What's the difference between New Urbanism and Futurism/Modernism?

http://westwardho.typepad.com/

"New Urbanism" - about how communities are arranged, not about architectural styles

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celebration,_Florida

modernism was the embodiment of early/mid 20th century values, which were based on a combination of rationalist top-down government and megalomaniac architect/master planner types, a shitload of public subsidies and postwar wealth, a belief in a gleaming-chrome sci-fi future rather than a real one with actual people in it, and a pretty clean development slate (there was still a ton of undeveloped land, and eminent domain was easier to get away with in those days cuz nobody knew how to argue against it yet).

yeah, it's sort of depressingly predictable how it's gone from "hey guys, how bout some stores and shit in with all these houses, and maybe some sidewalks huh, so everybody doesn't have to fucking drive every-single-fucking-where all the goddamn time" to "HEY! Let's have some Sidewalks (Can they be Pink?) and some Arcades and a Panera Bread Company and a Village Green with a Duckpond!"

but i guess it's something.

maybe. i was wondering more of the contrast between Uncle Walt's post-war idea(l)s and what actually took shape in Celebration and whatnot.

In retrospect it was probably sort of inevitable that new urbanism would get co-opted by shitty cartoons of it (the post-mall etc) that in turn help give it a bad name. The original hard-line NU (Duany et al) has a lot left to offer us in terms of basic theory and principles and the potential paradigm shift - particularly in terms of getting away from rigid use-based zoning. Unfortunately, because of that rigid zoning, a lot of new urbanist projects have had to shoot themselves in the foot in order to be built. That is, most of the first decade or so of NU on the ground was brand new towns in the middle of nowhere, which was the only place it was legal or remotely affordable (for the builder) to do new urbanism. Unfortunately, this means whole towns of all-new construction, which aside from making them homogeneous also creates really unnatural price points. So Seaside was commissioned as a resort town and functions as one, and a lot of the other NU projects amount to commuter suburbs - ones that are much prettier to look in, but which can't function economically or socially like "real" towns.

Now, a spinoff of all this, though, is that the NU stuff is pretty, and people like it. But they can't afford it. So developers have figured out they can copy the superficial details of stereotypical "new urbanism" - basically, make a cartoon Main Street of some sort - and create the illusion that they're doing something different. This is being done to sell "post-malls" and a variety of phony neighborhoods whose creators aren't even trying to be new urbanists.

None of this has anything whatsoever to do with EPCOT Center and modernism. Which is appropriate - the first wave of new urbanists were actively hostile to modernism, in terms of its social planning values and certainly in terms of its architecture. James Howard Kunstler, while not a NU insider (he's a journalist and general crackpot crank, not a designer of any sort), is probably a good example - he keeps a running "Eyesore of the Month" devoted to savaging what Modernism "has done to our society." The new urbanists saw themselves as leapfrogging back over decades of unilaterally bad design, an era when everything went horribly wrong and we embraced the EPCOT/Le Corbusier vision of the future.

Just to sort of conclude this unsolicited history lesson... I think all this is beginning to change and new urbanism is becoming considerably more subtle (and more viable as a meaningful force). New urbanism is under twenty years old, which is a blink of an eye given the long lead times in the design world. More specifically: we're only just beginning to see the first generations of architects and engineers and public policy people to go to school after NU broke. They're combining a deep-seated belief that the new urbanist critique is correct with a recognition that the new urbanism that's been built so far is inadequate socially and economically, and architecturally too rigid. NU projects with expressly Modernist design aesthetics (though not, thankfully, Modernist social programs) are starting to pop up. Most crucially, the zoning is starting to give way a little and at the same time money is starting to be more amenable to doing NU - which makes it possible to do NU on the scale of individual buildings and blocks, rather than whole towns. It also means that NU now has to confront itself on gentrification. But the dialogue is getting bigger and bigger, and the field is opening up.

Or maybe I just think all this because I got struck by New Urbanist lightning as a freshman in the year 2000 and have just two weeks ago begun my schooling towards a masters in architecture. ;) To summarize: NU has VERY little in common with Modernism, but the two are starting to get comfortable being in the same room. NU is also not about Seaside anymore, and hopefully it can avoid being pigeonholed as the buzzword for those godawful cartoon Main Streets. We'll see, I guess.

http://www.kunstler.com/eyesore_200311.JPG

Behold the new $30 million Ontario College of Art & Design classroom and studio building by British architect Will Alsop -- a totemized retro-futuroid coffee table joined umbilically to its Soviet-style predecessor below. The message, apparently: art and design are nothing but fun fun fun. Nothing to get serious about. A playful spirit of induced hazard will keep students wondering when the checkered box might wobble free of its cute swizzle-stick legs and come crashing down on their heads. This exercise in hyper-entropic avant garde faggotry is so cutting edge that it is already out of date. The only question: which of the two conjoined buildings is more cruelly ridiculous?

