Urban design as metaphor: Washington, DC

When Pierre L’Enfant set out to design the capital city for the newly independent colonies at the direction of George Washington, he had a single idea:  design the city as a metaphor for the country.  That is, if this new country was to succeed, individual states had to become united.  After deciding on the location – between the northern and southern states, and on a defensible, navigable river – and with Washington’s brilliant scheme for purchasing the land from about 15 farmers with little actual funds – landowners would donate half their land with the understanding that the remaining half would double in value – L’Enfant’s vision was simply to design a metaphor:  as the states are to the country, the districts would be to the city.

Surveying the site, L’Enfant determined that the waterways and their prominent banks would be the locations for important places.  The three branches of government were located first.  The Congress House (Capitol) was placed on Jenkin’s Hill and oriented west on line with Tiber (Goose) Creek that fed into the Potomac River.  The President’s House (White House) would be on the northern bank of the Tiber oriented south toward Washington’s home Mount Vernon.  Both sites were developed as planned.  The judiciary branch's building site (unrealized) was to be between the executive and legislative branch building sites, but not directly linked symbolizing its independence.

L’Enfant then located 15 squares on the elevated banks of the existing waterways about a half a mile apart, which is the distance a person can see unaided.  Each of the states at that time were assigned a square with the six northern states in the northern part of the city, the three central states in the center, and the five southern states in the southern portion.  Each state would then develop the land around their square following their particular interests with housing, churches and businesses.  The squares were connected with broad avenues named for the states.  Looking down an avenue from one district to the next would be the visual link that united the state's districts and created a united city.  The rest of the urban plan was subdivided into four quadrants centered on the Capitol (originally its public plaza, but the building was moved to this center place) with lettered and then one, two and three syllable names for streets to the north and south, and numbered streets to the east and west.

Today, the grand diagonal avenues named for the states remain and more were added as new states entered the union.  The interior waterways whose elevated banks provided prominent elevations for the squares have long been filled and covered, although sometimes the subsurface hydraulic pressure causes wet basements, and requires continuous pumping for monumental buildings such as Union Station.  The districts that were meant to develop around the state’s squares did not happen as land speculators were more interested in profits than the design implications of L’Enfant’s elegant vision.  While Washington is a very legible city for residences and visitors alike especially with the alphabetical and numbered street grid, I often wonder what it would be like if L’Enfant’s design had been fully executed.  Imagine a Washington that represents the country in design, and then perhaps in operation.

More meaning than a hat rack?

Why does a bedroom usually have a chair?  Venture into a teenager’s bedroom and you’ll find it covered with discarded clothes.  True, at least they weren’t left on the floor although it might be a bit better if they found their way to the laundry hamper or were at least hung on a hat rack.  Even if clothes aren’t an issue, having a chair means you don’t have to sit on the freshly made bed to tie your shoes, although this maneuver can take years of training.  More than a hat rack, an empty chair is an invitation to sit and rest, maybe to read, sometimes to recover.

Today, the sickbed is a piece of forgotten household furniture.  For centuries people stopped their normal life activities when they were injured or sick unlike now when medications mask the symptoms and allow the relentless pressure to produce to continue at all costs.  In the past, recovery took time and allowing for that meant special consideration:  travelling to a healthier climate, eating warm, soft and nutritious food, and resting.  Others took care of you.  And you were careful not to expose people to your affliction.  The bed for sleeping and love making was not used, if at all possible, for birthing babies or recuperation.  The place for that was a comfortable chair in a quiet bedroom.

A chair with a foot stool, side table and lamp makes a nest.  French philosopher Gaston Bachelard wrote a chapter on nests in The Poetics of Space.  He described the human desire to withdraw, to be safely contained especially when sickness lowered your defenses.  These are places of removal from primary activities, and of repose and contemplation.  There they generate the sense of contentment as a refuge from the threatening external world.  Critical to this feeling is the physical fit between the chair and the body.  Nestled in soft pillows, the perfect shape emerges like a reflection of our particular shape and posture.  When the scale of the nest matches our body, a sense of belonging in this world is satisfied. 

