Week 2 Readings: Public Space as Ideal Form / Grid / Ubiquitous

Response to Rowe, C., & Koetter, F. Collage City

When reading this portion of Collage City I became very intrigued at the points that the author(s) were trying to make. However, the language used was rather too complex for my liking and I found myself lost multiple times, and having to back track just to get an understanding at all. Using what I could understand out of it I noticed some very interesting ideas as well as quotes to back up said ideas. Basically, as I understood it to be, the original idea of a city needed to go, so that the new idea could come into place. However the new ideas of a modern city also had it's major flaws. Therefore a healthy balance of the two is needed to be created. The right combination of public space with buildings is what architects and urban planners are seeking. An example using Gestalt diagrams proved to be a helpful example in the reading. The two extremes being one having mostly black with a tiny bit of white, and vis versa. In relation to a city one would be buildings with spaces cut out of them, and on the other hand would be space with buildings created within it. Also said in the reading is that objects or spaces may characterize the "old" city or the "new" city, however they can be used to create an equality amongst one another. "A debate in which victory consists in each component emerging undefeated" (Koetter, 83). To summarize what I learned in one sentence, basically what it's all about is creating a combination of the ideas of the old city with the ideas of the new city, in a way that works for todays society. On a side note, one quote stood out a lot to me and it said, "A building is like a soap bubble. This bubble is perfect and harmonious if the breath has been evenly distributed from the inside. The exterior is the result of an interior" (Koetter 58). I found this very inspirational because it gave me a new perspective about architecture that I had not really thought about in depth, and will not most likely look back on this quote in the future.