A new plan by the Downtown Brooklyn Partnership—a consortium of three business improvement districts—seeks to make room for all of those people by curtailing car access and installing protected bike lanes, colorful street furniture, and monumental gathering spaces. — CityLab
Despite rapid population growth, Downtown Brooklyn seems to be missing the appeal for the increasing number of pedestrians and cyclists.
The newly unveiled Downtown Brooklyn Public Realm Vision, developed jointly by WXY architecture + urban design and Bjarke Ingels Group in collaboration with the Downtown Brooklyn Partnership, proposes a number of public realm, streetscape & green infrastructure improvements for an entire neighborhood.
It is similar to the BIG project in Copehnagen. I visited it just after it was completed and a few years later, once on foot and once on bike. It was brilliant both times. There are social issues attached to that project that I did not know enough about to appreciate, but they did not affect my and others enjoyment of the linear park. It works.
The weird comments that gunk on the sidewalks makes it unworkable are simply ridiculous. Copenhagen is a winter city too, so the entire idea that climate or some other error in recognizing reality has been made is spurious. Better to just say you don't like it because it is not what you are used to and move on.
The design is fine. The only thing that will actually make it work are the people who live and visit the city. If they are positive about it and love it then it will work. If they hate it then it won't. Considering the current demographic of Brooklyn I can't imagine a better demographic match for this kind of project.
The hate for Jan Gehl is a new one for me. What is the problem with him? Passive is not a term I would apply to his work. Taking cars of streets is hardly a small thing to advocate, especially in the USA. We are using some of his ideas for a planning project here in Tokyo and I find it slightly out of touch with the needs of a proper dense city, simply because Tokyo is already working so well. The insights are still valuable though, and the methodology is very useful for students and young architects who otherwise don't have a framework for seeing the city in front of them. Why critique this approach? You want to go back to Robert Moses and replay all the errors of High Modernism?
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A lot of cutesy mcurbanism design trends here: the city as playground for adult children. Ad hoc confusion sans larger urban design plan. I miss futurist design planning with sky bridges, separation of use, elevated streetcars, etc. Now it’s all weak Jan Gehl passivity
Follow the yellow brick road! Or the green one! Or the blue one! Or the purple one!
Here is a picture of Fulton Mall today:
From the CityLab article. Compare with the suggested renovation, above. Click to enlarge and notice the spots of gunk on the sidewalks. What is this stuff? But it's everywhere and it's hard to clean off. Now imagine this gunk everywhere on the proposed pastel walks. And how well with the walks hold up under wear and weather? They'll soon lose their pristine look and turn worn and dingy. The boring, neutral colored walks now manage both better.
There are a ton of buildings with character in the area. Think how much these colorful walkways work against them. I suppose they could be torn down and replaced with something more fun.
There is erasure in this proposal, of the character of a place and its history. The metaphor is not only childish, it won't hold up long.
Hard to argue, however, against turning the streets over to pedestrians and cyclists.
We're not in Kansas anymore.
That gunk is gum. It collects dust and becomes black.
More cartoon architecture from BIG.
There are thousands of pedestrian streets and ‘malls’ (for lack of a better word) that function beautifully without pretending to be Candy Land. The concept dates back at least as far as Trajan’s Market.
Not to mention that all that colorful street furniture is going to be filled with homeless. Part of this should be public housing.
how about some substantial indoor public space that can be used 365? Jane Jacobs specifically warned against poorly designed parks that would fall into disuse and danger. If I’m gonna rob someone, I’m definately hiding behind one of those squiggly things in these “alley-parks”
McUrbanism has given bureaucrats a toolkit to pretend to solve problems without actually doing anything. Yet they can still secure fat stacks (usually state $) for it, all quickly tapped
The design itself is defiantly lacking and unearned. Maybe that flies in the Bronx or even Williamsburg, but your purple sidewalks and graffiti are super cheesy in downtown BK. The only thing it’s missing are slides and a ball pit.
Instagram urbanism at its worst, with the existing structures as a background to the proposal.
