BACHELOR OF SCIENCE (HONOURS) IN ARCHITECTURE THEORIES OF ARCHITECTURE AND URBANISM (ARC61303/ARC2224) SYNOPSIS: REACTION PAPER (MARCH 2016) [10 MARKS] NAME: Evelyn Sinugroho ID: 0318217 LECTURER: Mr. Nicholas Ng Khoon Wu TUTORIAL TIME: 14.00-16.00 SYNOPSIS NO: 1 READER TITLE: “Life between Buildings Using Public Space.” (1986) AUTHOR: Jan Gehl The article Life between Buildings Using Public Space by Jan Gehl addressed the importance of a good quality city scape in order to enhance the stimulation of a good interaction between citizens. He investigated the relationship between the uses of outdoor space patterns with the spatial properties of physical environment. Gehl advocated a straightforward way in improving an urban scape which is acquired from his investigation by recording the performance of urban spaces systematically and analyzing what factors affect their uses. He concluded that urban areas that promote comfortable places to observe people and relax in an undemanding way stimulates more interactions rather than spaces in between grandeur buildings. Successful spaces are spaces that attracts people because of people. What stood out to me the most about his point is how he overlooked the chances that some citizen might not take part in the activity of observing other people and to keep up with the social context as an enjoyment. George Simmel’s theory of Objectivism from The Metropolis and Mental Life (1903) in a way contradicts Gehl’s theory about human psychology in a metropolitan city, as Simmel states that human interaction in a city has become Blasѐ despite whatever condition due to the fact that they are pressured to be rational and instrumental in their social interaction resulting the wish to avoid it as much as possible. Adding to this argument, Massey’s Global Sense of Place (1994) emphasizes on a time-space compression and locality as a place to escape from the fast changing era of world because human needs a tool of escapism. I agreed on Gehl’s perspective about how the performance of urban spaces affects human activities, but I believe that Gehl is overemphasizing on using passive contact as a form of human contact for the basis in designing a public space. In this fast changing era, sometimes what people need is not to keep up with the social context, but rather to escape from it. WORD COUNT:327 ASSESSED BY:
DATE: 11th April 2016
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