Urban Design - A Typology of Procedures and Products

ALL-OF-A-PIECE URBAN DESIGN 223 Photograph by Tata Soemardi Figure 8.15 Office workers and tourists looking down the axis towards the Arc d’Triomph from the steps of the Grande Arche. Photograph by Herti Verge Figure 8.14 La Défense: typical commercial buildings with a stabile by Alexander Calder in the background. H6628-Ch08.qxd 7/19/05 3:22 PM Page 223

THE CORE OF URBAN DESIGN WORK: PROCEDURES AND PRODUCTS 224 impressed visiting politicians such as the United Kingdom’s Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher and Shanghai’s Mayor (later premier of the People’s Republic of China), Zhu Rongji. Canary Wharf and Lujiazui are the children of La Défense and the scheme for Hanoi North a grandchild (see Marshall, 2002). If Haussmann’s Paris was the model for earlier generations of political leaders, La Défense is for today’s. Major references de Graveline, Frederique (2002). La Défense, Les Villes et Leurs Projects: Projets Urbain en France. Paris: Editions du Moniteur. EPAD (c. 2002). La Défense. EPAD. Lowe, Garrard (1996). Urban lessons from Paris. Urbanities 6 (1): 1–6. http:www.city-journal.org Torres, Felix (1987). Paris La Défense: Métropole Européenne des Affaires. Paris: Editions de Moniteur. CASE STUDY Canary Wharf, Isle of Dogs, London, England, UK: the urban design of commercial pragmatism? (Primarily 1985–98 but continuing) Canary Wharf, the centerpiece of the London Docklands redevelopment, is an offspring of La Défense. The government of Margaret Thatcher had been encouraged by that scheme’s success as a commercial venture to pursue a similar policy in London. Following the example of La Défense, Canary Wharf has been designed to cater to the commercial development of London outside its traditional commercial centre, the City. It is located on what was once a thriving port site abandoned as the result of changes in the size of ships and the nature of transportation technology, particularly the development of containerization. For all intents and purposes this brown-field site had been totally cleared except for the remnants of the docks. Today, the area comprises 18 office buildings, a retail centre, hotels, a conference and banqueting centre, five parking stations (in addition to the parking below the office buildings) and landscaped open space. It is served by a light-rail system and, belatedly in 2000, by an underground railway station on the Jubilee Line (see Chapter 10). The site extends over 86 acres (34.4 hectares) of which about 20% is landscaped open space. To get to this state has been a harrowing experience. In the 1980s, the British government under Thatcher took over control of the Docklands area from the five local borough governments responsible for it and established the London Docklands Development Corporation (LDDC). The LDDC’s task, as stated in 1981 by the then Environment Secretary, Michael Heseltine, was to ‘bring these barren areas back into more valuable use’. The Corporation encouraged a marketled approach to design but it also created an enterprise zone that offered tax incentives for firms to locate at Canary Wharf. The Docklands’ statutory regulations were H6628-Ch08.qxd 7/19/05 3:22 PM Page 224

ALL-OF-A-PIECE URBAN DESIGN 225 also suspended. Much was left up in the air. There were, for instance, no specific regulations about building developers’ contributions to the cost of the infrastructure or landscape architecture. Decisions were made on an ad hoc basis. In 1985 an American entrepreneur, G. Ware Travelstead, proposed a 35-hectare commercial development designed by Hanna–Olin for the Canary Wharf site but in the same year Skidmore, Owings and Merrill (SOM) was commissioned to produce a master plan and design guidelines for the area (see Figure 8.16). The present layout retains the essential feature of that plan. The design has a City Beautiful/Beaux-Arts axis terminated by a landmark building (see Figure 8.17). The area was divided into 26 building sites and formal landscaped gardens. The design guidelines – prepared by SOM and the LDDC – specified height limits for the buildings in order for the central towers to be landmarks, and also the requirements for the materials to be used in order to establish a sense of unity. Development proposals that conformed to the guidelines did not require LDDC approval. Anything that deviated from them did. The guidelines turned out to be quite prescriptive giving architects little design leeway. In 1987, the developers Olympia and York, earlier a key investor in Battery Park City (see later in this chapter), inherited the master plan. The company was part of the Reichmann family real estate empire in Canada. Otto Blau, a key member of the company advised against investing in Canary Wharf because of its location. Paul Reichmann, who had developed a close relationship with Margaret Thatcher, was persuaded to go ahead by her personal promises that an underground rail connection to the site would be built in order to make the site commercially viable. By the time she left office in 1990 no progress had been made on the line. The development of Canary Wharf, like that of La Défense, has not been smooth sailing. £1.3 billion was quickly invested between 1981 and 1986. After those years of speculation and development, bankruptcies in the 1990s saw the financial collapse of the development. The commercial rental market was severely depressed. No leading tenants had signed leases. This lack of demand for commercial office space had Photograph courtesy of the Olin Partnership, Philadelphia Figure 8.16 A model of the SOM proposal for Canary Wharf. H6628-Ch08.qxd 7/19/05 3:22 PM Page 225

THE CORE OF URBAN DESIGN WORK: PROCEDURES AND PRODUCTS 226 Adapted from B. Richards (2001) 3 4 1 2 1.Canary Wharf Light Rail station; 2. Jubilee Line station; 3. Westberry Circus; 4. One Canada Place Figure 8.17 The Canary Wharf plan. a major impact on Canary Wharf because it was not a mixed-use development. Olympia and York went into receivership in 1992. It owed substantial sums to 91 lending banks that had invested money largely on Paul Reichmann’s enthusiasm for the project. Three years later Canary Wharf was sold to an international consortium of which Paul Reichmann is a leading member for £700 million. In 1995, Prince al-Walid bin Abdul Aziz of Saudi Arabia helped bring Canary Wharf out of bankruptcy. The development was not helped by the Irish Republican Army’s car bomb attack of February 1996 causing £50 million worth of damages and killing two people. In 1999, the consortium became a public company with shares selling at £3.30. With the rise in demand for office space in the mid-1990s much has now been built. Building-use programme changes have enriched the development mix. It was expanded to include more restaurants, clubs, hotels, and leisure and entertainment facilities. The only residential development consists of luxury apartments at Wood Wharf but more apartments are in the offing nearby. The LDDC having completed the regeneration programme closed in 1998. A Canary Wharf Group now promotes the development. In 2002, Canary Wharf was 99.5% leased. It has a workingday population of 55,000 people and new buildings are being erected in adjacent areas. Canary Wharf is, however, still in financial trouble. In late 2003, the Canary Wharf Group had £3 billion debts. Efforts were being made to sell-off the company. The downturn in the London office market resulted in the H6628-Ch08.qxd 7/19/05 3:22 PM Page 226

ALL-OF-A-PIECE URBAN DESIGN 227Photograph by Randolph Griffith (a) (b) (c) Figure 8.18 Three views of Canary Wharf. (a) A view from the ferry wharf, 1993, (b) a view on axis towards One Canada Place, 2004 and (c) a view from the south, 2004. H6628-Ch08.qxd 7/19/05 3:22 PM Page 227

THE CORE OF URBAN DESIGN WORK: PROCEDURES AND PRODUCTS 228 company’s shares trading at £2.43 in November 2003 having dropped to as low as £2.20 earlier in the year. The financial difficulties were being compounded by tenants whose leases were coming up for renewal seeking lower rates than they were currently paying to remain at Canary Wharf (Timmons, 2003). The physical environment is, however, there for everybody to see. The architecture of the buildings has been described as ‘post-modern classical’. Marble, limestone, brick, steel and glass are the primary building materials. A unity of design is achieved through the round corner towers at the entrances to the squares, the pedimented façades facing the Thames, the window grid applied and the attic story setbacks. The buildings were designed by major global architectural practices such as Kohn Pederson Fox, I. M. Pei, Troughton McAslan and César Pelli. Pelli (Architect of the World Financial Center at Battery Park City) was hired by Olympia and York to design the key building, One Canada Square, which is one of three landmark towers that can be seen from a distance. It is a relatively plain 800-foot (245-metre) Modernist building of stainless steel and glass with a reconstituted limestone base. It is an architecturally subdued building. It is distinguished primarily by its location at the end of the axis and by its height (see Figure 8.17). The design controls have resulted in Canary Wharf being considerably less flamboyant than much commercial architecture of the 1990s. Contemporary critics saw this character as negative but it seems to be aging well in our contemporary critics’ eyes. An important urban design difference between Canary Wharf and La Défense is that the buildings have street addresses so they can be reached from the street. At La Défense the pedestrian zones are largely undifferentiated. Perhaps this detail is something that SOM brought with them from their American experience (Figure 8.18). The project has been both damned and praised. The lack of concern for the infrastructure necessary for the working population, particularly in public transportation, was severely criticized by all and sundry. The problem has now been largely addressed. A direct link to Heathrow airport and Liverpool Street station is still at the proposal level and Canary Wharf firms are lobbying hard for it. There is also a proposal for a monorail connection to the heart of the City. Canary Wharf has been criticized for its bland, cheap, hermetically sealed architecture and finishes. It has been unfairly dismissed as the ‘architectural expression of Thatcherism’. There are, however, problems. The sick building syndrome has, apparently, been common. The office monoculture that isolated the development from the social difficulties of people in its surroundings has also been the subject of negative commentary. Outsiders regard Canary Wharf as a private estate. On the positive side the master plan has been praised for the quality of its landscaping: its circuses, squares and tree-lined streets. The individuality of the buildings designed by different architects (i.e. its allof-a-piece urban design quality) has also been regarded as an achievement of merit. The overall success of the endeavour remains to be seen. It has, nevertheless, already achieved its primary goal of relieving, but not eliminating, pressure on the City. H6628-Ch08.qxd 7/19/05 3:22 PM Page 228