How often do you sit in this chair?  Sometimes when efficiency and economy become our paramount motives, every non-essential element is vulnerable to elimination.  Simplifying is not the same as subtracting all objects deemed of no immediate purpose.  A glance into a formal dining room that is used only for holidays and family gatherings can have more meaning as a reminder of those events even if it is empty most of the time.  It’s a place that holds memories.  A glance at the bedroom chair refreshes dreams of quite times, inward times, and times of recovery.  Such a reminder may serve its greater purpose by alerting us to be more aware of the health and vitality we currently enjoy.  Bachelard concludes his chapter noting that it is only with confidence that birds build nests.  Our instincts too are to be confident of the world.  Coming home to the inviting bedroom chair demonstrates this.

Floor plans

In design, the well-composed floor plan is the foundation for every subsequent decision.  Made up of places and connections, floor plan designing starts with attending to solar and wind orientations, to what affecting conditions are beyond the immediate area, and to the particular needs.  Renaissance architect, Alberti had a word for it: ‘compartition’ where “All the power of invention, all the skill and experience in the art of building, are called upon in compartition; compartition alone divides up the whole building into the parts by which it is articulated, and integrates its every part by composing all the lines and angles into a single, harmonious work that respects utility, dignity, and delight.”  (I.9)  This is true for design at all scales from the city to the house and gardens, to a table setting, to an object.

Taking the available whole and designing the parts is an act either of subdivision or assembly.  Design by subdivision has a sequential procedure starting with identifying the dominant or most important, usually the largest, room.  This place can have the ideal exposure, size, and relationship to all the other parts.  Then the rest of the desired places must fit into the remaining space.  The advantage of this method is that the main room can be designed without compromise, and this sets the vocabulary of materials and details for the entire project.  The disadvantage is that the finished floor plan cannot grow.  To compensate for this, expansion has to occur with additional blocks, often seen as separate but connected wings to the main structure.

Design by assembly is very different.  This method allows every room to have its correct design following the requirements for individual places.  The advantage of this approach is that each room has the desired size and attributes.  The disadvantage is that this often results in a chaotic mess of a floor plan.  There is no visible logic or order to the plan, and it’s hard to find your bearings and know where you are.  Medieval city plans are an example.  The resolution is to have a clear and strong organizing “spine” about which all rooms have a dependent connection.  The strategy of a “spine” – often a wide hallway – has the advantage in that its growth is not limited by what is already built.  You simply make more of it.

Knowing which approach makes better floor plans is a good question.  The subdivided method wants level land, and yields buildings with a strong presence in the landscape and commanding prospects.  The assembled method appreciates undulating topographic form, and displays an organic relationship between building and land.  Either type of floor plan is capable of utility, dignity, and design – Alberti’s take on the classical Vitruvian triad for beautiful design – and each is appropriate in specific situations.  Floor plans that employ one or the other have clarity and harmony in their original construction as well in their future development and use.

The pleasure of opening

Who doesn't like presents?  Someone hands you a wrapped object and the excitement begins.  The anticipation, then the surprise – it’s a pleasure we all share.  What if this same feeling could be created in home design?

One clue encouraging this feeling begins with the containment.  Unlike products for commercial sale where clear plastic wrapping keeps the object fully visible and protected from damage, we wrap gifts in paper that conceal them from view.  The gift giver keeps a secret from the recipient until the act of opening reveals the present.  Once the gift is opened, a line is crossed and the secret disappears.

