on public interior space

7/23/2019 On Public Interior Space

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On Public Interior SpaceMaurice HarteveldandDenise Scott Brown


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Itllhe city loday, riM mtcl il1 poblicolno and shop itl malls, we mOtJe alol1gcflf)f17d ~ a l k l l Y s (lIld go from streff 10 strut by taking shortcuts throug/tIhe boildillgs ofa city bloc. Itl ream decades, theOl1/oonl (l1ldproportionofpoblic space Wilhil1 Urbttl1 buildillgf has slfadily il1creosed, wilh muchof il formil1g part ofa larger inlfnor (lIld fXlfnor jMdeslliOlI l1etwork.Yel, althoug/t imenorpublic space has /Kcome an important conslitofllf of Ihecontemporary city and ofoor orbol1 fXpenfllce, il is rarely desigtud as soch.Prompted by Ihis discOtllleclion, A/ounce HOiteveldhas followed dijftrf111leads 10 fXamil1e contemporary urbttn design in relalion 10 public illfenors.Throug/t this resrorr:h, he has dOCUmf1lled in particular the Urbttl1 Ilnalyses al1dorr:hileclural designs of Robert Vmlun andDellise Seoll Brown, in whichinlmorpoblicspace is occorr/ed significanlolld multiple roles. !dells pionaredby Vetllun alld SCOII Bf'OW:N hUVt' become absorbed wilhin orr:hilecluralpractiel, nOlably Iheir use of the Nolli Mop iNlroduced in their t972 sludyofLas Vegas. Similarly, the COllcepl of the 'rue immeur' seen iNlheir earliestprojects, has millufld ill their loltrc:or/: to indude an inlemolstrut imbeddedin alutwor/: of umon public spaces (l1ld p O l h ~ o y s , both imenorand~ t e r i o r . Howroer, althoog/t they 17fer 10 interiorpublicspace frequemly inIheirwriting, Ventunand SCOIl Browl1 hUVt'yf/to descri/K Iheirviews onil in anygreat deloi/,' a more focused txominoliolllhotlhefollow;'lgdialoguebe/'lJt1l Mounce Horteveld (l1ld Denise SCOII Brown seels 10 provide.litH: 'The street through the bUilding' is a recurring ,heme in yourdesign work. In your recent book, Arrhitecture as Signs OIld Systems:Fora A/01l1urist Time, llearncd that this SUCCt always ties inro thcexterior pathway system leading ro thc building. With this approach,the internal street can be designed to support the urban circulationsystem while at a smaller scale it forms the spine, as you call it, of thepublic secror of your building. To make appropriate public interiorsyou closely study the surrounding urban patterns then design thearchitecture to fit with these and to encourage communication.Thissecms to bring the tWO of you togcther: the urbanist and the architect.DSB: I am happy that you have found thc book useful. It attempts tobroaden our grasp, as architects, by applying urban idcas ro architecturaldesign, in and our of buildings. Bur it's perhaps an over-simplificationto call Bob an architect and me an urbanist. We arc cach both. Thcdichotomy is within us as well as betwecn us. It's a four-way dichotomy.AIH: In looking at these intcrnal streets, therc seems to be significantvariations between projects - in both their public nature and how theyarc designed. For example, the street between the Life SciencesInstitute and the Commons Building in your University of t.,liehigancomplex is more accessible than the one between the twO wingsof the regional governmental complex in Toulouse. In bOlh designs,the major street is internal to the project but outdoors, and it is alignedwith surrounding pathways. But in Toulouse it can beclosed offby gates, therefore it is perhaps more privatc. In the Trabant StudenrCenter of the University of Delaware the route is interior; it isboth a street and the major public area of the building. And within theexisting Princeton building that you converted to th c Frist CampusCenter the streets arc low and narrow. They arc thc least open inthe series, and are also SCt at right-angles to the outdoor path. Could youexplain how thcse diffcrences in publicity are affected by the designassignment and the urban analysis? In what scnse are they all public?DSB: It would take a book to answer these questions. Bur first, alinguistic issue: in English, 'publicity'commonly means 'communication

