YouTube Series: BACKGROUND OR ICON?
2 JANUARY 2024
CAN A STREET BE ARCHITECTURE?
I believe that streets can’t be just described as infrastructure.
I’m making a case here that streets are in fact, architecture.
Let me qualify— It gets down to what we think architecture really is. There are good reasons why streets can be considered— Let’s apply the architectural qualities test:
DOES IT PROVIDE SHELTER?
Strictly speaking, streets don’t provide shelter, and shelter is a basic component of architecture. But— while street design favors its primary design brief of movement and connection, streets do shelter it their own way, providing protection and enclosure, despite the general lack of a roof overhead. The building faces themselves, the trees, the street furniture— they all contribute to creating a visually appealing and comfortable environment for pedestrians that moderates the outdoor climate.
DOES IT ACCOMMODATE FUNCTIONAL REQUIREMENTS?
No mystery here! Streets provide the pathways, between buildings and across town, for vehicles, pedestrians, cyclists- you name it. They are a necessity for the movement of people and goods. One unfortunate thing, though: In our era, the functional design of streets is especially planned to ensure the most efficient car-oriented circulation, at the expense of everything else.
DOES IT PROVIDE A DYNAMIC EXPERIENCE?
Dynamic experiences like moving through a smaller and/or darker space into a larger/lighter space is one of the secret sauces of architecture. It applies to street design to create a sense of spatial progression and rhythm, just like in an individual building design. Streets can be designed to gradually narrow or widen, creating dynamic and engaging ‘hooks’ for pedestrians. This deliberate manipulation of space positively influences the perception and interaction of individuals within their surroundings, contributing to the overall spatial composition.
PROCESSION
Of course streets are often considered as pathways for processions; formal, informal, you name it— these are the events and traditions that give a city character, maintained and burnished over time. The linear space of a street accommodates parades, or marches, or any other ceremonial event you can think of. Streets are the backdrop for significant cultural and social activities. The arrangement of buildings, landscaping, and street furniture along the route of a procession can enhance the visual spectacle and architectural significance of the event. A kind of scaled-up version of what we do in a building.
Even without the spectacle, streets can inspire forward movement, and an excitement about just passing through. You look at one interesting thing ahead, and you want to move up to it. Then you see another, and you move forward more. This is the essence of the processional quality of a street.
DETAIL AND INTEREST
Thoughtful details, sometimes bold, and sometime subtle, are basic to good street design. When the collection of buildings along a street fully participates, each with its own offering of rich details, a visually interesting and cohesive urban landscapes ensues. The facades, shapes, materials, lighting, and signage, all contribute. The additional incorporation of public art, green spaces, and interactive features adds layers of interest and engagement, taking the street design beyond just being an utilitarian corridor.
So streets are more than mere infrastructure; their components, thoughtfully arranged are indeed a work of architecture in and of itself. These components— function, shelter, compression and release, procession, and attention to detail, all fulfill an architectural role, while also contributing to the overall fabric of a city, shaping the built environment and influencing the experiences of its inhabitants.
THE ICONS
One of the apparent weaknesses of the Great Architects, is that there is a failure to recognize that Streets and other great outdoor spaces, are collectively designed and fully built-out work, designed by many. Mistakes are made, and healed over time. But the producers of great works, see what they do as self-possessed icons. Icons that outwardly radiate their assured artistic presence, and only relating upon high, down to the collective surroundings.
These are buildings that embody architecture, buildings that are beautiful, thought provoking, buildings that are photographed, written about and known the world over.
They occupy the top of the architectural pyramid, and they believe the work they do should influence and inspire the surrounding environment without listening and looking first.
And these illustrious works do influence! — but it’s manifested in ways not intended or immediately understood. These icons are placed, and fill the theoretical and pragmatic brief that the great architect envisions.
But are these icons, and their so- called dis-associated surroundings- are they really inconsequential to each other?
I believe that for the most part, the architecture of the iconic and sensational, relate with their surroundings in both obvious and oblique ways. By not acknowledging what can’t be controlled, the affect on our ‘Street as Architecture’ cannot be predicted.
