{"id":2974,"date":"2013-08-11T12:29:34","date_gmt":"2013-08-11T18:29:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/?p=2974"},"modified":"2013-08-14T12:50:39","modified_gmt":"2013-08-14T18:50:39","slug":"draft-urbanism-architecture-in-public-spaces","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/?p=2974","title":{"rendered":"Draft Urbanism: Architecture in Public Spaces"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"DraftUrban.small\"<\/a>

John McCusker<\/p><\/div>\n

<\/i><\/b>“Draft Urbanism<\/a><\/em>” is the exhibition theme of Denver\u2019s 2013 \u00a0Biennial of the Americas<\/a> celebration.\u00a0 The Biennial is an \u201cinternational festival of ideas, art, and culture\u201d that provides an opportunity for leaders in business, government, philanthropy, and the arts to examine significant issues affecting life in the Americas. Depending on your point of view the Biennial is either a compelling demonstration of Denver\u2019s cosmopolitanism or a massive marketing ploy to\u00a0 boost this dusty old cow town\u2019s clout in the Western hemisphere.\u00a0 Whatever the case, this summer\u2019s exhibition of architecture and art throws\u00a0 a welcome light on the status and potential of Denver\u2019s public spaces.<\/p>\n

Draft Urbanism<\/em> is based on the premise that urbanism is always in flux; i.e., that the city is always in a state of becoming.\u00a0 Four major architectural installations in downtown Denver anchor the exhibition.\u00a0 These installations address site-specific needs and planning challenges, and prompt thought about the public city of the future. \u00a0The rest of the exhibition includes artwork that\u2019s distributed in 67 other sites (billboards, bus shelters, etc.) in a dozen neighborhoods covering over 10 square miles of Denver. These pieces speak to more general themes in global urbanism.\u00a0 Together, Draft Urbanism<\/em> makes the city one big outdoor exhibition. It transforms Denver into a city \u201cto be contemplated rather than passively experienced.\u201d\u00a0 I describe the architecture here and the art in a follow-up post.<\/p>\n

\"Mine<\/a>

Mine Pavilion<\/em> (D. Saitta)<\/p><\/div>\n

Mine Pavilion<\/i> (by Pezo von Ellrichshausen<\/a>) is a five story tower located \u00a0in the median of Speer Boulevard near the point where Denver was founded as a mining settlement back in 1858.\u00a0 It addresses the challenge of connecting the Auraria campus<\/a>\u2014shared home of the Community College of Denver, Metropolitan State University of Denver, and the University of Colorado at Denver (UCD)\u2014to the rest of downtown.\u00a0\u00a0 It does so not by moving people across Speer Boulevard, but by in-filling a grassy median that currently functions as a bit of a No-Man\u2019s Land. \u00a0The structure\u2019s wooden latticework is constructed of beetle-kill pine<\/a> and riffs on the scaffolding of a mine shaft.\u00a0 The structure can be viewed in ways that allow for multiple identities: as a tower, a tunnel, a bridge, and a billboard.\u00a0 One of Draft Urbanism<\/em>\u2019s curators, Paul Andersen of Indie Architecture<\/a>, said in a public lecture that he didn\u2019t see the crossing of Speer Boulevard as an \u201cinteresting” architectural problem. However, my spouse confirms that there were several pedestrian deaths in the area while she was an architecture student at UCD in the early 1990s.\u00a0 Thus, filling the dead space of the grassy median is a start, but urban planners and architects might go a bit farther\u2014with an actual bridge or below-grade foot\/bike path\u2014if they want to activate unused space and<\/i> eliminate a persistent pedestrian danger.<\/p>\n

\"Skyline<\/a>

Skyline Cloud<\/em> (D. Saitta)<\/p><\/div>\n

Skyline Cloud<\/i> (by Plan:b Arquitectos<\/a>) addresses another underutilized space problem, one that exists at the western end of downtown\u2019s Skyline Park<\/a>.\u00a0 Skyline Cloud<\/i> is an array of 11 foot high steel and nylon fabric modules designed to provide shade for a little-used section of lawn.\u00a0 The modules are inverted hexagonal umbrellas that resemble clouds.\u00a0 They can be used separately or in series. \u00a0The intention is to \u201cencourage spontaneous activity\u201d and help build \u201csocial infrastructure.\u201d\u00a0 At time of my visit there wasn\u2019t much social activity occurring under the clouds other than some young folks laying about.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/a>

The Hotel Rehearsal<\/em> (D. Saitta)<\/p><\/div>\n

The Hotel Rehearsal <\/i>(by Alex Schweder<\/a>) speaks to the challenge of repurposing downtown\u2019s surface parking lots, the inherited legacy of 1960s-70s urban renewal<\/a>.\u00a0 The Hotel Rehearsal<\/i> is a temporary hotel room (complete with working shower and chemical toilet) hoisted 25 feet into the air from a nondescript white Chevy van. According to the Draft Urbanism exhibition catalogue,\u00a0The Hotel Rehearsal<\/i>:<\/p>\n

Hybridizes two traditionally distinct mechanisms of urban mobility: the automobile, icon of suburban sprawl, and the elevator, icon of urban density. Ethnically, socially, economically, and culturally the once clear distinction between city and suburb is becoming rapidly blurred.\u00a0 The Hotel Rehearsal is a hotel prototype for this increasingly mixed context\u2026The Hotel Rehearsal presents a fresh perspective on how to use the surface parking lot\u2026it anticipates a potential future of the lots\u2026Each parking space can be\u00a0 individually and temporarily developed, and vehicle-buildings can move within and between lots. Amenities can be accessed in adjacent streets or by driving to other locations. The hotel room becomes a dynamic building block for a progressively small scale and provisional city.<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I love the symbolism and whimsy of The Hotel Rehearsal<\/i>.\u00a0 Certainly, not all architecture should problem-solve lest we inhibit creativity. But this installation may come up short if the challenge is to enliven public space.\u00a0 Individual privacy and anonymity are lost with the room raised, but the occupant is still on display.\u00a0 This gives force to Richard Sennett\u2019s complaint (in Flesh and Stone: The Body and The City in Western Civilization<\/i><\/a>) that public spaces, at least in Western culture, far too often serve as \u201cplaces of gaze\u201d rather than \u201cscenes of discourse.\u201d\u00a0 And I\u2019m not sure that the activation of surface parking lots by driving \u201cvehicle-buildings\u201d in-and-out, and between parking lots and the city\u2019s amenities, moves the ball forward on environmental sustainability.\u00a0 But all of this is debatable<\/a>. \u00a0By the way, the Curtis Hotel<\/a> is currently offering a package deal that includes a one night stay in The Hotel Rehearsal<\/i> for $50,000\u2014a price that includes some diamond jewelry, a couple of ipods, and a dance party for 100 people in the Curtis Ballroom.<\/p>\n

\"Mirror<\/a>

The Mirror Stages<\/em> (D. Saitta)<\/p><\/div>\n

The Mirror Stages<\/i> (by June14 Meyer-Grohbr\u00fcgge&Chermayeff<\/a>) are four butterfly enclosures on Denver\u2019s 16th<\/sup> Street Mall<\/a>.\u00a0 They enclose different pieces of site furniture like benches and phone booths. The installation seeks to introduce biodiversity and provide \u201ca strategic escape from the cacophony of the mall.\u201d\u00a0 In a site tour Draft Urbanism<\/em> Executive Curator Carson Chan<\/a> noted that the phone booths have seen increasing use since they were enclosed by the butterfly netting.\u00a0 Chan also notes, in a New York Times Style Magazine<\/i> interview<\/a>, that “by introducing a new species to the existing urban ecology [The Mirror Stages]\u00a0<\/i>aims to call out the unarticulated tensions between downtown\u2019s various subcultures.\u201d I\u2019m not sure I see the connection here.\u00a0 This might be a case of the architect getting a bit too ambitious about what they hope to achieve with built form.\u00a0 But I love the interdisciplinary sensibility.<\/p>\n

\"BOA<\/a><\/p>\n

One purpose of the Biennial, as disclosed by Carson Chan in the New York Times<\/i> interview, is to ask whether there\u2019s such a thing as a \u201cpan-American cultural thread\u201d running from Canada to Chile and connecting everything in between. \u00a0The architectural installations, and the Draft Urbanism<\/em> exhibition as a whole, go some way toward strengthening the connections. But the overall question is still open if Mark Rinaldi\u2019s summary review of the Biennial<\/a> in the Denver Post<\/i> is any indication.\u00a0 According to Rinaldi there was nothing very Canadian about the Biennial\u2019s \u201cCanada Night.\u201d\u00a0 The \u201cMexico Night\u201d erred on the side of celebrating traditional Mexican culture at the expense of that country\u2019s contemporary culture. According to Rinaldi \u201cDenver Night\u201d\u2014perhaps predictably\u2014fared the best.<\/p>\n

Thus, the Biennial of the Americas still has growing pains. But Draft Urbanism<\/em> is a very nice exhibition. The four architectural installations described here succeed in prompting new thinking about the possibilities for the future design of public space, and in raising new questions.\u00a0 And Denver remains, by virtue of its location and popular appeal, an excellent place to explore interculturalism in the city and to test the integrating power of architecture and other forms of material culture. \u00a0Including billboard art, which I\u2019ll cover in the next post.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“Draft Urbanism” is the exhibition theme of Denver\u2019s 2013 \u00a0Biennial of the Americas celebration.\u00a0 The Biennial is an \u201cinternational festival of ideas, art, and culture\u201d that provides an opportunity for leaders in business, government, philanthropy, and the arts to examine […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true},"categories":[4,6,18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2974","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-architecture","category-denver-urbanism","category-intercultural-city"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1H2bI-LY","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2974","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2974"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2974\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3007,"href":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2974\/revisions\/3007"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2974"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2974"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2974"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}