DigitalSciGuy
Active Member
- Joined
- Apr 14, 2013
- Messages
- 670
- Reaction score
- 421
I have more pics of the rest of my walkthrough that I wanted to save for another day so I didn't overload the thread. (Dropbox reported that I had 150 photos to upload from my phone, admittedly many of them with an HDR duplicate that I don't upload to Imgur.)
Now that the place is booming, it feels less like a mall and now like a Disney-esque, near-perfect imitation of an old town - it still feels like an urban playground. Not even Celebration, Florida feels like this; Celebration succeeds in emulating the type of town it's made after. I think it's because Assembly Row's trying SO HARD to emulate older architectural/urban styles that were built before the Car Culture Era while attempting to discretely accommodate cars. Scale is off in some places. Spending more time here has helped me put my finger on what's making this Uncanny Valley Urbanism for a lot of us and I'll try to do that in a visual essay later tonight.
Aesthetics aside, holy shit is this place turning out to be great. I can accept an urban island while Somerville tries to figure out how to tie this neighbourhood to the others around it...across two arterial roads/highways. Japan manages to do this well, but usually their elevated highways are half the width of ours and they have less daunting 'urban bridges' to cross.
Ah the tower's construction wasn't puzzling me. It was in reference to the wood and steel bracing of the low-slung wrap around housing - I assume for whatever cladding they'll slap on. I've never seen it before. Sorry for the ambiguity.
Now that the place is booming, it feels less like a mall and now like a Disney-esque, near-perfect imitation of an old town - it still feels like an urban playground. Not even Celebration, Florida feels like this; Celebration succeeds in emulating the type of town it's made after. I think it's because Assembly Row's trying SO HARD to emulate older architectural/urban styles that were built before the Car Culture Era while attempting to discretely accommodate cars. Scale is off in some places. Spending more time here has helped me put my finger on what's making this Uncanny Valley Urbanism for a lot of us and I'll try to do that in a visual essay later tonight.
Aesthetics aside, holy shit is this place turning out to be great. I can accept an urban island while Somerville tries to figure out how to tie this neighbourhood to the others around it...across two arterial roads/highways. Japan manages to do this well, but usually their elevated highways are half the width of ours and they have less daunting 'urban bridges' to cross.
Ah the tower's construction wasn't puzzling me. It was in reference to the wood and steel bracing of the low-slung wrap around housing - I assume for whatever cladding they'll slap on. I've never seen it before. Sorry for the ambiguity.
