CNU XIV

Washington, DC, Sunday, June 4, 2006

Congratulations to the organizers of the Providence Conference for the planning and execution of a truly excellent and well-run program. I not only enjoyed myself but learned something.

It was interesting to finally meet some of the subscribers on the listservs with whom I communicate frequently. It reminded me of finally seeing photographs of people I listened to on the radio during the 1940s. They were just different from what I had pictured in my minds eye.

CNU XIV was a contrast in extremes. There were the very practical sessions, e.g. pattern books, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, the very theoretical and often hard to grasp, e.g. Unfoldings: The Building Blocks of Living Neighborhoods. Surprising was the Taskforce Summit where I was part of the group that discussed housing affordability. 

Ray Gindroz 's session on pattern books was notable for the suceess of pattern books. Surprising and appropriate was that all of the panel members, with the exception of Leon Krier, were developers. Though the theme was supposed to be about high density mixed-use development, for the most part it was about residential areas with some mixed uses near the center city. It was both surprising and comforting to learn the success in the use of pattern books by developers to guide their architects and, to a lesser extent, to be used in negotiations with the city and local interest groups. More vague is how pattern books can be used for in-fill, because it is hard to predict how a general massing plan can anticipate various architectural designs. Paul Ostergaard, Managing Principal of UDA, explained to me that the pattern book in these instances is mostly for "creating a certain kind of place" to which any architectural design should comply. More work on these in-fill pattern books will help to unearth just how a pattern book can shape infill in massing new development and to create sensible public spaces and special places.

Disappointing were Leon Krier's remarks on pattern books. They were a rambling of unorganized thoughts on peak oil, cars, the ignorance of government, the limited understanding of the public, the destructiveness of American mass culture that works against "good architecture" and new urbansim. At one point, Krier contended that "modernism", in contrast to new urbanism, had an easy time being accepted, to which one questioner reminded him was quite the opposite. Roy Gindroz did interrupt to ask Krier what he thought of pattern books, to which Krier responded of-handedly was "good"; and then he went back to his rambling discourse which continually used the word "ecology" in no context to which the real defintion of the word fits. After he finished his remarks, the audience but most importantly the panel members were curiously silent, which I would define as a mixture of embarrassment and dumboundedness. Here was an NU icon who turned out to be less than the "superman" I would have imagined from a radio program.

I stopped by only briefly on a session on the market for modernism in new urbanism. I left at the point where exhortation drummed out reason and rationality, and when slides of modernist contributions to the street scape were anything but a contributing factor. The facades were flat without depth or rhythm and the coloring resembling some child's building blocks. It is clear the style war was continuing without some thoughtful theory and examples of just how these "styles" can take their rightful places in a good place townscape. NU and the "modernists' have to stop the style wars to get on with the business of exploring the possibilities of both peace and a better product.

The audience for "Unfoldings" and Chris Alexander's presentation was surprisingly very large. Since Alexander never took the time to quickly go over the evolution of his work from patterns to unfoldings, it was difficult to understand just what he was talking about. For those who have not read any of his books, importantly "Patterns.....", my guess is that they may have been totally baffled. What Alexander thinks about how to approach building and townscape design revolutonizes the traditonal  hierarchical approach architects and town planners follow and reverses that traditional thinking to take into account organic evolution, pattern relationships between people of various cultures and building, and how these patterns "unfold" over time (change in complex ways much like the evolution of biological matter). Michael Mehaffy is leading his organization to translate this thinking into a body of new knowledge that planners and architects can use. Open as I think I am to new ways of thinking about these subjects, I had to admit that my mind struggles to understand and that I would be unwilling, at my stage in life, to undertake Michael's important work.

The surprise of the whole conference was the group discussion on affordable housing that took place at the Task Force Summit. After some limited remarks on subsidies, Phyllis Bleiweiss put forth the premise that this new initiative starts by assuming government intervention, including subsidies of all kinds, with private market participation and a whole set of tools for addressing the problem that she and the panel members agreed was a must for NU to work on. The panel concluded that since much of the available information already exists and many interest groups are involved in recommending new strategies, money and time CNU will provide will be devoted to hooking up with these different interest groups and working together to devise all of the "tools". This after months of harranguing on the need for subsidies by Emily Talen, David Brain, and myself with those on the list who "don't feel comfortable with government intervention and who also believe that too much money has already been spent and the results have been more slums, street crimes, and unplanned pregnancies by the very poor.

Though it rained during most of the conference, the sun came out at the CNU XIV Conference.

Comments

[Adam Parish]

Nice feeback about Leon Krier and Affordability. I enjoyed your analysis.

[John Chamberlain]

While I clearly wanted to hear much more material from Christopher Alexander in the time he had available, I personally found several things he told us truly enlightening and heard new ground broken in the second session - about the whole giving rise to the parts. (This btw has very strong similarities with ancient Indian Vaastu tradition about the earth giving rise to the buildings and the respect which needs to be paid in doing so).

Given the fact so many CNU founder members and other members have been strongly influenced by Alexander's work, I can well imagine he expected an audience at CNU XIV who had read many of his works.

No doubt those who had not might have experienced what they felt to be a rambling or disjointed talk with little meaning for them.

As a minimum I would recommend reading Alexander's works in this order:

-The Timeless Way of Building
-A Pattern Language
-The Oregon Experiment and/or A New Theory of Urban Design
-At least the first 'Nature of Order' volume, even if not all four.

To read actual contract documents from C. Alexander which allow Change Orders within the original contract budget you should read his 'The Mary Rose Museum,' ISBN 0195210174 - now out of print and ridiculously expensive used on Amazon (may be cheaper elsewhere). If Christopher Alexander and/or Michael Mehaffy could do one very useful follow-up for CNU XIV it would be either to re-publish 'The Mary Rose Museum' or to at least make those sample contract documents available on the web, as a real practical "How To" and which would massively reinforce the theories we heard Christopher Alexander talk about at CNU.

John Chamberlain