What turns a space into a place? Why are certain paths used while others are not? What is the difference between a void in the urban fabric and a successful plaza? How do urban details convey vital information to our senses and differentiate between attractive and unattractive places? And why is it that most old, historical cities are inviting and functional, while most modern ones tend to be alienating and dysfunctional?
Please send letters for the website, clearly marked FORUM, to Julia Dawson at: julia.dawson@emap.com or The Architectural Review, Greater London House, Hampstead Road, London NW1 7EJ, England.
ON FUNCTIONAL AND DYSFUNCTIONAL URBAN SPACES
BOOK REVIEW by Isaac Meir
Nikos A. Salingaros (2005) Principles of Urban Structure. DSP – Fac. of Architecture, Delft University of Technology, p.252, US$ 56, paperback.
Nikos Salingaros addresses these and many other urban design and organization issues in a systematic and creative manner. In the best tradition set out by authors such as Christopher Alexander and Kevin Lynch, Salingaros delineates a set of rules and their interconnections – patterns and the languages that may be formed with them. He approaches the design complexity of the urban scale with the analytic precision typical of his trade (mathematics and physics), yet with the simplicity and sensitivity needed to address his audience of architects and planners.
The book's various chapters deal with these issues on different levels – from the theory of the urban web and the emergence of design methods and collective intelligence, to practical and methodological issues such as the structure of pattern languages and interactive design. Salingaros investigates the urban space and its information field, and how this addresses our senses in conveying vital information allowing us to identify and understand the urban space, its edges and what is behind them. He describes the universal law of the distribution of sizes, showing why certain cities are better adapted to various civic activity needs, as these have evolved through time. The complexity and urban coherence, a city’s composition, and information architecture of cities are chapters that point towards probable processes and work protocols that allow cities to regain the lost genius loci so distinct in urban forms that evolved through natural historical processes. Urban form is explained by mathematical logic, and works with the urban statistics, but is neither mathematics nor statistics per se – urban form is a creation in the image of its creators, and many of the recent images are not much of a compliment to the latter.
The theoretical information is accompanied throughout the book by ideograms that help the reader to understand the context. Each chapter is introduced by Arthur van Bilsen, who translates the abstract ideas and principles into 'real life' spaces and objects from cities around the world, and their urban elements. Van Bilsen uses photographs of good and bad examples to illustrate the subsequent issues presented, and adds an interesting list of publications and references, that – together with the extensive bibliography by Salingaros – forms a comprehensive theoretical base for readers who want to expand their knowledge and cross-reference some of the ideas and topics.
This book is yet another significant contribution by Salingaros to the design and planning professions, and hopefully it will contribute to the remediation of some of our dysfunctional cities – places that are reflected in the images screaming out of de Chirico and O'Keeffe's urban paintings, and places in which we live from day to day, but in fact would rather avoid.