for the purpose ofmaking certain information better known'.I think, is different from what you intended. How such publiciis achieved through architecture and urbanism intelests Bob avery much: however, weren't you referring in your questionmore general and abstract idea of'public quality'?MH: When I use the term 'publicity' I'm referring to sociologiwho catcgorise interiors public if they are part of the so-calledrealm. In the '950s, through writers such as Hannah Arendt, trealm was defined as the sphere of action and speech. So, in itsth e notion is closely related to communication. I would say thinteriors are public when they open themselves to the knowleda community. A shopping mall, for example, unlike a home oprivate club, issues an invitation to the general public. Thercfocontinue this reasoning, it is open to general regulations similarthose for an outdoor street. Bur you arc right that, in design, thof being publicly known is only one aspect of a much broadquality of being public. Others might include being invitingpublic, and being part of a network of public spaces and patIn considering these broader aspects, the emphasis on the pubquality of the space becomes most important.DSB: The difference between 'public' and 'civic' should be notAnd you're right: our various internal streets and spaces have vedifferent public qualities - as different as those of a city. As we dthem, we find mctaphors in a range of urban prototypes, from mmarket routes ro cxpressways, and we hear in mind the issues olocation and capacity that transportation planners consider. We dour categorics and hierarchies of street typcs from, among ottransportation engineering, from Lou Kahn's famous plan foPhiladelphia's streets, from our '>os analyses of Las Vegas, anDavid Crane's 'four faces of movement'. Crane was one ofthe fmembers of the University of Pennsylvania planning faculty durtime there who tried to maintain a link between architecture ansocial-sciences-based, 'non-physical' (as they called it) urban plIt was Crane who set me to study regional science, and whose inin urban change and unpredictability has been an influence on mwork evcr since. Thesc, then, are th e underpinnings of our ideasdesign of the public sector, or street, in buildings. But this is hastory. The other halfconcerns specifics of the brief or progf'ammwhich give the basis for the projcct. In the client's intended acthe relation between thcm, and the spaces required to accommothem lies the first definition of the public tcalm. And the firstthe 'strect through thc building' is circulation. It forms part of tmovement systcm, along which the building's spaces arc locatedfrom which access to and among users' activities is obtained. Ustudy urban economics and transportation enginecring to undcrshow patterns of circulation affect urban development and how land movement are interrelated in the city. AndCrane includes 'access' as one of his four faces of movement, pointing out that thquality defines the strect as a 'city builder', because giving accesland enables its development, In the same way, we consider thcthrough-the-building as an access-giver and try to combine actipatterns and circulation in designing buildings as we would in pa city. This forms the basis ofour claim that we do land use antransportation planning illside buildings. Yet, as 'interior urbawc find we must work with catcgories offunction beyond thosethe brief. These relate to thc building's role in the community


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may concern the size and volume of movement or activity. Particularlyimportant are categories that differentiate between public and privateactivities or spaces, and help [Q define the character of each and therelations between them. [n considering public-private relationships inarchitecture, we have [earned from a comparison of NoIIi's map ofRome and our Nolli map of the Las Vegas Suip, and from Crane's ideaof the 'Capital Web', which he describes as the infrasuucmre of allpublic facilities in a city.AfH: So understanding public space mcans understanding irs relationto private space, and especially so as we consider public interiors.I am remindcd of a discussion that was at the centreof the discourseon urbanism in the late nineteenth century. The pioneering urbantheorist JosefStubben pleaded for a clear division of public andprivate space, while Camillo Sitte argucd in support of an interwovenrelationship because a great part of public life took pl:lce withinbuildings. Not only public squares bur also enclosed spaces were,he claimed, used publicly. This is what we sce in thc city today,bur many designers seem to have forgonen the eomp[ex symbiosisthat exists between public and private.DSB: A beach is public and a town hall is civic. In the first we allshare a common good but don't join together to do so. In the secondwe are part of a community. But public and civic functions may alsobe served by the interiors of some private and institutional buildings.Shopping malls arc to some extent public today, and Las Vegassimulates the public sector both indoors and Out. The combinationof public and private has a long and varied history. An auspiciousearly twentieth-century example is the much [o\"ed interior of the JohnWanamaker department store (now Macy's) in Philadelphia. It's alarge atrium inside a private building, bur people arrange to rendezvousthere as ifit wcrc a public squarc. It feels civic and it has a role, bothretail and ritual, in thc communal Christmas celebrations ofthe city.

