Armstrong Cork

Abstract

Connection and variety are the quintessential characteristics of successful urban neighborhoods – variety in places to shop, products to buy, income level of residents, and in the interests and activities of the people who populate the sidewalks. Urban variety is not the consequence of population density alone: people must be in contact with one another, if only visually, for the place to succeed. The inside must communicate with the outside. For a city to work, its people must only follow the simple epigrammatic advice of E.M. Forster – Only connect.

A place which facilitates connections must propose a physical variegation: different sizes of places, polyvalent places, places diverse in age and in cost. At the scale of the dwelling, diversity necessitates an economy of material and action, through which even a relatively modest apartment can become an excellent home.

Recognizing, then, these fundamentals, is it possible to apply them in such a way that a single project may provide the seed for urban growth in a misused part of a city district? And what constitutes such a seed – what components are indispensable for it to grow? How does the articulation of degrees of privacy energize the city? The question requires that the city, both general and particular, is understood.