• Creating Temenos: An experiment in suburban retrofit

    An elegant plan to transform a struggling shopping mall into a mixed-use town center uses the same principles of sacred geometry that were employed by Pierre L'Enfant in the urban design of Washington, DC.
    “The catalog of forms is endless; until every shape has found its city, new cities will continue to be born.” ~ Italo Calvino In an article early last year, I reported on the process by which Pierre L’Enfant designed the city of Washington, using various principles of what is known as “sacred...Read more

  • Why choose a grid?

    The decision of a city in Texas to plan for new growth using a grid of streets has inspired readers and makes a lot of sense.
    The recent article on Bastrop, Texas, struck a chord with a lot of readers. The city of about 9,000 people southeast of Austin has adopted a street grid for growth—one of the few cities that have taken that step since 1950. Bastrop is applying the grid in unique and flexible ways. The goal is to...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

  • Texas city adopts street grid and code

    New, lean code deals with flooding issues and fiscal sustainability for fast-growing historic city in the Austin area.
    Bastrop, Texas, adopted new, groundbreaking land-use regulations in November that address flooding and establish a street grid as a framework for growth—one of the first cities in the US to do so since the middle of the 20 th Century. The Bastrop Building Block (B3) code is the result of the...Read more