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Originally Posted by the urban politician
what's wrong with overwhelming the pedestrian? There is always talk about having tall towers without "disrupting the human scale". Yes, I believe active street level activity is important (retail, for example), but beyond that, why is it wrong to have towers right up against the street?
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chicago.peninsula.com
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Note the brutish and imposing size and scale of "Chicago Place" in relationship to its neighbors. Sitting next to the well designed Peninsula block and the old water tower, it looks cartoonish. What's worse, the
feel of the building from the street is almost suffocating.
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Here again, note the imposing and crude size disparity between a skyscraper designed in a computer and 19th century design by hand. Poorly designed towers like this smother everything around them and create an uninviting streetscape.
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Across the street again. It's not just about height; it's everything to do with size and volumes. The Hancock Center is over 1,000 feet tall, and yet it feels far more inviting than the awful, forbidding block that the Water Tower tower sits atop.
meganandtimmy
It's hard to capture in a google image search, but its base does well to offset its imposing size as it's only a single story and visually separated from the rest of the tower. Also, the tower is set back into the center of the block and tapers in, which further helps offset its massive feel.
Anyway, my point is simply this. Poorly designed buildings do far more damage to cities than just
look ugly.
Quote:
Originally Posted by the urban politician
Humans are feeble & whiny creatures. They are annoying, they are a distraction. They complain too much and talk too much about their feelings. They really don't deserve special consideration. Humans should be made to feel tiny & irrelevant. The greatest cities in the world always make people feel small. I want to feel small, because that makes me feel that the city I'm in has endless possibilities, and that I really have to strive to make it to the top. That's how one feels in Manhattan, and it works to that city's advantage.
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Okay.
Quote:
Originally Posted by the urban politician
That's how one feels in Manhattan, and it works to that city's advantage.
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Don't be so daft. Manhattan is one of the best designed urban centers in the world. They even realized the danger of canonizing their streets and killing the human scale that they passed a zoning law restricting the design of their skyscrapers. That was 100 years ago. Your entire post is just belligerently silly.
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