David Adams - Steve's passion as a communicator

MONDAY 27 FEBRUARY 2012

Steve’s passion as a communicator STEVE TIESDELL LEGACY SEMINAR David Adams

Steve’s teaching style • Steve taught both Urban Design and Public Policy at Glasgow – a rare combination indeed!!

• With an unforgettable style of lecturing and using illustrated powerpoints of up to 200 slides, Steve was a legend of the lecture theatre • Drawing on some of his own powerpoints, this presentation seeks to demonstrate how much thought and effort he put into communication

“To communicate effectively, you need to know precisely what it is that you are trying to say.”

I found this slide in a lecture Steve gave within his Designing Places courses. It encapsulates so much of Steve’s approach to teaching

“A picture is worth a thousand words.”

Diagrams Steve loved diagrams and loved constructing them from scratch himself. Here are a few examples ‌

This first series of five slides were produced as an early prototype for the Delivering Better Places research, but subsequently used in his lectures

PLACE PRODUCTION PROCESS

Factors driving change

Anticipation ECONOMIC CHANGE

SOCIAL CHANGE

POLITICAL CHANGE

TECHNOLOGICAL CHANGE

DEMOGRAPHIC CHANGE

ENVIRONMENTAL CHANGE

STAGE 0

EXISTING PLACE

FRIENDS-IN-HIGH-PLACES Factors driving change

Anticipation ECONOMIC CHANGE

Strategic (place promoter)

Conception SOCIAL CHANGE

POLITICAL CHANGE

Project Promoter

EXISTING PLACE

TECHNOLOGICAL CHANGE

DEMOGRAPHIC CHANGE

ENVIRONMENTAL CHANGE

STAGE 1

THE SUPPORT COALITION

FRIENDS-IN-HIGH-PLACES Factors driving change

Anticipation ECONOMIC CHANGE

Strategic (place promoter)

Executive (place delivery body)

Conception SOCIAL CHANGE

POLITICAL CHANGE

Project Promoter

EXISTING PLACE

CONTROL

DESIGN

TECHNOLOGICAL CHANGE

FUNDING DEMOGRAPHIC CHANGE

ENVIRONMENTAL CHANGE

STAGE 2

THE SUPPORT COALITION

FRIENDS-IN-HIGH-PLACES Factors driving change

Anticipation ECONOMIC CHANGE

Strategic (place promoter)

Executive (place delivery body)

Conception SOCIAL CHANGE

POLITICAL CHANGE

Project Promoter

EXISTING PLACE

CONTROL

DESIGN

TECHNOLOGICAL CHANGE

FUNDING DEMOGRAPHIC CHANGE

Implementation ENVIRONMENTAL CHANGE

STAGE 3

THE SUPPORT COALITION

FRIENDS-IN-HIGH-PLACES Factors driving change

Anticipation ECONOMIC CHANGE

Strategic (place promoter)

Executive (place delivery body)

Conception SOCIAL CHANGE

POLITICAL CHANGE

Project Promoter

EXISTING PLACE

CONTROL

DESIGN

TRANSFORMED PLACE

TECHNOLOGICAL CHANGE

FUNDING DEMOGRAPHIC CHANGE

Implementation ENVIRONMENTAL CHANGE

STAGE 4

Management

THE SUPPORT COALITION

The next two slides come from a lecture on multi-level governance They illustrate his design approach to getting students to understand key policy concepts, in this case about local government reorganisation

Glasgow District Council

Glasgow City Council

Strathclyde Regional Council (two-tier arrangement)

Post-Strathclyde Regional Council, with network arrangements

Glasgow District Council

Strathclyde Regional Council (two-tier arrangement)

Glasgow City Council

Post-Strathclyde Regional Council, with (multiple) network arrangements

Timeline 1910 PUBLIC HEALTH & AMENITY

1950s/1960s MODERNISM & ARCHITECTURE

1960s/1970s CONSERVATION & HERITAGE

1940s/1950s STANDARDS & UTOPIA

And here’s how Steve conveyed a sense of time in the evolution of urban design through a diagrammatic chronology

1990s RE-EMERGENT URBAN DESIGN

1970s DESIGN OF BUILDINGS & SPACES

1980s REACTION AGAINST DESIGN CONTROL

Late 1990s URBAN RENAISSANCE

2000s SUSTAINABLE COMMUNITIES

The next set are what you might have expect from Steve – the first slide has 13 separate animations!

Florence

Sequences Steve liked to construct sequences of photographs to make his point – here are two examples, one from his design teaching and the other from his policy lectures.

Detail • Buildings seen in different ways – near & far, straight on or obliquely • Detail is required at varying scales on facades depending on its position in townscape

In power • (New) Labour Government elected in 1997 • Desire to put distance between its approach & that of both ‘New Right’ & ‘Old Left’ • Won subsequent elections in 2001 & 2005

GORDON BROWN from 2007

OH HURRAH!!!

DEAR!!!

Surprises Steve would often surprise students with the unexpected just to make his point – here’s an example about context

ABERDEEN

History Steve often used old photographs to put recent and current development proposals in their historical context

Watch this space

Opposite what is now the Gallery of Modern Art in Glasgow City Centre

Developer: Valad Property Group Architect: Holmes Partnership Floor space - 250,000sq/ft (13-floors) Cost - ÂŁ40 million 11 10

9 8

6 5

7 6 5

4

3

4 3

2

2

1

Current proposal

1

Romance It could be said that Steve was married to his work, or at least saw romance in urban design!

exclusive inclusive

CORE/HEART

EDGE/BOUNDARY

In-the-round

He was very keen this quote (and I suspect this picture of Sophia Loren!) and insisted it should go in our book!

“Her feet are too big. Her nose is too long. Her teeth are uneven. She has the neck, as one of her rivals has put it, of a „Neapolitan giraffe.‟ Her waist seems to begin in the middle of her thighs, and she has big, half-bushel hips. She runs like a fullback. Her hands are huge. Her forehead is low. Her mouth is too large. And mamma mia, she is absolutely gorgeous.”

Time Magazine 6 April 1962

Celebrities Steve often introduced celebrities into his lectures. The first example highlights the attractions & dangers of directly elected mayors The second example makes an important point about the transition from urban to rural areas by comparing it to the transition in celebrity fashions (or not, as the case may be!)

Who should lead Manchester ‌?

Directly-elected city-region mayor ‌ ?

The Transect

Rather than a one-size-fits-all code, the transect allows elements of the code to be varied to suit a range of intended characters (multiple, related codes rather than a single code)

The Tornagrain Transect

The David Beckham Transect

Andres Duany: Brad Pitt & Paris Hilton Steve Tiesdell: David Beckman & Posh Spice

The Victoria Beckham Transect

People Steve didn’t just mention notable people in passing – he aimed to bring their personalities alive in the lecture theatre.

And sometime he showed himself in a self-deprecating way!

A monstrous carbuncle on the face of a much loved older friend

Ugh!!

Sir Terry Farrell – ex Edinburgh Design Champion Design Champions can be instrumental in changing the mindsets of key city actors about the value/importance of place-making – especially the mindsets of politicians and other key decisionmakers ‌

â€œâ€Ś control & freedom can co-exist most effectively when incorporated in regulations that precede the act of design, framing parameters of a given programme, rather than conflicting in judgement exerted on the completed design. Review without regulations, or some clearly articulated intention, is nonsensical, painful at least, & often resulting in banal compromise as holistic conceptions submit to fragmented adjustments.â€?

Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk (in Case Sheer & Preiser 1994: vii)

“Some cities are emerging from a prolonged crisis of confidence in which they abdicated initiative to market forces rather than providing a predictable environment for the market to thrive in.�

(Andres Duany et al, 2000)

“Places provide the ‘thick’ & fluid labour markets that help match people to jobs; jobs to people.

Places support the ‘mating market’ that enable people to find life partners.

Places provide the ecosystems that harness human creativity & turn it into economic value.”

Richard Florida (2005: xix)

Always see urban buildings as part of an ensemble - a collective Relationship between “the part” (the individual building) & a greater “whole” (the collective)

Politicians Steve took a jaundiced view of most politicians, although he certainly recognised the importance of political power

POWER IS THE

ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM

• Presidents: Concentration of power in a single individual (albeit legitimised by being popularly elected)

Nearly 60 million people voted for the current US President in 2004

How could they be so DUMB?

Presidents & Prime Ministers • Very difficult to remove a sitting president • Much easier to remove a PM Compare the situation in the US … with that in the UK …

Compare the situation in the US … with that in the UK …

(i) Politicians More venal or incompetent?

• Economic & managerial incompetence • Truth, lies & spin • Corruption & sleaze

Architects and Developers Steve didn’t care too much either for most architects and developers, although there were certain notable exceptions to this

Another arrogant selfEntrenched positions appointed architect imposing his monumental aesthetic prejudices on us, to see you Sir!

A reductionist view of developers Developers seek to: • Buy development land as cheaply as possible • Get the public sector to put in the infrastructure around the site • Get the public sector to fund the on-site infrastructure &/or to subsidise development • Get the highest value planning consent (& may sell on the land at this point) • Build the development as cheaply as possible • Sell the development for as much as possible

… & then LEG IT

How can we, as urban design policy makers, get inside property developers’ heads ‌ and then press the right buttons?

He thought he had discovered the secret from an earlier age on how best to deal with troublesome architects and developers

“You can get much farther with a kind word and a gun than you can with a kind word alone.�

Al Capone

• There now follows one of Steve’s most elaborate powerpoint animations • It concerns how developers can be persuaded to follow good urban design principles rather than just build suburban sprawl • The developer is depicted as particular type of animal who responds differently to regulation (sticks) and incentives (carrots)

SOMETHING BETTER

Achieving something better?

“Worth it” “Have to”

“Want to”

THE DEFAULT

• Detailed historical research now reveals the great care Steve took to recruit the right participants for this cartoon. Here are some of those who failed his auditions!

Sports

“Steve is an avid fan of West Ham United … a fleetfooted striker, playing off the shoulder of the last defender – a combination of the better qualities of Michael Owen and Jermain Defoe

Steve was a keen sportsman and sports followed. Let’s first see how he saw himself as described in an unfinished academic paper on “Urban Design as Football” (to be written jointly with Kevin Murray) and then look at how he used sports illustrations in his lectures.

Watch out for these coconspirators who are here today, but they’re not as young as they used to be!!

Credit for identifying & justifying themes & criteria in student dissertation

Criteria A

Criteria B

Criteria C

Criteria D

CASE ONE

CASE TWO

CASE THREE

weighting of criteria

Elegance

Poise

Tackling

Spirit

CASE ONE

CASE TWO

CASE THREE

So you can use the same approach evaluating dissertation case studies as you would comparing the qualities of West Ham greats!

Getting students to read Steve didn’t just hand out reading lists – he introduced students personally to books & their authors

KEEP THE ASSIGNMENT IN MIND DURING THE COURSE

Policy networks • Rod Rhodes

Dramatic manifestation of fragmentation, polarisation & divisions within society

Multiple public realms?

Those living in ‘sealed communities’ are ‘diminished in their development’

“The wounds of past experience, the stereotypes which have become rooted in memory, are not confronted. Recognition scenes that might occur at borders are the only chance people have to confront fixed, sociological pictures routinised in time.”

Richard Sennett (1990)

“… increasing diversity of lifestyles & cultures is splintering public space into a patchwork of specialised monocultural enclaves.”

(Mean & Times, 2005)

Q: But if there are multiple realms, is there still a public realm?

On site There are few photographs of Steve on field visits (mainly because he was normally behind the camera) but here’s one, followed by his instructions of where the visit was to end

Why do they need umbrellas? It’s only Glasgow!

Queen Street Station

Buchanan Street subway

BABBITY BOWSTER Blackfriars Street

Ending the lecture And here’s four classic ways in which Steve would end his lectures

“The place matters most” (Tibbalds, 1992)

LESS • What a place looks like?

MORE • How it works?

• What kind of place is it?

• How we can make ‘better’ (people) places?

WHAT KIND OF PLACE IS IT?

“Rules are for the obedience of fools and the guidance of wise men.”

DOUGLAS BADER

A caveat …

Original illustrations © Steve Tiesdell produced between 2004 and 2010, as adapted by David Adams

THE END!!!

Enjoy your drinks and chat …

And now a short interview with Georgiana Varna: Steve’s PhD student 2007-11