columbus Ohio

You say big deal: a city street. Exactly. But it is a city street which is crossing a freeway. I say, yes it is a very big deal.

The American freeways changed the world through which they ran. They facilitated a vast expansion of suburbs and ripped asunder many city neighborhoods. The project (in the oval in the uppermost picture) started out, in the mind of the Ohio Highway Department as a simple widening of the I-670 as it rolls through Columbus, Ohio. But the adjoining neighborhoods put up a fight. (This is my casual from-a-distance understanding of what happened.)

The compromise proposed by some local genius was to make the new overpass (neccesitated by the wider freeway) into a city street by lining it with shops to "link rather than divide." It is under construction now.

In terms of the daily lives of potentially millions, this is architecture at its finest. This is significant, this is meaningful. This is re-building, re-forming the world. Starchitects might well pay attention. (BTW, one may or may not like the particular architectural style of the buildings --- I happen to but that's not the reason this project is so important. Look beyond the style to the larger lesson and model of reconnecting the city by discovering spaces.)

Links below for more information on this marvelous project which ought to be known by every Mayor and City Council in the nation:

Google Search: I-670 Cap

Business First of Columbus

ODOT Interstate 670 Gallery Page

July 03 CoverStory

Columbus AlivewireD

(Maybe this is how Ray Kroc felt when he sat in his car outside the First McDonalds, just observing, letting it sink in, realizing that he was seeing something very big. More here at McDonald's Corporate Information McDonald's History Page 1. The scene of Ray Kroc sitting in awe in the parking lot must be one of the most dramatic scenes from American business history.)

UPDATE: Beyond Brilliance Takes Note

In Boston, I-90 is depressed as it passes through the city, including through the Fenway neighborhood, home of the ballpark. There are plans to buy the air rights from the Mass Turnpike Authority and build a highrise. There are arguments in the neighborhood about the scale of the building and other issues, many of which are probably valid. But really, could anything be worse than a 6 lane highway canyon?

Posted by: joe on August 29, 2003 09:46 PM

The Columbus project is not a typical air-rights deal; those are fairly common. The magic of The Cap it that it creates a connection between two sides of a freeway.

A high-rise --- if it had clear public right of way for both vehicle/bike/walker at its edges -- could also function that way. The issue is not so much "air rights" as "connection."

Posted by: David Sucher on August 30, 2003 01:50 AM

Is urban design a question of morality?

Several days ago I wrote with some dismay about the unwisdom of presenting our awful urban environments as an issue which can be solved through some 'contemporary version of moral re-armament.' Via Armavirumque, I stumbled upon a post at orthoblog of a talk given by Roger Kimball.

The upshot? Things are as bad or worse than I thought.

"We're not worthy!"

In reference to this post on Frank Lloyd Wright, AC Douglas writes:

I mean, it all sounds perfectly reasonable, doesn't it?

It does indeed -- if you're talking about a tract house, or a stand-alone designed and built by a builder along more or less typical commercial lines. Such bourgeois concerns, however, have no place when the house is one designed and built by an architect of genuinely transcendent aesthetic gift."

So in that case

"...you hire a good, solid, bourgeois builder to build a house for you, and leave the all-too-rare Wrights of this world free to serve those worthy of their transcendent aesthetic genius."

Too critical? or just tough love?

After reading City Comforts Blog, TM Lutas reflects:

I had a great flashback reading it as it's quite critical of the right wing and libertarianism as having nothing original of import to say on the subject of creating livable urban spaces, a criticism that used to be very common about conservative urban policy. Well, conservatives, no doubt tiring of the constant ribbing, eventually did get an urban policy and lo and behold, they started getting elected in major cities as their ideas looked pretty good compared to the liberal ones that had failed so obviously in cities across the US.

I didn't mean to be critical; I call it "tough love." Yes, I am throwing out a challenge of sorts. And I assure you that I would be delighted to hear practical, conservative alternatives which do not deny the goal of humane urban form as a way of achieving it, if you follow my drift.