[n Tou[ousc, the client saw our diagonal street across the sire ashighly civic but in addition to its civic functions it provides a pedestrianshortcut between twO existing commercial areas. I had hoped itcould contain a suect market as do other Toulouse streets, howeverthe clicnt would not countenance a commercial use and althoughthis sueet is the public access to all government offices it is shur offat night for security. There is also a small civicp/att before rhe S(lIIede I'Assembfle that is lined with trees and benches like the squareof a tradiriona[ French m(lirie. Unfortunately this has been dosed to thepublic again for rcasons of security. But children walk to school u[ongour street and the local community gathers there for events. And someintcrna[ spaces have de\'eloped ancillary uses. The assembly hallcomplex is used for important public announcements and conferences,and a marker for fruit and vegetables has appeared, unofficially,underground in the parking structure along the route to the elevator.

At our University of rVlichigan Life Sciences complex, a seriesof pedestrian paths, bridges and public spaces connect the academicsciences, a life sciences research faci[iry and the medical centre.These routes are more like medieval streets than a civic plaza. Theycake users directly where they need to go, via relutively narrowpathways that widen to give access to doorways or to allow eddyspace in which people can congregate. Encouraging serendipitOusmeetings between scholars of different disciplines is a major aimin the planning of our academic streets. We therefore [ocate informalstopping places at points of encounter where important pathways

cross. In lab buildings, we place coffee lounges olTthe main corrnear the clevator. In exterior spaces around intensely used buwe provide informal seating, sometimes cafe chairs, often JUSt sparapets and [edges. Here in good weather students can study oworkers ea t lunch. 'rhese informal oppormniries along the waymther than demonstratc their function. People, especially studenseem happy to discover and define uses for themselves. Give stua bench to s it on and they will lie on ir or dance on it, but provia parapet or ledge and they will creat it as an engaging opportThe major route that passes through the Trabant Center liesa direct path between the college dormitories and the lecture

It serves the twO primary functions of all streets - to join pointslongitudinally and to provide access to activiries and StrUCTUbordering it. Sitting spaces along it purvey the feeling of a combiseminar room and sidewalk cafe. It is therefore much morc thana food court. The narrow streetsof the Frist Campus Center edirectly from the heavy basement structure of the existing buiBob managed to draw from this picturesque but uncompromisinhericage a needed interplay between the Center's right, low spacits high, expansi\'e ones. Th e right-angle rum that concerns youat the main entry to the building must be seen in the context oeircu[ation plan in that part of the campus. A pathway does indetraverse the front of the Frist Building, and it widens to form aat the entrance; bur it's less used for access to the Center thanr..kCosh Walk, which runs parallel to ir, to the north. Th e entryadded to the Frist exterior is designed to draw from this largecrowd of pedestrians, bringing them from several directions intbuilding via a series of new doorways, creared from what were oribasement windows. People walk across rhe pathway and into tbasement. Once there, they move between the heavy supportS, ttight, low ways, past campus centre facilities in a Las Vegas-liksetting, then on to the vast, light spaces of the cafeteria and stuoffices above. This sequence coO\'ertS whar was once a building sone academic department into a facility for the whole communityAlthough the original front door still admits students and facclassrooms and a libmry above, a more civic entry and access patthas been added for the campus l.:entre. But 'civic' for undergradcan be funky and a little (but only a liule) like Las Vegas.AIH: [n all these designs the internal street is used as a connectcommunicator between the private and the public domains, [inkpathways, imerwea\'ing the public sector, and using eommunicgraffiri (signs and symbols).DSB: Streets can play many roles. Crane's 'four faces of movemsuggest that they function as channels for the circulation of pgoods and vehicles; city builders, in that they give access ro plafor settlement; rooms for activities, especially in mild climatin developing areas, where much of life takes p[acc outdoors aon streets; and information givers, tclling travellers wherc theythe city, providing the locus for communication berween indivand purveying messages, communal and commercial. This is tpublicity funerion, whose iconography we studied in Las Ve

