What is urban design?
(laughs) What is urban design? I mean, you guys have heard me say my spiel in general, which is that I don’t think that urban design is a discipline in and of itself. I think it’s a kind of interdisciplinary design concentration that’s something that architects do. No offense to either of you, neither of you are architects, but I think it’s a scale of design that can be engaged by architects, landscape architects, planners, but it’s not a fundamentally different discipline. It’s a scale and venue for design that demands that in a different way. And, in a greater intensity, demands that designers engage issues of politics and economics and society, because it kind of brings those things more to the fore. But I don’t think, I don’t think that urban design is a is a discipline of its own. I think it’s a it’s a scale of design that forces or for which it behooves the designer to engage these other kinds of exigencies around a given context.
What makes your work urban?
Yeah, I don’t know. You guys have probably heard me talk about this before too. The way I was educated as an architect, there is really no difference. Like, I was educated, I think from the beginning as a formalist and contextualist. And when I was learning about architecture at, like, the age of 18, there was no distinction between drawing, designing, and understanding the city and drawing, designing, and understanding the building. So like, those kinds of questions are almost foreign to me. Like the urban is one scale of gathering the concerns around design and architecture is another scale of gathering concerns around design, but they’re not fundamentally different. So, yeah, I guess like I think being urban does have something to do with being, for me at least, with being a contextualist with like wanting to understand the, the various and sometimes conflicting, demands that go on in any project or the kind of ideas or constituencies that gather around the project. Like even if you’re doing a house, I think there’s like an urbanism to that kind of that model of thinking. I guess that’s what makes me think my work is urban. But I never, like, I didn’t do, teach urban design or anything like that until I came here. And people like Maria are like, “oh, you’re doing urban design.” I didn’t even know what urban design is. The easy answer to the question is like it concerns the city (laughs) or concerns urbanization. Like something beyond the building object. Although I guess I just just contradicted that by saying, like, there can be an internal urbanism to the building object.
Who is doing compelling work in urban design right now?
Yeah, I saw that question. It’s a hard one to answer. I mean, I like Interboro’s work a lot. I think they’re doing interesting urban design work. I like people, as you know, like Nicholas de Moncheaux, who’s not necessarily doing a lot of like, built work. I think that there are other good offices that are now doing pretty good urban design like Studio Gang now, I think.
I think that the amount of capital required for urban design projects almost necessarily bends the model towards the decoration of the neoliberal city which is a, it’s something it’s like a proficiency and ability, like, to do things like what James Corner does, for example. It’s something that I can certainly appreciate. But it’s also not something I want to fully endorse, especially now that we can fully recognize what projects like The High Line actually do to issues of equity and access and stuff like that.
So, other people I like? I like Tim Love, Utile, just because it’s kind of like a realpolitik approach like really engaging the political economy of the city. Who else? I mean, Weiss/Manfredi is already doing perfectly good work.
At one point I was going to turn my career towards this question, and then I decided it was too hard. But I don’t think that there’s a compelling, progressive aesthetic project, in urban design. And that’s what that’s what it would take for me to really get fully invested or fully behind a practice. I think that we have practices that do not take the aesthetic project, particularly seriously. Like there’s no, there sometimes is not a lot of conviction, like maybe the most intellectually interesting urban designers like even like Kate Orff or Nicholas de Moncheaux, like these people I find really really interesting I think they don’t believe in or invest in an aesthetic project, on one hand and the kind of progressive aspects of their practice are often about the, you know, like systems or computation or whatever it might be. So that’s on one hand, like these are the progressives and the people who seem most interested in aesthetics are regressive. It’s like the new urbanists and like those kinds of people, but I don’t see if I feel like there’s a space up there for yet somebody who wants to have like a conviction about an aesthetic project for urban design, the contemporary city and progressive aesthetic project, I don’t know what that would be.
What do you try to teach urban design students?
What is a common misconception about urban design?
What is a common misconception of urban design? For me, a common misconception of urban design is that it’s altogether different than what we do as architects or landscape architects, that like consideration of the city is like a completely different skill set. I think it’s a re-articulation, kind of like these things that we do as designers.
Where do you think urban design is heading?
I mean, the inevitable direction, whether it’s where urban design is headed, like, the project of articulating urban futures seems inevitably headed towards computation, like increasing methods of computation. Probably engaging professionals who are non-standard designers. I think that puts urban design in an interesting problematic, like, does the sub-discipline want to embrace that? Does it want to be a staunch pillar of resistance and in service of some other higher principles? Or does it want to find an intermediary place? I mean, I think I would be the third of those just because I’m circumspect and dialectical by nature. But I’m not, I’m not sure. I guess like for urban design to exist, like urban designers have to care because nobody else gives a shit. Like there’s no problem with things going on, like, as status quo without urban designers. That’s not a, it’s not an issue at all. So yeah, I think it’s a problem for you guys. Again, like a problem and in a good sense, like, not a bad problem.