Apologies for the inconvenience

Apologies for the inconvenience 

One sees quite a lot of construction activity in the Netherlands. Projects planned before the credit crunch as well as new ones aimed at stimulating economic and business activity seem to be everywhere. Delft has been a building site for quite a few years and will remain so for some more. What impresses me in how these activities affect public space is the relative indifference for the inconvenience citizens have to suffer, especially cyclists and pedestrians. Quite often the inconvenience has a strong physical component: having to push bicycles up some stairs is no joy - and not just for the many elderly cyclists or parents carrying children. The perceptual component is equally discomforting: where there used to be an orderly or at least recognisable context for ones movement and activities, the environment becomes a variable obstacle course. Orientation and navigation become problematic, distorted by both new elements like temporary fences around the construction areas and the need to constantly solve minor problems like keeping on the arbitrary route  that circumvents them on the particular day. One cannot relax and walk or cycle without thinking, just enjoying the views around them, as one can often do in the Netherlands.

The problem is that everything seems to be for the benefit of the construction activities: roads and cycle paths are blocked so that transportation and site logistics are served, with little regard for the comfort or even safety of citizens - quite often the taxpayers who finance the projects. This should actually be a priority for any public project: rather prioritising the efficiency of construction works, planning should respect those affected by the works and take good care of their needs, especially if the works last long. People need to feel cared for by town hall officials but also by construction firms. It may prove more expensive but goodwill is difficult to achieve and easy to lose. Populism thrives on the accumulation of small dissatisfactions. Proper planning can minimise physical inconvenience but arguably more importantly stimulate involvement of people in what takes place. This refers to both participatory design of the temporary situation around construction activities and the possibility to organise this situation in a way that affords views and information on what is happening, on the projected final state and progress of the works. Rather than feeling alienated by changes in one's environment, citizens should be able to view these changes as part of their environment.

Nature and architecture

Nature and architecture 

I write here about natural environments but not just as journal entries on tourist experiences. I consider experiences with nature an integral part of architecture. What gives an architect any particular right to have views on the natural environment?

One could argue that quite a lot of what we consider natural is actually designed; also that the current association of the natural with the virgin, the unmolested by humans is rather recent notion and a very biased one, too. Living in the dense, small-scale Dutch suburbs of the Randstad I'm constantly amazed by the resilience of the flora and fauna, and their ability to come back and occupy even more than what we make available to them, so I'm disinclined to view my environment from a god-like perspective of human supremacy or to adopt sharp distinctions between the built and the natural environment.

We're just part of the environment, admittedly a very influential species, yet often powerless against e.g. a swarm of insects or a river flood. So, even though I keep writing about "the built environment" I acknowledge the unity of the environment and our partial role in it. Nature is not an accessory of architecture but the wider framework within which architecture and the rest of our culture exists. To understand better human foibles and achievements one needs to see the environment as a whole.

Yet another reason is that our perceptual apparatus has been formed by millions of years of interaction with environments where out influence has been minimal. Over these years deeply ingrained prejudices have developed, which often remain unaccounted for in architecture. Just think of the many buildings with visual cliffs in them and how often some people refuse to walk there. There's a lot to be learned from a less architecture-oriented view of the environment.

3D

3D

When most people talk about 3D, it's about depth perception, about combining two pictures of a scene (as we do with our two eyes) to actually see rather than infer the distance and relative position of objects. In architecture, when we talk about 3D, it's about the height of objects, the Z axis in our representations. This is arguably typical of architecture: we don't look at the world, we look at our own tools and conventions. Perhaps the saddest thing is that we don't appear to celebrate the ingenuity of these tools: 2D representations aren't boring, stupid means to be replaced by 3D representations as soon as possible; at least some of them are great ways of describing aspects of the real world, making them accessible and manageable.

No, I'm wrong: the saddest thing was that many years ago, when I was pushing for 3D and making people work towards it by putting floor plans on top of each other and cross sections at the right places, discrepancies of even 50 cm between floors were not uncommon. Of course, at the same time, when we put floor plans of adjacent buildings next to each other we discovered gaps of up to fifteen degrees. That's the saddest: not being able to use one's tools properly - and this won't improve with 3D.