In all its roles the street is a link between the public and the pat scales that range from the sidewalk access of a row house to thmovement nerworks that serve major facilities and urban areas.this applies to interior streets too. Yet if interior public space iscontribute to urban circulation, careful study of its context is req


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for this reason we analYie activity and movement systems aroundthe project site and document the quality of nearby public space,exterior and interior. And we consider trends within these systemsand demands on them. This gives a framework for the planningof relationships both within the project and beyond it. And from theseplanning studies of the broader surroundings our designs frequentlyspring. In evolving designs from context, we've found thetransponation planning concept of 'desire lines' to be useful. Theselines are drawn directly between where people are and wherethey want to be, regardless of whether direct routes exist. Many VSBAproject partis stem from desire lines. Sometimes the building orcomplex encloses a portion ofthe area-wide movement system andis literally built around the desire lines.11tH: The internal street seems very much akin to the model ofthe Parisian arcade. These covered streets are parr of the network ofpublic space, giving access to shops and theatres, and they alsodisplay signs. But more important to this comparison, arcades alsofunction as systems ofshoncuts that have survived over time.DSB: Yes, it's important that interior streets take people where theywant to goand, just as the market place sits ar rhe crossroads in a town,so the more public functions must be located at major access andcrossing points, where mOSt people pass. And yes, arcades that nm withinbuildings make an interesting comparison with the street. Yourresearch reminds me of the two-level main street of Chester, England.Here interconnected pedestrian ways arc set one above the other.They face the street on one side and arc lined by shops on the other.This building section occurs in all the private buildings along thelength of the street. It has been maintained by successive builders overhundreds of ycars, so valuable is it to the rerail uses of the city. Wealso experienced the longevity of shortcuts in Toulouse. The site, whenwe first saw it, had already been cleared and we planned our diagonalacross it ro serve as a shortcut between tWO nodes in the city. But onlywhen our project was well into construction did we discover fro m anold map that we had sited our route exactly where a street had once run.MH: Although a comparison could be made between urban internalarcades and the internal streets in your designs, the urban contextsare quite different. VSBA buildings are mostly free-standing, while ingeneral the arcades are embedded within a city block. Your buildingsare surrounded by public open areas while arcades have backs whichare private. How, then, in your designs do these open spaces keepor achieve their public meaning without contradicting the objectivesof the internal strcet? How, through architccwral and urban dcsign,do you prevent rear areas and anonymous outdoor space from flankingthe building?DSB: The intcrnal arcadcs are lined on eitherside by private (mainlyrctail) uses. They are connectcd, as well, with service and loadingarcas at the back. In our work as urban planners we sometimescollaborate with rerail economists who help us define the commercialnawre of the street and set up the relationships you are discussing.They choreograph the various retail uses to achieve the mostprofitable selling environments for individual stores and the community.We must also plan carefully for service functions. Though thesemay lack bcauty, thcy can 't be evaded but must be adequately sizedand welilocatcd. We wax lyrical on the subject of servicc planning.

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If we don't, trucks and maintenance vehicles will invadc thcplaces of ~ b i n Street and the pedestrian paths of the campuMH: There is a more extreme version oCthe internal street in thof the suburban mall. Architects who design them seem to focuson the inside. Their building complexes arc introverted; blind ofacades form a blank box surrounded by parking lots. But recenthere has been development towards a more outdoor-onemed tyCompetition with rcnewed city centres and with other retail arehas forced some malls to be abandoned. Others are being redeto imroduce outdoor pedestrian spaces, which surround partsthe complex and open up the facades of the buildings. It seeminterior public space needs outdoor space and more importantto be part of a differentiated and hierarchic systcm of public spDSB: This is a major finding of both your work and ours. Fromfurther questions deri\e. fo r example. how should the advantaglively indoor street be weighed against the need for vitality on texterior? We made a study of the Republic Square district in ATexas, where our client was planning to build office buildings ahoped to achieve vital retail activity on the street. We analysedwhich building entrance and access patterns could be designedsupport and cnliven ground floor, street-facing retail. If the eocto the office building are locatcd too near the road intersectiomid-block retail uses may suffer because fewer people will gothem. But mid-block entrances draw people past storefronts ahead toward building lobbies and elevators.

