A New Theory of Urban DesignThe venerable cities of the past, such as Venice or Amsterdam, convey a feeling of wholeness, an organic unity that surfaces in every detail, large and small, in restaurants, shops, public gardens, even in balconies and ornaments. But this sense of wholeness is lacking in modern urban design, with architects absorbed in problems of individual structures, and city planners preoccupied with local ordinances, it is almost impossible to achieve. In this groundbreaking volume, the newest in a highly-acclaimed series by the Center for Environmental Structure, architect and planner Christopher Alexander presents a new theory of urban design which attempts to recapture the process by which cities develop organically. To discover the kinds of laws needed to create a growing whole in a city, Alexander proposes here a preliminary set of seven rules which embody the process at a practical level and which are consistent with the day-to-day demands of urban development. He then puts these rules to the test, setting out with a number of his graduate students to simulate the urban redesign of a high-density part of San Francisco, initiating a project that encompassed some ninety different design problems, including warehouses, hotels, fishing piers, a music hall, and a public square. This extensive experiment is documented project by project, with detailed discussion of how each project satisfied the seven rules, accompanied by floorplans, elevations, street grids, axonometric diagrams and photographs of the scaled-down model which clearly illustrate the discussion. A New Theory of Urban Design provides an entirely new theoretical framework for the discussion of urban problems, one that goes far to remedy the defects which cities have today. |
Contents
INTRODUCTION | 1 |
PART I THEORY | 7 |
PART II EXPERIMENT | 101 |
PART III EVALUATION | 233 |
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS | 251 |
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act of construction Artemis Anninou Bath Bay Bridge bollards building increment built café character Christopher Alexander coherent COMMENTARY committee COMMUNITY BANK complete courtyard create defined elevation entirely entities entrance example existing experiment factory field of centers FISHING PIER formulated freeway function gate gateway ground floor plan growing wholeness heal helped Hills Brothers coffee idea intermediate rules larger centers larger wholes levels main square mall ment Mission Street Nature of Order NEWSPAPER BUILDING OFFICE Oregon Experiment parking garage parking structure pedestrian mall pedestrian space pedestrian streets Piecemeal growth placed primary structure problems produce wholeness proj proposal PUBLIC GARDEN RESTAURANT road rooms ROW HOUSES scale secondary structure sense sequence seven rules shape simply simulation small park stage stairs STEUART storeys structural bays subrules Takeshi Kimura theater THEORY OF URBAN thing tion urban design urban space vision volume waterfront YMCA