ALL-OF-A-PIECE URBAN DESIGN 229 Major references Edwards, Brian (1992). London Docklands: Urban Design in an Era of Deregulation. Oxford: Butterworth Architecture. Hoyle, Brian S., David Pinder and M. Sohail Husain (1994). Revitalising the Waterfront: International Dimensions of Dockland Redevelopment. Chichester: John Wiley and Sons. Meyer, Han (1999). City and Port: Urban Planning as a Cultural Venture in London, Rotterdam and New York. Utrecht: International Books. Ogden, Philip, ed. (1992). Update: London Docklands, the Challenge of Development. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Powell, Ken (2000). City Transformed: Urban Architecture at the Beginning of the 21st Century. London: Laurence & King. CASE STUDY Euralille, Lille, France: a new city heart (1987 to the present) In 1994, Rem Koolhaas and his Office of Metropolitan Architecture (OMA) prepared a master plan for the centre of Lille. Its aim was to create a new city in the heart of the old. The necessity of doing so had been the subject of considerable political negotiation. The growth of the European Union, the development of the Channel tunnel, and the desire to extend the North European line of France’s TGV (Train à Gran Vitesse) had placed Lille, a city with a declining industrial base, at the centre of the London–Brussels–Paris business triangle. The city is strategically placed having a population of over 100 million people living within a radius of 300 kilometres (200 miles). It is, however, perhaps too close to Brussels to become a major centre. The SNCF – the French national railway – in looking to develop its network north had proposed a stop in Seclin, a Lille suburb. It had calculated that the cost of running the line through central Lille would be 1.9 billion francs above the cost of running it through the outskirts of the city. In 1985 Lille’s Deputy Mayor, Pierre Mauroy (Prime Minister of France from 1981 to 1984) started to pressure the French government to have the train station in the centre of the city. In 1987 he had success. Mauroy went on to form a development management organization, Lille Metropole, to implement the project. Jean Peyelevade, a close associate, was placed in charge of raising funds. Lille Metropole with the regional office of the SNCF and the Regional Chamber of Commerce formed a public–private partnership to steer the project. The core shareholders were five major French banks. Lille Metropole invited four French and four foreign architects to submit master plan proposals for the site. The French architects were Claude Vasconi, Jean-Paul Viguier, Yves Lyon and Michel Macary while the international ones were Norman Foster, Vittorio Gregotti, O. M. Ungers and Rem Koolhaas. The last mentioned’s plan was accepted and the OMA became the master planner for Euralille. An all-of-a-piece urban design approach was followed with a number of illustrious architects working on the individual buildings in accordance with the master plan. H6628-Ch08.qxd 7/19/05 3:22 PM Page 229

THE CORE OF URBAN DESIGN WORK: PROCEDURES AND PRODUCTS 230 The prime consideration in the development of the urban design concept was its symbolic aesthetic character as a futuristic new business centre for Europe (see Figures 8.19 and 8.20). The central ideas of the scheme were those of Koolhaas as presented in his book Delirious New York and his theories of ‘bigness’, ‘commercialism’, ‘exhibitionism’ and ‘density without architecture’ (Koolhaas, 1978). Selective voids to create a complexity of geometry and monumental architecture are the essential ingredients of the scheme. Philosophically, despite Koolhaas’ observations in New York it is closer to the Rationalist tradition than the Empiricist. The scheme has five major components: 1 The TGV station used by London– Brussels trains. 2 A triangular forum outside the station (an ‘expression of the conceptual opposition of history–future’). 3 Le Corbusier Street (the main traffic thoroughfare linking station, business centre, the edges of Sant-Maurice and Le Corbusier Square where old and new cities meet). 4 The park. 5 The Convention and Exhibition Centre. The whole is framed by the edges of the neighbourhood of Sant-Maurice. The Convention and Exhibition Centre is a 300-metre (1000-foot) long multi-functional structure designed to link the fragmented parts of the scheme. The TGV line runs on the surface through the city opening it up to view and views from it. Implementation of the project took place over a decade in two phases. Phase One (1991–5) involved the acquisition of land and the building of the TGV line and station Source: Koolhaas (1998); courtesy of the Office for Metropolitan Architecture Figure 8.19 Rem Koolhaas’ concept for Euralille. Drawing by Thanong Poonteerakul used with permission of the Office for Metropolitan Architecture Figure 8.20 Massing drawing of the development. H6628-Ch08.qxd 7/19/05 3:22 PM Page 230

ALL-OF-A-PIECE URBAN DESIGN 231 Photograph by Tata Soemardi (a) Figure 8.21 Two images of Euralille. (a) The link between the old station and the shopping centre and (b) The Credít Lyonnais tower. Photograph by Tata Soemardi (b) H6628-Ch08.qxd 7/19/05 3:22 PM Page 231

THE CORE OF URBAN DESIGN WORK: PROCEDURES AND PRODUCTS 232 (designed by Jean-Marie Duthilleul). The land available for development had been owned by the French military and had been a zone non-aedificandi – not available for development. The relevant legislation needed to be changed and had already been during the premiership of Mauroy. Progress on the implementation of the Koolhaas proposal was, however, hampered by the real estate crisis of Europe that also affected La Défense and Canary Wharf. A number of key investors abandoned the project leading to the dropping of some elements of the scheme (e.g. the four-star hotel). Phase Two (1995–2000) saw some amendments to the master plan but brought the project to semi-completion. The key buildings were an office tower for Credít Lyonnais (designed by Christian de Portzamparc and known locally as ‘the boot’; see Figure 8.21b), the World Trade Centre (Claude Vasconi, Architect), a shopping and office centre (by Jean Nouvel), and Congress Centre and Rock Concert Hall designed by Rem Koolhaas himself. Seventy per cent of the building rights for the town centre had been sold by 2002 and Euralille2, a more suburban type mixed-use development is on the drawing boards. The urban design is very much a personal statement of Rem Koolhaas. It has been attacked and defended largely on those grounds – as a work of art – in which the individual buildings are objects to be admired as signature statements. The objective has been to attain a high level of prestige for the development. It has been an extraordinarily expensive endeavour that demonstrates the interconnections amongst politics, ambitions for one’s own city, urban design and architectural ideologies. It is Pierre Mauroy’s dream and it was his arm-twisting that enabled Euralille to go ahead. The scheme also shows the importance of grand architectural ideas as a catalyst for business development. Le Corbusier would have been proud of the audacity of the project. Major references Goldberger, Paul (2000). The Architecture of Rem Koolhaas. Los Angeles: Jensen and Walker. Koolhaas, Rem (1998). 1987–1998, OMA Rem Koolhaas. Madrid: El Croquis Editorial. Spaans, Marjolein (2004). The implementation of urban regeneration projects in Europe: global ambitions, local matters. Journal of Urban Design 9 (3): 335–49. CASE STUDY Lujiazui, Pudong, Shanghai, People’s Republic of China: a global business precinct (1990
) The Lujiazui (also sometimes spelt Lu Jia Zui) Finance and Trade Zone in Pudong, Shanghai is not only a good example of an all-of-a-piece urban design with highly laissez-faire overtones, but also a good example of the urban design and architectural values being displayed in China and many other Asian countries today. (In China similar efforts can be seen the Fu-tian new district in Shenzhen and the River North area of H6628-Ch08.qxd 7/19/05 3:22 PM Page 232

ALL-OF-A-PIECE URBAN DESIGN 233 Chongqing.) Lujiazui is the largest single-construction site in the world. Nearly 160 foreign banking institutions are already located there. By 2005, 12 million square metres of office space will have been built. As yet, however, no significant international organization has set up its headquarters in the precinct. Pudong was partially a green-field site of agricultural land but it also contained shipbuilding works, petrochemical plants and other industries along the river. The land is publicly owned. In April 1990, the government of the People’s Republic of China announced its plan to develop the Pudong New Area as part of its economic reform effort to attract foreign investment. The goal of the development is to turn Shanghai into a global commercial centre by creating a precinct of prestigious modern buildings and manicured open spaces with a coordinated infrastructure and communications network. One hundred and eighty-two other Chinese cities are reputedly hoping to attain the same end but only the major ones are serious contenders. Shanghai is much better placed than its competitors to achieve its goals. The overall plan of Pudong contains four special development zones: the Lujiazui Finance and Trade Zone, the Jinqiao ExportProcessing Zone, the Waigaoqiao Free Trade Zone and the Zhangjiang High-Tech Park. The first of these is the focus of attention here. Suffice to say that Jinqiao is to be an industrial area of 9.6 square kilometres (5.8 square miles) located in the centre of Pudong, the Waigaoqiao Zone, China’s first free-trade precinct, is to be located on the estuary of the Yangtze River, and the Zhangjiang High-Tech Park is to emphasize science and education. The last mentioned is to be 17 square kilometres in size and located in the eastern part of the Pudong New Area. It is planned to be the location of computer software companies and precision medical apparatus manufacturing industries. The Lujiazui Finance and Trade Zone is planned to be the new commercial heart of the whole city, and an extension of the Bund – the financial core of Shanghai that lies across the Huangpu River from Lujiazui. Lujiazui covers an area of 6.8 square kilometres (4 square miles). The zone is planned to house financial, information and real estate consultancy organizations. It is also part of the plan to link Pudong with Puxi, the city precinct west of the river that is undergoing considerable urban renewal. The basic infrastructure of Lujiazui has already been built and the new buildings are being plugged into it with great rapidity. Publicly owned, the land is leased for 99 years at 50% of the predicted value it would have when developed. The full-scaled planning effort for Lujiazui began in 1992 when the Shanghai government under the leadership of Mayor Zhu Rongji, set up the Senior Consultants Committee (SCC) to initiate development. The committee was comprised of local officials and professionals, and also four foreign design teams. The international teams were from France (Dominique Perrault, designer of the glazed towers of the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris, 1992–6), the United Kingdom (Sir Richard Rogers, known for his high-tech architecture), Italy (Massimiliano Fuksas, whose schemes for high-rise buildings were attracting attention) and Japan (Toyo Ito, whose ITM building in Matsuyama (1993) exploits the characteristics of many varieties of glass). The selection of these architects illustrates the type of architectural imagery sought for the district. The hope was that through the act of design creative future possibilities would emerge. The Shanghai Urban Planning and Design Institute submitted a fifth scheme (see Figure 8.22c). H6628-Ch08.qxd 7/19/05 3:22 PM Page 233

THE CORE OF URBAN DESIGN WORK: PROCEDURES AND PRODUCTS 234 Drawing adapted from various sources by Thanong Poonteerakul (a) (b) (c) Drawing adapted from various sources by Thanong Poonteerakul Drawing adapted from various sources by Thanong Poonteerakul Figure 8.22 Three of the five proposals for Lujiazui. (a) Richard Rogers’ scheme, (b) Dominique Perrault’s scheme and (c) the Shanghai Urban Planning and Design Institute’s scheme. H6628-Ch08.qxd 7/19/05 3:22 PM Page 234

