I'm reading "Safescape", by Al Zelinka and Dean Brennan.
Nobody wants to be unsafe.
However...
And this is a big "however" because I moved to rural Maine partly so my children would be growing up in a safe environment:
Is there a difference between "safe" and "good" design? Which begs the question, what do we mean by good design?
There is a time when the community is so strong, and the impacts of humanity so small, that no design is necessary to have a safe, healthy environment. That is probably what rural living is all about. It's not just that the houses are far apart. It's that people have a surplus of freedom, so their natural inclination is to be friendly in public. There are so few people, you have to be nice to strangers.
When populations get dense, trouble brews, and you have to be more careful. You have to design your physical environment to minimize opportunities for trouble. When does a community cross that line? When do they know they have crossed the line? Is there a way to go back?
Tuesday, November 22, 2011
On Being a Planner
I've worked at a lot of scales; when you build, you work at 1:1 scale. During schematic design, we often work at 1/16th scale, which is really 1:192. Shop drawings are done at 1:4 or even 1:2.
Urban planning is done at 1:90,000. Now that's a scale.
But the truth of the matter is, once one knows how design is a matter of collecting, organizing, and then synthesizing knowledge, the planning process is not so distant from the shop drawing process. The sensory input is different: we're no longer interested in the tactile, or the resolution of structural stresses, or the watertightness of a flashing system. Rather, we are interested in populations, their interactions, their selfish decisions compounded by sheer numbers of them. We start to concern ourselves with sense of place, with those places being of the neighborhood, or community, or even the region.
And as much as it may seem rude to say it, the planning profession has been wrong just as many times as the architectural design professions.
Urban planning is done at 1:90,000. Now that's a scale.
But the truth of the matter is, once one knows how design is a matter of collecting, organizing, and then synthesizing knowledge, the planning process is not so distant from the shop drawing process. The sensory input is different: we're no longer interested in the tactile, or the resolution of structural stresses, or the watertightness of a flashing system. Rather, we are interested in populations, their interactions, their selfish decisions compounded by sheer numbers of them. We start to concern ourselves with sense of place, with those places being of the neighborhood, or community, or even the region.
And as much as it may seem rude to say it, the planning profession has been wrong just as many times as the architectural design professions.
Friday, November 4, 2011
The culture bar
We had a good moment frame erection (yes, that's the proper term) today on our garage project. This is a design-build project of ours, and my wife Robyn was out there with me today, setting HSS5x5 columns ahead of the C10 beam arrival. Everything went smoothly, except for one little glitch: our concrete frost walls were a little weak, and we had a partial crack develop around one threaded anchor. We know how to fix this, and will, but what irks me is that our concrete sub poured such bad concrete. Part of this is my fault. I let him put way too much water in the mix, and I shouldn't have. But when you are on a pour with an old curmudgeon in charge, your options are limited. I had hoped we would be OK, and in the end I have to pay for the mistake by spending an hour or so correcting the cracked area.
The lesson here is that the construction culture of a region dictates the probable quality level of work one can cajole out of subs, and in this area of Maine, good concrete work is not a part of the culture. The corollary to this is, it's difficult to come from an area of really good concrete culture to an area of really bad concrete culture without getting frustrated. Is there an opportunity here? Probably.
The lesson here is that the construction culture of a region dictates the probable quality level of work one can cajole out of subs, and in this area of Maine, good concrete work is not a part of the culture. The corollary to this is, it's difficult to come from an area of really good concrete culture to an area of really bad concrete culture without getting frustrated. Is there an opportunity here? Probably.
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