Bringing density back in to city making has been back in vogue for awhile with the reintroduction of the 'Transit Oriented District'. This hasn't been without its disappointments.

In the United States of America, we believe in a democracy based on the rule of law. The thought is that the rule of law will create a better society, one that promotes Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness. As civilization has progressed, no-one seems to have come up with a better idea.

Taking this idea, and translating it into how we make cities, the Democratic choice and the rule of law guides us to build in one of two ways, and in America, we've done both.

It is a place where successive generations layer their city building atop what their predecessors built. Old buildings and infrastructure are honored and preserved, but are kept alive by new adaptations within the preserved structures.The character and history of the place are realized everywhere you look. Yet the hand of the current generation of designers is also everywhere. The past is honored and preserved, and yet the excitement of the new is also clearly at hand.

My friends took this building, acquired in the 1970s, and kept it, renovated and refined it, honoring it for its original design intentions, while overlaying years of upkeep and refinements. They made a great thing even greater. Actions, when placed together, that constituted a kind of love. They loved it, not just in thoughts and feelings, but in action. It made for a wonderful experience.

In Pasadena, where I live, the community values careful monitoring of the design of new construction and remodeling of buildings. The city has established a panel to review proposed building projects which, as a group, is aptly called, 'The Design Review Board'. This panel, consisting of professionals and other appointed interested parties, takes its work seriously. It's not easy to get their approval.

The design of things, the design of cities, are all required to go through their requisite 'purification'. But instead of a distillery's chromium piping, a city has code-enforced banality. The act of codifying what is 'good', as practiced in our administered system, renders our cities into something not awful. Yet something that is without character.

The Architect's Newspaper:

"Details are sparse during the period of Zaha Hadid replacing Assemblage. First, over the two year span, Assemblage was never officially notified that they had lost the bid. Although, in private they knew they were frozen out of conversation. Second, leading Iraqi architectural critic Ihsan Fethi said there has been a veil of secrecy as he has tried several times to see the plan for the parliamentary building. Finally, the Iraqi Council of Representatives never had a chance to choose the winner selected by the RIBA judges."

I would imagine that there must be pressure from the other side, too. The great ones will get dissed by their own contingent to avoid giving folks the wrong idea that they are paying too much attention to context, and not enough to the art and theory of their work. Yet by accident or design, the work of the elite actually does contribute to improving a city. It's nice when it happens.

Here in Pasadena, Morphosis has pulled this off, on California Boulevard, on the CalTech campus.

Witness the ongoing saga at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. With the acquisition of the American Folk Art Museum on West 53rd Street, came a crafted building praised by many critics. After some wavering on the issue, it was announced that this building would be torn down to make way for a new MoMA addition, throwing MoMA headlong into a classic preservation debate. Keep or Tear Down. Keep the quirky structure by the architects Tod Williams + Billie Tsein, with all of its accompanying issues mis-matched floor elevations and the like, or scrape it clean and start over.

The High Line in New York is a public way, a kind of a street. By no means does it replace the street at grade, in function, nor in its full relationship with the surrounding buildings. The original trestles and freight rails did respond to a particular 'need' that the surrounding buildings had, that is, the movement of goods to and between them. Over the years this need faded away; eventually it was creatively repurposed to fill the need for new York's inhabitants to move around on foot, in an outdoor and public space that provided a calming antidote to the bustling city life. So in claiming public access, providing up-and-over connectivity, and in continuing (albeit in a different way from the trestles) a relationship with the surrounding buildings, the High Line becomes a substitute street.

Current advanced thought in the architectural world and associated academia proclaims that computer design can take us to places in architectural form that past practice could only dream about, and it because it can done, it should be done.

Here's another idea…

Everything about moving up through the building helps to build the excitement. We'll start with the long and deep red space that houses the linear assent up from the parking garage. The zig and zag through the main lobby spaces, a sequence of unexpected volumes, all lined with the beautiful fir paneling, foretelling the concert hall inside. Working up to more intimate spaces that lead to the part of the hall you are headed towards. Free flowing and refined, adventurous and in good taste, with a sense of movement the whole time. Finally, the concert goer moves through a discreet portal and into the great concert space, the musical instrument in which you will experience the concert. Wonderful experience in site and sound. The very culmination of why the procession is so important in architecture. It places you in the right frame of mind to experience great art.

Its people tend to prefer buildings that play along with the agreed upon architectural style, but there has always been some room for the adventurous and creative. Alas, there has also been an element of the crass and carelessly expeditious. Things decay, and sometimes they are blown away, and they are lovingly brought back, or stuck together with plywood and caulk and painted chartreuse to honor Mardi Gras.

There are a collection of physical and environmental elements that surround a building that help to make it a great to be in, and especially if it is a residence, a great to live in. To visualize, think of these surrounding and enveloping things as a collection of attributes that makes something like a cosseting, comforting blanket, providing the 'comfort' of the feeling of well-being and beauty.

Where I come from, building setbacks at the front are primary and irrefutable elements of the zoning code. Intrusion is forbidden up to a few inches above the ground plane, except for landscaping and the odd lamp-post. The front-yard setback is the hallmark what what is considered to be good suburban design, the semi-public space that sets a residence or other suburban building away from the activities of the street, and helps to create a pleasant and pastoral street volume.

"The rest of the country looks to California. Not for what is conventional, but for what is necessary—necessary to keep faith with our courageous forebears.What we have done together and what we must do in the coming years is big, but it pales in comparison to the indomitable courage of those who discovered and each decade thereafter built a more abundant California. As Legislators, It is your duty and privilege to pass laws. But what we need to do for our future will require more than producing hundreds of new laws each year.

My architect world-view changed with the realization that one of the things I appreciated most about cities is the spatial progression down the streets and public places, the ever changing volume between buildings and level of activity that revealed itself as I walked or rode. The change in my perception came from the realization over time that this continually changing outdoor space was of the public city was considerably more important in its totality then any of the given buildings along the way-no mater how significant and finely executed. The dynamic tension between the great and small spaces created between structures, the 'leaky' interstitial, the collective details and textures compelled me as something that made for a greater whole. It's now a key part of what makes me understand a city, and it's a realization that greatly affects how I practice as an architect.

Grand Avenue in Los Angeles is a showcase of premier American Architecture, created by premier American Architects. So far the buildings that have been created have not been cooperating with each other to make the great urban space Grand Avenue could be.