In Denmark, Linking Beauty And Rail In New Design
These renderings for a new project in Denmark show how towers and open space combine to promote mass transit and reject old-fashioned ideas about monolithic design.
"Steven Holl Architects of New York is working on two projects in and around Copenhagen: this one shows how design and planning can fuse to produce lively places with plenty of room for growth. The project will include roughly 54,000 square feet of apartments on top of 37,500 square feet of retail, with a large allotment of open space. Holl’s design shows how tall structures, plenty of natural light and strategic use of grass can deliver a sense of exploration without sprawl. Says Holl: 'It is a sharp contrast to the American urban sprawl which is characterised by highways and endless seas of houses.'"
"It also takes the wind out of the argument that only car-centric urban design can satisfy a yearning for individual expression. This is no Soviet-style block."
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Avant-Gardism At Its Worst
As most comments on the blog point out, this proposal has many of the same failings as the tower-in-a-park housing projects of the 1950s and 1960s.
It has T-shaped-buildings-in-a-park instead of conventional towers for esthetic reasons. It is striking (or sensationalistic) to cantelever the upper stories so far out beyond the base of the tower, but it does nothing to make the project more livable.
This project is all too typical of today's avant-gardist architecture, which concentrates on flashy technological innovations that draw attention to themselves, rather than concentrating on creating human-scale places.
Charles Siegel