I can’t wait for everyone to grow up and start designing real cities again. Jane Jacobs never said anything about making streets some kind of central design fetish. They are still about getting from Building A to Building B.
From the Downtown Brooklyn link, above:
Finally, the plan is geared around establishing a sense of place and strengthening Downtown Brooklyn’s identity in its business and shopping district.
And here's Bjarke:
“We are excited to be part of regenerating Downtown Brooklyn, a neighborhood many of us call home. Working closely with DBP, WXY and the wider local community, we look forward to creating a greener, safer and bolder Downtown – our proposal paints the already lively character of the neighborhood with a distinct color palette and new public furniture collections. Brooklynites can enjoy a cohesive streetscape experience, one with improved walkability, pedestrian and cyclist safety, double the greenery and new art beacons,” said Bjarke Ingels, Founding Partner & Creative Director, BIG. “We look forward to re-animating neighborhood’s public realm, reclaiming the spaces between the buildings and creating an engaging and green environment for everyone to enjoy.”
Run the clock. I'm curious to see what this looks like twenty years from now and read what the architectural critics have to say, if there are any then. And I'd like to see now a full defense of the design decisions and the assumptions that lay behind them. I suspect they're skating on thin ice. As we all are now.
a cohesive streetscape experience
a sense of place and strengthening Downtown Brooklyn’s identity
These words most ring false. You have to wonder how much time BIG spent in Brooklyn. Jacobs, of course, spent most of her life in the neighborhoods.
It's the BIG figures in their renderings that get to me—who are these people? Are they smart and strong enough to negotiate the challenges of Brooklyn? To face the challenges that lie ahead?
To be fair, he lives and works in Brooklyn (Albeit Dumbo). The Downtown Brooklyn coalition knows that flashy renders are needed to grab attention.
It is similar to the BIG project in Copehnagen. I visited it just after it was completed and a few years later, once on foot and once on bike. It was brilliant both times. There are social issues attached to that project that I did not know enough about to appreciate, but they did not affect my and others enjoyment of the linear park. It works.
The weird comments that gunk on the sidewalks makes it unworkable are simply ridiculous. Copenhagen is a winter city too, so the entire idea that climate or some other error in recognizing reality has been made is spurious. Better to just say you don't like it because it is not what you are used to and move on.
The design is fine. The only thing that will actually make it work are the people who live and visit the city. If they are positive about it and love it then it will work. If they hate it then it won't. Considering the current demographic of Brooklyn I can't imagine a better demographic match for this kind of project.
The hate for Jan Gehl is a new one for me. What is the problem with him? Passive is not a term I would apply to his work. Taking cars of streets is hardly a small thing to advocate, especially in the USA. We are using some of his ideas for a planning project here in Tokyo and I find it slightly out of touch with the needs of a proper dense city, simply because Tokyo is already working so well. The insights are still valuable though, and the methodology is very useful for students and young architects who otherwise don't have a framework for seeing the city in front of them. Why critique this approach? You want to go back to Robert Moses and replay all the errors of High Modernism?
i think a lot of commentators are missing the fact that these projects are usually incredibly restrictive: often times the only things you can do are surface treatments on the ground plane + movable furniture / temporary structures. supergraphic urbanism is pretty successful in other cities like copenhagen and allows the design team to accomplish a lot with their limited budget and scope. and unlike the urbanism of robert moses, the cost for being wrong is low.
There are a wide range of design options that could be considered. Gehl / Big isms are a very limited scope, one that I personally find annoying like much contemporary public space design.
Also, modernism was the most successful design movement of all time. It is the world we live in. Gehl-ism is a retro fetish of urban elites, who don’t know how their coffee beans and avacado toast is delivered
Why critique this approach? Why critique any plan at all? Somebody has to do it. Or not. Surely this is an improvement over the dirty alleyways that these plans seem to address. Or is it? Think what I'm talking about here is a larger idea of Gehl-ism which has its good and bad side.
The good is the low cost and restricted traffic, bike lanes, and public seating. But I think it gives bureaucrats a crutch to "solve" urbanism -- color the pavement and the market condos will follow.
