International Unbanism Symposium reflects on city-making around the globe
Rob Krier presenting his sculpture to Robert Davis. Photo by Brandan Babineaux.
The inaugural International Urbanism Symposium was held in Seaside Florida, where sixteen world-renowned architects and planners gathered to share their experiences working in the global arena. The symposium attendance exceeded expectation, which consisted of architects, planners, students, and local residents.
The first session began the evening of Friday, January 31st with an introduction by Dhiru Thadani outlining the global crisis of rapid urbanization and population shift from rural to urbanizing centers. Boston architect Michael Dennis presented an overview of the degradation of urban design over the past 50 years, and paid homage to the life’s work of Rob Krier, the recipient of 2014 Seaside Prize. Dennis placed Krier as the original progenitor for reform of urban discourse. He credited Krier’s writings, drawings and early projects that proposed the repair of traditional urban form versus the destructive tendencies of prevailing modern architects of the 1960s.
New York architect Steven Peterson moderated the Saturday morning session. He introduced the topic of “what is urban?” by using observations made by his grand daughter on her recent visit to New York City. University of Miami Professor, Jaime Correa illustrated and discussed contrasting approaches to urban design - a top-down strategy for a large coastal extension of the City of Muscat, in Oman, and a bottom-up tactic for the development of a new settlement in the southern region of Antioquia, Colombia. Transportation planner and engineer Peter Swift discussed the fallacies of traffic modeling and the detrimental outcome of over-designed thoroughfares the world over along with specific experiences in the city of Erbil, Iraq. Indian-born, Los Angeles-based urbanist and USC Professor Vinayak Bharne shared findings from his three recent books on Asian cities — from governance structures and micro-economies to land scarcity and religion — reflecting on the differences in city-making in the majority world. French national and Sorbonne PhD candidate Clémence Montagne presented a history of the Emirates and the 40-year urban development of Abu Dhabi. Australian planner Mike Day presented an overview of the challenges encountered in working internationally as well as in his homeland where patterns of sprawl closely emulate the United States.
University of Maryland Professor Steven Hurtt moderated the afternoon session, which focused on built projects. Rob Krier presented an overview of several of his built new towns in the Netherlands where he had executed the master plan and shared the commissions for buildings with several notable architects - including one where his undergraduate architecture students had designed the row housing. Providence based architect Bill Dennis shared his experiences in China and Mongolia in executing strategic interventions towards better urbanism, from new neighborhoods to building infills. Washington-based architect John Torti presented an oeuvre of the firm's work highlighting built work in Turkey and the Middle East, and the victories and struggles therein. Guatemala-based architects Pedro Godoy and Maria Sanchez presented the new town of Cayala that they have been working on with Léon Krier, where a beautifully executed urban fabric is punctuated with civic buildings and public spaces. University of Notre Dame Professor Richard Economakis presented his Town Hall building in the Cayala project and discussed the search for a culture-specific classicism of derivative forms inspired by Guatemala's history. The afternoon session concluded with a presentation of the City of Justice designed by Rob Krier. This project is an aggregate of several buildings on a historic site, which was a 17-year long effort for the noted architect, as he was adamant to make a major contribution to his home town of Luxembourg.
The symposium was followed by the 2014 Seaside Prize Award ceremony. Dhiru Thadani provided an overview of Rob Krier's outstanding contribution to the fields of architecture and urbanism. Thadani also emphasized Krier’s immense passion for making beautiful drawings and sculptures, which has been equally inspirational and influential. Robert Davis presented the Seaside Prize key to Rob Krier and in return Krier presented Davis with one of his sculptures. In his acceptance speech Krier candidly shared intimate stories of his youth, his family, his influences, and his experiences growing up in Europe in the wake of the destruction caused by WWII. He expressed his desire and struggle to integrate painting and sculpture into his architecture, and adorn buildings with beauty that would inspire future generations of citizens.
Sunday, February 2nd started with a presentation by Andrés Duany on the three seaside towns that he had designed over the past 35 years: Seaside, Rosemary Beach, and Alys Beach. Duany highlighted lessons learned, mistakes made, and corrections and adjustments incorporated. Duany placed Seaside as the forerunner to his thinking about ‘Lean Urbanism,’ a term that describes how future developments need to be designed and built if they are to be environmentally and economically feasible.
The symposium was sponsored by the Seaside Institute and the American Institute of Architects’ Northwest Florida chapter.
Dhiru Thadani is an architect and urbanist, author of Visions of Seaside, and the 2011 recipient of the Seaside Prize.
