8/9/2019 Making a Place

1/6

Making a Place:

Bridging the Physical and the Poetic

The range of people involved in creating environmentsfrom urban planners to architects todesigners and finally to usersmakes up a pretty large group. All of them, especially those who getpaid for it, can find an abundance of technical information to guide them. After the reinforcedconcrete or the fabric flammability code is mastered, however, the professional as well as the new

occupant is left with the challenge of creating, or perhaps maintaining, the special character of aplace.

A new field of study, called "placemaking," explores this other half of planning environments. Peoplein many fields contribute to the discussiondesigners, architects, planners, philosophers, andwritersand their lines of thought are as varied as their disciplines.

PlacemakingLike designing itself, placemaking is not easy to describe, but here is a beginning: It is the creativeact of defining an enjoyable, comfortable, supportive, and meaningful environment. Placemakingstudies the delicate relationship between the surroundings and the psyche, the way in which the

physical world of buildings and tables relates to the realm of the inhabitant's "civic, poetic, andemotional life." 1While the subject is very far from being a formal discipline, it is like a link joining

a varied group of people who approach the same subject in their own ways.

The problem of making a meaningful place is at least as old as architecture itself, but in 1960 aplanner named Kevin Lynch began to examine our experience of a place in a new way. Then, beforethe ubiquity of the shopping mall, he observed that "we need an environment which is not simplywell organized, but poetic and symbolic as well. It should speak of the individuals and their complexsociety, of their aspirations and their historical tradition, of the natural setting, and of thecomplicated functions and movements of the. . .world. . . . Such a sense of place in itself enhancesevery human activity that occurs there. . . ." 2

For Jeffrey Scherer, an architect who studies it, "Placemaking is a concept that bridges the mentaland physical aspects of place." Its concerns cross that span: How much daylight is available, or howmuch light from Times Square's neon signs? How much fresh air? What can you smell? How muchspace is free for communal interaction or for being alone? Is the space identifiably of its region? Canyou see the horizon? Where does the light from the sunset fall? What can you hear?

The problemMany observers have chronicled the costs of bad environments to our culture. For Kent Bloomer andCharles Moore, authors of Body, Memory, and Architecture, "The great blank horrors of our publicenvironment are the spaces that belong to no one, that are neither private nor public, neithercomfortable nor inspiring nor even safe, the no-places that erode the public realm." 3They go on to

complain: "What is missing from our dwellings today are the potential transactions between body,imagination, and environment. . . . Comfort is confused with the absence of sensation. The norm

has become rooms maintained at a constant temperature without any verticality or outlook orsunshine or breeze or discernible source of heat or center or, alas, meaning." 4In 1990, Tony Hiss'sbook The Experience of Placebrought many of these issues to public attention. He begged us toreconsider the significance of place, writing: "It's simultaneous perception [of our environment] thatallows any of us a direct sense of continuing membership in our communities, and our regions, andthe fellowship of all living creatures." 5

These communal values contrast with those of Puritanism and architectural Modernism, the

intertwined philosophies that have helped to define much of the environment we inhabit today. Partof the wonderful original revolution of modernist architecture withered, over time, into a vestigial

design tic, whereby environments change from meaningful places into mere spaces; that is, in theintellectual process of analyzing a design, it became more abstract and moved away from the users'needs, away from its roots in a local context or earlier purpose, and toward an impersonal aestheticgoal. The problem of Puritanism, on the other hand, belongs not just to the architect but to societyat large, where we secretly harbor the conviction that discomfort is good for our souls. 6This stoicundercurrent whispers to us that beauty, character, and comfort are expendable luxuries; and itinfluences, with bottom-line logic, most of our business decisions.

Hiss argues against this puritanical rejection: "Far from constituting a kind of backdrop that we can

8/9/2019 Making a Place

2/6

8/9/2019 Making a Place

3/6

to know what exactly a good place isthat is, we know one when we experience one, but it isdifficult to figure out how it gets that way. Designer Bill Stumpf has noticed that people, when theymove into a house, spend a while moving the furniture around, without knowing what they want.When they get to a certain position, it feels O.K., and they stop. 13In his more academic way, theplanner Kevin Lynch observed in his studies that people's images of dystopia (the opposite ofutopia) are clear and exacteveryone knows a bad placewhile the image of utopia is generalized

and vague. Just think how uncertain a proposition heaven is in contrast to the color, temperature,

population density, and kinds of activity we know to avoid in "the other place."

Extension of our selvesParadoxically, even if we can't describe our connections to a place, we all maintain them anyway,and in an intimate way. For Caplan a personally important place "has a measure of you in it." BillStumpf includes places as kinds of containers he calls an "exoskeleton memory." These wouldascend in order from one's wallet, to pocket, to briefcase, to car, to desk, to office, to house, thenperhaps to neighborhood. We depend on these as vessels to hold our memories and our metaphoricas well as real place in the world. Our place in society, after all, is established by the contents of ourwallets, where cards identify us and confirm our links to others.

