Some design wisdom from Milton Glaser:
Last year someone gave me a charming book by Roger Rosenblatt called ‘Ageing Gracefully’. I got it on my birthday. I did not appreciate the title at the time but it contains a series of rules for ageing gracefully. The first rule is the best. Rule number one is that ‘it doesn’t matter.’ ‘It doesn’t matter what you think. Follow this rule and it will add decades to your life. It does not matter if you are late or early, if you are here or there, if you said it or didn’t say it, if you are clever or if you were stupid. If you were having a bad hair day or a no hair day or if your boss looks at you cockeyed or your boyfriend or girlfriend looks at you cockeyed, if you are cockeyed. If you don’t get that promotion or prize or house or if you do - it doesn’t matter.’ Wisdom at last.
A week or two later I read a joke that I haven’t been able to get out of my head. A butcher was opening his market one morning and as he did a rabbit popped his head through the door. The butcher was surprised when the rabbit inquired ‘Got any cabbage?’ The butcher said ‘This is a meat market - we sell meat, not vegetables.’ The rabbit hopped off. The next day the butcher is opening the shop and sure enough the rabbit pops his head round and says ‘You got any cabbage?’ The butcher now irritated says ‘Listen you little rodent I told you yesterday we sell meat, we do not sell vegetables and the next time you come here I am going to grab you by the throat and nail those floppy ears to the floor.’ The rabbit disappeared hastily and nothing happened for a week. Then one morning the rabbit popped his head around the corner and said ‘Got any nails?’ The butcher said ‘No.’ The rabbit said ‘OK. Got any cabbage?’
Lifted in its entirety from Monoscope, just as it was originally copied from davidthedesigner. I just had to pass it along, and didn’t want to lose anything in the process.
My neighborhood in San Francisco, known as SOMA (South of Market Street) or South Beach (even though there is no beach) or Rincon Hill, is in transition in nearly every possible way. What was once an area full of relatively low-slung and often derelict tenements and warehouses stretching down to the wharfs that once lined the bay, SOMA is not only gentrifying but rapidly going massively vertical.
I do not pretend to understand the myriad reasons why it is so difficult to build in San Francisco. Suffice to say it involves a fair amount of the classic NIMBY syndrome cleverly disguised as high-minded civic activism. By intention or pure accident, it creates the impression that “no one” wants San Francisco to change so that in the end very little can, and what does get built is often watered-down in the process.
SOMA, on the other hand, is very much a blank slate. Soon there will be thousands of new residents, but since there is no incumbent community upon which to intrude today, there is no one to advocate for it when it matters most (Jamie’s voice is one very strong exception). Thus, the SOMA of tomorrow is being shaped almost exclusively by the developers building luxury high-rise towers for their ultra-rich clientele…
Please know I have no qualms with the height of these new buildings, no issue with the added density in the neighborhood, and no care or concern with respect to their inhabitant’s wealth. I simply disagree with the way it’s being done, specifically the over-reliance on pairs of isolated towers set on opposite corners of an entire city block, with its perimeter ringed by townhomes.
There is no excitement in this approach, no variety in its rhythm, and absolutely no visual interest at the ground level. Even more to the point, there is no community space, no common oasis, no shared experience for all San Franciscans — all of the “public spaces” in these new buildings are in fact private by virtue of being placed above the townhouses, often five or six floors above street level. These new developments are fortresses, nothing more and nothing less. The entire design scheme exists to preserve the space around (and the admittedly great views from) the towers.
I am in New York City this week, and have been writing this brief manifesto while sitting in beautiful Bryant Park, at the very center of midtown Manhattan. You would never know it from sitting here, but I am just a five minute walk from Times Square, six blocks from the Empire State Building, and a hop away from the busy 5th Avenue thoroughfare. Sure, it’s loud as traffic whizzes by on three sides while sirens wail in the background, but it is truly an oasis. All day long, people wander in and out. Some stop for a brief minute to enjoy lunch, some linger for an hour with a book, and some like me stay all day for the free wifi. Interactions are incidental and ephemeral, but there is a feeling of being connected to something much greater than my own existence…
To be fair, it’s somewhat absurd to compare New York to San Francisco. New York’s fate was sealed many, many years ago with the street grid and the unique constraints it imposed on the city. But, with some notable exceptions, very few blocks are filled with a single monolithic development, most in fact are quite varied with new and old, small and tall, squat and sharp buildings all condensed together. The result is a richly-textured urban fabric.