Front doors or garden gates also have this power.  Approaching, one evaluates their status as the returning inhabitant or welcome visitor or unwelcome sales call trolling for donations.  The curved walk, low steps, a covered arbor or expansive porch, they all provide what A.J. Downing called ‘a note of preparation.’  Like a good book cover, your eye and hand touch it as you settle into a comfortable chair preparing yourself for reading and thereby leaving this world for the next.  In a home, the front door is the book cover.  Glass doors, like clear plastic product wrapping, reveal everything without restraint and any sense of anticipation slips away.  Solid doors hold back.  A door that is a little heavier than usual, a little wider, or with the handle a little higher as Frank Lloyd Wright sometime did, all help to create a sense of wonder while crossing from public places to private homes.  The added effort draws attention by its weight and the extra force needed to move it, or by the handle height and the extra reach required to touch it.  The bodily sensations wake up the mind alerting it to pay attention and appreciate the created event of a home opening itself to you.   

And then there is the act of crossing the threshold.  From the word ‘thresh’ as in beating grain to separate it from the shaft, threshing is a violent word.  Think of giving someone a thrashing:  it’s noticeable!  Unconsciously crossing from outside to inside will likely produce little effect or generate any sentimental reaction beyond a small measure of relief.  Beyond this impoverished feeling, design is able to generate feelings with far greater impact.  A need for safety and security, and a desire for comfort are basic human instincts that are satisfied with reasonable shelter, but what of affection or contentment, optimism or cheerfulness?  These are also emotions that we long to satisfy.  For example, a visit to a New York apartment building began when I stepped off a crowded and noisy street into a large lobby, not with a vacuously high ceiling intended to impress and intimidate me, but with several wide halls with turns that lead me eventually to the elevator.  The openness and generosity of space instantly caused me to relax and to turn my attention from the street to the friend I was visiting.  The changes to my feelings altered the tone of the entire experience and opened me to the pleasure ahead.  What more do we require of design?
 

More meaning than a throw pillow?

A recent visit to a small New York apartment gave me pause.  My arrival had prompted the dwellers to hang their pictures - a last act of 'moving in.'  My instant reply was that they were hung too high.  But was that true?  Slowly accumulated as gifts or reminders of someplace special, what we hang on the walls are the art of our lives.  They have more meaning than a throw pillow.

Throw pillows may have associations with how they were acquired, by whom or where or even what you were doing when the urge to decorate came over you.  Yet, they lack content.  The meaning or significance we give them doesn't grow with time in the same way as an appreciation of a work of art.

Professional recommendations on how to decorate with framed art - in this case published by Nielsen Bainbridge, suppliers of the matte board used for framing - suggests several guidelines:  hang at eye level, oversize the matting to create drama, lean pictures on a shelf or mantle to look more causal or to make them easy to change, use a picture as an element in a sitting area, mix styles with the furniture to create "interest", or cluster similar images to make a gallery look.  The first suggestion is helpful:  hang at eye level, but is that sitting or standing?  I suggest that in rooms about motion (hallways and stairs) standing is the preferable height while rooms about rest and relaxation (the others) sitting is the preferable height.  Then what?

Look at the picture.  Examine its color, its composition, the direction your eye takes as you study it, the energy you get from it.  These effects are physical manifestations of the meaning that image has for you.  Finding its home within your home starts with matching that content to the way you occupy your spaces.  Intimate associations belong in private rooms, and something you're willing to share and discuss with the friendly observer should be hung in more public rooms.  Within either space, the picture can fit in or stand out depending on if you want a sense of blending or contrast.  For example, a picture hung over a sofa does not have to be centered on it:  if the colors compliment each other and in fact one object reinforces the other, then you create a sense of balance and repose when you center them.  But if you locate the picture to one side, its impact is heightened.  Your eye is drawn to it because it's not quite what you expect.  The effect is more dynamic and more interesting.  The same strategy works with spacing several pictures unusually close, or combining unusual textures, media or visual densities.

The art in your home is you, it tells your story.  Who were your parents, where you have been, what matters to you.  It reveals your sentiments for what you chose to remember about your experiences, and what you chose to share with others.