As you have noted, mall developers are seeking ways to opshopping malls and give them some of the interest ofMain StreWhen we plan for small main streets, we tr y to help storekeepedifferentiate themselves from the malls by using tile fact that ththe great open sky, not a mall roof, over them, and by imaginativadapting their historical buildings to create unique outdoor andshopping spaces. For this work we must find economistswho lovebuildings and understand their possibilities. We have also tried tconcepts of retail planning ro the major thoroughfares that pass tand around our institutional buildings. Meeting places, which cobe lounges, cafes, community buildings, or outdoor congregatingbelong where routes cross. The 'hundred per cent area' of urbaeconomics is at or ncar the busiest crossing. Here should be thintense group activities, physical or mental, of a city - and also, wsuggest. of a building. Large-volume lecwrc halls require wide caccess space. This is congested only every hour, when classes cbut as swdents wait there theycan meet and chat. We try to provseating and a glass wall facing the campus, so this corridor can authe sparse common-room space that is all most universities canAs it continues to other pans of the building, this way maywidennarrow to serve its access functions. It may give information viboards and provide convenient locations for telephones and elecommunication systems. Off it, indoors or out, we like to provieddy places with a coffee machine nearby, so that fruitful discuinitiared as studcnts walk Out of lectUrcs can continue informally11tH: You could also refer to the unique Las Vegas Strip ofthc lIt showed that a vast systcm of public interiors could exist that,explained in uamif/gjrom UIS Vegas, was disconnected fromoutside in order to keep patrons disorientated in time and spacewould lose COUnt of the hours and remain at the gambling tab


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Nowadays along what was once the Strip, thc outdoor space is moreesublished and more part of the whole systcm. Outdoor piazzas andopen arcas berween buildings and on what is now Las Vegas Boulevardarc introduced. So both Las Vegas and the malls have tCllnsformcdor evolved. Do you think these transformations share a similar logicconcerning the differentiation of the public system and the eliminationof anonymous outdoor space?DSB: On Las Vegas Boulevard today hardly anything is public andprobably in the malls it never was, but both try to imitate a publicSCCWf. Malls cncourage scmi-civic and political evcnts to take place ontheir parking lots or in their interior courts and 'community halls',which are usually nicked-away spaces unsuitable for retail usc and withlittle public presence. Las Vegas has created a private-public secwr.The Boulevard is so different from [he Strip we studied in the 1960s.Highly pedestrianised, it seems like an elongated Piaa..a Navona.The 'public' plazas that lic bctween the Boulcvard and the casinosimitate the public sectors of historic European cities. Where stridentsigns, a /JOT1e-clXlth"t and a reassuring: view of parking once beckonedthe llutomobile, now, famous plazas of Europc are jammed togetherto beguile the pedestrian on the boulevard. Why go to Venice,lraly, they seem to ask, when you can experience Venice, Nevada?But the morc the casino front yards have been made to rcsembleold civic places, the more private they've become. There is almostno public sidewalk left. E\'erything that looks like a civic plaza isprivate to within halfa meter of the street. And 'private-public' in nOtreally public, as would-be protesters discovered when they triedto assert their right to public assembly on Boulevard sidewalks.Both Las Vegas and thc malls must think hard-headedly about

systems for service and parking, especially customer parking. On theBoulevard, parking has graduated to struetures behind the casinohotels, leaving the front yards available for a pseudo civic townscapc.Bm vast parking lots remain the prevalent and reassuring first viewof the shopping mall. In both cases, the store service system is out ofview and anonymous.Now Las Vegas is changing once again. Like contemporaryarchitecture it is moving away from architectural allusion and the