I think that these producers of icons manage (often but not always) to somehow relate their work to their surroundings. In two ways:
First, As a precious gem, something that sets itself off from its surroundings— or—
Second, By accidentally providing the requisite qualities that contribute to the larger collective architecture of the outdoor room.
A LOCAL ICON
I’m thinking of a iconic building near where I live in Pasadena- it’s the Cahill Center for Astronomy and Astrophysics, at Cal Tech, by Morphosis.
Cal Tech is a vaunted institution here, known world wide for the scientific contributions in a variety of fields that its people have made. According to Wikipedia, “As of October 2022, there are 79 Nobel laureates who have been affiliated with Caltech, making it the institution with the highest number of Nobelists per capita in America.”
Bertram Goodhue, a scion of early 20th century Gothic and Spanish Colonial architecture was hired to do a master plan on what was to become the Cal Tech campus. Over the years, the university has become the home of many wonderful buildings; it is a well loved campus in this community.
Yes, there have been a few lemons built on the campus too. The collection of buildings where the Cahill Center was constructed is a varied collection— many of the buildings erected in the vicinity have made no real attempt in their designs, to properly address the street they flank, or even to compliment the campus as a whole. So California Boulevard, where the Cahill is constructed, is kind of a de-facto back-door to the campus. And yet the experience of passing through these blocks that traverse this southern portion of the campus is pleasant enough.
So what was the Architect’s intent here?
From Morphosis website:
“The building is the result of a series of forces that collide, to produce unique spaces of discovery. Force lines track the movement of form and light through the building’s faceted façade, the central vertical volume, and the ‘stitches’. As one moves through the space, formal fragments coalesce to reconstruct the interactions among light, architectural elements, and bodies as physical traces of the institution’s new ideas.”
I assume that Morphosis had a good relationship with their client Cal Tech, and an adequate one with the City of Pasadena. But I’m also sure that there was little in their brief, about making a contribution to East California Boulevard.
And it must be said that the institution’s importance in the Pasadena community must have helped to bridge-over the communities’s recent preference for historic design, over abstract modernism. In putting this together, I did not find any information on any neighborhood push-back..
And I didn’t find any information that would shed a light on any effort by the university or the design team for the project to ‘blend-in’ either.
AND YET…
And yet, Surprisingly enough, it works.
The Cahill Center has made a real contribution to the life and feel of these few blocks of Pasadena city fabric.
Why? Is this by accident?
Here is a little light analysis as to why this building might actually be making this contribution:
First, It helps to contribute to the PUBLIC realm that exists along the boulevard; It spatially supports that realm.
Second, It provides an excellent transition zone to support both the street and the functions that take place within the building.
Third, It provides excellent connectivity with surrounding Campus functions.
Fourth, Its facade provides visual interest; its fractal design language actually works well with the topography and mediates with its surroundings
Fifth, Heading west, the indented fissure in the facade visually responds well to the uphill approach.
And finally sixth, Headed east, the deconstructed facade, in its primarily terra cotta color, actually helps to mediate between the middle aged modern structures and the original Spanish Colonial of the old campus
Some of this was premeditated. Some influence may have been imparted by the City’s Design Review panel. Some of it was a happy accident.
IN THE END
No mater what the theory or construct is, in the end a building, any building, participates in the environment that is was built in.
In the end, the theories and internal design journeys are all stripped away. In the end, the building is judged as an object within a larger picture. In the end, an architectural work stands the test of time in not quite the way its creative team intended, but by complicated circumstances, and by how history responds.
In the end, Cahill is less of an icon, and more of a background building.
But that’s good!
Cahill adds to the architecture of the California Boulevard place. It adds to the walking experience, and provides interest and character. It compliments the surrounding campus buildings by unifying and providing counterpoint at the same time. It welcomes, and yet is clear that it is to be used primarily by those who are a part of the campus. It contributes interest along the way, just the same as the other buildings that line the street. There are pleasing spacial relationships, that it sets up. It is very good, but it can’t lay any claim to being better the the good buildings around it. It’s doing its job, providing part of the enclosure of the larger architectural place, California Boulevard.
Cahill is not an Icon, and that’s OK!
Here’s a link to my video: