WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:02.520 The following content is provided under a Creative 00:00:02.520 --> 00:00:03.970 Commons license. 00:00:03.970 --> 00:00:06.360 Your support will help MIT OpenCourseWare 00:00:06.360 --> 00:00:10.660 continue to offer high quality educational resources for free. 00:00:10.660 --> 00:00:13.350 To make a donation or view additional materials 00:00:13.350 --> 00:00:17.190 from hundreds of MIT courses, visit MIT OpenCourseWare 00:00:17.190 --> 00:00:18.326 at ocw.mit.edu. 00:00:28.610 --> 00:00:32.210 JULIAN BEINART: OK, enough about knowledge of the past, 00:00:32.210 --> 00:00:36.310 be it memory or history. 00:00:36.310 --> 00:00:43.550 We are in a very interesting space-time capsule. 00:00:43.550 --> 00:00:48.470 We have the possibility of imagining the future, 00:00:48.470 --> 00:00:52.160 or at least contemplating more and more about how 00:00:52.160 --> 00:00:59.030 one might use even geometry to associate with minimizing 00:00:59.030 --> 00:01:02.690 the obstacles of the future. 00:01:02.690 --> 00:01:05.990 And we also have the capacity to look backwards, 00:01:05.990 --> 00:01:12.050 using many techniques, as showed in these examples. 00:01:12.050 --> 00:01:17.480 This should produce a much richer set of ideas of urbanism 00:01:17.480 --> 00:01:20.760 than modernism. 00:01:20.760 --> 00:01:26.570 It will depend on the genius of individual interpreters given 00:01:26.570 --> 00:01:29.720 this new scale of things. 00:01:29.720 --> 00:01:34.730 What we're not seeing are overall theories 00:01:34.730 --> 00:01:38.850 of urbanism based an amalgamation of these two 00:01:38.850 --> 00:01:39.350 ideas-- 00:01:42.110 --> 00:01:43.955 forward looking and backward looking. 00:01:46.680 --> 00:01:49.300 Maybe that'll happen. 00:01:49.300 --> 00:01:50.730 Maybe we're still too early. 00:01:53.730 --> 00:01:57.690 We switch now to a discussion of the relationship 00:01:57.690 --> 00:01:59.625 between public and private space. 00:02:05.450 --> 00:02:09.860 At first glance, the distinction between private and public 00:02:09.860 --> 00:02:14.630 space is simply a question of the difference 00:02:14.630 --> 00:02:18.140 between rights and obligations. 00:02:18.140 --> 00:02:22.460 You cannot park your car on my land, 00:02:22.460 --> 00:02:26.000 because I have the right of ownership. 00:02:26.000 --> 00:02:30.440 But when we get to a parking lot on Mass Avenue, 00:02:30.440 --> 00:02:36.560 it's a contestation between two of us fighting for public use, 00:02:36.560 --> 00:02:38.300 for the use of a public-- 00:02:38.300 --> 00:02:42.050 the available space at any time. 00:02:42.050 --> 00:02:44.930 Sometimes we are very angry that we 00:02:44.930 --> 00:02:49.070 are beaten by a car which has gotten there first, 00:02:49.070 --> 00:02:51.020 but we have no rights. 00:02:51.020 --> 00:02:53.480 We only have rights to part if it's free. 00:02:58.530 --> 00:03:02.640 In the same way, we have rights of behavior 00:03:02.640 --> 00:03:15.840 in our private world which are not superintended by the law, 00:03:15.840 --> 00:03:20.790 provided we don't hurt anybody or behave illegally. 00:03:23.400 --> 00:03:28.030 But if I grow marijuana in my garden, 00:03:28.030 --> 00:03:33.672 and as long as it's seen as green space, it's OK. 00:03:33.672 --> 00:03:37.680 There are no rules in the Cambridge Historical Society's 00:03:37.680 --> 00:03:41.850 book which says that you're not allowed to grow marijuana 00:03:41.850 --> 00:03:43.920 in your garden. 00:03:43.920 --> 00:03:48.930 There probably are other rules which prohibit that. 00:03:51.990 --> 00:03:53.670 There are a number of other distinctions 00:03:53.670 --> 00:03:57.030 between public and private and have 00:03:57.030 --> 00:03:58.630 been used at different times. 00:03:58.630 --> 00:04:00.360 I don't want to go into them. 00:04:00.360 --> 00:04:04.770 I simply want to look with you at a number of examples 00:04:04.770 --> 00:04:08.490 where the relationship between public and private 00:04:08.490 --> 00:04:18.410 is not so clear and where, if you take a matrix 00:04:18.410 --> 00:04:24.280 and have four headings to your vertical columns, 00:04:24.280 --> 00:04:28.895 the four headings are use, ownership, access, and meaning. 00:04:31.850 --> 00:04:34.270 Let's look at each of these categories 00:04:34.270 --> 00:04:37.850 and see what examples come to mind. 00:04:37.850 --> 00:04:40.450 Under the first, which is use-- 00:04:40.450 --> 00:04:43.585 use, ownership, access, and meaning-- 00:04:48.890 --> 00:04:54.590 Richard Sennett gives an example, in London, 00:04:54.590 --> 00:04:55.820 in the 18th century. 00:05:00.410 --> 00:05:07.640 It was impossible for investors in shipping and in trade 00:05:07.640 --> 00:05:13.100 to know the outcome of of a shipping trip 00:05:13.100 --> 00:05:16.100 that they've invested in. 00:05:16.100 --> 00:05:18.570 There was no electronic communication. 00:05:18.570 --> 00:05:20.480 It took too long to write letters. 00:05:20.480 --> 00:05:24.470 The letters had to come by ship, anyway. 00:05:24.470 --> 00:05:26.360 So you didn't know if the pirates had 00:05:26.360 --> 00:05:32.270 got hold of the ship that was carrying silver back to Spain 00:05:32.270 --> 00:05:39.020 or whether the ship had been sunk in a hurricane. 00:05:39.020 --> 00:05:41.570 This knowledge was certainly capable 00:05:41.570 --> 00:05:45.185 of being transmitted verbally through human beings. 00:05:48.190 --> 00:05:54.670 So near the docks in London, a coffee bar grew up. 00:05:54.670 --> 00:05:59.680 The coffee bar was a private entity. 00:05:59.680 --> 00:06:05.150 You paid a penny to enter and sit down. 00:06:05.150 --> 00:06:07.060 You weren't able to-- 00:06:07.060 --> 00:06:11.080 you had to sit anywhere that space was available. 00:06:11.080 --> 00:06:12.370 You couldn't reserve space. 00:06:15.000 --> 00:06:22.170 It was frequented by sailors who had this important information 00:06:22.170 --> 00:06:25.170 about their ships. 00:06:25.170 --> 00:06:27.540 So the wealthy and the poor managed 00:06:27.540 --> 00:06:31.890 to occupy the same space because of the importance 00:06:31.890 --> 00:06:32.910 of the information. 00:06:37.440 --> 00:06:38.865 What became of this place? 00:06:47.260 --> 00:06:53.050 Lloyd's of London grew out of this corner coffee shop. 00:06:53.050 --> 00:06:56.050 The important thing is that an important public set 00:06:56.050 --> 00:06:58.810 of transactions could take place, 00:06:58.810 --> 00:07:02.350 but under the shelter of a private institution. 00:07:11.710 --> 00:07:16.410 If we wish to put our body into public space, we need security. 00:07:19.010 --> 00:07:23.630 Security is often provided more by private institutions 00:07:23.630 --> 00:07:24.640 than by public. 00:07:27.900 --> 00:07:30.660 30,000 people on a summer's night 00:07:30.660 --> 00:07:36.750 occupy the center of Boston only if they go to the Red Sox game. 00:07:36.750 --> 00:07:40.560 The Red Sox are a private corporation 00:07:40.560 --> 00:07:43.440 with private security. 00:07:43.440 --> 00:07:47.940 MIT has its own security force. 00:07:47.940 --> 00:07:50.310 Harvard has its-- and the Christian Science Center-- 00:07:50.310 --> 00:07:56.835 just going down Mass Avenue, you would transect a number 00:07:56.835 --> 00:07:59.640 of private authorities. 00:07:59.640 --> 00:08:06.030 So there's a principle that the private sector provides 00:08:06.030 --> 00:08:12.810 a kind of phenomenological and actual security for the actions 00:08:12.810 --> 00:08:21.040 of public need, such as putting your body into public space. 00:08:21.040 --> 00:08:23.680 For those people who have criticized-- 00:08:23.680 --> 00:08:25.000 and they're endless. 00:08:25.000 --> 00:08:28.720 Hannah Arendt, for instance, Richard Sennett 00:08:28.720 --> 00:08:35.710 criticized the modern world as promoting isolation 00:08:35.710 --> 00:08:38.770 from the public world-- 00:08:38.770 --> 00:08:43.750 narcissism, self-preoccupation, people locked up 00:08:43.750 --> 00:08:48.010 in their own private quarters, fed 00:08:48.010 --> 00:08:51.910 by television and electronic systems 00:08:51.910 --> 00:08:58.870 and not hazarding the danger, if you want to call it, 00:08:58.870 --> 00:09:02.530 but the adventure, which is a better word, 00:09:02.530 --> 00:09:06.020 of immersing yourself into public space. 00:09:06.020 --> 00:09:11.530 So public space doesn't exist, except in Roger Scruton, 00:09:11.530 --> 00:09:15.400 the British critic's, argument that public space only 00:09:15.400 --> 00:09:18.190 exists in the street. 00:09:18.190 --> 00:09:24.750 All the rest is an affectation and an unnecessary affectation. 00:09:24.750 --> 00:09:31.870 The idea of creating a public space as a Plaza 00:09:31.870 --> 00:09:35.640 is an affectation. 00:09:35.640 --> 00:09:41.170 It's true of contemporary Tokyo, for instance. 00:09:44.190 --> 00:09:48.930 Public world exists in the dense stream of connections 00:09:48.930 --> 00:09:50.280 between functions. 00:09:53.560 --> 00:10:01.250 There's no tradition of public meeting space. 00:10:01.250 --> 00:10:07.370 Where it's been tried in front of the tall, new metropolitan 00:10:07.370 --> 00:10:10.730 city hall building, it's a waste of time. 00:10:15.840 --> 00:10:19.370 We'll go into the history of public space in a few minutes. 00:10:22.860 --> 00:10:23.870 We still have time. 00:10:28.050 --> 00:10:41.230 So if we see that public use can be 00:10:41.230 --> 00:10:48.530 made more appropriate by private endeavor, 00:10:48.530 --> 00:10:54.270 we have a notion of sharing of use 00:10:54.270 --> 00:11:03.405 which has always been true in urbanism. 00:11:08.520 --> 00:11:14.820 The agora, which most of our arguments for public 00:11:14.820 --> 00:11:24.890 communication space rests on, was a 37-acre piece of messy 00:11:24.890 --> 00:11:30.890 mixtures of monuments, temples, shoemakers, 00:11:30.890 --> 00:11:36.560 stoas where philosophers like Socrates sat and engaged young 00:11:36.560 --> 00:11:37.820 men-- 00:11:37.820 --> 00:11:40.670 not young women, young men-- 00:11:40.670 --> 00:11:46.545 in discourse, even housing. 00:11:50.460 --> 00:11:52.550 This is the space of democracy. 00:11:59.190 --> 00:12:05.700 Wycherley, the historian, writes about it in the same way 00:12:05.700 --> 00:12:12.750 that I've just mentioned it as a highly dense agglomeration 00:12:12.750 --> 00:12:17.280 of shoemakers, temples, monuments, none of which 00:12:17.280 --> 00:12:19.140 fit any cardinal pattern. 00:12:23.050 --> 00:12:32.200 There is no assemblage of items in the buildings, which 00:12:32.200 --> 00:12:34.210 sit in relation to any other. 00:12:42.820 --> 00:12:49.330 This is, in one thesis done here by a [? Marxist ?] [? smart ?] 00:12:49.330 --> 00:12:56.180 student, the result of a kind of democratic form of rhetoric 00:12:56.180 --> 00:12:58.420 which only allowed people to speak-- 00:12:58.420 --> 00:13:02.860 that's males and not women and not slave-- 00:13:02.860 --> 00:13:06.970 to take part in discourse through the use 00:13:06.970 --> 00:13:08.285 of a particular language. 00:13:16.550 --> 00:13:21.860 When it became necessary for people to meet and debate 00:13:21.860 --> 00:13:28.190 propositions later on, a meeting place 00:13:28.190 --> 00:13:34.280 called the Pnyx was created separate from the agora. 00:13:34.280 --> 00:13:36.620 The agora was this mixed domain. 00:13:40.790 --> 00:13:46.580 Aristotle rejected that image of the agora. 00:13:46.580 --> 00:13:51.470 For him, a public plane or public place of meeting 00:13:51.470 --> 00:13:58.700 was a clean, absolutely minimized environment. 00:13:58.700 --> 00:14:02.883 I should read you the quotation from him. 00:14:16.210 --> 00:14:23.895 Here-- "The agora in Athens, far from being architecturally 00:14:23.895 --> 00:14:27.840 impressive, was a jumble of crowded downtown streets 00:14:27.840 --> 00:14:29.910 and the regular open spaces where 00:14:29.910 --> 00:14:32.865 shrines and altars, public buildings and monuments, 00:14:32.865 --> 00:14:39.132 stood in the midst of workshops, market stalls, and taverns. 00:14:39.132 --> 00:14:42.540 The agora was the haunt of the dregs of the populace. 00:14:42.540 --> 00:14:47.280 The home of idleness, vulgarity, and gossip. 00:14:47.280 --> 00:14:51.600 For Aristotle, the ideal public square 00:14:51.600 --> 00:14:54.780 were that all commercial activities and all merchants 00:14:54.780 --> 00:15:00.510 and vendors would be exported to another part of the town. 00:15:00.510 --> 00:15:03.420 Nothing in the agora may be bought or sold. 00:15:03.420 --> 00:15:05.490 No member of the lower order may be 00:15:05.490 --> 00:15:08.880 admitted unless summoned by the" and so on and so on. 00:15:13.090 --> 00:15:17.220 So much of Aristotle's view of the public meeting space, 00:15:17.220 --> 00:15:20.610 as opposed to the agora, the Athenian agora, 00:15:20.610 --> 00:15:23.235 has become part of architectural dogma. 00:15:26.210 --> 00:15:33.140 City Hall Plaza rests on an Aristotelian assumption 00:15:33.140 --> 00:15:40.190 that there is something absolute about prior public space 00:15:40.190 --> 00:15:46.990 which is satisfied by whenever we wish to immerse ourselves 00:15:46.990 --> 00:15:48.590 in bedlam. 00:15:48.590 --> 00:15:52.460 In a metaphysical condition, we think of it 00:15:52.460 --> 00:15:57.380 as depicting our public environment 00:15:57.380 --> 00:16:00.620 in gracious and hallowed terms. 00:16:00.620 --> 00:16:02.570 The curious thing is the pattern, 00:16:02.570 --> 00:16:07.280 the bipolar relationship between City Hall Plaza 00:16:07.280 --> 00:16:10.130 and Faneuil Hall Marketplace. 00:16:10.130 --> 00:16:12.290 Faneuil Hall Marketplace would be 00:16:12.290 --> 00:16:17.040 the agora in the ideal connection between the two. 00:16:17.040 --> 00:16:19.550 However, it's not. 00:16:19.550 --> 00:16:24.500 It's a singular high, upmarket phenomenon 00:16:24.500 --> 00:16:27.500 totally driven by market conditions, 00:16:27.500 --> 00:16:29.020 at market conditions. 00:16:35.610 --> 00:16:46.620 So we start off with a notion of the public meeting place, which 00:16:46.620 --> 00:16:53.430 derives from a unique setting for democracy 00:16:53.430 --> 00:16:58.530 in first century Athens and has maintained itself 00:16:58.530 --> 00:17:01.215 through deviations under the Romans. 00:17:04.190 --> 00:17:08.690 There were no elevated platforms in the agora 00:17:08.690 --> 00:17:10.730 for people to make speeches. 00:17:10.730 --> 00:17:15.520 If you spoke, you spoke from the same plane as everybody else. 00:17:15.520 --> 00:17:19.190 The Romans introduced in the Forum places 00:17:19.190 --> 00:17:23.869 for people who were spokesmen, people 00:17:23.869 --> 00:17:29.240 who had particular ability to make political speeches 00:17:29.240 --> 00:17:33.230 or speeches which are non-political 00:17:33.230 --> 00:17:35.675 but of specialized nature. 00:17:39.020 --> 00:17:41.510 In the examples I show in the slides 00:17:41.510 --> 00:17:44.630 at the beginning of next class, you 00:17:44.630 --> 00:17:47.570 will see that the traditional-- 00:17:47.570 --> 00:17:54.260 many of the traditional public squares in small towns in Italy 00:17:54.260 --> 00:18:00.650 were simply based upon passageways through space, not 00:18:00.650 --> 00:18:04.280 cul-de-sacs of space at all. 00:18:04.280 --> 00:18:12.230 I spent a year in Assisi, living in Assisi, documenting the town 00:18:12.230 --> 00:18:15.670 and measuring pedestrian volumes. 00:18:15.670 --> 00:18:20.180 The Piazza del Comune is exactly that space. 00:18:20.180 --> 00:18:22.310 I'll show you in some illustrations. 00:18:27.510 --> 00:18:31.290 In the post-telephone era, the need 00:18:31.290 --> 00:18:35.970 for people to obtain communication 00:18:35.970 --> 00:18:40.290 by machine-interposed systems has become another variable. 00:18:45.080 --> 00:18:54.900 What is the most significant public place built since 1920? 00:18:54.900 --> 00:18:55.530 Anywhere? 00:19:01.270 --> 00:19:04.210 This is part of an urban tradition, after all. 00:19:04.210 --> 00:19:05.669 If we stopped-- 00:19:05.669 --> 00:19:07.545 AUDIENCE: But it's really hard to [INAUDIBLE] 00:19:07.545 --> 00:19:08.014 JULIAN BEINART: Hm? 00:19:08.014 --> 00:19:10.190 AUDIENCE: It's really hard to say one [INAUDIBLE] 00:19:10.190 --> 00:19:11.440 JULIAN BEINART: Well, say six. 00:19:11.440 --> 00:19:15.808 [LAUGHTER] 00:19:15.808 --> 00:19:16.808 AUDIENCE: The High Line? 00:19:16.808 --> 00:19:18.030 [LAUGHS] 00:19:18.030 --> 00:19:23.536 JULIAN BEINART: High Line is an old train track. 00:19:23.536 --> 00:19:26.353 AUDIENCE: Oh, do you mean from [INAUDIBLE]?? 00:19:26.353 --> 00:19:27.520 JULIAN BEINART: No, I don't. 00:19:27.520 --> 00:19:31.510 I mean just anything which resembles a public square. 00:19:34.760 --> 00:19:37.400 AUDIENCE: They built one in Columbia Heights in DC 00:19:37.400 --> 00:19:41.940 in the early 2000s that's been pretty successful. 00:19:41.940 --> 00:19:42.815 JULIAN BEINART: Yeah. 00:19:42.815 --> 00:19:43.790 AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE] 00:19:43.790 --> 00:19:45.207 JULIAN BEINART: Rockefeller Center 00:19:45.207 --> 00:19:48.830 is by far the best, universally. 00:19:48.830 --> 00:19:51.920 It contradicts all the argument about public. 00:19:51.920 --> 00:19:54.290 It's the largest private investment 00:19:54.290 --> 00:19:56.090 in a city in history. 00:19:59.120 --> 00:20:00.520 Let me give you a few details. 00:20:15.120 --> 00:20:17.700 It's the largest privately held complex 00:20:17.700 --> 00:20:21.180 of its kind in the world. 00:20:21.180 --> 00:20:23.810 It's the largest private building project ever 00:20:23.810 --> 00:20:25.365 undertaken in modern times. 00:20:27.980 --> 00:20:30.830 It was bought-- it was leased by John D. 00:20:30.830 --> 00:20:38.640 Rockefeller from Columbia University in 1928. 00:20:38.640 --> 00:20:44.190 It was completed-- it was built between 1930 and 1939. 00:20:44.190 --> 00:20:48.270 In 1985, Columbia University sold the land 00:20:48.270 --> 00:20:51.540 beneath Rockefeller Center to the Rockefeller Group 00:20:51.540 --> 00:20:54.985 for $400 million. 00:20:54.985 --> 00:21:02.250 The entire complex was purchased by Mitsubishi Estate in 1989. 00:21:02.250 --> 00:21:07.590 In 2000, the current owner [INAUDIBLE] paid $1.85 billion 00:21:07.590 --> 00:21:09.990 for all the buildings. 00:21:13.230 --> 00:21:15.990 This is an-- there could be nothing more 00:21:15.990 --> 00:21:20.550 private in ownership than Rockefeller Center. 00:21:24.120 --> 00:21:29.320 It provided the public with an open space. 00:21:29.320 --> 00:21:32.610 It provided the public with an underground concourse, 00:21:32.610 --> 00:21:34.110 shopping concourse. 00:21:34.110 --> 00:21:37.410 It added streets to the number of streets 00:21:37.410 --> 00:21:39.840 in the grid in Manhattan. 00:21:39.840 --> 00:21:41.625 And yet it's a public space. 00:21:45.170 --> 00:21:50.770 So does public space have to be owned by the public? 00:21:54.810 --> 00:21:58.860 I'm looking for examples of contradictions 00:21:58.860 --> 00:22:02.940 simply to make the argument a little more interesting. 00:22:02.940 --> 00:22:05.910 AUDIENCE: Well, there's the famous court case, a Supreme 00:22:05.910 --> 00:22:08.860 Court case, in the suburban mall in Portland, Oregon. 00:22:08.860 --> 00:22:11.365 I forgot the details, but that's where, 00:22:11.365 --> 00:22:13.740 I think, you're not allowed to have a protest in the mall 00:22:13.740 --> 00:22:17.613 even though it functions as a public space, 00:22:17.613 --> 00:22:18.880 because it's private. 00:22:18.880 --> 00:22:20.910 So even Rockefeller has more control 00:22:20.910 --> 00:22:26.640 over that space than a space that actually would be common. 00:22:26.640 --> 00:22:28.890 JULIAN BEINART: Yeah, I don't know about-- 00:22:28.890 --> 00:22:31.770 certainly, Diego Rivera's mural-- 00:22:31.770 --> 00:22:33.150 AUDIENCE: [? Mural ?] [INAUDIBLE] 00:22:33.150 --> 00:22:34.400 JULIAN BEINART: --was removed. 00:22:36.870 --> 00:22:42.900 And doing this just before the '39 war. 00:22:42.900 --> 00:22:46.560 Germany wanted to invest in Rockefeller Center 00:22:46.560 --> 00:22:49.290 and build something called Deutsches Haus. 00:22:49.290 --> 00:22:52.770 And that was turned down. 00:22:52.770 --> 00:22:57.750 So the Rockefellers have played a very antiseptic attitude 00:22:57.750 --> 00:22:59.760 towards politics. 00:22:59.760 --> 00:23:05.280 I don't know what the present status would be. 00:23:05.280 --> 00:23:07.750 Security issues at the moment in America 00:23:07.750 --> 00:23:12.210 are probably so inflamed after Boston 00:23:12.210 --> 00:23:16.020 that you would probably stop anybody carrying 00:23:16.020 --> 00:23:19.140 a knapsack for a while. 00:23:19.140 --> 00:23:23.640 But to be more serious, I don't know about the limitations 00:23:23.640 --> 00:23:27.600 on public protest in New York. 00:23:27.600 --> 00:23:29.010 I should ask somebody. 00:23:31.740 --> 00:23:35.070 I don't know of any history of the restriction 00:23:35.070 --> 00:23:38.310 of public protest in New York. 00:23:38.310 --> 00:23:41.460 It's a very open city. 00:23:41.460 --> 00:23:43.980 AUDIENCE: Well, with the protests, 00:23:43.980 --> 00:23:46.644 they started penning people in [INAUDIBLE] [? Iraq. ?] 00:23:46.644 --> 00:23:48.403 AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE] public [INAUDIBLE] 00:23:48.403 --> 00:23:49.820 AUDIENCE: Yeah, and that one, too. 00:23:49.820 --> 00:23:50.320 They would-- 00:23:50.320 --> 00:23:51.200 AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE] 00:23:51.200 --> 00:23:52.575 AUDIENCE: There was that famous-- 00:23:52.575 --> 00:23:55.880 the day before we invaded Iraq the second time, 00:23:55.880 --> 00:23:58.172 there were protests in cities all around the world. 00:23:58.172 --> 00:23:59.630 And you saw most [INAUDIBLE] people 00:23:59.630 --> 00:24:00.740 were gathering in plazas. 00:24:00.740 --> 00:24:02.930 And in New York, they had you penned in. 00:24:02.930 --> 00:24:08.044 They had all the streets blocked off with the pop-up fences. 00:24:08.044 --> 00:24:09.550 It didn't look very open. 00:24:12.770 --> 00:24:18.080 JULIAN BEINART: It raises another question, 00:24:18.080 --> 00:24:21.340 which urbanistically, is difficult to answer. 00:24:25.490 --> 00:24:31.250 We have City Hall sitting on a plaza. 00:24:31.250 --> 00:24:34.220 The mayor has said that he was actually thought 00:24:34.220 --> 00:24:37.610 of selling City Hall Plaza-- 00:24:37.610 --> 00:24:38.740 City Hall. 00:24:38.740 --> 00:24:42.180 I don't know about the Plaza. 00:24:42.180 --> 00:24:44.790 Do you feel more public when putting your body 00:24:44.790 --> 00:24:54.345 into space in Filene's Basement than you do in City Hall Plaza? 00:24:59.020 --> 00:25:03.670 If association with other people is the phenomenon which 00:25:03.670 --> 00:25:08.650 guides us from a self-preoccupation 00:25:08.650 --> 00:25:15.400 to a sense of being part of a large human race, 00:25:15.400 --> 00:25:18.910 part of the rhetoric of communication, 00:25:18.910 --> 00:25:23.330 stochastics, and so on, which Hannah Arendt 00:25:23.330 --> 00:25:27.560 makes a big fuss of in her book, The Human Condition, 00:25:27.560 --> 00:25:29.075 that we are different from animals. 00:25:33.360 --> 00:25:36.450 I don't go to, nor do I know anybody 00:25:36.450 --> 00:25:40.680 who goes to, Boston City Hall Plaza on a Sunday morning 00:25:40.680 --> 00:25:42.680 to negotiate with strangers. 00:25:47.660 --> 00:25:52.090 AUDIENCE: [? You need ?] [? to go ?] [INAUDIBLE] 00:25:52.090 --> 00:25:53.090 JULIAN BEINART: You do-- 00:25:53.090 --> 00:25:53.965 AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE] 00:25:53.965 --> 00:25:56.428 JULIAN BEINART: --because you have too little else. 00:25:56.428 --> 00:25:58.850 AUDIENCE: But [? you might ?] [INAUDIBLE] 00:25:58.850 --> 00:26:01.000 JULIAN BEINART: Yeah, I know-- 00:26:01.000 --> 00:26:03.410 fair enough. 00:26:03.410 --> 00:26:07.430 In Assisi, you would wander down to the Piazza del Comune 00:26:07.430 --> 00:26:12.020 because it's on your path somewhere else anyway. 00:26:12.020 --> 00:26:15.950 It's in the middle of a small town. 00:26:15.950 --> 00:26:18.660 And if there's any action-- 00:26:18.660 --> 00:26:21.500 secondary, the amount of private accommodation you've got 00:26:21.500 --> 00:26:23.890 is very small. 00:26:23.890 --> 00:26:27.260 Why do black kids in Baltimore play basketball in the street? 00:26:30.100 --> 00:26:32.020 Because they haven't got the space and got 00:26:32.020 --> 00:26:35.050 backyards to play basketball as you can 00:26:35.050 --> 00:26:36.660 in your own suburban garden. 00:26:39.210 --> 00:26:41.610 So all these connections-- 00:26:41.610 --> 00:26:45.420 City Hall Plaza should have been surrounded by dense housing. 00:26:50.190 --> 00:26:57.870 Most of the Rockefeller Center placed in Des Moines, Iowa, 00:26:57.870 --> 00:27:01.200 would not be the same as Rockefeller Center built 00:27:01.200 --> 00:27:07.800 on a grid of density plus income with Fifth Avenue 00:27:07.800 --> 00:27:14.430 right adjacent to it and part of an extraordinary grid 00:27:14.430 --> 00:27:18.750 which pumps energy through all of the system, 00:27:18.750 --> 00:27:24.590 much like the system of reticulation in your brain. 00:27:28.370 --> 00:27:30.080 Let's just look at some other examples. 00:27:42.660 --> 00:27:48.400 Under the idea of control or access, 00:27:48.400 --> 00:27:54.100 I pay taxes to maintain army camps and nuclear power 00:27:54.100 --> 00:28:02.250 stations and private domains which I don't claim access to. 00:28:02.250 --> 00:28:05.940 But yet I own a fraction of it. 00:28:05.940 --> 00:28:12.440 What is public about me earning part of the built environment 00:28:12.440 --> 00:28:17.220 but not being able to have access to it? 00:28:17.220 --> 00:28:32.200 I have much more access to shopping environments, which 00:28:32.200 --> 00:28:36.235 are largely private than I do to-- 00:28:42.390 --> 00:28:50.200 who guarantees access to all space, independent 00:28:50.200 --> 00:28:51.010 of ownership? 00:28:58.040 --> 00:29:04.190 This isn't a subject which Michael Sorkin tries 00:29:04.190 --> 00:29:11.150 to attack in his book, where he terms shopping 00:29:11.150 --> 00:29:19.620 centers space be ageographic, where 00:29:19.620 --> 00:29:23.310 there's dissipation of stable relationships, 00:29:23.310 --> 00:29:27.480 of loosening of ties to any specific place that 00:29:27.480 --> 00:29:31.200 is nothing which is emanating from history. 00:29:31.200 --> 00:29:32.190 Everything is ersatz. 00:29:36.850 --> 00:29:40.550 The market doesn't produce any environment 00:29:40.550 --> 00:29:45.500 which has the resonance that is required 00:29:45.500 --> 00:29:49.265 for domain of public space. 00:29:52.490 --> 00:29:55.220 And lastly, the category of meaning-- 00:29:59.990 --> 00:30:03.230 but just before we leave ownership 00:30:03.230 --> 00:30:06.720 is the category of psychological ownership, 00:30:06.720 --> 00:30:11.825 which is very much part of the habitation of urbanism. 00:30:16.580 --> 00:30:21.470 If I had to ask you, in Boston, what 00:30:21.470 --> 00:30:27.770 would we miss more, the Boston Celtics moving to Sacramento 00:30:27.770 --> 00:30:31.490 or City Hall Plaza being redeveloped? 00:30:34.590 --> 00:30:40.890 The one is an absolutely public phenomenon, especially. 00:30:40.890 --> 00:30:43.500 The Celtics are a private company. 00:30:47.440 --> 00:30:52.400 They're only physically in the sense they play 62-- 00:30:52.400 --> 00:30:56.810 31 games a year in the town. 00:30:56.810 --> 00:31:02.090 But the psychological ownership, which is a very-- 00:31:02.090 --> 00:31:03.890 again, we go back to [INAUDIBLE]---- 00:31:03.890 --> 00:31:06.350 or not back to him, necessarily. 00:31:06.350 --> 00:31:10.220 But we get this sense that there are 00:31:10.220 --> 00:31:13.790 traces of understanding which we carry 00:31:13.790 --> 00:31:19.220 with us as human beings which are not absolutely contingent. 00:31:21.810 --> 00:31:23.038 It's five to two. 00:31:28.410 --> 00:31:30.675 Let's just talk a little bit about meaning. 00:31:33.890 --> 00:31:38.390 The federal courthouse in Boston is an interesting example. 00:31:38.390 --> 00:31:42.740 It faces towards the sea, which is 00:31:42.740 --> 00:31:49.700 a foolish kind of notion, facing to lobstermen in the boats. 00:31:49.700 --> 00:31:53.210 The traditional courthouse in New England 00:31:53.210 --> 00:31:56.150 faces towards the town, to a square, 00:31:56.150 --> 00:31:58.497 opposite a church, or something of this kind. 00:31:58.497 --> 00:32:00.997 AUDIENCE: It's really weird, because the courthouse here not 00:32:00.997 --> 00:32:06.750 only faces the sea, but that's really good prime real estate 00:32:06.750 --> 00:32:08.340 that is off-limits. 00:32:08.340 --> 00:32:10.567 So it's heavily secured [INAUDIBLE] 00:32:10.567 --> 00:32:12.900 JULIAN BEINART: Well, it has a McDonald's underneath it. 00:32:12.900 --> 00:32:14.970 AUDIENCE: Well, yeah, but underneath it. 00:32:14.970 --> 00:32:17.080 JULIAN BEINART: Well, as part of it. 00:32:17.080 --> 00:32:19.610 AUDIENCE: So it's weird to stand in that little corner, 00:32:19.610 --> 00:32:22.960 that little tip, and look at what they have 00:32:22.960 --> 00:32:25.440 and then, at the same time, see nobody moving around 00:32:25.440 --> 00:32:29.740 because of the security around, surrounding the place. 00:32:29.740 --> 00:32:32.290 JULIAN BEINART: It's badly configured in a number of ways. 00:32:32.290 --> 00:32:38.650 But they are private courthouses in New England, in Boston. 00:32:38.650 --> 00:32:40.580 In the State Street building, there 00:32:40.580 --> 00:32:45.400 are courthouses which are purely private, 00:32:45.400 --> 00:32:51.550 where you can settle civil suits by judges who are retired, 00:32:51.550 --> 00:32:52.810 sitting in. 00:32:52.810 --> 00:32:55.180 And you have to agree that you will-- 00:32:55.180 --> 00:32:59.080 now, what is the difference between a public courthouse 00:32:59.080 --> 00:33:03.760 and a private courthouse in contemporary [INAUDIBLE]?? 00:33:03.760 --> 00:33:09.070 The private courthouse is lost in the assemblage of the State 00:33:09.070 --> 00:33:10.837 Street tall building. 00:33:10.837 --> 00:33:12.670 You could be going to visit your accountant, 00:33:12.670 --> 00:33:17.380 instead of which you go to a courthouse, which is not-- 00:33:17.380 --> 00:33:19.360 all you have to agree is to listen, 00:33:19.360 --> 00:33:21.760 to take the judgment of-- 00:33:21.760 --> 00:33:25.030 you have the wonderfully beautiful environment. 00:33:25.030 --> 00:33:28.060 It doesn't have the dregs of the population have 00:33:28.060 --> 00:33:29.830 to go to a public courthouse. 00:33:33.120 --> 00:33:36.690 I wonder how that would configure in the [INAUDIBLE] 00:33:36.690 --> 00:33:37.835 structure of a town. 00:33:44.940 --> 00:33:51.120 OK, I've used the shorthand system 00:33:51.120 --> 00:33:55.320 of trying to connect us to some of the dilemmas 00:33:55.320 --> 00:33:57.210 of public and private life. 00:34:12.210 --> 00:34:19.850 The idea of solitude, removal from the public, 00:34:19.850 --> 00:34:25.130 was considered madness in medieval society. 00:34:33.329 --> 00:34:40.489 You were considered insane or heroic if you went on a trip 00:34:40.489 --> 00:34:46.489 without somebody else, without a group of people. 00:34:46.489 --> 00:34:49.739 To build or to maintain your own private garden 00:34:49.739 --> 00:34:55.100 was considered a very antisocial move. 00:34:58.940 --> 00:35:05.540 What caused us, as a society, to change 00:35:05.540 --> 00:35:09.530 from an extreme publicness? 00:35:09.530 --> 00:35:13.610 And you read this book on Socrates in Athens. 00:35:13.610 --> 00:35:17.390 You were amazed at the sense of transparency. 00:35:19.950 --> 00:35:24.370 Socrates would be walking barefoot through the agora, 00:35:24.370 --> 00:35:27.840 and a young man would come up to him and ask him something. 00:35:27.840 --> 00:35:31.290 And he'd give a philosophical answer. 00:35:31.290 --> 00:35:33.360 And the young man would be asking 00:35:33.360 --> 00:35:37.680 for where he could buy food. 00:35:37.680 --> 00:35:40.350 This intermersing of the acceptance 00:35:40.350 --> 00:35:47.160 of remote speculation about life and everyday things 00:35:47.160 --> 00:35:51.780 is not part of our domain any longer. 00:35:51.780 --> 00:35:54.200 It may be in some places. 00:35:57.260 --> 00:35:59.360 Why did we invent solitude? 00:36:09.755 --> 00:36:11.610 Let's start with that place. 00:36:11.610 --> 00:36:13.500 Think about the answer to that question. 00:36:18.280 --> 00:36:24.450 We are [INAUDIBLE] and endless architects for not 00:36:24.450 --> 00:36:25.800 behaving more in public. 00:36:30.400 --> 00:36:37.450 I lived in Assisi for close to a year, measuring the whole town. 00:36:37.450 --> 00:36:39.880 This is a drawing, an axonometric 00:36:39.880 --> 00:36:44.807 based on my measurements, that some of the texture of part 00:36:44.807 --> 00:36:45.721 of the-- 00:36:45.721 --> 00:36:50.020 part of my purpose was after being at MIT 00:36:50.020 --> 00:36:52.900 as a student in teaching. 00:36:52.900 --> 00:36:58.300 I got a Rome Prize to study pedestrian movement 00:36:58.300 --> 00:37:00.825 in a small town. 00:37:00.825 --> 00:37:01.325 Next. 00:37:06.720 --> 00:37:09.210 This is the Piazza del Comune. 00:37:09.210 --> 00:37:12.570 And there's the measurements of pedestrian flow 00:37:12.570 --> 00:37:15.090 at different times of the day. 00:37:15.090 --> 00:37:17.160 One of the things that was interesting 00:37:17.160 --> 00:37:21.970 was that there was always this [INAUDIBLE] the Piazza del 00:37:21.970 --> 00:37:25.710 Comune is the central plaza of the town. 00:37:25.710 --> 00:37:27.315 Assisi's a linear town. 00:37:31.650 --> 00:37:35.520 I'll just turn on the light for a second, because-- 00:37:38.712 --> 00:37:42.060 oh, I'm afraid you have to-- it's 00:37:42.060 --> 00:37:45.840 got this mad system of turning it off in one place 00:37:45.840 --> 00:37:47.612 and turning it on in another place. 00:37:47.612 --> 00:37:50.384 [LAUGHTER] 00:37:52.232 --> 00:37:54.890 Assisi's on the slope of a hill. 00:38:08.640 --> 00:38:15.970 The town consists of a set of public spaces linked 00:38:15.970 --> 00:38:20.260 across the grain and along the contours, 00:38:20.260 --> 00:38:25.150 with a major Piazza del Comune in the center. 00:38:25.150 --> 00:38:29.410 Because the land use is distributed 00:38:29.410 --> 00:38:32.740 throughout the town, there's as much chance 00:38:32.740 --> 00:38:36.600 of there being a destination here as destination here. 00:38:41.460 --> 00:38:43.860 The volume of traffic moving this way 00:38:43.860 --> 00:38:46.050 through the center of the town is 00:38:46.050 --> 00:38:50.850 the same as the volume moving that way through the town. 00:38:50.850 --> 00:38:58.630 So the center of the town, in a very dense, 00:38:58.630 --> 00:39:07.960 [INAUDIBLE] kind of environment, is a combination of platforms 00:39:07.960 --> 00:39:11.200 at different steepnesses-- 00:39:11.200 --> 00:39:16.960 Piazza, with the San Rufino, Santa Chiara, San Francesco, 00:39:16.960 --> 00:39:22.840 and so on forming the basis for the organization of the town 00:39:22.840 --> 00:39:27.490 into parishes and into neighborhoods. 00:39:27.490 --> 00:39:31.870 But essentially, the meeting place 00:39:31.870 --> 00:39:36.760 is in a restricted town in the center. 00:39:36.760 --> 00:39:40.300 And serves both as a passthrough and as a place. 00:39:48.130 --> 00:39:51.370 The slide on the left is my crude attempt 00:39:51.370 --> 00:39:59.220 at time-lapse photography of a burial of a soldier 00:39:59.220 --> 00:40:00.940 in the central Plaza. 00:40:00.940 --> 00:40:01.440 Next. 00:40:08.420 --> 00:40:12.350 I stayed up in the tower above the Plaza 00:40:12.350 --> 00:40:15.950 for many hours of the day and night 00:40:15.950 --> 00:40:19.600 and was struck by the fact that, when there's 00:40:19.600 --> 00:40:23.470 nobody in the Plaza, [INAUDIBLE] [? years ?] of postmen 00:40:23.470 --> 00:40:29.410 delivering mail, it still seems very well inhabited, as 00:40:29.410 --> 00:40:32.680 opposed to when it was full with the crowd. 00:40:32.680 --> 00:40:34.985 It seemed appropriately sized. 00:40:34.985 --> 00:40:35.485 Next. 00:40:39.630 --> 00:40:47.220 Traditionally, the piazza, the Italian piazza, 00:40:47.220 --> 00:40:52.620 takes its form from a position of centrality or access, 00:40:52.620 --> 00:40:56.970 surrounded by dense housing environment, 00:40:56.970 --> 00:40:58.740 surrounded by a wall. 00:40:58.740 --> 00:41:01.590 This is a classic image of it. 00:41:01.590 --> 00:41:05.360 This plays out in different ways. 00:41:05.360 --> 00:41:08.510 As the town is a bit bigger than this one, 00:41:08.510 --> 00:41:12.140 this is Il Palio in Siena. 00:41:12.140 --> 00:41:22.650 Originally, it is a place for festivals and for animal games. 00:41:22.650 --> 00:41:23.150 Next. 00:41:26.770 --> 00:41:32.650 Now, it is a large open space which, twice a year, 00:41:32.650 --> 00:41:33.685 hosts a palio. 00:41:33.685 --> 00:41:38.290 And a palio is a kind of medieval reconstruction 00:41:38.290 --> 00:41:39.650 of a ritual. 00:41:39.650 --> 00:41:44.800 It's a game in which the various components of the town 00:41:44.800 --> 00:41:49.830 compete in a race. 00:41:49.830 --> 00:41:51.290 A lot of money is now gambled. 00:41:53.810 --> 00:41:58.430 On the right is an example of the use of public space 00:41:58.430 --> 00:42:00.320 for private use. 00:42:00.320 --> 00:42:04.280 This is very typical in the Italian open space, 00:42:04.280 --> 00:42:10.003 where land is leased from the public authority 00:42:10.003 --> 00:42:10.670 by the private-- 00:42:13.720 --> 00:42:15.545 in this case, a restaurant. 00:42:15.545 --> 00:42:16.045 Next. 00:42:19.210 --> 00:42:24.655 The palio takes place in the Piazza Del Campo here. 00:42:27.760 --> 00:42:31.290 There are other significant places in the town. 00:42:31.290 --> 00:42:41.710 Just above it is the great cathedral 00:42:41.710 --> 00:42:43.945 and medieval hospital. 00:42:48.180 --> 00:42:52.890 People have asked a lot about the emptiness of City Hall 00:42:52.890 --> 00:42:53.490 Plaza. 00:42:53.490 --> 00:42:56.100 And there are at least two theses 00:42:56.100 --> 00:43:00.900 which have been written about it and two competitions 00:43:00.900 --> 00:43:03.730 to do something about it. 00:43:03.730 --> 00:43:05.850 What is wrong with Boston City Hall Plaza? 00:43:10.360 --> 00:43:11.320 Say something. 00:43:11.320 --> 00:43:14.060 AUDIENCE: There's no real active [INAUDIBLE] 00:43:14.060 --> 00:43:15.932 JULIAN BEINART: There's no active what? 00:43:15.932 --> 00:43:18.890 AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE] 00:43:18.890 --> 00:43:21.640 JULIAN BEINART: OK, there's no reason-- 00:43:21.640 --> 00:43:25.143 AUDIENCE: The [INAUDIBLE] 00:43:25.143 --> 00:43:25.935 JULIAN BEINART: Hm? 00:43:25.935 --> 00:43:28.870 AUDIENCE: The building [? is ?] [INAUDIBLE] 00:43:28.870 --> 00:43:30.940 JULIAN BEINART: The building is the problem? 00:43:30.940 --> 00:43:32.560 Why is the building a problem? 00:43:32.560 --> 00:43:35.710 AUDIENCE: [? It's ?] one part of the [? problem ?] [INAUDIBLE] 00:43:35.710 --> 00:43:38.020 JULIAN BEINART: OK, so we've got a couple of ideas. 00:43:38.020 --> 00:43:40.720 The one is there's not enough housing 00:43:40.720 --> 00:43:43.580 density around the square. 00:43:43.580 --> 00:43:45.480 That's probably a good observation. 00:43:48.300 --> 00:43:51.660 In a decentralized city, why do you need a central square? 00:43:56.030 --> 00:43:57.793 AUDIENCE: Stubbornness. 00:43:57.793 --> 00:43:59.210 JULIAN BEINART: Stubbornness, yes. 00:44:02.000 --> 00:44:08.300 Archivalness-- that this was a good idea historically, 00:44:08.300 --> 00:44:11.660 but it's misappropriated literally. 00:44:11.660 --> 00:44:13.850 It's taken out of another context 00:44:13.850 --> 00:44:16.640 and placed in one which doesn't serve it. 00:44:26.830 --> 00:44:31.780 There have been two attempts at solutions in competitions. 00:44:31.780 --> 00:44:33.500 The one is formal-- 00:44:33.500 --> 00:44:36.250 that is, to do something formally. 00:44:36.250 --> 00:44:41.050 One of them was to continue Hanover Street from the north 00:44:41.050 --> 00:44:46.450 end through the Plaza and to advocate 00:44:46.450 --> 00:44:49.660 some shopping along it. 00:44:49.660 --> 00:44:55.510 Others have proposed no formal intervention but only 00:44:55.510 --> 00:44:57.310 programmatic intervention. 00:44:57.310 --> 00:45:01.090 There's one famous one which puts a baseball 00:45:01.090 --> 00:45:03.180 diamond in the square. 00:45:07.960 --> 00:45:11.302 AUDIENCE: Also, I think the biggest difference is that, 00:45:11.302 --> 00:45:15.960 in Siena, the space is an interior space [? and ?] 00:45:15.960 --> 00:45:18.930 [? an outdoor ?] space [INAUDIBLE].. 00:45:18.930 --> 00:45:23.120 And here, the space just meets on [? the sides. ?] 00:45:23.120 --> 00:45:24.287 JULIAN BEINART: Well. 00:45:24.287 --> 00:45:26.120 AUDIENCE: [? Ties ?] [? into ?] [? scale. ?] 00:45:26.120 --> 00:45:35.070 JULIAN BEINART: Yeah, [INAUDIBLE] City Hall-- 00:45:35.070 --> 00:45:37.800 there's another tradition of open space 00:45:37.800 --> 00:45:39.480 which I'm not showing. 00:45:39.480 --> 00:45:43.650 That is the creation of open space in front 00:45:43.650 --> 00:45:45.560 of important buildings. 00:45:48.530 --> 00:45:53.630 In Assisi, there happen to be small open spaces, plazas, 00:45:53.630 --> 00:45:55.265 in front of each major church. 00:45:59.010 --> 00:46:04.920 This depends very much on the quality of the building 00:46:04.920 --> 00:46:08.700 that is being addressed and whether there's 00:46:08.700 --> 00:46:10.290 any real significance. 00:46:13.740 --> 00:46:16.980 In the Campo del Siena, the municipality 00:46:16.980 --> 00:46:21.960 has paintings from medieval times of the Comune. 00:46:21.960 --> 00:46:25.620 There's a sense that this place is somehow, 00:46:25.620 --> 00:46:30.690 to use a word from our first class, 00:46:30.690 --> 00:46:33.540 that it's somehow centered. 00:46:33.540 --> 00:46:37.410 I'm using a word from the cosmic model. 00:46:37.410 --> 00:46:45.240 Centeredness-- it's a metaphysical concept. 00:46:49.700 --> 00:46:53.450 In the case of the Campo, it is both-- and Assisi-- 00:46:53.450 --> 00:46:55.400 it is both-- I repeat myself-- 00:46:55.400 --> 00:47:01.520 it is both an important functional path to connect 00:47:01.520 --> 00:47:09.900 and also a place which can serve both small and large functions. 00:47:13.055 --> 00:47:13.555 Next. 00:47:18.480 --> 00:47:25.380 This is the underground of Rockefeller Center, 00:47:25.380 --> 00:47:31.740 the shopping mall and elevators and new roads and the rooftop 00:47:31.740 --> 00:47:35.490 condition, which was even considered 00:47:35.490 --> 00:47:42.471 to have aerial bridges above and recreation events on the roof. 00:47:42.471 --> 00:47:58.230 So in Rockefeller Center, there's 00:47:58.230 --> 00:48:00.750 public space below and above. 00:48:03.935 --> 00:48:04.435 Next. 00:48:14.880 --> 00:48:17.850 This is the largest-- 00:48:17.850 --> 00:48:20.880 probably, at its time, the largest private building 00:48:20.880 --> 00:48:23.920 development in history. 00:48:23.920 --> 00:48:29.860 I don't know about comparing it to the pyramids or whatever, 00:48:29.860 --> 00:48:33.640 but in modern times, certainly. 00:48:33.640 --> 00:48:38.950 It's part-- it's like Assisi. 00:48:38.950 --> 00:48:43.150 In Assisi, the square is part of the structure, 00:48:43.150 --> 00:48:46.690 the geometry of the whole town. 00:48:46.690 --> 00:48:53.090 In this case, it fits into a grid system, 00:48:53.090 --> 00:48:57.555 which it doesn't try to destroy, but actually adds roads. 00:49:01.120 --> 00:49:08.440 So it's adjacency to Fifth Avenue, plus it's surrounding 00:49:08.440 --> 00:49:12.550 of a high-density and high-income area, 00:49:12.550 --> 00:49:17.560 make this square, again, a functionally appropriate 00:49:17.560 --> 00:49:24.695 commodity, not an attempt to symbolize something. 00:49:24.695 --> 00:49:25.195 Next. 00:49:28.350 --> 00:49:36.050 Attempts to-- this is, on the left, 00:49:36.050 --> 00:49:41.310 a project called Urban Design Manhattan, some 25, 00:49:41.310 --> 00:49:46.340 30 years ago, by a group who tried 00:49:46.340 --> 00:49:49.490 to argue that the way to deal with Manhattan 00:49:49.490 --> 00:49:53.390 was to see it as a three-dimensional system 00:49:53.390 --> 00:49:57.950 with vertical connections private and horizontal 00:49:57.950 --> 00:49:59.000 connections public. 00:50:01.810 --> 00:50:04.690 The slide on the right is what you 00:50:04.690 --> 00:50:09.550 see of the sky at intersections in the grid 00:50:09.550 --> 00:50:12.940 [? down in ?] Manhattan. 00:50:12.940 --> 00:50:15.835 It's an attempt to argue that there 00:50:15.835 --> 00:50:23.545 is a logic to what you see in the sky between tall buildings. 00:50:23.545 --> 00:50:24.045 Next. 00:50:32.810 --> 00:50:38.210 The [? muteness ?] of the departed World Trade Center 00:50:38.210 --> 00:50:47.990 and the attempt in Shanghai to have completely private 00:50:47.990 --> 00:50:51.560 activity dominate the scene-- 00:50:54.750 --> 00:51:01.110 despite all of the attempts in the competition 00:51:01.110 --> 00:51:04.290 and the procedures of participation 00:51:04.290 --> 00:51:08.130 to replace the buildings on the left, 00:51:08.130 --> 00:51:09.660 the building which is has resulted 00:51:09.660 --> 00:51:14.400 is purely the result of the wishes of the Mr. Silverstein, 00:51:14.400 --> 00:51:15.850 the developer. 00:51:15.850 --> 00:51:16.350 Next. 00:51:21.680 --> 00:51:26.070 The tall building is a modern icon, 00:51:26.070 --> 00:51:30.980 which has often been seen as having perceptual value, 00:51:30.980 --> 00:51:35.510 much like a cathedral that dominated a medieval town. 00:51:35.510 --> 00:51:37.172 The tall building is the-- 00:51:41.300 --> 00:51:44.210 the attempts to make them taller and taller-- 00:51:44.210 --> 00:51:48.110 on the left is a building in Shanghai. 00:51:48.110 --> 00:51:55.010 On the right is Louis Kahn's attempt to design a [? much ?] 00:51:55.010 --> 00:51:57.525 [? lower ?] building in Philadelphia. 00:51:57.525 --> 00:51:58.025 Next. 00:52:02.190 --> 00:52:06.360 A Saudi bank building in Jeddah on the left and the attempt 00:52:06.360 --> 00:52:11.700 to make a tall building in Kuala Lumpur, on the left, 00:52:11.700 --> 00:52:14.940 as an Islamic building. 00:52:14.940 --> 00:52:19.985 An Islamic skyscraper is a paradox. 00:52:19.985 --> 00:52:20.485 Next. 00:52:24.590 --> 00:52:28.460 You've seen this project on the left. 00:52:28.460 --> 00:52:32.630 It's Melnikov's entry into the Pravda competition 00:52:32.630 --> 00:52:37.910 in St. Petersburg, with a rotating system. 00:52:37.910 --> 00:52:44.210 And on the right, the 1922 Chicago Tribune competition-- 00:52:44.210 --> 00:52:50.890 this is the entry by Adolf Loos, where-- 00:52:55.540 --> 00:53:00.815 it's difficult to explain in simple terms. 00:53:00.815 --> 00:53:04.025 But its obviousness is one of its powers. 00:53:06.910 --> 00:53:07.410 Next. 00:53:12.550 --> 00:53:18.390 [? There ?] is no legislation or design of the vertical ends 00:53:18.390 --> 00:53:22.890 of tall buildings as a system. 00:53:22.890 --> 00:53:28.920 I know of no city in the world which has an inventory. 00:53:28.920 --> 00:53:32.805 This is Houston on the right, Constantinople on the left. 00:53:36.250 --> 00:53:39.460 One might have thought that somebody 00:53:39.460 --> 00:53:43.000 would have had the idea that the geometry 00:53:43.000 --> 00:53:48.710 of the system of tall buildings would have some significance. 00:53:48.710 --> 00:53:51.130 But I don't know of any [? city-- ?] 00:53:51.130 --> 00:53:53.530 if you know of a city, tell me-- 00:53:53.530 --> 00:54:00.040 which controls the form of the system of tall buildings. 00:54:00.040 --> 00:54:03.820 It's seen as one of the things that 00:54:03.820 --> 00:54:07.830 is not necessary to control. 00:54:07.830 --> 00:54:13.100 It's interesting because it's seen, in many respects, 00:54:13.100 --> 00:54:15.800 when you have a river, and you have green space, 00:54:15.800 --> 00:54:18.500 you see the profile of the city from a distance. 00:54:21.110 --> 00:54:21.610 Next. 00:54:26.850 --> 00:54:34.455 Tall buildings are often used to project futurism. 00:54:34.455 --> 00:54:38.430 This is on the cover of an Archigram booklet 00:54:38.430 --> 00:54:42.510 on the right and a Wonder Stories book 00:54:42.510 --> 00:54:45.960 on the left, where the synchronicity 00:54:45.960 --> 00:54:49.470 of the transportation system creates 00:54:49.470 --> 00:54:51.835 the dynamic of the city. 00:54:51.835 --> 00:54:52.335 Next. 00:54:56.470 --> 00:54:59.470 There's another aspect, concealed aspect, 00:54:59.470 --> 00:55:07.780 of the city, much though its vertical shape is uncontrolled, 00:55:07.780 --> 00:55:15.970 so is below the level of the platform [INAUDIBLE].. 00:55:15.970 --> 00:55:25.690 This is a part view of the workings under Herald Square 00:55:25.690 --> 00:55:27.340 in New York. 00:55:27.340 --> 00:55:31.390 And on the right is a Diego Rivera drawing called 00:55:31.390 --> 00:55:38.800 Frozen Assets, which argues that under every city 00:55:38.800 --> 00:55:44.530 there are bodies locked up and dead bodies giving 00:55:44.530 --> 00:55:50.740 a kind of macabre picture of the use of the bottom. 00:55:50.740 --> 00:55:54.400 You'll remember a picture I showed you of travel 00:55:54.400 --> 00:55:58.510 in the sewers of Paris-- 00:55:58.510 --> 00:55:59.590 tourist trips. 00:56:02.405 --> 00:56:02.905 Next. 00:56:06.806 --> 00:56:12.120 [? Here ?] [? are ?] two examples in from Manhattan 00:56:12.120 --> 00:56:17.400 of the attempt by new office buildings, 00:56:17.400 --> 00:56:20.880 on the Lever Brothers on the left and the Ford Foundation 00:56:20.880 --> 00:56:23.770 on the right, to give the impression that 00:56:23.770 --> 00:56:26.790 they're creating public space. 00:56:26.790 --> 00:56:29.530 There's no market for the space underneath, 00:56:29.530 --> 00:56:34.770 as I tried to show in comparison to Fifth Avenue and Madison, 00:56:34.770 --> 00:56:38.130 or Fifth Avenue and Park. 00:56:38.130 --> 00:56:43.440 So it's very easy to give up the ground floor space in an office 00:56:43.440 --> 00:56:47.610 building, as it was easy for Seagrams Building 00:56:47.610 --> 00:56:51.150 to sit back in return for [? higher ?] bulk. 00:56:55.810 --> 00:56:58.855 There's no public space under a tower. 00:57:01.600 --> 00:57:06.900 Richard Sennett has written very critically of this device. 00:57:06.900 --> 00:57:12.730 The Ford Foundation puts a garden inside the building 00:57:12.730 --> 00:57:16.080 as if it's a public park. 00:57:16.080 --> 00:57:20.380 In fact, it very curtailed as to its entry. 