Life Between Buildings

 

Jan Gehr - Life Between Buildings: Using Public Space

 

Gehr suggests that many cities built since the start of the 20th Century have at a detrimental effect on the quantity and quality of human interactions. A primary factor in this was designing around the automobile, and secondary to this is; form over function. Great plazas and tiered areas where build that dwarfs the human scale.

Gehr explains that there are three types of human interaction:

• Necessary (eg. work, school, shopping)
• Optional activities resultant activists (eg. sitting sunbathing, strolling)
• Social activities (eg. play, conversations, communal activities)

Creating space for contact, from high intensity to low: close friend, friends, acquaintance, chance, passive (see and hear). The more time people spend outside the more chance there is of contact. See above diagram showing good vs poor quality space.

There are a number of key take aways from this book including:

• To much space without intimacy is detrimental to contact 
• People will sit on a bench facing the main thoroughfare over away from it 
• Human sight line is at 90 degrees (almost) horizontal. Reduced vision down and further reduced upwards. We walk at an angle looking down, viewing roughly the 1st store.
• Smell is relatively weak around 1m skin smells. 2-3m perfume
• Hearing: 7m max fo a conversation and 35m for a lecture Q and A
• Senses designed to take on information at walking or running pace
• Staging and softer demarcation between realms of private and public have a positive impact on interaction 
• Good visual connection eg. Children and see other children playing. The library, club room, swimming pool can be viewed from the outside not hidden in a basement. People see people and are drawn to participate or just experience what others are doing 
• The automobile city and the pedestrian city have quite different scales. The architecture of the automobile city is large and brash.
• People will always take the shortest route when the destination is in sight. One must obstruct view of the destination whilst maintain the primary direction.
• The main rule of pedestrian traffic and different levels is that they should be avoided where possible. Use a ramp instead of steps
• Reduction in crime the more people in the street. Also general safety as there are others to look out for you 

• Areas that get sun and protection from the wind are much better used than those that don’t 

  Lower buildings in higher density mean wind goes over the top. Spaced out larger buildings pull wind down.

• Integration of institutions within a city (eg. a university) will promote greater opportunity for interaction if they are located on the outskirts.

Standing

People like to stick to the edges or stand with something or with their back to something.

A good city has irregular facades providing niches and various supports in there open spaces (Bollard, tree, bench etc.) 

 

Sitting 

Always consider the orientation of view

Type of seating - comfortable 

Primary - bench chair

Secondary - steps, buildings, fountains 

Ideally seating in a city should be 100m apart for older residents 

 

Seeing, hearing and talking

Max distance for facial recognition  20-25m this is an immediately comfortable distance, 70-100m for seeing events. Spaces shouldn’t be larger than 110m - Kevin Lynch

Lighting the relevant planes makes for friendly for safe feeling spaces 

Hearing an conversation is easier the further away from traffic 

60 decibels is the max before conversation becomes difficult. This is exceed with traffic noise

People can’t converse with flow and have to shout. Children can’t ask questions 

Conversational landscapes - arrangement of seating. eg. Trains and buses seeing backs of heads reduces interaction. Ralph Erekine mostly places two benches at right angles with a table between to encourage interation

 

Blurring the edge between private and public (domestic or inner city) will always encourage more interaction. Creating places to rest, pause. Front porch garden that gives a reason to be outside (encouraging activities like watering the garden, painting a fence). Parks and pedestrian streets where people can sit and watch others and perhaps interact or just over hear snippets of conversation. Pushing the car out of our neighbourhoods would create safer, quieter and nurturing spaces for communities. 

There is so much more to explore in this book. I wonder with increases in working from home how this will effect the level of interaction and how we can work to revise these ideas going forward. 

reference:

life between buildings: using public space, Jan Gehr (sixth edition 2006)