Description
Book SynopsisThis book provides the tools to maintain and rebuild the interaction between architecture and public space. Despite the best intentions of designers and planners, interactive frontages have dwindled over the past century in Europe and North America. This book demonstrates why even our best intentions for interactive frontages are currently unable to turn a swelling tide of economic and technological evolution, land consolidation, introversion, stratification, and contagious decline. It uses these lessons to offer concrete locational, programming, design, and management strategies to maximize street-level interaction and trust between street-level architecture, its inhabitants, and the city.
This book demonstrates that designers, developers, planners, and managers ultimately have to create the right preconditions for inhabitants and passersby to bring frontages to life. These preconditions connect architecture to its urban, social, economical, and technological context. Only t
Table of Contents
Preface by Hans Karssenberg. Acknowledgements. 1.Introduction. 2.Detroit – Eye level death and resurrection. 3.Birmingham – The concrete collar unleashed. 4.The Hague – The layered city at eye level. 5.Vancouver – The frontage formula. 6.The frontage ecosystem. 7.Commercial life – Eye level transactions in the city. 8.Life beyond transactions - New destinations in the city. 9.Living at eye level - Prospect and refuge. 10.Conclusion - Living it up. Index.
