In the coming months, we will have the opportunity to help shape a defining development for Southwest and the D.C. region at large. EEK Architects, led by the Southwest Waterfront developers have put together a compelling vision to redevelop the city's leading maritime center. It features a variety of uses, structures, and open spaces. To knit these components and draw people into the 26-acre site, the plan draws on design inspirations from around the western world. At the same time, Southwest's own design template provides important precedents.
Several hours to the north, a renounced Danish urban planner, Jan Gehl is radically and thoroughly transforming New York City under the Bloomberg administration. The concepts Gehl uses to describe this radical transformation are remarkably similar to those that characterize Southwest DC.
The Danish planner recognized earlier in his career that architects in Copenhagen had "started building buildings" without building cities. He found this to be a retreat from the "garden city"tradition featuring "complexes of high-rises" where "everyone could see the garden and later, the parking lot." Recognizing the pitfall, he "decided to make the public realm so attractive it would drag people back into the streets, whilst making it simultaneously difficult to go there by car" "This phenomenon can occur outside in the garden, in the parking lot, in the common house, and along walkways."
As the plans for Southwest's waterfront develop over the next several months, we should carefully consider how this development will integrate with and enhance Southwest's existing garden city template.
Posts in the coming days will further explore Southwest's basic "garden city" template and 21st Century additions to the fabric.
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