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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

If a city is filled with all of the varying things of commerce and amenities, but can't offer it's inhabitants a complete experience- with transportation, and places to live, work, and recreate in reasonable proximity, it is not functioning as a complete and whole city. If the shape and form of the city are not a pleasure and inspiration to move through, then it isn't a fully formed city. The visitor judges a city, and determines if it provides a whole experience. But the people who inhabit a place need the same things, if it is going to be a place that we truly love and can function in.

Over time, the tourist appeal of the Highline will diminish, and its infrastructure will burnish itself into the surrounding neighborhood. Hopefully it will be kept it good repair, to be treasured for many years to come. The displaced will find other quarters in the Burroughs, and some will still survive in the shadows of the trestles as before.

"Guenther Demnig is the artist and sculptor behind the stumbling stones (shown in the photo in the link). Here, he installs new bricks in Berlin. He says formal memorials are too abstract. Not so with the stumbling stones. 'Suddenly they are there, right outside your front door, at your feet, in front of you,' he says."

"Which is what walking in America has become: An act dwelling in the margins, an almost hidden narrative running beneath the main vehicular text. Indeed, the semantics of the term pedestrian would be a mere curiosity, but for one fact: America is a country that has forgotten how to walk."

Apple stores are textbook cases for how buildings and businesses can contribute and make a good city. They add substance and interest beyond their initial functional purpose; they are conceived and constructed with the deepest care. Although they take on a machine-like character, they are executed with considerable skill, lavished with attention to detail, and are well loved by the designers, builders, and the ones writing the checks. They are ultimate crafted urban element, a gift to each place that makes a home for them.

"Cities are brokers of complex truths, the result of decisions that are registered on their very surfaces. Three exemplars in this regard are New Orleans, Detroit, and Phoenix; in Detroit parlance- the “New Big Three.” These cities are serving as the scouts for the rest of the nation as they confront some of our most pressing challenges."

Shopping can be frustrating, or an exercise in spending too much, but we also know that it can be richly pleasurable. What about finding a way to go back to that local shop, a place that happens to be easy to get to (maybe even walk to!), has the stuff we want, and is priced well? That is certainly a way to incite pleasurable shopping. It would be a difficult, yet delicious problem to solve-perhaps never completely solvable (that's why it's 'unobtainable'). The diverging forces of processing and manufacturing, transport and marketing don't make it easy, and it's getting more difficult every day. Yet this may be the time to try and achieve it.

"Beneath the trail the city [Chicago] has been busy assembling a series of parks at grade that are to become access points, including one in the Logan Square neighborhood that opened on June 4. Eventually, the trail will have an access point every quarter to a half of a mile. “We really think of this as an archipelago of green space,” said [Ben] Helphand [board president of Friends of the Bloomingdale Trail]. In addition to Logan, some existing parks will also be incorporated, such as Churchill Field Park and Walsh Park, which will expand north as part of the plan. A park at Milwaukee Avenue is being greened. Other parks will be at Kimball Avenue and at the terminus at the McCormick Y. Other access points will be at Maplewood and Mozart avenues but there will not be parks."

I'm attracted to alternate circulation systems in cities; a means of getting around on foot that circumvents the normal street grid, normally to solve of grade changes, or for getting around impermeable infrastructure. These alternative structures, if done well, transform how a local neighborhood works, while actually helping the urban street grid work.

I laugh, because I'm not sure they are the renegades they make themselves out to be. The High Line project in New York may be their most well known work, and at the face of it, seems like pretty radical thinking. I think it works as good design, perhaps for some of the reasons that the designers offer up, but more likely, it works for some age old reasons that have contributed to crafting great cities for thousands of years.

To the craftsperson, the grain of a material is the most important consideration in determining its use, and how it will be transformed into craft. ‘Grain’ is an essential characteristic of the craft; the analogy extends well beyond the metaphor of wood to a carver or stone to a sculptor. Craft is universal, and 'grain' is the essential and basic to the understanding of the endeavor.