ALL-OF-A-PIECE URBAN DESIGN 235 The five schemes were presented to the SCC as a set of potential ideas for the site. After deliberating on the schemes the SCC proposed: 1 a major development of the transportation infrastructure with new tunnels across the river and an underground rail system; 2 the development of parkland along the river; 3 that super-high landmark buildings should be located in the core area with lower buildings near the river; 4 that the development of infrastructure should be phased so that any proposed developments could go ahead without stretching financial resources or causing a delay. In 1994, the municipal government of Shanghai and a new corporation, the Lujiazui Finance and Trade Zone Development Company, invited the Shanghai Urban Planning and Design Institute to do the urban design plan for the area by adapting the five schemes presented to the SCC. The result was a variation of the Institute’s own model. The plan divided the area into three sub-areas, proposed an underground pedestrian network, a park along the river and a set of foreground buildings. The desire was also to create a mix of uses so that Lujiazui would not be simply a 9.00 a.m. to 5.00 p.m. office zone (Figure 8.23). One of these sub-areas was proposed to be a district of high-rise buildings – the higher the better – with a central park. Another was proposed to be a commercial district, located on the west side of a central avenue, and the third was proposed to be a waterfront precinct to contain cultural and entertainment facilities, gift shops and the pre-existing Collection of the author Figure 8.23 The master plan for Lujiazui prepared by the Shanghai Urban Planning and Design Institute. H6628-Ch08.qxd 7/19/05 3:22 PM Page 235

THE CORE OF URBAN DESIGN WORK: PROCEDURES AND PRODUCTS 236 Oriental (or Eastern) Pearl Television Tower. An underground pedestrian network would unite these three parts of Lujiazui. A central avenue would link the waterfront and the central park. The major transportation interchange would also be located on the central avenue. Today the road network consists of two major components: the central avenue and a ring road. The central avenue is the powerful coordinating element of Lujiazui. It is a twoway arterial boulevard, consisting of eight lanes and includes a road divider planted with grass and trees, and with a continuous water feature along it. Not only is the avenue to be the major road transportation route but also a visual corridor linking the three sub-districts of Lujiazui. It has gradeseparated interchanges connecting it to the roads that serve the interiors of the sub-districts. The ring road has six lanes and bounds the central area of Lujiazui (Figure 8.24). The most visible landmark of Lujiazui is the Oriental Pearl Tower, an over 400-metre (1260-foot) high spire. Symbolizing the resurrection of Shanghai as a leading player in world trade, the tower is comprised of 11 red spheres – two large ones and nine smaller ones of up to 50 metres in diameter supported on 9-metre diameter columns. The Shanghai World Financial Center (Shi Mao) was planned by Kohn Pederson Fox to be 488 metres in height topping the Petronas Towers in Kuala Lumpur. Construction on the building was started in 1997 but Asia’s economic crisis halted work on it. Concerns about terrorist activity not withstanding, the Mori Building Company of Tokyo has (at Collection of the author Figure 8.24 Lujiazui: transportation links. H6628-Ch08.qxd 7/19/05 3:22 PM Page 236

ALL-OF-A-PIECE URBAN DESIGN 237 the time of writing) changed the planned height to make it even taller in order to top the 508-metre Taipei Financial Centre being built in Taiwan. The design at present shows it to be a metallic, wedge-shaped tower with a hole at the top. It will overshadow its neighbour, the 88-storey, 420- metre tall Jin Mao Tower (1993–9) that sits on a six-storey podium. Designed by the Chicago office of SOM in a fusion of Art Deco and a touch of traditional Chinese types, the Jin Mao Tower is the third tallest building in the world. It was unknown at the time of writing whether the World Financial Center design will change again as the result of the announcement by Emaar Properties that its Burj Dubai on a 20-acre (9-hectare) site was designed to an unspecified but taller height. The design guidelines for the buildings of Lujiazui consist of height controls and a series of more detailed site-by-site requirements. In the core area, the landmark tri-towers were stipulated to be a minimum of 360, 380 and 400 metres in height. The area around them is to be a linear high-rise zone with buildings stepping down from 220 metres in height to 160 metres on the waterfront. In this linear zone the design guidelines stipulate building setbacks, building envelopes, the height of podiums, materials and the height of colonnades (Figures 8.25 and 8.26). The profile sought is shown in Figure 8.27. The expenditure on the first step of the Pudong development was estimated to be about $US10 billion obtained from the central government in Beijing, the Shanghai Municipal government, the Asian Development Bank and the World Bank. The total cost for the whole development spread over 30 years will probably be in the region of $US80 billion. Half of this sum is expected to Collection of the author Figure 8.25 Central area design guidelines.© EDAW, Ltd. Figure 8.26 An artist’s impression of Century Avenue, Lujiazui. H6628-Ch08.qxd 7/19/05 3:22 PM Page 237

THE CORE OF URBAN DESIGN WORK: PROCEDURES AND PRODUCTS 238 Drawing by Zhe Xian Figure 8.27 The proposed skyline, Lujiazui. come from foreign investment. To attain this goal a number of incentives are being offered to investors: 1 a reduced (15%) income tax rate; 2 exemption from duties on exportoriented imports; 3 tax relief for construction and infrastructure projects; 4 land leases for 50 or 70 years. The whole process of development has been organized into a number of phases. The first phase was the development of the Figure 8.28 Lujiazui as seen from The Bund in 2004 (for another view see page 358). H6628-Ch08.qxd 7/19/05 3:22 PM Page 238

ALL-OF-A-PIECE URBAN DESIGN 239 road links, telecommunications facilities and energy systems. This investment allowed building construction to begin. The second phase involved the development of the regional infrastructure to support the development of Shanghai as well as, more specifically, the Pudong area: airports, telecommunications centres, the subway system extension, the external ring road, the international conference centre, etc. These two stages provided the essential infrastructure for further development (Figures 8.28 and 8.29). The sites have been leased to or are being leased to different property developers by the development company. What is emerging is a spacious, ‘glitzy’ area of high-rise buildings designed by internationally renowned architects. It presents a panoramic skyline outrivaling Manhattan for architecture grandeur and variety of forms (see Figure 8.28). The open spaces give an image of luxuriousness but they are also large and unfriendly to pedestrians. The width of the central avenue (now called Century Avenue) at 100 metres provides a strong visual link between Figure 8.29 The architecture of Lujiazui from Century Avenue, 2004. H6628-Ch08.qxd 7/19/05 3:22 PM Page 239

THE CORE OF URBAN DESIGN WORK: PROCEDURES AND PRODUCTS 240 the river and the core of Lujiazui, but it is also a substantial divider between the area’s components. Five kilometres long, it serves local vehicular traffic and pedestrians below the ground and it has a new subway line that provides public transport. Whatever the quality is perceived to be, Lujiazui sets a precedent for China, both in process and product, as a symbol of modernity. In 1999, 70% of the office space in Pudong was estimated to be vacant because of the gross over-supply but by 2004 this figure had reputedly dropped to 15%. The project is not simply market-driven but rather driven by the aspirations of a people as represented by their government officials. Its architecture has been called ‘non-judgemental kitsch’ in which diversity is exciting, everything is possible and everything is acceptable. It is a hybrid architecture reflecting concepts of individualism, modernity and tradition. Lujiazui is evolving into a piece-by-piece design of separate buildings each striving to be a foreground building barely within the constraints imposed by the design guidelines. Major references Balfour, Alan and Zheng Shiling (2002). World Cities: Shanghai. Chichester: Wiley-Academic. Lim, William S. W. (2004). Have You Been Shanghaied? Culture and Urbanism in Glocalized Shanghai. Singapore: Asian Urban Lab. Marshall, Richard (2003). Emerging Urbanity: Global Projects in the Asia Pacific Rim. London: Spon Press. Olds, Kris (1997). Globalizing Shanghai: the ‘Global Intelligence Corps’ and the building of Pudong. Cities 14 (2): 109–123. Wang, An-de, ed. (2000). Shanghai Lujiazui Central Area Urban Design. Shanghai: Architecture and Engineering Press. CASE STUDY Battery Park City, New York, NY, USA: a ‘new town in-town’ (1962 to 2002, but continuing) Whether or not one cares for the design of Battery Park City, it is arguably the exemplar of an all-of-a-piece urban precinct design in the United States. Chronologically, it predates Canary Wharf, Euralille and Lujiazui but it is very different. It was not seen as a new business district but as an adjunct to an existing one. Now almost completed (and repaired after the events of 11 September 2001 when it was much damaged; see page 379 for a 2004 view) Battery Park City’s development history is lengthy. The undertaking was embroiled in political infighting (particularly between politicians and bureaucrats of the State and the City of New York) and battered by the fluctuations in New York City’s economy and the corresponding demand for property development. Political and civic leaders and architectural critics (particularly Ada Louise Huxtable of the New York Times) wielded considerable influence on the proposals for the scheme. What we see today on the site is a product of the 1979 master plan, but the process of planning for Battery Park City began in the early 1960s. Like many other river ports throughout the world, the finger wharfs on the Hudson River became obsolete in the 1960s. In Lower H6628-Ch08.qxd 7/19/05 3:22 PM Page 240

ALL-OF-A-PIECE URBAN DESIGN 241 Courtesy of the Olin Partnership, Philadelphia Figure 8.30 The site in 1977 with the World Trade Center towers in the left background. Manhattan 20 piers that had once busily handled produce had fallen into disuse and became decayed. They were owned by the city and run by its Department of Marine and Aviation. The river could legally be landfilled to pierhead-line and the 37-hectare (92-acre) site so created used for development (see Figure 8.30). The Department wanted to build a new shipping terminal with an industrial esplanade along the edge, with housing blocks behind (see Figure 8.31). These blocks were proposed to be located, in the Modernist manner, as objects in space. This plan, presented in 1962, was poorly received by the press, the public and by government officials. A series of alternative proposals followed. The governor of the state, Nelson Rockefeller, wished the development to be a comprehensive community built over a base of light industry. He asked Wallace K. Harrison of Harrison and Abromowitz, who had worked for him before, to prepare a plan. In 1966, the firm produced a poorly received orthodox Bauhaus/Le Corbusian scheme (see Figure 8.32). Like the 1962 plan no implementation procedure was designed along with the urban design. Implicit in both proposals was that they were total urban designs to be implemented by a single developer. Proposed funding procedures were never worked out. The City responded to the State’s plan with one of its own. Mayor John Lindsay hired the firm of Concklin and Rossant to do the job. As a compromise the firm worked with Harrison and Abromowitz (and with Philip Johnson as a broker of ideas), to propose another scheme. It was presented in 1969. The conflict between the city and the state over control of the project was finally H6628-Ch08.qxd 7/19/05 3:22 PM Page 241