Still, the design criticism around here is lacking. Would this work for a few alleyways? Maybe. As a system, it only works for a very limited area. If you go around NYC or Europe you will see many other strategies and systems for public space that are less annoying and more successful. Think it's time for a larger critique of the state of public space design -- which is overdue. If you think the public space as walking through an IKEA is cool, that's an opinion. Or offices will ball pits and slides is preferable to dignified grand spaces and substantial park designs.
The other thing that bothers me here is the faux-populism of Gehl-ism. It's a patronizing form of urban design that minimizes the holistic city, architecture and urban planning and instead fetishizes the streets. Tactical Urbanism is a giant scam that says the streets are the only space for the public. Leave the rest for the big boys. That was a perversion of what Jane Jacobs said.
It has become a kind of urban elitist religion, a fetish of lifestyle and identity much in the same way rural lifestyle has become fetishized into a caricature of manly men on motorcycles roaming around hunting deer on weekends. So much for the classic park design that folds in and out of the architecture.
There is a cute version in Vancouver that I happened across last year. Just paint as you say. This proposal is a lot more than that.
The critique about public space is a good one. My view is that this is perfectly fine and probably fun. Dignity is harder to get at. It’s certainly not the little maze park in front of the louvre. But then that park is just as intentionally fun as bjarke, though the signals are a lot more obviously somber. It’s not as human as the Copenhagen project for sure. Nobody is invited to bbq in the formal French park. Maybe that is the populist side you don’t like ( the casual bbq in a public space) The critique makes sense. Populism is so suspicious as a way of working and easily ignores real problems in favor of the surface issues. My take on this critique is yes an ideal design would do more. Ideally so would the people who live there.
For now at least this is a clear effort to connect and to make places for connecting. That is a real achievement.
Is there a BBQ park I'm missing? Think the point of these Gehl-Bjarke parks is they are very rigid, linear, one-liner experiences and more confusing. There is no multilayered experience of an open space that can a open market one day and an empty space the next. These spaces might work if the buildings and adjacent real parks are doing the heavy lifting, but you know some bureaucrats in Tulsa are going to start thinking this is a solution to everything and start painting the streets blue and purple. Urbanism!
i am talking about superkilen park in copenhagen. Your comments indicate that you dont know the project. Yes there is a bbq. A few of them. Not many. They had ashes in them so I guess they are being used. but you are right it is a small thing. The park is as far as i can tell pretty multi-layered. It was a community driven design that brought in symbols from all of the nations of the immigrants living around the park. The park is linear because it is a bike path Not incidentally a linear park has the ability to impact a much larger area of p eople than a simple square or dot in an urban landscape. I will admit that I am biased towards this point of view because I did my PhD in urban planning with Hidetoshi Ohno in Tokyo and his research was based on a similar idea, which he called fiber city. It emerges from the theories of Fumihiko Maki, who was his mentor. You might have heard of him? Neither Gehl nor Ingels are suggesting that urbansim is made by paint on a road. If that is all you can see then I suppose you have not bothered to look further than the surface, which is ironic. The paint is a tool. Maybe it is a style choice as well, but who cares about that? It is hardly important unless you think what something looks like is what it IS. Gehl in particular seems like a natural fit for a classicist such as yourself, as he starts with the idea of integration. I don't really understand how you can object to his approach, unless you actually have not looked at it properly. BTW, superkilen has both hard and soft areas. It is not just a big open space with a pattern painted on it. Do check it out if you want to see how it works in practice. I would especially recommend looking at the aga kahn award page, since it highlights some of the process and gets into the community side of things. They barely talk about paint at all ;-)
That's interesting you mention Maki, his work seems much different than Gehl or Ingels -- though his early metabolism is superficially similar to BIG -- but has now been refined over the years to be much more generous, open and organic -- a attention to detail and craft that signals a maturity that is a much better fit for NYC than what this BK project presents.