In this sense, the word insideness takes on two meanings, says Michael Brill of the Buffalo

Organization for Social and Technological Innovation, Inc. On the one hand, if the place in questionis a building, it is possible, of course, to be inside it. But insideness also describes the sense ofbelonging that a known place communicates to a person; it makes that person an insider in the best

sense. 14In this way, the larger place where we work or live confirms our belonging as much as alibrary or credit card. Stumpf tells the story of a museum curator whom he asked about herpreferred places to work; she said that she would never want to do her work outside the museum,because it gave her such joy to walk through the collections she worked on every day.

"Emotional ergonomics"Abundant scientific studies provide us with rationales for what common sense already knows: Thepituitary gland receives sunlight directly through our eyes, and so now we know that humans need

sunlight; the small-air ions occurring naturally in fresh air by lakes and rivers make people alertsowe need fresh air, too.

As an example of how important these qualities of place are, Stumpf points out that everyone, onentering a hotel room, goes first to see what the view is. The fact that this precedes learning howcomfortable the bed is has its parallel in the office space, where, he has observed, despite all theattention devoted to it, people would trade all their hydraulically adjustable furniture for a place

next to a window. 15Caplan tells the story of a designer named Rick Penney who complained that,despite all the beautiful advantages his interior designs offered clients, they still all wanted daylightand open windows. When he heard this, Penney mused about the lasting problem of "emotional

ergonomics." 16The hidden purpose of the scientific studies may be to quantify these obviousvirtues so that they too will have a place on the sheet that tallies the bottom line.

TimeAnother aspect of attachment to place is, of course, familiarity with it. The shock in returning toone's hometown is in finding that time has changed it. 17Conversely, much of the drama in acathedral lies in the air of stability and of enduring grandeur it conveys. There is a complex interplayof time in the sense of place. As any Eastern European knows, even a map is only the record of aplace for a certain moment. A scholar attending a seminar called Commonplaceswent so far as toargue that "Place is the name for space/time"; 18in other words, since the thing that distinguishesa place from a space is our experience of it, and since we experience places only in finite moments,the term "place" must only describe a particular moment in a particular space.

Dynamic aspectIf one is striving to bring a sense of place to a planned environment, this fluid definition of place intime may seem frustrating, and yet it is the very open-ended aspect of the Herman Miller site, forinstance, that Michael Hough so praised. That dynamic aspect is a valuable quality of a place: botha dynamic relationship to the environment and a dynamic relationship to the inhabitants."Placemaking can start with a chair; then as it expands, things get more fixed. Under whatconditions can an environment retain flexibility and discovery for someone? How can one build anopen-ended system so that the responsibility is given back to the individual?" 19asks MichaelRotondi, dean of the Southern California Institute of Architecture.

8/9/2019 Making a Place

4/6

Approaches to making a placeAmong the qualities of place we have discussed, the only one that is not very abstract is thepractical concern with light and air. Small wonder then that economic values often define ourenvironments: They are easier to understand! Placemaking's goal is described here, again byBloomer and Moore: "We will care increasingly for our buildings if there is some meaningful order in

them; . . .if we can actually inhabit them, their spaces, taking them as our own in satisfying ways;

if we can establish connections in them with what we know and believe and think; if we can shareour occupancy with others, our family, our group, or our city; and, importantly, if there is somesense of human drama, of transport, of tension, or of collision of forces, so that the involvementendures." 20

Conceptual preparationThe difficult part in the design of a place is to really know what role it has for the people who willuse it. For Rotondi this is a process of trying to "figure out how to leave things alonehow to workwith the existing conditions and develop reciprocity between the building and the city. The thing isto travel light, to develop a new kind of understanding of all the conditions, and to develop a new

skill of seeing the conceptual connectedness between the project and the environment." 21

Michael Hough, like Rotondi, is more philosophical in his approach. "The making of memorableplaces involves principles of evolving natural process and change over time. It involves economy ofmeans where often the less one does to make purposeful change the better....It also has to do with

understanding the nature of places as a precursor to making purposeful change, which is a far moresignificant act of creativity than imposing prepackaged solutions on the land. The familiar andoverworked analogy of the Eskimo carver who, staring at the stone in his hand, wonders what it iswithin that wants to come out, serves to encapsulate the underlying philosophy of what place is allabout. When the carver recognizes what it is, he simply carves the stone to release it." 22

The soul of placemaking, it is becoming clear, is a poetic one, and so requires a gentle approach. A1992 article in Places, a journal of environmental design, may have described the most extreme

example of this. It told the story of the restoration of a Chinese village to its Ming-era (1368 -1644) and Quing-era (1644-1911) appearance. In the Chinese language, characters are ideograms,each representing a thought or thing or quality. On this basis, buildings surrounding the town'scentral stream were restored not to rigid specifications or to historical drawings, but to a sequenceof experiences in traveling the river: "a north-bound boat ride will provide, for example, a sense ofsheltering security, loosening delight, enclosing comfort and anticipating excitement...." 23

Brass tacksOne usually has somewhat more prosaic constraints. How, then, to proceed? Clearly, as every hotelroom's brass lamp and bedroom wallpaper demonstrate, placemaking cannot be done by recipe.