aim to communicate and toward architectural abstraction andthe projcction of luxury and quality service. It is hard to imaginea Las Vegas hotel that no longer romances you off the boulevard butpurveys, instead, an air of privacy and high-class exclusiveness.What will be thc nature of thc public realm in such a complex? I SUSI}(.'Ctthat landscaping will provide the primary image, and that itwill beused 10 shield the view. while disclosing discreet but fascinating hintsof the facilities resctved for JUSt a fcw inside. Perhaps this will work.Perhaps by the laws of contrast, abstract nco-modern architeemre willpresent an irresistible attraction to a public jaded by the old LasVegas. But how soon will people of the 20[OS tire of architecturalabstraction, as their grJndparents did in the 1960s?IIIH: It seems that for you mapping is the single most important elementin understanding interior public space. It helps to depict the publicinterior as a segment of a pedestr ian path system or pan of a biggernetwork of public space. In the past you have explained your use ofdifferent techniques of analysis. I would argue that interiors contributcto the city ifthey h a ~ ' e an urban use and an urban location. It seems,therefore, that analyses should be made of the numbers and patterns ofusers. Do you recognise these themes in your analysis?

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DSB: In dcciding what kinds of analysis and analytic mapping to dwe face a dilemma: the range of possible in\'estigations is vast antasks could go on forever bm funds arc limited. So wc consider hoto focus from the Start. Wc try [Q avoid what one of my professorsthe 'whale method' of urban research. The whale opens its mouthas it swims, and whatever flows in is what it eats. This is not effeTherefore, as urban researchers, we must devise techniques to disearly, the most relevant research variables for a given tOpic. We mado this by conductinga brief, once-over-lightly overviewof the probefore delving inco detail. We have also learned to introduce a firsattempt at design deliberately tOO early in the process to help struthe next rounds of researeh. So design can scrve as a research toolas a heuristic for further research - as well as vice versa. But genewe examine patterns of activities and movement, and diffcrentiatthese by type and intensity, preferably over time. We also connatural patterns and systems and those of built structures; and wdistinguish betwecn activities and the structurcs that hold themage of structures is an important variable, and there are many otheparticularly those to do with capacity and location. Mapping [hdata of usc and structure is just a first step. Bcyond that, we maywant to break our information down further. The computer allowto disaggregate one variable, for e;;:amplc, the distribution of allsciences on campus, and to study the pattern it makes. And our anincludes synthesis (we are aftcr all architects). We may juxtaposevariables. For example, for Tsinghua University in Heijing one omost cogcnt maps superimposed dcnsities of people on a map ofcampus green space. It showed that there was little match betwwhere people and landscape were. At Michigan. we derived thlocation and [he conceptual design of our Life Sciences complexjuxtaposing mapped distributions - of campus sciences, theatre(on campus and in downtown Ann Arbor), museums, topographypedestrian pathways. For the Las Vegas Strip, we mapped signand lighting by intensity, location and purpose. The maps that rcportrayed the fcel of the place better than could traditional urbanuse maps or the orthogonal plans of architecture.'l'hcse analyses and syntheses provided information, but they walso design tools. They helped us move seamlessly into the pr

of synthesis architects call design. And they had a heuristic valuin that some early synthescs of variables led to astOnishing insand in many cascs to the pan;. For us, design and analysis procein tandem throughout the design process. In sum, what you anand how you do it depends on your problem. You hopc that youonce-ovcr-lightly study and your successivc cycles of analysissynthesis will give you a good sense of where to go.Alfl: Either intense activit ies or a good urban location can mainteriors appear more urban. Beside this, public interiors, for a ccampus centre or church, require high-


