Learning from “Learning From Las Vegas”

March 9, 2010 at 5:17 pm
Filed under Designers, Placemaking, Signage, Urban Planning

“From October 29, 2009 to Feb 5, 2010, Yale School of Architecture Gallery held What We Learned, an exhibition that features the teaching, research, and design work of Venturi and Scott Brown. The exhibition was made up of two independently organized shows.” — A.M.

Signing the National Mall

February 19, 2010 at 10:49 am
Filed under Conferences, SEGD Conf + Expo, Urban Planning, Wayfinding

More than 25 million people visit Washington D.C.’s National Mall and Memorial Parks each year, and on any given day, more than 60 languages are spoken on the mall. It’s a special place, with a dramatic story to tell about America and what it means to be an American.

But many visitors don’t know the Washington Monument from the U.S. Capitol, never mind how to find the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. For them, the two-mile stretch of the National Mall can be a complex, confusing place to be. Help is on the way, though, in the form of a new wayfinding and signage system designed to guide visitors to major destinations, identify monuments, explain park rules, and reduce sign clutter. In late 2007, the National Park Service chose Hunt Design to develop the signage system and, this spring, the first of about 300 new signs will be installed.

The new program is featured in the latest issue of segdDESIGN magazine and will also be a tour spot during the 2010 SEGD Conference + Expo June 2-5 in Washington, D.C. We’ll see you there. –P.M.K.

designed to

Gorilla warfare

January 29, 2010 at 9:05 am
Filed under Signage, Urban Planning

City officials in Houston have fought a huge, hairy nemesis for years: those giant inflatable gorillas that sit atop rooftops as advertising. They passed a city law banning them, but it was overturned by a federal court.

Now the fight may be back on. When an inflatable gorilla deflated on the roof of a Houston shopping center Thursday, it landed on some lights and set the shopping center on fire. –P.M.K.

Bike lanes in the sky

January 27, 2010 at 8:43 am
Filed under Traffic, Transportaton, Urban Planning

Martin Angelov says, “Everything started in the summer of 2008. I decided to participate in the international architectural competition Line of Site on the City Transportation Interchange brief. The first crazy idea which came to my mind was to make flying bicycle-lanes, using steel wire, something like ski lift but working on the opposite principle in which the wire is static and it doesn’t need electricity.”  Kolelinia (the name of the project) might seem far-fetched but check out the schematics; they make it seem much less scary. — A.M.

Decorated (sidewalk) shed

January 22, 2010 at 3:07 pm
Filed under Architecture, Design competition, Urban Planning

Last fall we told you about the UrbanShed competition hatched in New York to reimagine the ubiquitous-and-ugly plywood sidewalk shed. Sponsored by Mayor Bloomberg’s adminstration and the AIA New York chapter, the competition culminated this week with a winning concept by University of Pennsylvania/ PennDesign student Young-Hwan Choi.

Choi’s “Urban Umbrella” design eliminates the need for cross-bracing, providing a much airier concept that creates more light and space than its plywood alternative. Made of translucent fiberglass decking, it also includes an integrated lighting system.

Bloomberg says the new shed design won’t be mandatory, but he’s betting it will catch on fast. A prototype will be installed in a Lower Manhattan construction site soon. — L.G.D./P.M.K.

Metro for Sydney

January 15, 2010 at 12:38 pm
Filed under Traffic, Transportaton, Urban Planning, Wayfinding

“To maintain and improve Sydney’s global position and contribution to national productivity, Sydney needs efficient transport networks for the free-flow of people between their homes and jobs.  We also need to cater for visitors to our city and for off-peak travel.”  SEGDster Jack Bryce thought you might enjoy this website on “the first steps toward a Metro network.” — A.M.

The digital divide

December 28, 2009 at 12:10 pm
Filed under Architecture, Dynamic Environments, Technology, Urban Planning

As the price of electronic display technologies has lowered in recent years, digital building facades have sprouted among more and more cityscapes. New technologies are driving the transformation of architecture into a communication medium and, not too far in the future, virtually all architectural surfaces will be programmable.

So what’s the problem? Many muncipalities see plenty of downsides to the dynamic media trend. Safety is the chief concern, of course. Many cities are awaiting the results of a Federal Highway Administration study on the effects on drivers who may be distracted by  digital billboards and media facades (although they may be too busy texting to look up). In Boston, a huge LED display on the WGBH headquarters building, located alongside a major highway, is limited to mostly static images and subject to annual review.  The city of El Paso, Texas, recently extended its moratorium on digital billboards pending the FHWA study.

Aesthetics are also a major concern. Scenic America campaigns against what it considers excessive signage, including digital signs. Boston is among the cities that have created districts where digital signs and architectural surfaces are allowed, but must be appropriate to the district’s character and can’t be too close to landmarks or residences. Municipal zoning boards and outdoor advertising companies continue to duke it out in cities like Los Angeles, which is embroiled in a long-running legal battle over digital facades and signage.

Other areas of concern include energy consumption, light pollution, community standards, and the relatively short shelf life of some display technologies. And content is another huge issue. As this article from Architectural Record reveals, the conversation is in its early stages. Certainly it’s a conversation that designers should be active participants in. If you haven’t already concerned yourself with ordinances in your own city, roll up your sleeves and get involved. — P.M.K.

Oh, Ottawa

December 11, 2009 at 9:26 am
Filed under Architecture, Design competition, Urban Planning

The Ottawa Citzen reports today that all seven architects on a review panel formed to help the Canadian capital city improve its architecuture have resigned to prove a point: that the city is not as serious about good design as it says it is.

The Downtown Ottawa Urban Design Review Panel was formed in 2005 to reviewed  proposed developments in the downtown core, suggest changes, and recommend whether the development should be approved. The panel’s seven architects say the process is flawed and a waste of their time, because they’re asked to  review developments after all of the planning and architectural design work has been done — too late to make any major changes. They also say the city has initiated several new building projects without holding design competitions.

The last straw, the panel said, was when the city cancelled an interational design competition for redevelopment of Lansdowne park in favor of a business-driven proposal with only a secondary consideration of architecture.

Councillor Peter Hume, chair of the city’s planning and environment committee, says a competition for part of the park development will be launched next week. He says the city is “politically committed” to the review panel and would like to keep the dialogue open. –P.M.K.

Helvetica comes to Argentina

November 30, 2009 at 4:04 pm
Filed under Design Firms, Graphic Design, Typography, Urban Planning, Wayfinding

In 1971, the City Hall gave Diseno Shakespear and Guillermo Gonzalez Ruiz a job later called the Visual Plan for Buenos Aires. This project was unique in context not only because of its huge scale but from the dynamic interaction with the client and some decisions that not only made the project possible but that also assured its survival.(See Eye 63 UK, Domus 159, Graphis 168).This was first time that Helvetica was used in Argentina’s urban landscape. — A.M.

Kiddie – and senior – parks

November 27, 2009 at 8:09 am
Filed under Landscape Architecture, Placemaking, Uncategorized, Urban Planning

Gorgeous, educational, and safe, these are not your grandpappy’s playgrounds.  (Which begs the question: if today’s kids don’t have to walk two miles to school in snow uphill both ways and can’t slide down a scalding hot slide with shorts on, how will they discipline their own children?) — A.M.