Architecture and the City — Makeshift Metropolis

Witold Rybczynski on the Bilbao anomaly and the limits of the urban-design plan: many actors participate over long periods, so the goal is a loose framework that accommodates the process rather than a finished object. The public’s appetite for striking architecture tracks prosperity, civic ambition, and confidence in the future.

Part of the New City reading list — indexed on The New City.

Notes

• Makeshift Metropolis by: Witold Rybczynski
• Urban designers deal with collections of buildings, such as downtown business districts, residential neighborhoods, planned communities, town centers, and college campuses. While they are often architects, urban designers don’t design individual buildings. Instead, they plan the public spaces between buildings—avenues, streets, squares, promenades, and parks—and establish general guidelines, such as setbacks, heights, and other rules that govern how buildings relate to one another.
• In this gradual process many actors participate over long periods of time. Thus, the goal of an urban-design plan is to create a loose framework that will accommodate this process, acknowledging that the future is usually impossible to predict.
• The public’s appetite for striking architecture in any period is fueled by similar forces: prosperity, civic ambition, confidence in the future, and a sense that one’s own epoch is unique and needs its own form of special expression.