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because American culture tends to avoid the use of governmentsupport or acdon in favour of the private sector. This brings upquestions for urbanists and architectS regarding the relation bet.....ee nthe public and private sectors. th e opportunities for action withineach and, for activists in the public sector, the public le\'eragepossible on private-secror decisions. All of this .....ould still have beenimportant .....ithout the notion of mapping. ho.....e\er Nolli's map isinfluenrial and relevant in our work because it provides a method ofsho.....ing physical relarions between the public and the private city.In campus planning. in panKular, we rely on the Nolli ~ " S t e m . adaptedfor today (there were few grassy areas and no parking lots in his Rome).We map Nolli's variables. showing the fNXAlof all public buildingsand of major public spaces in private buildings.On these we juxtaposethe system of pedestrian pathways that cross the campus. It fOnTIsa nervous p:lUern of movement, resembling maCl'.l.me. and runningcontinuously between exterior and interior spaces. This patternsubtends the campus open spaces, which we differentiate by typegiving special prominence to those we feel arc highly symbolic.A Nolli map for a university campus, in this way, portrays its overallpublic system and the relation between its public and private uses.It shows whcre the capacitY of pedestrian ways is not related tothe demand on them, and where gaps exist because ncw buildingswerc erected but the pathway system was not adapted to them.T he Nolli map has taught us a great deal about the character ofpublic architecture, including the architectufC of the street through thebuilding. Th e map is all about the processional. Why wouldn't it be?It " ' a s conceived as an information ~ " S t e m for religious pilgrims. Rome'swinding and sinuous street pattern stands OUt in marked contrastto its formal piazzas. for example the Piazza Navona. But the buildings.with their Sllong black plans, arc panicularly suggesrive o f thedifference between the public architectureo f suc:ets and institutionsand the private tissue o f the city. T he fact that th e plans arc baroquedoes nOt indicate that public space should be baroque. Th e plans ofmodem architectS, panicularly Ah-arAalto, lend themselves to a similaranalysis. But we han: cenainly learned from Nolli to think of thestreet through the building as if it were an exterior street. Therefore inour National Gallery Sainsbury Wing the main lobby and stairwayspaces arc clad in rusticated stone. as arc rhe facades of buildings on anItalian Renaissance street.Th e entryarea and main lobby arc sinuous.raking the shape of the crowd that uses them. We planned a widenedsidewalk and sheltered portico whcre visitors could wait for themuseum to open, befote proceeding through a narrow door into a largerspace beyond. Here a crowd of people might all stop at once, whiledeciding where to go next. Ou r entryway is therefore pretzel-shaped.Similarly, in our lab and classroom buildings, seating occurs in eddyareas off the main circulation.These arc designed as widenings ofcorridors, n()( rooms. Siuing beside the continuing space of the streetshould feel like a pause IK l ( a commitment. It should be possible,while moving, to glance in and make a quick decision to enter for achat or to pass by. But sometimes the safety requiremenrs for fire dOOBon major corridors are a restraint. Then we must specify hingemechanisms to allow these doors to remain open unless there is a fire.So urban design concerns a door hinge as well as a reg)on.litH: Today's design guidelines cover accessibiliry and various publicqualities, but designers could srilliearn from Nolli: the churches hemapped were seen as both a retreat from daily life and a centre of thesociety, and designing their interiors was considered a privilege.

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Takingsueh an approach to our more secular interiors could chathe discourse on future public space.DSB: Of course, the churches shown by Nolli weren't public. Towe might call t he m N GO s (non-go\'ernmenral organisations),bm the streets and plazas C't't't public, and we consider the churas stand-ins for the public buildings that we study in our urbananalyses. T h e churches could also represent a pri\ 'ate sector'feels' public. We tried using other mapping techniques as welto suggest different types of public-private relationship, panicuk inet ic ones - for example . to show how an inves tment bygO\'ernment in urban development could lead to a reaction byprivate sector. T h e opponunities lie in both sectors.tlIH: In learning from Beijing, Newark, Philadelphia or Toulousebegan by studying Rome and Las Vegas. It is generally known thyou first travelled to Las Vegas in 11)65, but whcn and where didiscover the Nolli Plan? Was it perhaps when you visitcd Fruraexhibition in 1


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on public interior space

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