• A comprehensive guide to buildings in walkable neighborhoods

    Here’s what you need to know about a wide range of building types that make up mixed-use cities and towns, how they work, and why they matter.
    When I prepare to review a book, I highlight key passages. But I couldn’t bring myself to mark up the pages of Increments of Neighborhood: A Compendium of Built Types for Walkable and Vibrant Communities . My highlighter hovered over the first few pages, until—nah—I just put it away. There is...Read more

  • Why buildings need ‘eyes’

    To understand architecture and design buildings successfully, we need to acknowledge core human tendencies that secured our survival.
    As a social species, we are built to see eyes, so we look for them all the time—everywhere—without conscious awareness or control. When we find them, they grab our attention, anchoring us in space, securing us to a place. So, it’s no surprise that tour buses driving through historic Cambridge,...Read more

  • Extending design excellence in a historic city

    A large-scale development raises the bar for new design in Charleston, while re-connecting neighborhoods and anchoring a 1.6-mile-long linear park.
    Charleston is one of the best-preserved historic cities in America, and architecturally sensitive redevelopment has fueled an economic revival of downtown since the 1970s. The Upper King Street Gateway project extends the design excellence north with a large-scale, mixed-use development creating...Read more

  • Lessons from travel: Het Schip

    Amsterdam architect Michel de Klerk and the patronage of Dutch merchants in the early 20th Century are an inspiration to today's wealthy classes on how to provide beautiful housing that is affordable to today's working class.
    I love to travel. Every trip widens my bandwidth, challenges my orthodoxy, introduces ingenious solutions to seemingly unsurmountable problems, and exposes me to the choices people make in living their lives as individuals and as a community. My recent trip to the Netherlands provided several such...Read more