Nevertheless, a few good sources of advice do exist.

The Journal Placesis dedicated to this subject

Though it tends to cover the macro-architecture of urban planning, as we have pointed out, many ofthe same issues are relevant in different scales. Therefore, despite their intended application to apublic plaza, many of the (39) "Questions to Ask a Space" offered in a piece by Ronald Lee Flemingcan be widely used.

Does the space have a complexity that allows it to be enjoyed by a variety of users? Conversely, isit simple enough to be memorable as an integral space? 24

Does the space reduce the impact of the visual cacophony of its surroundings? Conversely, does the

space strengthen a vocabulary of design elements that are used (or could be used) appropriatelythroughout the surrounding area?

Do the intricacies in the space sustain interest; are they worth considering five or six times?

Are there design features in the space that the community could add to over time?

Are there elements of continuity that reinforce the overall design character of the space andestablish a pattern that is discernible by pedestrians, not only from a bird's- eye view?

8/9/2019 Making a Place

5/6

Can you hear special sounds in the space: the rustle of leaves, the thud of horseshoes, the trickle ofwater, or the music of a band?

Do the works of art in the space have meanings that are accessible to the general public?" 25

Another source of more hands-on advice is Michael Brill, an architect and the president of BOSTI.

His firm has published a booklet titled The Office as a Tool, in which he provides suggestions foroffice planning. Some of them are as follows:

"Provide a stable framework which also accommodates change. People thrive best where there is abalance between stability and change.

Design to help integrate worklife and 'life-life': One of the characteristics of high-performing staff isthat there is no clear demarcation between their life at work and their lives in general.

Subdivide floorplates into understandable 'places':

There is a kind of psychic oppression people have with a large number of near-identical

workstations in a large area. In such a situation, the whole place feels like 'no-place.'

Consider giving the space at the window to everybody, by using it as a main circulation, with access

to a band of services and amenities across from the window wall.

Design each workgroup so that it is recognized as a separate 'place.'

Create a center for each workgroup and for each neighbourhood: There should be a place forbehaviors which are part of work but not its core, like the coffee break.

Recognize people in the streets: To reduce feelings of anonymity and increase the sense of

community and feelings of security, no corridor should be longer than about 65 feet, which is themaximum distance at which people's faces can be recognized." 26

ConclusionAs our world becomes more complex, more populated, and more built, it also becomes moreimportant for us to sustain ourselves in supportive communities. We have seen that the kind ofenvironments we create are integrally connected to that sense of community. Though it is the more

difficult half left after technical problems have been solved, the task of placemaking is also the mostenriching and culturally important part of defining a space.

REFERENCES

1Black, et al, eds., Commonplaces: Essays on the Nature of Place (University Press of America,New York, 1989), p. ii.

2Lynch, K., The Image of the City (The M.I.T. Press, London, 1960), p. 119.

3Bloomer, K., and C. Moore, Body, Memory, and Architecture (Yale University Press, London,1977), p. 84.

4Bloomer and Moore, p. 105.

5Hiss, T., The Experience of Place (Knopf, New York, 1990), p. xiii.

6Kaufman, K., "Finding Comfort at Work," Magazine (Herman Miller, Inc., Zeeland, Michigan,1988), p. 3.

7Hiss, p. 9.

8Hough, M., Out of Place: Restoring Identity to the Regional Landscape (Yale University Press,London, 1990), pp. 147-148.

8/9/2019 Making a Place

6/6

9 Kaufman, p. 6.

10Brill, M., unpublished interview, October 8, 1992.

11Hiss, p. xi-xii.

12Mooney, Michael, "Being There: Forms of Space and Time," Commonplaces: Essays on the

Nature of Place, Black, et al, eds. (University Press of America, New York, 1989), p. 13.

13Stumpf, W., unpublished interview, November 9, 1992.

14Brill, M., unpublished draft, Archetypes as a "Natural Language" for Place-making, October,1992.

15Stumpf, interview.

16Caplan, Ralph, unpublished interview, October 30, 1992.

17Caplan, interview.

18Flay, Joseph, "Place and Places," Commonplaces: Essays on the Nature of Place, Black, et al,eds. (University Press of America, New York, 1989), p. 2.

19Rotondi, M., unpublished interview, November 5, 1992.

20Bloomer and Moore, p. 106.

21Rotondi, interview.

22Hough, pp. 210-211.

23Wang, Joseph, "A Chinese Village in Transformation," Places (Summer, 1992), p. 21.

24The issue of complexity mentioned here is one that reappears in much writing on this subject.Complexity is essential to perhaps the most simple definition of a place: a spot that we candistinguish from others. This echoes design's purpose as Caplan described it earlier: "Design is botha way of making distinctions and a way of eliminating distinctions that are not useful."

25Fleming, Ronald, "Questions to Ask a Space," Places (Summer, 1990), pp. 12-13.

26Brill, M., The Office as a Tool (Teknion, Inc.), pp. 29-31.