In his 2004 New Yorker article, Paul Goldberger wrote of architect Rem Koolhaas’ downtown Seattle Public Library branch under the moniker of “ennobling public space“, lauding the return of a dignified, people-centric structure to the city center.
Six years later, those depicted below along the library’s Fifth Avenue entrance facade looked within themselves, reflecting with private particularity, while also ironically reflected in the monumental public glass.
Discussions by Christopher Leinberger and others frequently reference “walkable urbanism,” premised upon increasingly compact, dense neighborhoods.
Ironically, on Seattle’s Capitol Hill, one of the city’s best examples of such neighborhood form, the evening depictions below show the historic, auto-based Dick’s Drive-In as a pedestrian center. Nearby, a classic parking area stands in front of a wok venue.
As the everyday urbanism of neighborhoods such as Capitol Hill evolve, chances are that “wok-able” and “walkable” will more completely align.
This article appeared in slightly different form in Crosscut, here.
The Thoreau-like cottage first identified here presents imagery of renewal in the urban woods. Collectively, these vignettes present a city cabin on the way to rebirth in an era of green, retaining existing walls as an element of land use permitting, in order to facilitate such rebuilding in a constrained, hillside setting. Small-scale projects like this one may be the true harbingers of the changing American metropolis.
A woman and girl, of diverse age, show respective urban gestures: one of universal cellphone pragmatism, and the other of wistful play on a screened balcony.
Click below for a multimedia tribute to “little places”: the industrial grates and covers which have graced urban rights-of-way since Roman times. These street-level barriers provide public safety and maintenance gateways to the inner workings of infrastructure. Like coins, they carry symbols and patterns from industrial process, often symbolizing local heritage or factory name.