THE CORE OF URBAN DESIGN WORK: PROCEDURES AND PRODUCTS 242 Source: Gordon (1997) Figure 8.31 The New York City Department of Marine and Aviation proposal, 1963. (a) Source: Gordon (1997) (b) Collection of the author Figure 8.32 The Harrison and Abromowitz plan (Governor Rockefeller’s proposal). (a) The plan and (b) massing diagram. H6628-Ch08.qxd 7/19/05 3:22 PM Page 242

ALL-OF-A-PIECE URBAN DESIGN 243 resolved with the formation of the Battery Park City Authority (BPCA) in 1968. The authority was given considerable freedom of action. It has had a chequered career but has seen the project through to completion. The 1969 proposal was well received by press and public as appropriate for Manhattan. It was radically different to its predecessors consisting of a seven storey, partly enclosed, partly open interior-mall containing a variety of urban functions and amenities – shops, restaurants schools, parks, recreation facilities, access from transit lines and utilities (see Figure 8.33). It ran the length of the Battery Park City site. The scheme also proposed the decking over of the West Side Highway to link the site directly with the rest of Lower Manhattan. The City’s planning department translated the scheme into a voluminous zoning code. The problem was money. Who would finance the project? The 1973 recession and the close-to bankruptcy conditions of the BPCA and of Source: Gordon (1997) Source: Gordon (1997) (a) (b) (c) Source: Gordon (1997) Figure 8.33 Battery Park City: the City/State plan of 1969. (a) General view along the Hudson River, (b) internal view of the proposed spine and (c) cross-section through the spine. H6628-Ch08.qxd 7/19/05 3:22 PM Page 243

THE CORE OF URBAN DESIGN WORK: PROCEDURES AND PRODUCTS 244 the City of New York did not encourage investment in such a mammoth project. Subsequent plans for the precinct were thus more down to earth. A 1975 proposal was pragmatically related to how developers finance their projects. It divided the whole site into a number of residential clusters or pods that could be developed independently. The pods turned in on themselves to create isolated, controllable middle-class worlds. The pods were to be linked by elevated walkways with traffic moving underneath, but the idea was abandoned as too costly. It was a sort of plug-in urban design although who would finance the walkways was not clear. Nevertheless, one of the pods, Gateway Plaza, was built. It took a number of years to complete being finished in 1982. By then the BPCA had abandoned the pod plan and another master plan was in place. Until 1979, the land was leased to the BPCA. The parlous financial state of the 1970s led to New York State’s Urban Development Corporation stepping in and the title was transferred to the BPCA. Having the land title enabled the authority to make decisions rapidly. One of the first decisions it made was to adopt a conceptual plan radical in its simplicity (see Figure 8.34a). The conceptual design and master plan were the work of Alexander Cooper and Stanton Eckstut. Produced in 1979, the scheme’s intellectual foundation was a precursor to the ideas of the New Urbanist movement in urban design. This new plan was developed under considerable time and political pressure. Richard Kahan, Director of the BPCA at that time, faced considerable constraints. Payment on a $200 million bond issue had to be made in 90 days and a plan requiring the approval of the New York State legislature had to be made within that time. It also had to be something that property developers could understand. The parcelization of the overall scheme had to be fairly standard. The plan proposed that up to 14,000 housing units be built on the site, that commercial facilities be incorporated as an integral part of the scheme, and that 6 million square feet (557,000 square metres) of office space be located opposite the World Trade Center. Thirty per cent of the site would be squares and parks and an esplanade would run along the Hudson. The streets consumed another 16% of the site space. The new plan was based on a number of objectives. Battery Park City should: 1 be an integral part of Lower Manhattan so the street pattern of Manhattan ought to continue through the site; 2 have circulation at ground level; 3 have its aesthetic qualities based on New York’s architectural heritage; 4 have the commercial complex as its foreground buildings, with the other buildings as background; 5 have its uses and development controls flexible enough to respond to changes in the marketplace. The northern end of the site was to be a park, now named for Governor Rockefeller. Public art would terminate the vistas from the centre of the island on each street in order to provide elements of interest and act as symbols of ‘class’ – high status. The master plan specified the sites for buildings and the design controls to be applied to each. The building design guidelines were based on the buildings in wellloved parts of New York such as Gramercy Park and Morningside Heights. The guidelines stipulated the nature of materials, the H6628-Ch08.qxd 7/19/05 3:22 PM Page 244

ALL-OF-A-PIECE URBAN DESIGN 245 World Financial Center Rector Place South cove West side highway Collection of the author (b) (e) (f) (a) (d) Drawing adapted from various sources by Chao Wong (c) Photograph by Susannah Lang Figure 8.34 Battery Park City: the 1979 master plan as developed. (a) The plan, (b) the view from across the Hudson in 1993, (c) the esplanade in 2003, (d) the World Financial Center layout in context, (e) a view towards the Winter Garden and (f) the Winter Garden in 1993. H6628-Ch08.qxd 7/19/05 3:22 PM Page 245

THE CORE OF URBAN DESIGN WORK: PROCEDURES AND PRODUCTS 246 (a) Source: Barnett (1987) (b) (c) Source: Barnett (1987) Figure 8.35 Rector place, Battery Park City. (a) The design guidelines, (b) rector place as built and (c) the park. location of stringcourses, that buildings should have articulated bases and cornices and specific window-to-solid-wall ratios. Each building was designed individually as can be seen in Rector Place (see Figure 8.35). The commercial space was taken up by the World Financial Center and Winter Garden (1980–3) that were designed by César Pelli as foreground elements. The esplanade was designed by Hanna–Olin a landscape architectural firm. Its hierarchy of levels has become a model for subsequent waterfront walkways. The BPCA built the public spaces to high standards to ensure a good financial return for the sites. Bonds matching long-term financing with capital funding were used to finance the infrastructure. The implementation process was considerably less complex than that proposed for the 1969 megastructure proposal (see H6628-Ch08.qxd 7/19/05 3:22 PM Page 246

ALL-OF-A-PIECE URBAN DESIGN 247 Table 8.1). The first phase of constructing the project involved the building of the World Financial Center with Olympia and York as developer. It was a financial success at least partially due to government commitments being fulfilled – an expectation that Paul Reichmann carried with him to London and the development of Canary Table 8.1 Plan implementation comparison 1969 Master Development Plan 1979 Master Plan Physical Design Concept Megastructure Extension of Manhattan Grid Public Circulation Spine Streets 7 Pods 36 Blocks Open-Space Decks Public Parks Planning Controls City Ownership BPCA Ownership Master Lease City Repurchase Option Master Development Plan Master Plan Special District Zoning Urban Design Guidelines Site Improvement Cost Estimates $1973 $1979* $1979 Utilities 14.1 25.2 Utilities 8.5 Civic Facilities 41.1 73.6 Civic Facilities 3.0 Streets, Spine 58.3 104.4 Streets 13.7 Foundations 19.2 34.4 Foundations N/A Architecture and Engineering 26.0 46.5 Architecture and Engineering Inclusive Contingency 15.8 28.3 Contingency Inclusive Total ($ million) $174.5 $312.4 Total ($ million) $53.2 Implementation process 1 BPCA designs service spine 1 BPCA prepares design guidelines 2 PARB reviews spine design 2 BPCA designs streets and parks 3 City Plan Commission Amendments 3 BPCA selects developer(s) 4 Board of Estimate Amendments 4 Developer designs buildings 5 BPCA starts spine construction 5 BPCA reviews designs 6 BPCA selects pod developer 6 BPCA builds streets and parks 7 Developer designs pod platform 7 Developer builds building 8 BPCA reviews pod/spine connect 9 Developer designs towers 10 BPCA approves tower design 11 PARB reviews pod design 12 CPC amends MDP (if required) 13 B of E amends MDP (if required) 14 Developer builds pod platform 15 Developer builds first building Source: Gordon (1997); courtesy of David Gordon *1973 Costs inflated to $1979 using CPI (1973
128.4; 1979
230.1). H6628-Ch08.qxd 7/19/05 3:22 PM Page 247

THE CORE OF URBAN DESIGN WORK: PROCEDURES AND PRODUCTS 248 Wharf. Then the tactic was to build towards the north and south of the site (i.e. from the centre out). The first residential pod, Gateway Plaza, remains a relic of the previous plan. The project as it has emerged, is very much part of New York and not nearly so much part of the global architectural scene as are La Défense and Lujiazui. Battery Park City has ended up being an all-of-a-piece urban design almost as rigidly controlled as Seaside but following very different design guidelines. It shows what can be accomplished, particularly in times of high demand for development, through carefully conceived urban design rather than laissez-faire planning. At the same time critics feel that the architecture’s focus on the appearance of New York – on its visual aesthetic character – has led to a lack of the behaviour settings that characterize New York. It is also not the type of architecture sought by the global economy. Yet, by all reports, it is well liked as a place to work by office workers and a place to live by its 25,000 residents. It is estimated to have cost $US4 billion to create. Major references Alexander Cooper Associates (1979). Battery Park City: Draft Summary Report and 1979 Master Plan. New York: The authors. http://www.batteryparkcity. org/guidelines.htm Barnett, Jonathan (1987). In the public interest: design guidelines. Architectural Record 175 (8): 114–25. Gordon, David A. (1997). Battery Park City: Politics and Planning on the New York Waterfront. London: Routledge, Gordon & Breach. Russell, Francis P. (1994). Battery Park City: an American dream of urbanism. In Brenda Case Scheer and Wolfgang Preiser, eds. Design Review: Challenging Urban Aesthetic Control. New York: Chapman and Hall, 197–209. CASE STUDY Paternoster Square, London, England, UK: a second go at an important urban precinct (1956–2003) Paternoster Square is the only case study in this book where one new urban design project was demolished and replaced by another. The precinct’s history highlights: (1) the necessity to take market conditions into consideration in designing complexes of buildings, (2) the danger of embracing a currently fashionable design paradigm that is inappropriate for dealing with the task at hand and (3) the impact of changing clients on the urban designing process. In addition, designing a complex adjacent to a major historical landmark raises a host of deeply felt emotional concerns for a large dispersed community. Sixteen years after the devastation of the area north of St Paul’s Cathedral in the City of London by German bombing in 1942 during The Blitz, Sir William Holford prepared a proposal for the redevelopment of the precinct. The site stretches from St Paul’s Cathedral to Newgate Street. Holford’s scheme was a total urban design, Modernist in its layout and architecture. It was built between 1961 and 1967. The client was the Central Electricity Generating Board (CEGB) H6628-Ch08.qxd 7/19/05 3:22 PM Page 248

