Posts filed under 'Ambiguous Places'
I got into a friendly argument with a colleague about “appropriate” uses for churches. It started with an observation he made about how St. Bart’s in Midtown over-advertises its cafe - and why does a church have a cafe anyway? He advocates separation of uses, and deplored as an example, the proposal to turn a church into a nightclub. I believe instead that churches are gathering places - in a whole host of different ways, whether they are cafes, nursery schools, night clubs, or anything else.
Maybe I remember very clearly the packed jazz club in the basement of St. Giles Church, one of the oldest Episcopalian churches in London, where the priest tended the bar, and it was one of the few places you could get absinthe. I thought of it as the safest place you could try absinthe, not as a dangerous place.
The argument reminded me that I took pictures of a cemetery in the East Village - the New York Marble Cemetery, which operates like a park on the weekends. Chairs are put outside and people are encouraged to have picnics and visit the park/cemetery.
What do you think of this use of the cemetery? Disrepectful? Or good management?
Much of our disagreement was wrapped up in our conception of these places and activity that is or is not perceived as illicit. I don’t thinking drinking and dancing or listening to music late at night, say at a night club, is such an illicit activity that needs physical separation from the observance of spirituality. However, my colleague thought that night club activity is immoral and church activity is moral. We agreed to disagree. I do think this discussion highlights some of the fundamental principles guiding people’s inherent reactions to the use of space. What do you think?
May 11th, 2007
I went to West Midtown a couple weekends ago, looking for spots of refuge from the heavy avenue traffic. I’ve been apartment hunting so something that I look for in a neighborhood is whether there are informal or formal places to hang out outside of the apartment, which will inevitably be very small. I really like some of the buildings out there, and I really wanted to like this park, which was soaking some of the sun on the very cold day.
But something about it made me stop and not want to go in. This is the entrance.
It’s OK. I didn’t know that it was a Balsley Park, but there it is. The gesture is to have the doors wide open. However, the real eye-catching element as you approach the park is actually this concession stand:
This large green structure is what I saw first, and it threw me off. I think it was the fact that Italian Ice was the largest font, and it was such a cold day that it didn’t appeal to me. Also, the cold drinks. And that the color of the concession stand matches the color of the trash can and both are similar in shape. I didn’t want to buy anything from this stand..but then I saw the coffee and thought maybe. As I got closer to the park, it turns out the concession stand was closed, so I looked in:
Yikes, those gates, does it look like a drive-way entrance…
Cold seats that don’t allow the sitter to look at anything…
…except the on-ramp. Was it me or did it seem that this was not meant for people, but for small vehicles? There is that guy who found a spot in the sun.
I loved the look and sound of this park on the Thomas Balsley Associates web site:
The description of the park makes it a public space success: there was community consensus, the “right” string of programming to make the space successful, including food, activities and seating. But the park doesn’t work. At least on this day, it didn’t. The photos on the designer’s web site are taken from the opposite end of the park, so maybe I just approached it from the “wrong” spot. It was the dead of winter, and maybe the park was built several years ago and is starting to show signs of wear. However, there shouldn’t be a wrong way to get into the park. And enduring the tests of time and seasons are what make public spaces successful experiences for people.
February 20th, 2007
It felt like we walked from one car-infested development to another in Brooklyn all day Saturday, so it was a pleasure to run into this experiment started last summer. Willoughby between Adam and Pearl Street in downtown Brooklyn is closed to cars and has been transformed into a mini public square with some moveable seating, some non-moveable seating, big planers and randomly (or strategically?) places trash cans. The purpose is to test the feasibility of closing it permanently to cars.
It was a cold and gray day, so no one was out on the metal furniture.
But a few people took advantage of the furniture to stop and adjust their bags…or maybe look for some spare change.
Though the square was mighty empty, there is an ancillary benefit to setting up people-oriented amenities within it, even in the middle of winter. It is a little island of brightness in the middle of many many streets and lanes of cars, buses and trucks. We looked lost all along our walk from Borough Hall to Adams Street, and it was in front of this friendly place that a woman stopped us to ask us if we needed directions. Lovely!
January 29th, 2007
The author calls his collection of panoramas, “suburban sprawl and other calamities,” but I’m curious whether everyone looking at these photos would see “calamity” captured therein.
I’ll admit — my first reaction was that some of these look like beautiful, safe places to live (some people who live there must have thought so) — and that it’s got to be debatable how bad all of this is.
To tie this back into the purpose of this site… I’ll pose the question, exactly what are the effects of sprawl from a user experience perspective? Do people choose to live there because there’s something positive about the experience, or do they see living there as a necessary evil? (And does it even matter if it’s not sustainable?)
LINK: Suburban Sprawl Panoramas (left side)
LINK: East Bay Sprawl Panoramas
Thanks for the link, Jess!
September 7th, 2006