2011 in review-the comprehensive version

This year in January I made several predictions about the new year. Here is my thoroughly objective analysis.

1. 2011 will be a fairly dull year. Things will continue to go poorly in places where things are already doing poorly, including Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, and the drug war cities of Juarez and Tijuana in Mexico. It could hit the fan in North Korea, but I doubt it.
-Boy was I wrong. The revolutions and regime changes in the Middle East were the defining events. Korea had a lateral regime change and I predict that things will continue as they are there for several more decades.And then there was Occupy Wall Street.

2. American politics will have more than usual sound and fury and idiots. It's the deep breath before the plunge into the 2012 election year. Obama may do something surprising, but I doubt it.
-A safe prediction and it is still being played out. Obama may take a progressive turn after his speech in Kansas (in conjunction with the Occupy movements), but we'll see.

3. Revolutions in architecture will be subdued because there isn't enough money to do crazy stuff. The construction boom in China will slow down, maybe they'll have a real estate collapse, but strong government action will mitigate its effects. U.S. architecture firms will continue to experience consolidation and contraction. Tough luck for me, but so it goes.
-Meh on this one.
4. The upcoming changes in building codes, specifically as they relate to energy use, will start to take effect, but the impact will be marginal. The long term positive impact will have profound consequences, but excitement over "green" design will be more constrained.
-Too soon to tell.

5. The end of the middle will accelerate. I will give some banal examples of what I mean by this: Retail opportunities will be dominated by either discount goods or extreme luxury items--a few Hummers counterbalanced by lots of subcompact sedans. People will be either very rich or lower class. Aspirational impulses will be constrained by the long odds of achieving superstar success. But, life at the bottom will be distinguished more by grumbling than full-out misery. Perhaps on this note I am being too optimistic.
-Business people and economists call this the "hourglass" effect and it is the dominant trend in business planning.

6. Conservative design trends will dominate. Curvy stuff, which used to look so revolutionary, will be continue to dominate mass-produced products, but we might start to see more right angles and subtle details in architecture. The stuff in the magazines will still be curvy, expensive blobs, but ordinary stuff will be boxier and more restrained.
-Meh on this one. Mostly wrong. Not much has changed.

7. None of these predictions will be borne out perfectly--they aren't very aggressive or original in the first place, but so what.

8.Something entirely unexpected will happen.
 
7 & 8 were the usual disclaimers. Despite the political revolutions, the natural disasters and the continuing recession, 2011 was forgettable.

driving in america

This is from Calculated Risk. No other graph captures the impact of the current recession more than this one. Americans drive a lot, but lately, because of the collapse in economic demand, we are driving less, despite the continuing increase in our population (312 million, more or less). A new urbanist would point to this as a good thing, and a particularly naive segment of the design profession would even try to take credit for reducing the number and duration of car trips taken by Americans. I doubt that recent trends in architecture or urban planning have had  much of an impact on the immediate downturn in auto use. What is more curious is the fact that over the course of time represented by this graph, the population growth rate has been outpacing the mileage growth rate. I don't know how to express this divergence, but it does point to an increasing densification of American settlement. However, its a densification expressed more significantly in "suburban" development areas.

a modern nation

Where is this? It looks like any city in the norther hemisphere on a cold day in winter. The man crossing the street could be James Dean, or James Bond. The bus will make its way through and the people riding in it will look at the window, lost in thought, until they get off at their destination. Spring will come, and this grim scene will be softened by warm air, blooming flowers and green leaves.

This is North Korea.

p.s. If this were any other city, there would be more cars and more people, regardless of the weather.

festivity and contemplation

This is architecture. Places like this, with these details and sense of longing and possibility, with this beauty. This is why I am an architect and why I am convinced it matters. Great architecture happens at the intersection of intent and chance. Now, back to business.

My next post, probably my last post of 2011, will feature an assessment of the predictions I made for the year. It's a mea culpa moment, so get the popcorn and something to drink. On January 1st or thereabouts, I'll make a new set of predictions, which will be as tiresome, unoriginal and wrong as the predictions I made the previous year.

I'm not exactly sure where this place is. Google images does not guarantee accuracy when searching for key words. Finding the right question to ask in this age of instantaneous information seems to be even more important than in the past. A growing danger of our age is that more and more people will be convinced that they will be able to make better decisions because more information is available. Such hubris will almost certainly lead to more bad decisions. See also: Global Real Estate Bubble, circa 2000-2006.

my big idea

Try not to fall off your chair. This picture represents a new approach to subdividing properties on an urban residential block. It is intended to help circumvent the homogeneity of the common zoning model that I referred to in some recent posts. The idea is simple--rather than have one, average lot size that is repeated ad nauseum over scores or hundreds of street blocks, a developer or municipality can start of with (or end up with) a layout that relies on different sized lots that are not restricted by a setback based zoning code. A diversity of architectural solutions based on the size and locations of the lots would be a possible, favorable outcome. Some lots are large enough to allow for detached, single family homes that would have large yards. Or, a large lot could support a multifamily building with off-street parking. Smaller lots would lend themselves to row-houses or small, fully detached homes that would appeal to first time homebuyers or retired people.

Maybe it's a good idea, but it's probably too late to make a difference in this country.

micro-unit

This design is my adaptation of plan that was recently published in the Boston Globe. A developer in Boston, with the input and support of the city, is proposing 375 s.f. studio apartments for buildings in the Fort Point Seaport district. This is being presented as an original idea, and maybe it is for Boston. I remember visiting a mock-up of an 8 bed Chinese apartment unit that was roughly the same size.
How much space does someone really need? The residents of the International Space Station are getting by with a lot less, and despite having some great views, I don't doubt that claustrophobia occasionally sets in.
The original design of this unit was done by the Boston architecture firm of ADD Inc.

alternatives?

This it what a suburban housing block looks like when it is under development. This is also what a housing block looks like when it is in decline. As housing stock burns down, or if shifts in the economy prevent the full development of the block, then the visual circumstance is of "missing teeth" which tends to discourage potential homebuyers and investors and depress housing values. Or so the story goes. In a few days I am going to propose a visual image of block layout that creates a situation where variable density doesn't result in the "missing teeth" effect. Well, I'll give it a try, at least.