ALL-OF-A-PIECE URBAN DESIGN 249 which had obtained a long-term lease of the site from the Church Commissioners of the Church of England. The Holford scheme consisted of narrow rectangular, slab, commercial buildings set within an orthogonal site geometry (see Figure 8.36). Their height was restricted by their closeness to St Paul’s – a control imposed by the Church Commissioners and one that still exists. They were designed to provide good light to office interiors. The buildings in day-to-day operation proved to be less than functional. Their shape did not meet the deep-plan requirements for commercial space at the time. Many critics and lay-people thought the development was lifeless and boring – a grim pedestrianized piazza. It was considered to reflect the functional theories of the Bauhaus Rationalist design ideology not British values. Much was shoddily built. During the 1980s the precinct became increasingly abandoned and the site came up for redevelopment. In 1986, the site ownership (except for Sudbury House) passed from CEGB to a consortium consisting of Stockly, British Land, Unilever and Barclays Bank on a 250- year lease from the church. A year later the Mountleigh Group acquired Stockly (and its portion of control over the site) and then sold it on to Cisneros of Venezuela. The transactions reflected the buoyancy of the London property market at that time. The search for a design more appropriate for the site than that of Holford began in earnest. Ownership of the lease subsequently changed hands ‘promiscuously’ several times over the next 10 years (1995–2004). Greycoat and Park Tower acquired the property to be later replaced by Mitsubishi Estates (MEC). An architectural competition organized by Stuart Lipton, a developer, on behalf of the Mountleigh Group was held in 1986. The figure ground studies of the proposals of the seven shortlisted architects are shown in Figure 8.37. Arup Associates was selected to proceed. Their design was a complicated neoRationalist one proposing the use of abstract historical referents in the buildings that formed it. The buildings were also designed to meet the commercial need of the marketplace for deep, highly serviced space. The proposal was criticized by Prince Charles whose views were widely supported by the lay-public. He argued for a more classical approach to design. John Simpson completed another (a) (b) Drawing by Munir Vahanvati Collection of the author Figure 8.36 The Paternoster development: Lord Holford’s design, 1967. (a) The figure–ground relationship and (b) a bird’s eye view. H6628-Ch08.qxd 7/19/05 3:22 PM Page 249

THE CORE OF URBAN DESIGN WORK: PROCEDURES AND PRODUCTS 250 Drawings adapted from various sources by Munir Vahanvati Figure 8.37 Figure–ground plans of the 1986 shortlisted proposals in comparison to Holford’s scheme. H6628-Ch08.qxd 7/19/05 3:22 PM Page 250

ALL-OF-A-PIECE URBAN DESIGN 251 scheme proposed by Prince Charles’ advisors Dan Cruickshank and Leon Krier. The Simpson scheme was also a competition winner. In this case the sponsor of the competition was a newspaper, The Evening Standard. Simpson tried to combine ‘functional’ requirements in a complex consisting of an underground shopping mall and office buildings with classical façades. It was part of the Classical tradition in English architecture. His design went through several changes. A joint John Simpson/Terry Farrell scheme proposed in conjunction with a number of renowned classical architects (e.g. Allan Greenberg, Hammond, Beeby and Babka, and Quinlan Terry) was submitted unsuccessfully for planning approval. The recession of 1993 appears to have killed the possibility of implementing it. While it initially received Prince Charles’ approval, the scheme was widely dismissed by critics as a ‘pastiche’. While the proposed implementation process is unclear, it was presented as a single comprehensive product (Figure 8.38). In 1995, MEC bought out its partners and appointed William Whitfield as master planner for the site. His scheme was adopted in 1996; demolition of the Holford project proceeded over the next 3 years and the new project was completed in October 2003. The scheme is an all-of-a-piece urban design and Neo-Traditional in character. The master plan strove to achieve a visual integration with the architecture of St Paul’s by picking up on the stone and brick of Christopher Wren’s design for the Chapter House of the Cathedral that now forms part of the scheme. Today the precinct contains 1 million square feet (110,000 square metres) of offices and shops (but no housing) in a number of independent buildings. The London Stock Exchange, Goldman Sachs International and CB Richard Ellis are major tenants. The site plan consists of a large central square and pedestrian ways that link it to St Paul’s, to the underground station and to Newgate Street. In the centre of the square is a 23 metre-high column topped by a gold-leafed copper finial that is floodlit at night. A statue of a man driving sheep – the area was once a livestock market – stands at one entrance to the square (Figure 8.39). Five different architects designed the buildings following specific guidelines that have ensured a unified yet diverse design. The firms involved were MacCormac, Jamieson Prichard (Warwick Court), Eric Parry Architects/Sheppard Robson (10 Paternoster Square), Allies & Morrison (St Martin’s Court), and Whitfield Partners with Sidell Gibson and Sheppard Robson (the buildings along St Paul’s Churchyard). The results have been both praised and criticized. The site design has been praised for its plaza and links to its surroundings but the architecture has been criticized as banal (Glancey, 2003). The fundamental controversy remains. Is it better for a new complex to reflect its surroundings or be in contrast with them when it is adjacent to a major, psychologically important building such as St Paul’s? Many people now think that the position of contrast taken by Holford was the correct position. It is a pity that his design was so bleak and an eyesore to so many. Major references Buchanan, Peter (1989). Paternoster pressure. Architectural Review 185 (1107): 76–80. Freiman, Ziva (1990), Controversy: Paternoster Square. Progressive Architecture 71 (3): 115–16. H6628-Ch08.qxd 7/19/05 3:22 PM Page 251

THE CORE OF URBAN DESIGN WORK: PROCEDURES AND PRODUCTS 252 Drawing adapted from various sources by Munir Vahanvati (a) Collection of the author (b) Figure 8.38 The Hammond, Beeby & Babke, Porphyrios Associates and John Simpson & Partners design. (a) The Figure–ground plan and (b) the image sought. Glancey, Jonathan (2003). It’s a jumble out there. The Guardian (3 November). http://www.guardian. co.uk/arts/critic/feature/0,1169.1076585.html Papadakis, Andreas C., ed. (1992). Paternoster Square and the Classical Tradition. London: Academy Editions. Paternoster Square: http://www.paternosterlondon. co.uk Weston, Richard (2001). The end of the affair. RIBA Journal 108 (4): 13–16. H6628-Ch08.qxd 7/19/05 3:22 PM Page 252

ALL-OF-A-PIECE URBAN DESIGN 253 Drawing adapted from various sources by Munir Vahanvati (a) (b) Figure 8.39 Paternoster Square: the Whitfield design. (a) The plan and (b) the square with Warwick Court in the background and 10 Paternoster Square on the right. H6628-Ch08.qxd 7/19/05 3:23 PM Page 253

THE CORE OF URBAN DESIGN WORK: PROCEDURES AND PRODUCTS 254 CASE STUDY Pariser Platz, Berlin, Germany: an historic square revived (1992 to the present) After the reunification of Berlin in 1989, and the dismantling of the wall that ran through it dividing East and West Berlin, Pariser Platz became available for reconstruction. It had been lying empty since being destroyed in World War II. During this period it lay in the East Berlin, or Russian sector, of the city that served as the capital of the Deutsche Demokratische Republik (GDR). The square is bounded on one side by the Brandenberg Gate which terminates the vista down Unten den Linden the ceremonial axis of Berlin. Before World War II the then great powers of the world, the United States, Great Britain, France and Austria had established their embassies on the square or in its vicinity. In addition, the Adlon Hotel and several prestigious apartment and commercial buildings enclosed it (see Figure 8.40). The Square had originally been constructed in 1734 to the plans of the chief royal architect, Philip Gerlach. The construction of the present Brandenburg Gate (1789, designed by Carl Gotthard Langhans and inspired by the Propylæa in Athens) established the importance of Pariser Platz. The gate lies on the western side of the square and was part of the customs wall that surrounded the city in the eighteenth century. In 1880 Herman Mächtig, the city garden director added two ornamental parterres with fountains dividing the square into symmetrical halves. After the reunification of Berlin there was a universal desire to re-establish the importance of the square to that of its glory days of the period between 1871 and 1933. The question was, ‘How?’ There was no consensus. Planning responsibilities for the site were divided. The [Berlin] Senate Department of Urban Development is responsible for overall urban design, zoning controls and landscape design concerns in Berlin but the individual city districts are responsible for local zoning, local development and landscape plans. The latter controls the development and building application process. The form that the restoration of Pariser Platz should take was very much a subject of debate amongst politicians, design professionals and the general public. Some people wanted the square resurrected as it once was; others wanted a laissez-faire collage of ‘up-to-date’ buildings. In addition, the site consists of 11 parcels of land and thus 11 individual owners whose possession dated to the time before the GDR had expropriated the land (see Figure 8.41). They had to be placated. The outline of the square had been totally obliterated during the war. Archaeological research undertaken in 1992 revealed the square’s outline and the locations of the fountains. The open area of the plaza was restored later in the same year. The redesigned plaza thus retains the square’s historical outline and includes the foundations of the old water basins and remnants of the fountains. Hans Stimmann who believed that the buildings facing the square should ‘combine conservative and modern elements’ established the design goal. A number of regulations and controls guarded the design of the buildings enclosing the square. One of the regulations of the Berlin Municipal Government is that H6628-Ch08.qxd 7/19/05 3:23 PM Page 254