But man, he can be great. His anti-bullshit posture occasionally leads him down some blind alleys, but he really can cut to the chase when it counts. See the Seattle Public Library:

http://www.kunstler.com/eyesore_200406c.JPG

Koolhaas has named this top floor salon "the living room," an interesing confusion of typology. Guess what? This is not your home. This is a place of public assembly. But guess what also? There's only enough furniture for five people to sit down. It's not a reading room (no chairs and tables). It's not a lecture room (slanted atrium ceiling can't be darkened.) What the fuck is it?

and, for more just enjoyable meanness:

http://www.kunstler.com/eyesore_200304.JPG

The Father of All Clowns communes with one of his many overfed American sons in front of pop's place of business. Looks like Sonny is working up a nice case of arteriosclerosis while he learns to operate his latest plaything. Notice that Sonny's costume is what used to be considered appropriate for children age six and under.

Whether or not Koolhaus's library passes this test I can't say, but calling a space a "living room" is certainly a deliberate and loaded word choice; Kunstler is right to raise his eyebrow at it. As for What the fuck is it?, I think the question is still open. Does any library call for a giant empty atrium of this sort? What's it for? To say not very hard - it is a 'living room' and JHK is the only one who seems to think it should be something else is dodging the question: what does "living room" actually mean in the context of a giant city library?

I...don't live in Seattle?

Granted, that doesn't mean I have to believe everything I read, but still. As for Kunstler, he purports to be a considerable fan of the public sphere, and not in your Nuremberg rally sense - more of a Jane Jacobs, "our streets used to be teeming with life and activity of all sorts, now they are bleak, broad, and soulless" thing. His principal thesis seems to be: we let it all go to hell and have created a public realm not worth caring about, defending, or passing on to our descendents, while retreating into mansions (themselves apathetically or childishly designed), gated communities, malls, & cetera.

There is, after all, considerable overlap between Kunstler, the New Urbanists, and the "Bowling Alone" critique. Even right-wing cranks can be right once in a while.

More specifically, he genuinely believes that the exurban pseudo-city of today is doomed by an impending collapse of the oil supply, and thus that small-scale cities and local/regional economies are our only hope for survival. Whether or not he's right (I hope not!) his rabid antimodernism at least makes more sense in that context.

Against large attractions - not because they take people off the street, but because they're generally designed with the person on the street as the absolute last priority. I doubt most people visiting the new Georgia Aquarium in Atlanta walked there after all. Plus, as an "attraction" gets bigger, unless cleverly designed it's apt to take up entire blocks of sidewalk space. Jane Jacobs is far more coherent (and intelligent, detailed, insightful, etc) on why this is bad for pedestrian life, but Kunstler is on the right track with it. And as for things like the Toronto art school looming over your head - I'm inclined to agree with him, sight unseen, that that would be kind of unpleasant and disorienting. But I could be wrong!

I stumbled across that Ontario College of Art and Design while wandering around Toronto a few weeks ago and holy smack is that an eyesore. I can only assume it works as an anti-ad for the college: "If you come here, this is the sort of crap you will make when you leave."

any cop OTM about the possibilities of Modernism as a design aesthetic rather than a value system. Pretty much got in a few sentences what I was trying to get at in several long paragraphs above - I think this is one of many directions new urbanism will go as it continues to splinter and evolve and worm its way into the mainstream of urbitechture.

I have a similar problem with the way he deals with the Stata Center at MIT. he says 'look at this sharp-edged monstrosity; it wants to attack the pedestrian. but wait, the rest of this area of MIT is a similarly pedestrian-unfriendly dead zone.' it never occurs to him that he wouldn't be looking at that zone if not for the Stata Center, and that it might represent the best first step in bringing street life to the area (or that some pedestrians might, you know, like sharp-edged monstrosities).

[...] it has some demented charms from this angle. But look a little closer on the street side. . . .

http://www.kunstler.com/eyesore_200405b.jpg

Note the tumbling razor blade effect over the entrance. Getting inside is a close shave.

http://www.kunstler.com/eyesore_200405c.jpg

And then there's the building's attitude to the street. The windows on the ground floor are the same as the windows on the floors above. The life of the street has no special meaning as far as the building is concerned. Note the landscaping beds intended to compensate for this design failure.

Whether or not you personally find sharp-edged monstrosities unbearable to walk past, surely you have to concede that Gehry is designing for the long view, the view he gets when he makes the building as a model sculpture. Indeed, by all accounts most Gehry buildings work wonderfully as spectacular views from a distance, which is to their credit compared to many buildings which completely ignore their role in lines of sight.

But...individual "moments" at the human scale are hit-and-miss. It's luck of the draw whether the pretty shell yields something satisfying at any given spot you happen to walk past. If it happens to work out that way, great, but it's not really what Gehry is focused on. I think you'd be hard-pressed to say that the entrance Kunstler depicts here is particularly inviting - "razor edge" aside, it's shadowy and claustrophobic. I would be interested in discussion of that - and of the point about the windows.

i'm a big fan of arthur erickson. i go to SFU because of the architecture. concrete brutalism.

this is one of my favourite buildings: arthur erickson's macmillan bloedel building, on georgia and thurlow in downtown vancouver.
http://www.arthurerickson.com/images/buildings/macblo2.jpg