Don't think it's color per se that I object to, but the composition as architecture in this specific project and then the greater use of design gimmicks in urban planning as a crutch rather than as a tool. There are many new urban housing projects that use color perfectly in NYC.
The superkilen park in Copenhagen seems like a nice one-off, one that children especially may enjoy. My critique is more to how this childish design quality is being exported into many other places, and a growing sense that the urban core is being suburbanized. What adult spaces are left? Does the entire world need to be a Marvel movie? What happened to hard urbanism vs. soft urbanism? Look closer at the current Maki projects and you will be surprised at their generosity and seamless positive and negative spaces working together.
Gehl claims to be a Jane Jacobs disciple (as to many) but reading Death and Life it is clear her positions are more nuanced: "A city sidewalk by itself is nothing. It is an abstraction. It means something only in conjunction with the buildings and other uses that border it, or border other sidewalks very near it."
this is Jane Jacobs urbanism. Give me a simple sidewalk, a curb and trees the clearly separate traffic from pedestrians, and tied together with good architecture in a seamless way. This is a few blocks away. It allows for cars but is much more bikeable and walkable. By design.
We should admit that most of Gehl urbanism is just reverting pre-car old town centers into their original state. It’s a bit of a retro fetish, regressive short-cut urbanism with a limited scope. You could do better by some aggressive urban design — creating bike boulevards, better sidewalks, trees, designed parks, infrastructure. Most of it Gehlism is restrictive attempt to commercialize sidewalks and take away open sidewalks. Or give bureaucrats and their media cronies an easy win they can tout at the next cities conference, while mocking those backwards car-focused cities they have never been to and that offer more pedestrian friendly walking (like above BK picture) than much of NYC.
I don’t know Sweden at all except from movies and pictures. My impression, however, is that its cities are cleaner, in fact clean. I certainly don’t hold that against them. I wouldn’t be surprised if the average Swede is less likely to spit gum, etc. on their sidewalks than an American, but I’m guessing. Start looking at sidewalks. Try to clean them, as I have. Gunk is distracting and has to be managed. There is a metaphor here.
I know Brooklyn from the same and from a couple of visits years ago and literature, lately Jonathan Lethem’s novel The Fortress of Solitude. I also know that Americans have been hard on their cities. We need designs that can withstand the rough and tumble of urban life, express and contain our variety, sustain, even lift us all. Most, we need to remember what we have endured and overcome.
I wonder if BIG’s multi-colored scheme is a nod to diversity. If so, it’s a puerile one. Each culture has its own vital expressions that give it identity—and its own conflicts and contradictions. Then add all the conflicts and contradictions when the cultures meet and clash—and sometimes come together—as they have in Brooklyn. Add to these Brooklyn’s fractious history, the crowding, the crime, the conflicts of class and oppression. But diversity, for all the violent reactions, has energized the country and given it its vitality. And our conflicts, for better and for worse, have defined us.
All that can’t be washed over with pastel colors or decorated with toys. I see such designs not as solutions or genuine cultural expression but as a symptom of cultural malaise, of simplemindedness and avoidance. This design is obscenely inoffensive. I see no past in it, nor a future. BIG—and architecture—are not alone in this.
What, exactly, is the point to all those lanes? The bike path is clearly marked off, but the others? Will anyone use them? Get what message?
Meanwhile, Brooklyn is gearing up for still more expansion that will multiply the challenges.
Was there not a competition? I would love to study competing entries so I could learn something about design and about Brooklyn. Was BIG selected simply because of its reputation (now)? Were developers the main target? Was anyone else in the loop, say civic groups, cultural figures?
The BIG problem is that everything is reduced to a visual sound bite, a pretty picture for marketing. In a different mileu you can easily picture gracefully-posed scantily-clad women, Range Rovers poised on piles of boulders, etc. What’s important is the sale and everything serves that purpose. Nothing else matters.
Thus the illusion of happy community from some pastel-colored sidewalks. Which would be no different if it was made out of Legos.
Except that the Lego version is better.