00:57:20.380 --> 00:57:20.880 Next. 00:57:27.390 --> 00:57:34.040 Bank in Hong Kong, of course-- a famous bank where 00:57:34.040 --> 00:57:37.730 there's an attempt to give a sense of public 00:57:37.730 --> 00:57:40.250 in the interior. 00:57:40.250 --> 00:57:44.450 And the access to the interior is tightly controlled 00:57:44.450 --> 00:57:48.870 by a single escalator. 00:57:48.870 --> 00:57:52.430 The whole idea of this insinuation 00:57:52.430 --> 00:58:00.580 is that this represents a unification 00:58:00.580 --> 00:58:06.670 of the work that's being done in this vertical space. 00:58:06.670 --> 00:58:13.250 And yet each group works individually. 00:58:13.250 --> 00:58:13.750 Next. 00:58:16.650 --> 00:58:21.390 This is Herman Hertzberger's insurance company project 00:58:21.390 --> 00:58:23.010 in Amsterdam. 00:58:23.010 --> 00:58:28.230 No, no sorry-- it's not in Amsterdam. 00:58:28.230 --> 00:58:33.630 It's in-- I'll think of the name-- 00:58:33.630 --> 00:58:38.190 where each of the workers in this insurance company 00:58:38.190 --> 00:58:42.180 is allowed to personalize their own space. 00:58:42.180 --> 00:58:45.660 Yet the openness of the whole structure 00:58:45.660 --> 00:58:48.690 depicts a sense of community. 00:58:48.690 --> 00:58:52.100 This is the exterior of the system, 00:58:52.100 --> 00:58:58.010 whereby the system stops bluntly when it leaves the building. 00:58:58.010 --> 00:58:58.510 Next. 00:59:05.070 --> 00:59:08.280 This is where the conjunction of public and private 00:59:08.280 --> 00:59:12.610 becomes somewhat meaningless. 00:59:12.610 --> 00:59:15.840 On the right is Trump Tower. 00:59:15.840 --> 00:59:20.130 On the left is Citicorp, the ground floor of Citicorp, 00:59:20.130 --> 00:59:25.530 which has 20 stores and enormous things going on. 00:59:25.530 --> 00:59:28.950 Do you feel public in these animated spaces, which are 00:59:28.950 --> 00:59:33.720 intensely private ownership? 00:59:33.720 --> 00:59:42.450 Remember the matrix-- use, ownership, access, and meaning. 00:59:42.450 --> 00:59:47.640 And try always to use that matrix 00:59:47.640 --> 00:59:54.070 to test whether what is private and what is public about space. 00:59:54.070 --> 00:59:57.565 In this case, ownership is completely private. 00:59:57.565 --> 01:00:00.430 Access is public. 01:00:00.430 --> 01:00:06.130 Use is public, but probably oriented 01:00:06.130 --> 01:00:10.030 absolutely to private profit. 01:00:10.030 --> 01:00:14.710 And meaning is whatever you want to make of it. 01:00:14.710 --> 01:00:21.380 You can feel more public in the base 01:00:21.380 --> 01:00:25.970 of Citicorp Plaza, the new Citicorp Building, 01:00:25.970 --> 01:00:30.365 than you can in City Hall Plaza in Boston. 01:00:30.365 --> 01:00:30.865 Next. 01:00:36.710 --> 01:00:40.520 The attempt to shape tall buildings 01:00:40.520 --> 01:00:45.350 with elements of the decentralized city, 01:00:45.350 --> 01:00:48.080 both ecologically and-- 01:00:48.080 --> 01:00:50.775 it's a bit of a joke. 01:00:50.775 --> 01:00:51.275 Next. 01:00:55.440 --> 01:00:57.870 From the Wonder magazine diagrams, 01:00:57.870 --> 01:01:01.486 you get this intense-- 01:01:01.486 --> 01:01:05.280 there are many visions of Manhattan 01:01:05.280 --> 01:01:11.130 which are multiplications of traffic, 01:01:11.130 --> 01:01:14.820 suggesting that automobiles be on a different-- the trains 01:01:14.820 --> 01:01:18.820 on the lowest level, automobiles above, and including 01:01:18.820 --> 01:01:24.270 a rail system, public rail system, pedestrians on a level 01:01:24.270 --> 01:01:25.320 above. 01:01:25.320 --> 01:01:29.620 And many levels above there are pedestrians. 01:01:29.620 --> 01:01:34.890 This is an image of the modern city which is closeted 01:01:34.890 --> 01:01:37.860 in a lot of people's minds. 01:01:37.860 --> 01:01:41.574 It just doesn't happen. 01:01:41.574 --> 01:01:43.470 AUDIENCE: How much was this vision reinforced 01:01:43.470 --> 01:01:46.480 by Fritz Lang's Metropolis? 01:01:46.480 --> 01:01:47.980 JULIAN BEINART: A number of things-- 01:01:51.130 --> 01:01:57.010 I think Moses King, who did some of the most wonderful versions 01:01:57.010 --> 01:01:58.580 of this-- these are not King's-- 01:02:02.690 --> 01:02:06.410 portrayed a kind of utilitarian base to this. 01:02:06.410 --> 01:02:11.330 Manhattan was getting to be so dense and congested 01:02:11.330 --> 01:02:18.170 that the reaction was let's use vertical space to distinguish 01:02:18.170 --> 01:02:22.235 between vertical and horizontal movement. 01:02:27.750 --> 01:02:29.870 You can imagine movies being made. 01:02:29.870 --> 01:02:35.340 This is this is probably suitable for a Batman movie, 01:02:35.340 --> 01:02:38.280 extraordinary things are being-- supernatural events 01:02:38.280 --> 01:02:39.720 are taking place. 01:02:39.720 --> 01:02:41.910 There's something supernatural about people 01:02:41.910 --> 01:02:43.650 walking on the 20-- 01:02:43.650 --> 01:02:48.570 up in the sky on the 20th floor across from two buildings. 01:02:48.570 --> 01:02:56.970 The basic rule is that people are where there's reason to be. 01:02:56.970 --> 01:03:00.520 The number of people on the 20th floor of two office buildings 01:03:00.520 --> 01:03:04.290 is too few to generate any need for connection 01:03:04.290 --> 01:03:07.170 at that [? tower. ?] You come down the elevator, 01:03:07.170 --> 01:03:09.030 and you connect to the base. 01:03:09.030 --> 01:03:11.130 There are a few cities in the world 01:03:11.130 --> 01:03:15.351 which have developed enough density, nor do I-- 01:03:15.351 --> 01:03:19.410 I won't be around, but I don't project that there will ever 01:03:19.410 --> 01:03:22.710 be cities which will develop significantly 01:03:22.710 --> 01:03:25.860 upper-level pedestrian crossings. 01:03:29.840 --> 01:03:34.880 This contradicts much of the romance with this kind 01:03:34.880 --> 01:03:37.190 of world, of architects. 01:03:37.190 --> 01:03:44.720 Archigram was based on dense models of urban interaction, 01:03:44.720 --> 01:03:47.730 which seldom take place. 01:03:47.730 --> 01:03:52.150 That's why architects hate suburbia so much. 01:03:52.150 --> 01:03:54.922 That's a Catholic statement. 01:03:54.922 --> 01:03:56.200 [LAUGHTER] 01:03:56.200 --> 01:03:58.360 Next. 01:03:58.360 --> 01:03:58.860 Next. 01:04:05.600 --> 01:04:10.130 On the left is the marathon in New York and on the right 01:04:10.130 --> 01:04:16.310 there are celebrations after the hostages from Iran 01:04:16.310 --> 01:04:17.630 were released and returned. 01:04:27.610 --> 01:04:34.360 Archaic relied on space-time inventions such as rituals 01:04:34.360 --> 01:04:37.390 not only to mark space in particular ways, 01:04:37.390 --> 01:04:43.450 as you saw in the example of Madurai in Southern India. 01:04:43.450 --> 01:04:49.060 But in crude form, this is the same phenomenon, 01:04:49.060 --> 01:04:52.690 the bringing together of people in public 01:04:52.690 --> 01:04:56.990 to celebrate a particular thing-- 01:04:56.990 --> 01:05:00.250 in the case, a race, which has meaning which 01:05:00.250 --> 01:05:05.140 is meaningless, in the second, a celebration 01:05:05.140 --> 01:05:12.060 to return people after being captured by a foreign nation.