A platform for research: civil engineering, architecture and urbanism
A platform for research: civil engineering, architecture and urbanism
A significant amount of our everyday landscape is comprised of repetitive, generic, prototypical design. Developer and corporate driven “one size fits all” quick-fix prototypes and spaces are the status quo in our persistently complex, continuously evolving, globalized world. Alternative approaches to current paradigms of sameness are imperative. Our daily experiences, from our homes, to work, to shopping, to driving, are comprised of interfaces with ubiquitous non-specific design, especially in the United States. Where do critical agendas, research, and design play a part in this moving target world? Margaret Crawford in Everyday Urbanism states that “the everyday city has rarely been the focus of attention for architects or urban designers, despite the fact that an amazing number of social, spatial, and aesthetic meanings can be found in the repeated activities and conditions that constitute our daily, weekly, and yearly routines.”1 This dilemma is further articulated In Ellen Dunham-Jones’s article “Seventy-five Percent”, where she states that: Architects design only a small percentage of what gets built in the United States. Still, it is astonishing that in the past-century a vast landscape has been produced without the kind of buildings that architects consider ‘architecture,’ a landscape almost entirely uninformed by the critical agendas or ideas of the discipline. This landscape is the suburban fringe, the outer suburbs and exurbs – the landscape often called ‘urban sprawl.’ The favored venue for development associated with the post-industrial economy, this landscape accounts for approximately 75% of all new construction – yet it is shunned by most architectural designers.2
A significant amount of our everyday landscape is comprised of repetitive, generic, prototypical design. Developer and corporate driven “one size fits all” quick-fix prototypes and spaces are the status quo in our persistently complex, continuously evolving, globalized world. Alternative approaches to current paradigms of sameness are imperative. Our daily experiences, from our homes, to work, to shopping, to driving, are comprised of interfaces with ubiquitous non-specific design, especially in the United States. Where do critical agendas, research, and design play a part in this moving target world? Margaret Crawford in Everyday Urbanism states that “the everyday city has rarely been the focus of attention for architects or urban designers, despite the fact that an amazing number of social, spatial, and aesthetic meanings can be found in the repeated activities and conditions that constitute our daily, weekly, and yearly routines.”1 This dilemma is further articulated In Ellen Dunham-Jones’s article “Seventy-five Percent”, where she states that: Architects design only a small percentage of what gets built in the United States. Still, it is astonishing that in the past-century a vast landscape has been produced without the kind of buildings that architects consider ‘architecture,’ a landscape almost entirely uninformed by the critical agendas or ideas of the discipline. This landscape is the suburban fringe, the outer suburbs and exurbs – the landscape often called ‘urban sprawl.’ The favored venue for development associated with the post-industrial economy, this landscape accounts for approximately 75% of all new construction – yet it is shunned by most architectural designers.2
Towards Difference in the Everyday Landscape
Dye, Wanda (author)
2019-06-19
ARCC Conference Repository; 2008: Changes of Paradigms | The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts
Article (Journal)
Electronic Resource
English
DDC:
720