Please no.
it’s no wonder why bike and pedestrian deaths are skyrocketing. NYC urban “designers” decided you can just paint the ground and traffic will figure it all out. Curvy paths, bikes and cars together, everyone looking at their phones, delivery trucks blocking most of the lanes anyway. Viola ... mcurbanism!
Seriously?
I see the newsstand has been removed in the Fulton Mall proposal, top of this post. I miss these. They added variety, visual interest, activity, even idiosyncrasy to the streets—and were for many a source of income.
Victims of the digital age, I'm sure. But there are other factors:
In 2005, the city, with strong support from then-mayor Michael Bloomberg, signed a contract with Cemusa, a Madrid-based design company, to construct the identical steel, aluminum, and frosted glass newsstands that now dot the NYC streetscape (Cemusa also built 3,300 bus shelters and 20 pay toilets). The old models, which Dan Biederman, president of The Bryant Park Organization and Biederman Redevelopment Ventures Corporation, refers to as “tawdry” and “put together with plywood,” were torn down. They were often ramshackle and idiosyncratic, varying based on the neighborhood and their owners’ sense of style. “The new design is definitely an upgrade,” Dan Biederman believes. Even so, they’re nondescript, uniform, and fairly soulless.
And you can see one of the modern newsstands in Fulton Mall now, in the picture in my comment above.
Aesthetics is only one part of the equation. Newsstand operators used to pay the city a licensing fee, but owned their newsstands outright -- prices varied considerably based on location and condition. After the highly contested Cemusa takeover, the company took over full ownership of the stands. Operators now pay a one-time $30,000 fee to Cemusa plus a two-year city license fee of $1,076 -- they are renters, not owners. The revenue from the ads displayed on newsstands, once a significant source of income for the individual owner, now goes entirely to Cemusa.
from Hannah Howard at Thrillist.
In microcosm, you see what has happened to our cities. And our culture. And our country.
Social utopia as defined by corporate marketing strategists.
that is a good critique Gary. I agree. The problem with the BIG approach is it creates a language without room for weird shit other than their own. That is a perfectly valid critique worth thinking about. Cities need clutter and dirt and grime, and they need to be flexible enough that change can take place over time without requiring a complete rewrite. Climate change, economic change, demographic change, unexpected change. These things are of the city, and the city should contain them. Designing too much with a singular expectation of outcome is short-sighted. The real test of these project by BIG will be how they accommodate change in the future. My honest expectation is that they will struggle, but that it will happen in interesting ways. Just as with most designs from any time in history. How much better though if BIG and his team built in space for the future in their designs for today...
That's exactly right. Cities need variety, not a one designer stamp over the whole thing. Plus, the cartoon like colors are silly.
Thanks, Will. I always look forward to your comments. Everything needs hard critical review, for and against, neither of which I see much of. There's no question we need to rethink our cities, continually. If there is a language here, I wonder who it is designed for and how durable and vital it is.
The Offerman Building again, in the area of the proposal. I picked it on the fly. Romanesque Revival, built 130 years ago. It provides a good contrast to the BIG proposal and offers one pole in the ongoing debate about styles.
Lets's face it. This is a clunky, homely building, which won't win prizes for grace and execution.
And yet—
It has endured, well over a century. It provides evidence that we once had a past, a past that still lives with us, that we survive, that endurance is possible, that we might have a future because we're aware what's behind us.
It has aged well. In fact such buildings get better with age as soot gets into the details and articulates them.
It has proven to be adaptable over the years, now mixed-use. The modern fronts for the stores fit in well. The apartments above have great windows, great light.
It has energy and division, compression and release, in the many parts, all contained within the overall facade. Suggested here the possibility of variety and vitality within an orderly whole.
The thing is just damn interesting and always will be. In fact lengthy discussion is required to explain just what all the parts are doing, which speaks for engagement and complexity.
It speaks a language, one of many variants of classical, which, while we may not know it, we still are familiar with, like Catholics long ago who didn't know Latin at mass, and have been for some time. The language is durable and expressive, analytical and ceremonial. Suggested, the possibility of communication, of ceremony, of critical thought.
