will take me more time to read it, but i'll just add that dan wood (work ac), in a recent lecture, bemoaned the relative scarcity of this kind of big visionary urban-scaled thinking.

in general he saw either big real projects (like masdar city) with more technical bravura than vision, or relatively restrained/containted urban strategy proposals.

no hugo-largo sci-fi visions with big ideas buttressing them, capable of having decades-long tails of influence like those of archigram, superstudio, yona friedman, constant...

I do worry that he is being overly romantic about typologies as containers for cultural identity (the critique that we mostly just build boxes to do stuff in is valid)- although he does seem aware that he's rehashing some of the ideas of pomo and new urbanism.

personally - I'd also like to see more large-scale theoretical urban projects that are not merely exercises in technical bravura, as you say (giant biomorphic viral structures infecting the city). but more architectural systems visions on a more fanciful level than something like the work in caracas by urban think tank.

anyone else?

When I started to read the article, I wanted to hate it. But close to the end, I started to love it.

There was gems like this:

" ... yet one wishes the project renderings were more focused on the character of the new infrastructures that will need to be built rather than on the ethereal buildings that populate the future edges of Manhattan."

"Most architecture curricula are untethered to relevant urban issues, and most do not integrate studio pedagogy within the broader intellectual framework of the city and do not include an urban design studio in the course sequence."

" ... while the city itself and urbanistic ideas do not drive the logic of such architectural projects, the site geometry becomes a kind of alibi for highly elaborated formal speculation."

"While New Urbanism offers an impressively overarching framework, its proponents are openly hostile to contemporary modes of architectural expression, making the entire approach off-limits to serious discourse. The success and subsequent codification of New Urbanism, as much as the ascendance of sophisticated digital design methodologies, might explain why urban issues were dropped from most architecture curricula in the past couple of decades."

"For most clients, it is the functional need for built space that generates a project. For the various self-interested parties that populate the real estate and construction industries, it is the use-category of a building, e.g., office, hospital, housing, education, that then shapes the design of the project. And even before design begins in earnest, the business plan is developed and enriched through assumptions about initial capital costs, potential revenue and performance measured in predicted lifecycle costs — all of which are calculated with the goal of minimizing financial risk.
...

Rather than ignore these influences, urban design should engage the logic of market-driven buildings — not as an end in itself but instead as a way to imagine alternative and more innovative solutions for the design of buildings and cities."

It seems like the author is trying to tip toe around the principles of urban planning. The subtle nods and suggestions are there but clearly staying the side of architecture to win over design types.

It is interesting that what I am getting from this is that the new paper architecture should be an amalgamation of paper architecture, paper landscape architecture and paper planning. In that sense, there should be no singular glorious thinker behind a grand idea. There should be, however, a group of individuals behind a grand plan to increase the scope and functioning of such projects.

I should point out that then author didn't even say the word planning once.

me too - I've not liked tim love's earlier writings as I thought he was an apologist for developers and more market-driven projects (this seemed especially off during the boom when we all wanted mcmansions with 17 bathrooms - the market isn't always right), but this seems a bit more like he has had a change of heart...

"Most architecture curricula are untethered to relevant urban issues, and most do not integrate studio pedagogy within the broader intellectual framework of the city and do not include an urban design studio in the course sequence."

I wonder if when he means "most" he's talking only about this small cadre of elite east-coast schools he pays attention to. There are many programs that address urban design/issues as part of their core curricula (Berkeley, WashU, Michigan,Penn, etc...). IMO either he isn't looking hard enough, he can't recognize it, or he's just trying to pimp his curricula he developed for NEU. He really needs to back up this claim.

aside from that - he has interesting ideas...

this is timely - and delicious!:

http://archigram.westminster.ac.uk/index.php

Oh my that Archigram is yummy indeed. There are some images there I haven't seen in 25 years, when Rick Joy and I were partners for an Arch History assignment on Archigram. It's actually amazing to me that our little school library had those books back then!

In crits at Ball State last week I saw a rally amazing large-scale eco-urbanism thesis proposal. The project proposed a small-village-sized development within the city of Indianapolis, with quadrants devoted to water, food, and energy generation/treatment. It was a very cool - not sidewalk-level urbanism, but a proposal in which that kind of urban design could flourish more organically.

Archigram also exhibit covered @ BLDG BLOG

hmmm... I'm sensing a trend - I think people are wanting archigram-esque "utopian/distopian"projects - however I sincerely doubt that the same people who desire such critical exploration are going to notice when it happens. Hell, I'm not even sure I'll notice - nothing is shocking anymore.

SW - do you have a link to that lecture?

link to lecture on this page:

http://www.uky.edu/Design/Fall09lectureseries.html

I think what he meant was that there isn't a sufficient jump from urban design to urban planning. Albeit their fields of overlapping practice, urban planning is more policy and administration focused.

So, while an urban designer is tweaking the nuances of a public plaza... a planner would be figuring out the finances of the runoff pipes to keep that plaza from flooding.

There's lots of "simplistic" issues in planning relating to things not-so-pretty and things pretty mundane. There's significant portions of the US that are directly discharging sewage in open water. There's an even bigger portion of homes still on septic tanks. Unlike the concern of "global climate change," the environmental consequences felt by such practices are immediately damaging-- one toilet flush away from red tide sort of deal.

Why is this relevant to architecture? Sewage systems need functional densities to be afford. Those density requirements drastically change the layout, size and shape of lots and parcels. And the placement of sewage pipes ultimately dictates (to some degree) the shape and function of a building-- where the wet walls will be, how much capacity the building has and how much slope there is available for the pipes to drain.

I'd consider these "everyday issues of everyday people." Urban designers and architects generally don't have to worry about where poop goes, who pays for it or how it is handled. They mostly have to worry about hooking up to these vast poop super highways.

And from that more cost-benefit and infrastructure approach, no one really sees any exceptional work being shown or talked about relating to all things poop (or really anything to do with district or citywide infrastructures). That is to not say they are thinking about it-- there are plenty of projects where pierced impervious surfaces allow for run off et cetera... but onsite practices don't necessarily stop flooding either.