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A Kiwi traffic engineer is showing the British how to make their vehicle-logged streets more pleasant places for people to be.
Steve Abley, a Christchurch-based Chartered Engineer, has co-written a new manual Designing Living Streets with Edward Hill who works for UK charity Living Streets, which champions streets and public spaces for people on foot.
The manual is being launched in London next week at a function in the House of Commons.
"Streets have lost their natural balance. We have been focusing far too much on building roads for cars to travel down with little thought given to other ways streets are used," says Steve Abley.
"This focus on vehicles has come at the expense of people who are now finding many streets unpleasant places to be. Streets are far more than just roads they are also places where friends and neighbours meet, places for commerce, recreation and play."
Steve Abley says putting walkers' needs first results in a better environment for neighbourhoods.
"Increasing the numbers of walkers in an area results in people lingering to interact and play, it makes people feel safer and discourages crime and anti-social behaviour."
Designing Living Streets has been written for every professional whose work impacts on the walking environment: traffic and highways engineers, planners, developers, t
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Scotland's architects are missing out on prestigious and lucrative work in their home territory because of a lack of recognition, it was claimed last night.
Richard Murphy, who is appearing at the Venice Biennale international architecture festival, lists a string of major public projects that have gone to architects outside Scotland.
The architect has been picked to join eight colleagues in the festival’s British pavilion - and his is the only firm from outside London.
"We are working for the British government but not for the Scottish government," he said. "We are doing the British embassy in Sri Lanka, but we have never been invited down to Leith."
The argument over whether Scots architects need a higher profile in their own country to match a rising reputation further afield has been brewing since Mike Watson, the then culture minister, was caught struggling in 2002 to name a single Scottish architect.
There was an angry reaction last year when Charles Gordon, leader of Glasgow City Council, suggested he wanted a big international name for the planned £40 million Museum of Transport.
In recent years Mr Murphy, whose best-known Edinburgh building is the Fruitmarket Gallery, has seen his firm go from working mostly within or around existing buildings to new-build projects, particularly housing.
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Behind a drab concrete wall, down a back street in the working class neighborhood of Tacubaya, sits a hidden jewel of Mexican architecture.
Architect Luis Barragan built his home here in 1948 to serve as a peaceful refuge in the hectic capital city. Now, more than 10,000 people come each year to tour the home and to soak in the meditative ambiance Barragan created.
UNESCO added the home to its list of World Heritage Sites this month in recognition of the worldwide influence of Barragan's work.
Barragan's home is only one of a dozen or so 20th century sites on the list of UNESCO, short for United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. It was the only Latin American site added by UNESCO at its July conference in Suzhou, China, said Francisco Morales, director of World Heritage sites for the Mexican government.
"He is an important architect, perhaps the most important one we have here in Mexico, because he was able to produce a cultural and architectural synthesis where he unites the oldest traditions of Mexico, meaning pre-Colombian, with colonial heritage and ... modern architecture," said Juan Palomar, architect and author of a book on Barragan.
Born in Guadalajara in 1902, Barragan studied engineering at university and never formally trained as an architect. He was an avid reader, and the boo
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Participants in the United Flight 93 memorial design competition soon will be able to survey sections of the memorial site - 2,200 acres that include the spot where the plane crashed nearly three years ago.
Planners of a national memorial for the plane's 40 passengers and crew will launch an international design competition with news conferences on Wednesday in New York and on Sept. 11 in Shanksville, about 65 miles southeast of Pittsburgh.
During the first stage of the competition, which runs through the end of the year, professional designers, as well as novices, can submit their concepts, competition adviser Helene Fried said.
Twice during the first stage, in October and November, competition coordinators will lead competitors through an escorted tour within the memorial's newly established boundaries. Few besides law-enforcement officers and memorial planners have surveyed the land since the tragedy, Fried said.
Seeing the reclaimed strip mine with its rolling hills, vast sky, and wooded terrain is necessary in the design process, Fried said. Competition coordinators will supply video footage to those who can't visit, she said.
It's hard to say how many groups and individuals will participate in the design competition, she said. "It's like counting jelly beans. We just don't know."
About 5,200 groups from
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August 27-29, 2004
The ASID 35th Annual Bazaar in more than 9,000 square feet offering home furnishings, fabric, draperies, rugs and accessories, normally available only to designers, at a fraction of the original cost; "Ask a Designer" 10-minute free sessions; Innovative Interiors section of vignettes and works by Houston furniture designers and artisans; Sherwin Williams Faux Finishing seminars; Go Texan pavilion promoting Texas foods and products; Amber Alert Program with child identification kits; tickets for ASID Pink Ribbon House tours in October benefiting breast cancer research at Baylor College of Medicine; kitchen and bath idea center.
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