I believe it was once a department store, yet it maintained a public reserve and formality and didn't call too much attention to itself but rather remembered it fit within a larger order, within the civic sphere. It is a civil building.
It is human. It corresponds to our sense of our bodies, feet, trunk, and head with its base, body, and capital. And in doing so, it puts us in the scale, the overall order.
And all the above is given dignity and elevation.
And maybe we smirk. It is awkward. But that's OK. We are awkward people.
My question is how much of the above can be retained in contemporary buildings. One complaint I have about modern buildings is that they just don't age well. They are pristine and look to exist for the moment, an eternal present that can only fade. And look like hell when they get dirty.
Still, times change, and we have to adapt. In my architectural imagination, it's not possible to revive the classical orders without being sentimental or false in other ways. Our assumptions about ourselves individually and together have transformed in so many ways. But we need a language and culture that go beyond what gets our attention—and brings in bucks.
The next question is what should go next to or before these things.
At any rate, I'm glad we hold onto them. I'm also grateful there aren't too many just like this one, that developers didn't try to create an overarching scheme back then. Brooklyn has great variety in its other older buildings.
"In my architectural imagination, it's not possible to revive the classical orders without being sentimental or false in other ways."
The building isn't classical, and styles have always been revived, like mid-century revival. What matters isn't whether a building is based on the past (cause everything is). It's whether it's humane, and therefore will it be loved and taken care of. We can't afford to build disposable architecture anymore.
"It is human. It corresponds to our sense of our bodies, feet, trunk, and head with its base, body, and capital. And in doing so, it puts us in the scale, the overall order."
Which of these two buildings is more human, or humane?
or
Neither. They are both authoritarian.
I'm not well schooled in styles, but there's a general definition of classical as anything that was influenced by Greek and/or Roman architecture, typically by their columns and/or arches. Romanesque wasn't influenced by the Roman? There's an abstract sense of classical describing work that is ideal in concept and balanced in proportion (and the proportions suggest the ideal). In this sense, both the Parthenon and Seagram building are classical. The Offerman building decidedly is not.
Philip Johnson was definitely a classicist, which makes his collaboration (and imitation of) Mies interesting. Though in retrospect, Mies' modernism represents a very classical era of modernism, projecting very old values on new building methods.
Nobody can really escape history. We are always responding to it in different ways. Those that tend to ignore it and pretend to be doing something "new" are usually conning themselves or everyone else.
The discussion of what is classical or not is confusing at times. I tend to stick to the dictionary, but many buildings are classically composed even though not in detail. In that sense, the Offerman building is, meaning there's an organic (or human) quality to its facade, unlike the Mies building which mechanical, speaking of architecture as frozen music. As a student in Brooklyn of the late 80's, I spent many an hour studying the Offerman building, which imho is definitely not "a clunky, homely building", considering how much movement, play, and variety its facade offers the passerby. That's why it looks 'human' to my eye, unlike the platonic or gridded compositions that leave one's eye searching. I could care less if a building is classical or not, just give the viewer something to look at longer than a second and it becomes a 'gift to the street'.
Greek thinking is at once typal and specific. It takes on an idea (or a form, which is nothing other than a congealed idea), nourishes and perfects it through a series of conscious changes, and in this way informs it with a kind of universal validity that seems irrefutable. The process is in fact ideal, that is, based on “the perfection of kind.” It presupposes orderly development and the practicability of consummation.
From Spiro Kostof's History. The Greek influence is as much a spirit, an idea.
This project is nothing more than an eyesore. It would be a lot better if there were more green spaces in place of useless benches created with good old grasshopper script. I am sick and tired of seeing the same unthoughtful design approach, which is probably created overnight. There would have been better integration of green space and urban furniture. I also agree with previous comments about the rigidity of the design. This place will need to be demolished since it does not even look functional now. I think we should all propose alternative design solutions. There needs to be a bike lane, urban furniture, and green space, but the design should be more aesthetically pleasing, sophisticated, flexible, sustainable, functional, and thoughtful.
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