Re: Battery Wharf
From ablarc's 22 Thesis:
1. intimate space
Seems like it
2. diversity through small-increment development by different owners
Nope
3. boldly-conceived infrastructure (Yeah, canals and landfill !)
Actually, the opposite was at work here.
Had they filled in the space between the piers the result would not have been nearly as interesting.
4. buildings that touch
Yes
5. background buildings --if the paradigm is right.
???
6. roof forms and materials as unifiers
Yes
7. casually varied relationships between buildings (NOT defined by uniformizing rigidities of zoning)
???
8. small, irregular lots
Yes
9. a central focus or main square with a monument or two
???
10. architecture that's not hidebound with prissy strictures against frank revivalism ("We can't do that, it was done a hundred years ago.")
Yes
11. if the streetscape is sound, interesting and pleasant to look at, you don't need many trees. They take up room and divert from the task at hand
Yes
12 hundreds of small buildings give you more places than a few dozen big ones
???
13. if you build a great place you'll make money; you don't have to start with current market wisdom
???
14. make every square inch count
Yes
15 build in the hierachy; coherence will follow (put the most important things in the center)
???
16. bold topographic ideas like landfill and canals (you make the former with what you excavate to make the latter)
See #3
17. don't be afraid to design for the rich. The best things only the rich can afford (Back Bay, Beacon Hill --then and now. The rest of us visit to get our jollies.)
Oh god yes.
18. pint-sized streets:
Well, no streets, but narrow paths.
19. an intimately-scaled water's edge
Indeed
20. don't be afraid to design pretty, and don't design for your colleagues
Yes
21. don't be afraid to risk a little hokeyness
Not too much hokeyness, that I can see.
