Category Archives: context-sensitive design

Context: Skyrise, highrise and surprise

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gold-coast-skyrise-q11Increasingly there is a trend towards the design of skyrise buildings in the inevitable push skywards which is the fascination of architects [and city fathers] worldwide: why? Because we can.

Beyond the temptations of exploiting the limits of technological possibility are a number of very real concerns about context which architects should be mindful of.

Each building contributes to the visual amenity and character of the urban fabric….and in the case of cities, located as Surfers Paradise, is on the edge of a spectacular coastline….to the landscape setting and ecology.

Each building’s context is unique. So there are no hard and fast principles applicable in all circumstances. [Truly great designers delight in confounding principles…so with some risk I say] Some general principles do apply in relation to the general impact of the height of a building on its context.

For example, a generous open landscape setting such as is present on the Gold Coast in Australia, visually permits a correspondingly generous height of built form. And a predominantly vertical city fabric is little impacted by an additional vertical built form – even if it breaks the previous skyline limits. However, this is only to say something of the visual impact of such developments. And of course there are many other considerations, not least being the impact of shadows etc on the useability of both the surrounding buildings and the surrounding streetscape and landscape.

Source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/benderish/127955038/in/photostream/

Capernaum House of St Peter and landscape archaeology

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The Octagon Church is a fine example of context-insensitive design, despite its octagonal shape

The Octagon Church is a fine example of context-insensitive design, despite its octagonal shape

When building a visitor centre on an archaeological site the best policy is assemble a group of experts and ask them to make a reconstruction of the original building. The worst policy is to invite a trendy designer to exercise his or her creative imagination. The Octagon Church at Capernaum shows ‘how not to do it’. The building dominates the ancient town. I find it no comfort at all that visitors can look through the glass floor and see the ruins of the octagonal church which the Byzantines built on the supposed ruins of St Peter’s House.

” According to Luke 4:31-44, Jesus taught in the synagogue in Capernaum on the sabbath days. In Capernaum also, Jesus allegedly healed a man who had the spirit of an unclean devil and healed a fever in Simon Peter’s mother-in-law. According to Matthew 8:5-13, it is also the place where a Roman Centurion asked Jesus to heal his servant… One block of homes, called by the Franciscan excavators the sacra insula or “holy insula” (“insula” refers to a block of homes around a courtyard) was found to have a complex history. ..The excavators concluded that one house in the village was venerated as the house of Peter the fisherman as early as the mid-first century AD, with two churches having been constructed over it (Lofreda, 1984).”  Info from Wiki. Photo courtesy kokorokoko

There is a great need for landscape architects to become involved with archaeological sites. They are far too important to be left to the care of archaeologists.

Loampit Vale Redevelopment in Lewisham

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Its ugly and its un-London.

Its ugly and its un-London.


The UK Royal Town Planning Institute (RTPI) was launched in ill-omened year: 1914. But it was founded by idealists and played an honourable role, until another year of destiny: 1947. Effectively, it then split. One portion became an arm of government, forever beholden to the ugliness of local government in the UK. The other portion, which has grown in size, became an arm of the property development industry. The idealists left.

The above image of a ‘regeneration’ proposal in Lewisham, South London, shows the result. There is a lot of patter about sustainability etc but the design is 1930s Corbusian with a sprinkling of rancid green sauce. The developers get a fat profit; the local council gets more tax income; the people get an ugly and badly designed project: 98% of respondents to a consultation were against the proposal. If Steen Eiler Rasmussen, author of London the unique city, could give an opinion he would surely sign it ‘Disappointed, Disgusted and Revolted of Copenhagen’. He believed London unique among world cities because such a high proportion of its residents have their own gardens and do NOT live in flats. Rasmussen also loved London’s parks and would be horrified the social uselessness of the proposed ground level space in Lewisham. The design is context-insensitive to a high degree. Poor old Lewisham. Poor old London. Poor old England.

From little things big things grow

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las_vegas-strip

When Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown first released their text Learning From Las Vegas in 1972 the idea of the importance of  unity or disunity of vision created within the visual environment by urban patterning and built form had been greatly neglected.

Perhaps, the shock of the everyday assisted in alerting the design professions to the importance of the prosaic nature (common v heroic) of the constructed urban environment even where hyper-reality is the norm.

The text is credited with re-humanising the built environment through its influence in promoting and disseminating the tenets of the emerging Postmodern movement.

Learning from Las Vegas continues to  influence in surprising and controversial ways the thinking of designers including landscape designers and multi-media designers through its insightful analysis of the visual environment.

Viewing the original photographs of Denise Scott Brown is a revelation in perception and an eye for beauty in the ordinary.

Source: http://www.stuffintheair.com/weather-underground-vegas.html

Scott Brown Photographs [http://www.architectsjournal.co.uk/1996064.article]

Landscape [http://landscapeandurbanism.blogspot.com/2009/08/reading-list-learning-from-las-vegas.html]


Heavy and light H2O

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snowflake3According to Richard Alley in The Two Mile Time Machine ‘heavy’ water is rare (for every 6,000 parts of water, there is only one part that is heavy water.)

Rain and snowflakes are formed from water vapour from the heavier isotopes of H2O. Water has an atomic weight of between 18 to 22.

Not being all that knowledgeable about snow, a little reading turned up some interesting facts I thought I would share;

“What are common snowflake shapes?

Generally, six-sided hexagonal crystals are shaped in high clouds; needles or flat six-sided crystals are shaped in middle height clouds; and a wide variety of six-sided shapes are formed in low clouds. Colder temperatures produce snowflakes with sharper tips on the sides of the crystals and may lead to branching of the snowflake arms (dendrites). Snowflakes that grow under warmer conditions grow more slowly, resulting in smoother, less intricate shapes.





  • 32-25° F – Thin hexagonal plates
  • 25-21° F – Needles
  • 21-14° F – Hollow columns
  • 14-10° F – Sector plates (hexagons with indentations)
  • 10-3° F – Dendrites (lacy hexagonal shapes)”

Source: http://chemistry.about.com/od/moleculescompounds/a/snowflake.htm

I don’t believe I am any more able to identify the temperature at which the pictured snowflake was formed. Perhaps someone could help me out? If identifying snowflake temperature is good fun, here are some more from [Alaska…http://www.andysorensen.com/Nature/Snowflakes/Alaska-Snowflake-Photos-1/2309403_oBP6E#120860351_Zvrth]

So to get to the crux of things – is snow flake biodiversity endangered by global warming?

Glass and thatched roofs at Athelhampton

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Glass roof and thatched roof at Athelhampton House and Garden

Glass roof and thatched roof at Athelhampton House and Garden

Here is a really good example of context-sensitive design: the glass roof sits beautifully with the thatched roof. It looks as though the pitch is the same and I can’t even be sure whether the piers which support the glass are old or new. But some of the other details are less than perfect – the trip rail, though suitably rustic,  seems unnecessary and the outdoor lantern is not in keeping with the arts and crafts excellence of the Athelhampton garden or indeed with what is described as one of the finest 15th century houses in England.