ALL-OF-A-PIECE URBAN DESIGN 255 Drawing adapted from Scheer et al. (2000) by Thanong Poonteerakul Figure 8.40 Pariser Platz as it appeared before World War II. Collection of the author Figure 8.41 The Pariser Platz development sites. 20% of any new development in the city must be devoted to housing. The purpose is to have some life in every precinct all day and to have streets and open spaces under natural surveillance (i.e. to ‘have eyes on the street’). The aesthetic goal for Pariser Platz was to have buildings that were architecturally of Berlin. The design guidelines (of the 1999 Development Plan I-200) specified that buildings were to be no more than 22 metres in height, sandstone range in colour corresponding to the Brandenberg Gate, and with no more than 50% glazed area on the façade, all in keeping with Berlin traditions. They also had to be built to the property line with no setbacks and have their lower façades H6628-Ch08.qxd 7/19/05 3:23 PM Page 255

THE CORE OF URBAN DESIGN WORK: PROCEDURES AND PRODUCTS 256 (4–6 metres from the ground) visually differentiated from the floors above. The goal was to prevent the square becoming a ‘playground’ for a set of haphazard architectural ideas. Most of the buildings have complied with the regulations in a direct manner. Starting in the north western corner, the square is enclosed by Haus Libermann (1996–8), Palais am Pariser Platz, the Eugen-Gutmann-Haus der Dresdner Bank (1996–7), the French Embassy (two-storey in appearance but of more floors in reality) designed by the Christian de Portzamparc Atelier, a residential-cum-commercial building, the Hotel Adlon (the hotel of the past on a new site, designed by Patzcheke, Klotz and Partners), the Akademie der Künst of the Senate of Berlin (2002, designed by Günter Behnish that leads through to Behren Strasse to the south) and the Deutsche Genossenschaftbank (DG Bank) (a pale sandstone building designed by Frank Gehry and completed in 2000). Adjacent to it is the site for the United States Embassy. Haus Sommer and Haus Libermann, both designed by Josef Paul Kleihues have identical façades and with the Brandenberg Gate enclose the western end of the square. Figure 8.42 shows the plaza as reconstructed. The gate remains the centerpiece of the composition. Gehry negotiated a 10% increase in the allowable area of glass on the façade of the DG Bank Building (see Figure 8.43b). His success shows both the political power that major architects can have and their desire Drawing by Thanong Poonteerakul Figure 8.42 Pariser Platz as developed by 2002. H6628-Ch08.qxd 7/19/05 3:23 PM Page 256

ALL-OF-A-PIECE URBAN DESIGN 257 (a) (b) Figure 8.43 Two views of Pariser Platz in 2002. (a) Pariser Platz under [re]construction and (b) the DG Bank Building with the United States embassy site beyond. to do things differently. His building is still sedate on the façade with greater exuberance in the internal court and on the rear of the building. The apartments are relegated to the rear so that the objective of having eyes on the square in non-business hours is not met, although there are always many tourists in the area to add some life to H6628-Ch08.qxd 7/19/05 3:23 PM Page 257

THE CORE OF URBAN DESIGN WORK: PROCEDURES AND PRODUCTS 258 the open space. This neglect of the intentions of a design directive shows that unless they are highly specific they can be easily avoided. At the time of this study (2004) the last remaining open site on the Platz is that occupied by the United States Embassy before World War II. A design for the site (by Moore Ruble Yudell of Santa Monica and Gruen Associates of Los Angeles) was proposed but for security reasons, after the 1998 bombing of the United Sates Embassy in Nairobi, the United States Government does not wish to meet the requirement of building to the property line – a requirement put in place to make the square an enclosed space. It wanted a 100-foot setback. Negotiations have taken place between embassy officials and the Berlin administration to resolve the impasse. Both groups wish to have the embassy in its traditional location to add prestige to the Platz and vice versa. Given this situation the Embassy has had the upper hand in the negotiations. A settlement has been reached whereby the setback will be considerably smaller than the United States government wanted and it will pay for the consequent design and construction changes required in the surroundings. The reactions to the square are mixed. Many architects (and the lay-public, I suspect) would have preferred to have had the modern glazed global glitziness of Potsdamer Platz. Perhaps the image sought by these critics was more like that of the Federation Square (completed in 2002; see Figure 8.44) in Melbourne (Dovey, 2004). That square is a total urban design in which formal and technonic inventions reign supreme within an anti-classical composition. Frank Gehry has found the Pariser Platz to be a little bit like a stage set’ (Gehry, 2001). Daniel Libeskind was more scathing. He considers the guidelines to be ‘anti-democratic’ and ‘authoritarian’ and the results ‘banal’. He does not seem to have commented on the square as an urban place or node. What the design does do is put the Brandenberg Gate on centre stage and makes the other buildings background. Few architects want to be painters of the background. The clash of values represents the conflict between private desires to be self-expressive and public interests in all urban design work. (a) (b) Collection of the author Figure 8.44 Federation Square, Melbourne. (a) The plan and (b) a general view. H6628-Ch08.qxd 7/19/05 3:23 PM Page 258

ALL-OF-A-PIECE URBAN DESIGN 259 Major references Gehry, Frank O. (2002). Building at the Pariser Platz – remarks on the new Berlin. Casabella 66 (704): 4–11, 100–2. James-Chakraborty, Kathleen (2000). German Architecture for a Mass Audience. London: Routledge. Scheer, Thorsten, Josef Paul Kleihues, Paul Kahlfeldt and Andrea Bärnreuther, eds. (2000). City of Architecture of the City: Berlin 1900–2000. Berlin: Nicolai. Schneider, Bernhard (1998). Invented history: Pariser Platz and the Brandenberg Gate. AA Files (Autumn): 12–16. CASE STUDY Potsdamer Platz, Berlin, Germany: a ‘cutting-edge vision’ for a consumer society (1991
) Before World War II Potsdamer Platz was the major node of Berlin and the termination of the railway line to Prussia. Like any node its quality was a function of its surroundings. They were diverse making an activity-rich area of hotels, cafés, art galleries and artists’ workspaces. The war changed all that. The area was demolished by allied bombs and divided by the partitioning of Berlin that the end of the war brought. Only the Esplanade Hotel and the Weinhaus Huth survived the bombardment. They stood in a wasteland between the occupied zones of Berlin. The precinct now consists of or, rather, will consist of three portions: the Leipziger Platz and its enclosing buildings, and the two areas that are the subject of this study. The one north of the Neue Potsdamer Strasse is now known as the Sony site and the other that lies across the road from it is known as the Debis site. In 1990, the landowners hired Richard Rogers to make a proposal for the area (see Figure 8.45). In 1991, the Senate (i.e. government) of Berlin held a widely publicized design competition for the whole South Tiergarten area. It attracted 16 entries from internationally renowned architects. It was won by Heinz Hilmer and Christoph Sattler (see Figure 8.46). Helmut Jahn won a similar competition for the Sony site but that was sponsored by the corporation. Giorgio Grassi was appointed architect for the strip of land on the east side of the site. He kept to the principles of the Hilmer–Sattler design. The Hilmer–Sattler design was restrained and essentially a New Urbanist one. It sought to recreate the complex, tight patterns of the traditional European city. The height of buildings was restricted to 22 metres with setback roof structures rising to no more than 30 metres. It had to follow the rule that at least 20% of each new development had to be allocated to housing. The design followed an approach called ‘critical reconstruction’ in which the stand taken is that the identity of a city is established by its history and does not need to be reinvented simply because that identity is something from the past. It repudiates the ideology of Le Corbusier as represented in the post-war developments in West Berlin (e.g. the Interbau at the Hansaviertel) and in the East Berlin of the GDR where massive buildings were located as objects in space. Opposing critics see critical reconstruction as a romantic attempt at turning back the H6628-Ch08.qxd 7/19/05 3:23 PM Page 259

THE CORE OF URBAN DESIGN WORK: PROCEDURES AND PRODUCTS 260 Drawing adapted from various sources by Thanong Poonteerakul Figure 8.45 The Rogers proposal. (a) (b) Source: Balfour (1999) Drawing adapted from various sources by Thanong Poonteerakul Figure 8.46 The Hilmer and Sattler Berlin Senate competition-winning scheme. (a) Figure–ground study and (b) aerial view. clock. Economics overtook the debate. Critical reconstruction was not what the major corporations wanted. The last thing they wanted was to be discrete. When the wall dividing East and West Berlins was demolished in 1989, the land parcels were made available for sale and were snapped up by major corporations at H6628-Ch08.qxd 7/19/05 3:23 PM Page 260

ALL-OF-A-PIECE URBAN DESIGN 261 what were seen by many at well below market rates. Sony and Daimler Benz were the purchasers of the two significant parcels but other multi-national corporations hold land as well. There were 17 sites in all. They were attractive because the area is easily accessible – a number of subway and bus lines have their junction at Potsdamer Platz – and because of the Platz’s past history. The Platz itself is on the periphery of the scheme and remains a traffic intersection. Perhaps it will become a place in itself when the development at Leipziger Platz and the LennéDreieck site are completed. The Berlin-oriented Hilmer–Sattler scheme gave way to a more global corporate one designed primarily by Renzo Piano and Christoph Kohlbecker. It resulted from a competition organized by Daimler Benz. The design includes high-rise corporate towers at both ends of the site but generally retains the build-to-the-property line requirements and height limits of the Hilmer–Sattler scheme. This new plan specified wide sidewalks, ground floor arcades and façades made of materials such as terracotta, limestone or clinker (reddish-brown bricks). At the same time much of the life generally associated with squares was internalized within the buildings. Neue Potsdamer Strasse is a weak seam for the overall area and divides the site into two major parts with the Sony site, an island complex of eight buildings, to the north and the remainder of the site, the roughly pie-shaped 50-hectare part containing 19 buildings, to the south. This southern portion is an irregular grid of 10 streets, some new and some revived. At its centre now is the Marlene-Dietrich-Platz. Many of the corporations holding land organized their own design competitions within the general principles of the overall urban design but boosted by their own corporate interests. The result is a well-crafted set of prestigious buildings designed by internationally renowned architects. The Sony Center (2000) was designed by Helmut Jahn, the Hotel Grand Hyatt (1998) by Rafael Moneo, the Berlin Volksbank (1997) by Arata Isozaki and the Potsdamer Platz Arkaden (1997–8) – another example of internal, quasi-public space – by Richard Rogers amongst others. Renzo Piano designed six of the buildings himself (Figure 8.47). The Sony Center (a 26,500-square metre site) consists of seven buildings with the interior Forum as its heart (see Figures 8.48 and 8.49). The Forum is an oblong plaza with a central fountain. It is covered by a tented, glass canopy supported on steel beams rather like the spokes on a bicycle wheel and surrounded by five buildings, all but one of which have concave façades encircling the Forum. The public space that was outside in both the Rogers and the Hilmer and Sattler schemes has become internalized and privatized (or, perhaps, private space has been made public). Shops and restaurants surround the Forum and the buildings include the Film Museum and the Esplanade residence (which consists of the breakfast room and the Emperors’ room of the Esplanade Hotel which were moved 70 metres from their original location on air cushions). The upper floors of the buildings consist predominantly of offices and expensive apartments. On the interiors facing the internal court the surfaces are clad with mirrored glass. On the corner of the site, as a largely separate entity, is the 100-metre tall Sony Tower. Across the road from the Sony Tower is the 22-storey office and retail building, the Bürohochhaus am Potsdamer Platz, H6628-Ch08.qxd 7/19/05 3:23 PM Page 261