There are obviously other differences in the two cities, not the least of which is the fact that most people in New York do not own automobiles and therefore rely on walking and/or public transportation. In this regard, the sidewalk is the city’s great unifier: age, gender, race, and wealth are all wiped away by the shared experience. Bryant Park feels much the same way. No, it’s not perfect, but it feels so much more real here than anything back home in San Francisco, and it is precisely the kind of public space that we desperately need in SOMA.
As an architecture and urban planning buff, I was very excited to see the new design proposals for the Transbay Transit Center in San Francisco, and I was instantly drawn to the Pelli Clark proposal for the elegant tower and the lush-green carpet of its rooftop garden (shown below). Then it hit me: all of the health and vitality of the street is once again removed and placed in the sky. Sure, it’s public, unlike the other developments being built, but it’s completely divorced from the city itself…
San Francisco, SOMA in particular, has its problems, not the least of which is the incredible number of homeless men and women living on the street. It seems we have decided that it’s more expedient to pretend this issue doesn’t exist, and to retreat within these fortress developments for comfort and protection. I submit to you that this is a strategic error with huge implications. We are quickly creating a community in SOMA that has no connection to the city in which it resides, one which is increasingly off-limits to the vast majority of its residents.
I strongly believe that inclusion is the way to solve these kinds of problems and create a deeper understanding for all involved. Our culture’s tendency to segment and segregate entire populations is archaic and entirely unacceptable in this day and age. We know better, now we must do better. It’s time that we take a hard look at the world we are creating, even if we have no power to change it today, we can at least begin to recognize our future opportunities and position ourselves to demand better results.
In the end, our built environment has a tremendous effect on our collective psyche. We owe it to ourselves today, and future generations tomorrow, to create a world in which everyone has a right to participate, and everyone has a chance to belong.
I met my caterpillar friend this morning in Bryant Park, which is this incredible public space directly across the street from our hotel in New York City. I sat down, looked up, and immediately saw this crazy furry monster crawling up the chair next to me. I grabbed my camera and took a couple of shots (all of which were as fuzzy as he was), then sat back down and went to work on my computer. I completely forgot about my new friend, until I saw him at my feet about ten minutes later.
I have always wanted to find a way to calm my initial reaction when I find a bug on me, but as with every other time before I freaked when I felt him crawling up my leg. I politely brushed him off, then moved him farther away from me, only to find him crawling up my table a few minutes later. He made it all the way to the top, and promptly went right for me again, coming up to the edge as though he wanted to jump into my lap. Nothing like this has ever happened to me before…
At this point, I grabbed a leaf and moved him to the ground cover behind me where I could watch him without fear of attack. I was mesmerized by the way his body moved, his five sets of antennae, and his tiny suction-cup feet. Whenever I got too close to him, he immediately stopped moving and pulled his brilliant red head into his yellow body. See Harry in action here:
I loved watching the way he surveyed the scene as he came to the edge of each leaf. He methodically but quickly examined his options, picked his path and moved forward, making the most of his caterpillar time on earth. I was especially surprised to see the strain he put on those leaves and the way they bounced back as such tiny creature shifted his weight to the next one. Truly, all of us, even the smallest living thing, leave a mark on earth with each and every step…
When I mentioned this story to my friend Sharon, she suggested that this experience was not a random accident but a gift from the universe. I could easily spend a lifetime reflecting on this very moment, dissecting each and every second in a million different ways, proposing any number of well-known and richly-detailed symbols to help make sense of it. But for tonight, I simply want to delight in the experience itself, and the account of it here.