Music in the Park: Denver's 16th Street Mall

Denver closed a downtown street thirty years ago making a public place for pedestrians called the 16th Street Mall. A free shuttle bus runs in both directions along the seventeen block stretch. At either end, the bus path runs in the Mall’s center with wide sidewalks on either side, and then splits for the middle ten blocks flanking a center island. Like many urban revitalization projects, this street is successful because it attracts people with appreciated amenities. The cafes and stores, offices and hotels are busy. Predictably, the surrounding blocks are not, and that’s where you’ll find the support businesses. You may buy shoes on the Mall, but you get them repaired a few blocks away.

Like all public spaces, this one attracts the homeless, ski bums with dogs and panhandlers. They gather on the benches under the dappled shade of honey locust trees. Food trucks and small kiosks are scattered about and the air is rich with smells and sounds, both good and bad. Clearly a few more public toilets are needed because even a Starbucks on every corner cannot provide this facility adequately. Street musicians stake out their spots, but none seems to be good enough to create much of a disturbance.

Denver gets little rain because the mountains to the west protect them from coastal weather, although if the storm approaches from the south, the city gets dumped with many feet of snow. This kind of weather allowed the Downtown Denver Partnership who manage the Mall to add about a dozen old, upright pianos located on nearly every block as part of a program called Your Keys to the City. Started in 2009, the pianos are kept tuned and repaired, and are painted by local artists. Surprisingly, they do not attract vandalism. On the contrary, people cherish them. On an early morning walk, I saw a young man on his way to work playing with skill as well as a homeless man just fooling around a few blocks away. Both were clearly enjoying the opportunity, not to perform, but to make music. Later in the day, the live music was a welcome contrast to the blaring techno noise blasting from chain restaurants.

This human element in a public place is risky, and urban designers do not often think at this scale. Even highly programmed public places such as New York’s Bryant Park does not provide much opportunity for behavior they can’t control. The pianos of Denver provide an opportunity for self-expression, and it reveals the optimistic character of the place. While a city may be somewhere that anything can happen, trusting the public to behave well points to feelings of trust and positivity. Further, the Mall was made with integral granite curbs and street gutters cut from large pieces of granite. Only a city near mountains can build public projects with such large stones. Made and operated generously contributes to an expansive and engaging sense of place.

"Keep Off" or "Keep Out": Mixed Messages at Rocky Mountain National Park

The life in an alpine tundra is fragile. This land type occurs above the treelimit where trees cannot grow. Trees need the average temperature of the year’s warmest month to be above 50˚F. The word ‘tundra’ is Russian for ‘land without trees.’ Alpine tundra has a very short growing season, but it is long enough to support a complex ecology of wildlife. The trees grow slowly often starting behind sheltering boulders. Once exposed, they twist into what is called a Krummholz, a German word for ‘crooked wood.’ These trees may be several hundred years old, yet they barely stand a foot or two. This tundra goes through nearly a hundred freeze/thaw cycles annually. Because water expands by nine percent when it turns to ice, these dynamic forces split rocks and ice/rubble flows create patterns of debris where fragments eventually settle. Reading this landscape to understand its life and forms is difficult although the National Park Service has done a masterful job of marking paths and overlooks, providing parking and installing instructional plaques.

One such overlook is about one hundred feet away from the parking area. It’s worth the trip because it presents a 270 degree panoramic view of astonishing valleys, meadows, glacial pockets and mountains covered with pole pines (many dead from the Pine Beetle infestation) and aspens with leaves that glow as if illuminated. Signs clearly warn people to stay on the path so as to not injure the adjacent plants that can take decades to recover. In no less than ten minutes, I had to remind three people, of which only one was a child, to stay on the path. The signs said “Keep Off” and perhaps this is just vague enough for people to think its negotiable. After all, the ground looked dry and bleak, just rocks and a few straggly plants. Other parts of the park are under restoration and entire areas adjacent to the path demand that you “Keep Out,” and people do. What’s the difference?

Both are lands that are clearly inhospitable to human occupation, at least according to modern sensibilities. That makes everyone a visitor. Warnings that insist you “Keep Out” give the clear indication that you don’t belong there because park operators are doing something and a visit will have to wait. On the other hand, “Keep Off” seems to be about protecting surfaces that appear tough. What’s the harm if I want a photograph from a slightly different angle? You can’t possibly mean that I can never go someplace I can clearly see is easily accessed. The problem, of course, is that not all landscapes are for people. The National Park Service weighs carefully the paradox of exclusion thus protecting wilderness versus the potential to enhance a sense of stewardship people gain by a limited experience such places. For them to increase restrictions caters to people who only respond to yelling and jeopardizes opportunities for others to listen for whispering.   

Food as Art

The 20th century British philosopher Robin Collingwood made a useful distinction between craft and art. A
well-crafted object and a piece of art possess some of the same traits:  an idea, technical perfection uniting form and material, and a sense of purpose. The difference is in the artist’s approach to the making. Unlike the craftsman, the artist is willing to undertake a process with an uncertain outcome. Like a hunter, the artist can intuitively “tell” the direction and “know” when it is done. The difference is the openness of the target. This is the difference between a cook and a chef, with the ultimate chef being the one who makes pastry.

The aesthetics of pastry involves the complete perception. Pastries have a look, smell, taste, feel and even sound when eaten, thus engaging all the senses. Further, chefs know that something tastes good when it includes tastes that are a little salty, sweet, sour and bitter. The pastry chef’s skill comes from the experience of combining ingredients for flavor and texture, decorating the object for appeal and baking it properly. Experience also allows the chef to understand preparation efficiencies and sequences thereby refining commercial applicability. Unlike other forms of cooking, baking stubbornly resists any effort to adjust the result that falls short of expectations. Endless revisions halt once the chemical reactions are set in motion. While a malformed cake can be disguised under thick layers of frosting, chefs consider such compensating methods unprofessional. Pastry chefs need a particular confidence to commit to making something that has no room for final adjustment.

But is pastry making an art according to Collingwood’s definition? Perfecting a specific type of pastry requires a predictable consistency in technique and result. Experimenting with a new ingredient or procedure through a trial-and-error process is needed before a level of certainty is obtained. Once understood, the recipe wants to be repeatable. Do these factors preclude the result from being considered art?

Architecture has a similar question. Good architects master techniques to investigate the issues of each project from the particularities of a specific site, the client’s programmatic needs, and technical demands for safety and performance to the inventive combination of materials. Nevertheless they can never absolutely predict the experience. Working through drawing and modeling gives them some idea of what to expect, but the projected experience is not guaranteed. The complexity of the art defies complete predictability. The art of architecture depends on the architect's ability to evolve to where the fundamentals of shelter are secure and the intended delight is likely. So too, the complexity of pastry combines nourishment with sure technique and consistent results and the unexpected pleasure of unfolding flavors, subtle sensations and provocative aftertastes. No chef can make someone respond a certain way on demand. Like all artists find, and if anything this is truest for food as art, there is no accounting for taste. Unlike architecture, the final test of pastry is in its disappearance when eaten. Then food as art finds expression in satisfied appreciation, and like fading musical notes, it lasts only as a memory.