THE CORE OF URBAN DESIGN WORK: PROCEDURES AND PRODUCTS 262 Drawing by Thanong Poonteerakul 9 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 10 1. Sony Center 2. Bürohochhaus 3. IMAX Cinema 4. Marlene-Dietrich-Platz 5. Debis Haus 6. Tiergarten Tunnel access 7. National Library 8. Potsdamer Platz Arkaden 9. Philharmonic Hall 10. Musical Theatre Figure 8.47 The Potsdamer Platz precinct in 2002. designed by Hans Kolhoff. The two buildings form a high-rise entrance to Potsdamer Platz. The Kohlhoff building steps down to a lower height away from the platz. Across Alte Potsdamer Strasse are the Weinhaus Huth and a complex of three office– commercial–residential buildings designed by Richard Rogers. The 3-storey Potsdamer Platz Arkaden, links them. Daimler City is a complex of buildings including an IMAX Theatre, the DaimlerChrysler Services Building, a Musical theatre, the Berliner Volksbank and the Neue Staatsbibliothek (National Library). The district draws in 100,000 people daily and tourists flock there. It is a very different place to the conventional European square and represents a new type of increasingly common civic space – one controlled by private interests. While the buildings are clearly part of the global economy and architecture, considerable effort has been made to make them environmentally responsible. Roofs are grassed, rainwater is used to irrigate the landscaping and some grey water is recycled. The buildings have been designed to consume 50% less energy than conventional air-conditioned buildings. H6628-Ch08.qxd 7/19/05 3:23 PM Page 262

ALL-OF-A-PIECE URBAN DESIGN 263 (a) (b) Figure 8.48 The Sony Centre, Berlin. (a) Exterior view on Neue Potsdamer Strasse and (b) the Forum. H6628-Ch08.qxd 7/19/05 3:23 PM Page 263

THE CORE OF URBAN DESIGN WORK: PROCEDURES AND PRODUCTS 264 As a feat of urban and architectural design, an extraordinary amount of coordinated work was accomplished in only 10 years. It is difficult in any urban design project to create the animated type of environment built piece-by-piece over a century or two, but the work of different architects gives a sense of variety to the Potsdamer Platz district. Is it, however, simply a twenty-first century Times Square, New York? (Rossi, 2000). Major references Balfour, Alan (1999). Octagon: the persistence of the ideal. In James Corner, ed., Recovering Landscape: Essays in Contemporary Landscape Architecture. New York: Princeton University Press, 87–100. Davey, Peter (1998). Potsdamer Platz: development in Berlin. Architectural Review 205 (1223): 31–4. James-Chakraborty, Kathleen (2000). German Architecture for a Mass Audience. London: Routledge. Ladd, Brian (1997). The Ghosts of Berlin: Confronting German History in the Urban Landscape. London: Chicago University Press. Scheer, Thorsten, Josef Paul Kleihues, Paul Kahlfeldt and Andrea Bärnreuther, eds. (2000). City of Architecture of the City: Berlin 1900–2000. Berlin: Nicolai. Figure 8.49 A view south towards Marlene-Dietrich-Platz with the Arkaden in the foreground. A NOTE The World Trade Center site development, New York, NY, USA: an architectural product or an all-of-a-piece urban design? (2002 – due for completion in 2011) The political and design history of the World Trade Center as designed by Minoru Yamasaki with Emory Roth and Sons as a consultant has been ably documented (e.g. Ruchelman, 1977). So too has its highly innovative structural systems that collapsed under the impacts of the attack of 11 September 2001. The proposal for the World Trade Center site after the devastation represents contemporary architectural spatial H6628-Ch08.qxd 7/19/05 3:23 PM Page 264

ALL-OF-A-PIECE URBAN DESIGN 265 thought. It is, however, premature to present a case study of the redevelopment of the site as the timeline for completion now extends to 2011. Given the number of changes that have already taken place in the short period of the scheme’s design history, the project’s implementation is likely to be subjected to more as unforeseen technical problems arise and political attitudes shift. In addition, many problems, such as dealing with the climatic conditions of Lower Manhattan, have yet to be resolved. The proposal does, however, represent our contemporary concern with the architecture of globalization and individual rights. The diverse controversies of how best to create what is essentially a large architectural and landscape architectural project in an urban environment displays the multitude and complexity of factors and emotions that come to play at the intersect of the traditional design fields and urban design work. The final product, as a set of buildings, links and places, will be both cluster of individual objects in space and have an impact on its surroundings. The goal is to link the development of the Trade Center site to a series of ‘vibrant, mixed-use communities’. Its ultimate catalytic effect is difficult to assess at present. The design for the site already has a complex history. Max Protech, an art dealer, almost immediately after the destruction of the twin towers took the initiative and asked leading architects to submit proposals. The resulting exhibition drew thousands of visitors and ensured that ‘design quality’ became an important consideration in any proposal for the site. The Lower Manhattan Development Corporation (LMDC) in partnership with the Port Authority or New York and New Jersey has played a coordinating role. Their goal has been to have an ‘open and inclusive’ design process. In July 2002, the LMDC and Port Authority (with Bayer, Blinder, Belle and others as consultants) proposed six initial design elements for the development of the 16-acre (6.5-hectare site): a memorial plaza, a memorial square, a memorial triangle, a memorial garden, a memorial park and a memorial promenade. Two well-attended public hearings, an exhibit and the solicitation of comments resulted in over 12,000 responses. Some respondents wanted to keep the site empty but not rebuilding has not been a seriously considered option (Figure 8.50). The LMDC and the Port Authority proceeded with selecting firms interested in doing the design for the site. Four hundred and six submissions were received of which seven teams were selected based on their perceived talents and reputations. Their charge was to create a ‘soaring vision’ for the site. Nine schemes were submitted and publicly exhibited drawing over a million visitors. After both a qualitative and quantitative analysis by the LMDC, the Port Authority and a number of consultants the number was reduced to two (the Memory Foundations scheme of Studio Daniel Libeskind and the World Cultural Center designed by THINK, a team led by Shingeru Ban, Frederick Schwartz, Ken Smith and Rafael Vin~oly). The Mayor of New York and the Governor of the State of New York selected the scheme produced by Studio Daniel Libeskind as the winner in February 2003 overruling the jury selection of the THINK team proposal. THINK proposed a cluster of facilities built around and above the footprints of the Trade Center towers. Two open lattice structures in their design were to have created a H6628-Ch08.qxd 7/19/05 3:23 PM Page 265

THE CORE OF URBAN DESIGN WORK: PROCEDURES AND PRODUCTS 266 base for soaring Towers of Culture. The transportation centre was located between the towers. The towers were proposed to rise from large reflecting pools that would allow light to penetrate into a retail and transit concourse. Shops were proposed for both the concourse and street levels to relate to and act as a seam with the surrounding community. A number of distinctive buildings would be designed by different architects: a Memorial, the 9/11 Interpretative Museum, a performing arts centre, an international conference centre, an open amphitheatre, viewing platforms and public facilities for education in the arts and sciences. Eight mid-rise office buildings and a hotel on the perimeter of the site were included in the programme in response to a perceived market demand. The Libeskind design (with Gary Hack and Hargreaves Associates), ‘Memory Foundations’, unlike the World Trade Center, which had been an island, picked up on the grid pattern of Manhattan. It left a portion of the slurry wall exposed, as a symbol of strength, and included a memorial museum and cultural spaces, the 1776 feet (541 metres) with its spire tall ‘Freedom Tower’ (in form echoing the Statue of Liberty) as an element marking the spot of the terrorist act on the New York skyline and a variety of activity spaces below. A refined master plan was presented to the public in September 2003 (see Figure 8.51). It included commercial office space, retail development, its integration with the transportation network and public spaces and a new park. The new proposal replaced 1.34 million square metres of space in six buildings with 1 million in five, plus another million square metres of retail space and the same amount of space for a convention centre plus a September 11 Museum. The memorial forms the centre of the composition. An open competition was held for it drawing 5201 entries from professionals and lay-people. They ranged from Figure 8.50 Ground Zero: the World Trade Center site in May 2004. H6628-Ch08.qxd 7/19/05 3:23 PM Page 266

ALL-OF-A-PIECE URBAN DESIGN 267 Drawing adapted from various sources by Munir Vahanvati Figure 8.51 The refined Studio Libeskind master plan. scaled down twin towers, to classical revival schemes, to parks. The memorial commemorates the lives lost in the explosion of 26 February 1993 as well as those on 11 September 2001. The winning design, ‘Reflecting Absence’, selected by a jury headed by Vartan Gregorian formerly Director of the New York Public Library and including Maya Lin, Enrique Norton and David Rockefeller, is by Michael Arad, an Architect with the New York City Housing Authority assisted by Peter Walker, an internationally renowned landscape architect. It consists of two large voids containing pools with the ramps around them encompassing the footprints of the twin towers. The memorial is set in a field of deciduous trees, their coming into leaf each spring symbolizing the revival of spirit of New York. The Arad/Walker design eliminates the wedge of light and a cultural building that formed part of Libeskind’s original scheme. Different architects will design other elements of the overall scheme (Figure 8.52). Santiago Calatrava, selected unilaterally by the Port Authority from potential consultants who responded to a solicitation of credentials, has designed the $US2 billion PATH terminal. The design has soaring wings and a cathedral like space. It represents both architecture as high art and the architecture of structural dexterity. It, like the memorial, is very different to the design in the Libeskind competition-winning scheme. For example, it is a freestanding object in space rather than an attached building making a street line. It will be joined to a new transit hub designed by H6628-Ch08.qxd 7/19/05 3:23 PM Page 267

THE CORE OF URBAN DESIGN WORK: PROCEDURES AND PRODUCTS 268 British high-tech architect Nicholas Grimshaw. It is hoped that this hub of transit lines will spur adjacent developments in much the way that the renovation of Grand Central Station did in mid-town Manhattan. Much has changed and continues to change. As Libeskind had no experience in designing skyscrapers, the Governor of New York State, George E. Pataki, and the developer insisted that his firm work with Courtesy of the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation Figure 8.52 The project with the memorial in place as proposed in 2004. Battery Park city is on the left. H6628-Ch08.qxd 7/19/05 3:23 PM Page 268

ALL-OF-A-PIECE URBAN DESIGN 269 David M. Childs of SOM, an expert on office building design. Working independently of Libeskind and with Guy Nordeson, Childs produced a number of designs including a 2000-foot high tower. He was, however, forced by Pataki to adopt part of Libeskind’s ideas. The Freedom tower design is now considerably ‘fatter’ than in the original gardenfilled design. The resulting collaboration seems to have been reasonably well received. The tower is now essentially a generic 70- storey office building in plan, 1500 feet in height with a 276-foot mast above it. After all the law suits over insurance payments brought by Larry A. Silverstein who acquired a 99-year lease of the site only 6 months before the towers were destroyed, the jurisdictional battles, and international design competitions – a messy process (although not atypically so) – a final design seems to have emerged. There is a streetbounded complex of: 1 the Freedom Tower to replace the World Trade Center towers on the New York Skyline; 2 a multi-tiered train station; 3 a public park and memorial to the victims of the 2001 attack. In addition, four adjacent city blocks have been allocated to office towers. This design opens up the site to views of the Hudson River and the Winter Garden of Battery Park City. Unlike Battery Park City it is designed as a series of architectural objects in space in opposition to the existing street-building pattern of New York City. What kind of urban design is this new development? Is it an urban design at all? The THINK proposal was clearly an all-of-apiece design. The Studio Libeskind design is partly an all-of-a-piece urban design with some components being designed by others and independently plugged in. It can also be considered to be a scheme plugged into an existing urban fabric with transportation routes linking the site to subway and suburban train routes, ferries and the southern tip of Manhattan. The idea of what was once an overall urban design scheme seems to be getting broken down into fragments. Thus in some ways, it is a design in which the components are being built separately according to the Studio Libeskind master plan but subject only to standard New York building codes. How much the design will change between now and the date of completion is open to conjecture. The present design is considerably different to Libeskind’s winning scheme of February 2003. The design guidelines submitted by Libeskind and urban designer Gary Hack in November 2003 have had little binding power as the four major clients have not been able to agree on them. Thus the Memorial, the Freedom Tower, the PATH Terminal, etc. are proceeding in their own ways bound only by the new streets and blocks created as part of the scheme. The desire not to be another collaborative design like Rockefeller Center, as popular as that urban place is, will certainly be fulfilled. Major references Forgey, Benjamin (2004). World Trade Center plans, rising above the squabbles. Washington Post (Sunday, 18 April): 1. Goldberger, Paul (2003). Up form Ground Zero: Politics, Architecture and the Rebuilding of New York. New York: Random House. Knack, Ruth (2003). Up close at the World Trade Center. Planning 69 (4): 11–13. Libeskind, Daniel (2004). Breaking Ground. London: John Murray. Stratis, William (2004). World Trade Center – Memorial and Reconstruction Plans. Corte Madera, CA: Ginko. H6628-Ch08.qxd 7/19/05 3:23 PM Page 269

THE CORE OF URBAN DESIGN WORK: PROCEDURES AND PRODUCTS 270 Precincts: Urban Renewal Many total urban designs such as the Barbican or Rockefeller Center can be regarded as urban renewal projects and in the 1960s many ‘slum’ clearance and mass housing schemes certainly were. The concern here is for the schemes that involved the all-of-a-piece development of an existing urban precinct under one aegis without wholesale demolition. Such urban renewal processes generally involve the selective acquisition of properties by a municipal agency using the government power of eminent domain, the accumulation of small parcels into larger ones, and the selling of the parcels to a number of property developers for redevelopment according to specified guidelines. Sometimes, however, it is a private developer who has organized the accumulation of sites. The power of governments to lead such activities varies from country to country. Much depends on the laws specifying how land is owned and can be acquired. In democratic countries the government power to acquire land is very much restricted by law but in totalitarian countries it is absolute. In many places a laissezfaire attitude towards development prevails. The two examples included here, however, represent coordinated efforts to enhance the quality of urban precincts. The first case study is of a superblock scheme and the second the upgrading of a traditional suburban downtown. The first, Charles Center in Baltimore, is important because not only did it show what can be done in American cities in crisis but also because it had a major catalytic effect on the development of central Baltimore. The second, Glendale in California, shows what can be achieved by a couple of tenacious people with a vision of what might be and the stamina required to push ahead to fulfil it. It is also part of a larger phenomenon. Many metropolises during the last quarter of the twentieth century experienced the development of the new suburban downtowns or ‘edge cities’ (Garreau, 1991). These developments were spurred by changes in accessibility based on new highways in particular, but also subway systems and now, reputedly, e-mail. Some of them have involved the redevelopment of suburban shopping streets into major centres (e.g. Bethesda, Maryland, and Walnut Creek, California). Others have seen the intensification of existing suburban shopping malls until they have the mixed-use attributes, and even the density, of existing downtown centres. Glendale is an example of an all-of-a-piece transformation of a decaying suburban centre into a lively ‘downtown’. Major references Frieden, Bernard J. and Lynne B. Sagalyn (1991). Downtown, Inc.: How America Rebuilds Cities. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Garreau, Joel (1991). Edge Cities: Life on the New Frontier. New York: Doubleday. Melnick, Scott (1987). The urbanization of the suburbs. Building Design Construction 28 (3): 70–7. H6628-Ch08.qxd 7/19/05 3:23 PM Page 270

ALL-OF-A-PIECE URBAN DESIGN 271 CASE STUDY Charles Center, Baltimore, Maryland, USA: a central city redevelopment (1954–70) It is difficult to imagine how later developments such as Inner Harbor (1968 to the present; see Figure 8.72) and the even later baseball stadium (1988) could have taken place without the earlier development of Charles Center. By 1994, Charles Center’s success as a catalyst in spurring other developments meant that it was no longer the heart of Baltimore. Few urban redevelopments can claim that type of success. It is also an example of an urban renewal project that did not begin by totally clearing the site and then rebuilding it de novo. Baltimore, like many other American cities, found itself facing strong competition from suburban centres from the 1950s onwards. Department store sales in the city dropped 10% between 1952 and 1957. There was a similar decrease in tax revenues. The office space occupancy rate was, however, healthy (97%) suggesting that the area had potential for renewal if problems with the aging infrastructure and decaying buildings could be addressed. No new building of consequence had been erected in the downtown area for 20 years. In 1954, the business community formed the Committee for Downtown, Inc. A year later the Greater Baltimore Committee, Inc. (GBC), a private business group was established. The groups merged to form a nonprofit, private-planning group, the Planning Council of the GBC. It became, in essence, a planning consultancy. Being a private and local group not only was it removed from much political infighting but it knew Baltimore. It also had considerable energy, if for no other reason than it saw the future of the investments of its members at stake. The Planning Council hired Dr David Wallace, later a principal in the Philadelphia urban design firm of Wallace, McHarg, Roberts and Todd, to develop a design for a sloping, 33-acre (13-hectare) area in the heart of Baltimore linking the retail, financial and government districts of the city. He, in turn, brought on board other consultants such as George Kostritsky and Dennis Durden. The GBC was aware of the work of Victor Gruen in Rochester, New York and his proposal for Fort Worth in Texas (Gruen, 1964). The latter design consisted of a ring road around the centre of the city with parking garages feeding off it (see Figure 8.53). The whole area within this loop was proposed to be a car-free pedestrian precinct. The GBC wanted something similar but implementable, financially and politically. On a smaller scale they got it. The goal of the GBC team was not only to revitalize the blocks that were to be later called Charles Center, but for any developments there to also encourage investment on adjacent sites. The objective was to have a project large enough to have a significant impact, but not large enough to fill all the potential demand that might be generated by an improved physical environment. By ‘improvement’ was meant that access to downtown offices and shops had to be clear and easy, that parking had to be convenient to destinations and that the buildings had to be both modern and look modern. The legal responsibility for achieving the specified development goals lay in the H6628-Ch08.qxd 7/19/05 3:23 PM Page 271

THE CORE OF URBAN DESIGN WORK: PROCEDURES AND PRODUCTS 272 (a) (b) Source: The Heart of Our Cities by Victor Gruen; © 1964 renewed 1992 by Victor Gruen. Reprinted by permission of Simon & Schuster Adult Publishing Corp. Figure 8.53 The Fort Worth plan of Victor Gruen, 1958. (a) A bird’s eye view and (b) a ground level view. hands of the Baltimore Urban Renewal Agency. The redevelopment was designated a Title I project requiring supervision by a number of Federal (central government) agencies. The project was, however, run by an office directed by J. Jefferson Miller. It evolved into the Charles Center-Inner Harbor Management team responsible for the coordination of the actions taken by government agencies and by private property interests. It was the first such organization in the United States. The design ideas came mainly from Wallace. Five important buildings on the site were retained (three office buildings, a hotel and a parking structure representing 47% of the assessed value of the site). Business in them continued while redevelopment took place. The remainder of the site was divided into 16 parcels large enough to appeal to a broad range of potential property developers. In order to assemble the parcels 148 separate acquisitions involving 216 different parcels had to be made. Three hundred and fifty businesses involving 8789 jobs had to be relocated. Some organizations were relocated to other buildings on the site and then moved back to newly erected buildings; for others temporary accommodations were found off the site (Figure 8.54). Drawing adapted from various sources by Munir Vahanvati Figure 8.54 The site before development seen from the north. H6628-Ch08.qxd 7/19/05 3:23 PM Page 272