Three Cities About the Size of Boston

I've never seen Seaside outside of the Truman Show, but I'd say it's a pretty good adaptation of Cape Cod, the Islands, or Long Island-albeit trimmed down and, for a lack of better words, dumbed down. I haven't the foggiest clue about how to decide if a place has 'soul,' but on an architectural level, Seaside doesn't have it.

By the way, the Bruins are ROCKING the Canadiens right now.
 
^Kennedy, by your own confession you misunderstand Seaside.

Time magazine: "the most astounding design achievement of its era"

Newsweek magazine: "probably the most influential resort community since Versailles."

A dumbed down Cape Cod eh?
 
We call for something genuine and new; and then when it actually happens along, we fail to recognize it, because we're so full of stilted intellectual theories that WE DON'T REALLY KNOW WHAT WE WANT (most of us).

Ready to pooh-pooh the real thing along with the fakes.

We're so jaded! For sure, we'd never recognize Jesus if he returned.
 
ablarc said:
I bet the best parts aren't in the modern style.

I should have said "Modernist", but I'm tired of getting bashed (falsely) for using that label for anything I don't like. Seaside, Celebration and Poundbury are recent, and Seaside certainly has soul, but these places are not consonant with the principles of Modernism.
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Modernism is a very academic style (your own words) - it's hard to have "soul" when utilizing such a self aware vocabulary.

That being said: Battery Park City is a very pleasant neighborhood, much of Vancouver is modernist, and (dare I say it) I think New York's Lower East Side has soul. Colleges too: (though I've never been) Illinois Institute of Technology and Yale's Morse and Ezra Styles College.

Diamonds in the rough though.
 
I'm (trying) to go to an exhibit on Eero Saarinen's art and architecture at the Mildred Lane Kemper Museum at Washington University St. Louis. Should be very interesting, I'll be sure to take pictures (if they allow). Also, I've got some pictures of Forest Park plus the Saint Louis Art Museum and the Missouri History Museum (which totally rips of the MFA) pictures to put up.
 
bdurden said:
^Kennedy, by your own confession you misunderstand Seaside.

Time magazine: "the most astounding design achievement of its era"

Newsweek magazine: "probably the most influential resort community since Versailles."

A dumbed down Cape Cod eh?
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I do not doubt that I misunderstand it. However, from what I've misunderstood-architecturally it rips off Cape Cod and the like. I've never been, so it could have been just the Truman Show. Urbanistically (sp?), from the Truman Show, it looks like it works, at least from the Town Square views.

I'm not judging it yet, I haven't been, but if I do I'll probably be pretty biased.
 
To be fair, they changed a lot about how it works for the Truman Show, and they even spliced in other places. There's no bus system in Seaside, for example.
 
kennedy said:
I do not doubt that I misunderstand it. However, from what I've misunderstood-architecturally it rips off Cape Cod and the like. I've never been, so it could have been just the Truman Show. Urbanistically (sp?), from the Truman Show, it looks like it works, at least from the Town Square views.

I'm not judging it yet, I haven't been, but if I do I'll probably be pretty biased.
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Seaside makes no effort to cover up who it has ripped off -- it embraces it. While creating Seaside the team toured the South and created principles based on Charleston, Savannah, St. Augustine, Key West. The Cape Cod style is not the Seaside style. Not surprising though, you will see a lot of Cape Cod/Caribbean fusion style architecture in the Fort Walton area that has sprung up around Seaside. It works quite well.
 
All this talk about Seaside has me thinking about my absolute favorite real estate brand created in the past ten years of so (since NYC's eWalk):

Crank your speakers and behold, the Town of Lost Rabbit:

http://www.lostrabbit.com/

This isn't marketing, this is branding. With the coolest name for a real estate development in a long, long time.
 
I wish they would build these where they would actually engage with / enhance an existing urban fabric.

Why do we get the Seaport here whereas that is built as a subdivision in all but form out in rural Mississippi?
 
Snob zoning, NIMBYS, and clueless government officials push most of these new-old-urbanism developments far from existing urban areas.

And before anyone harps on the 'traditional' architecture, the style isn't what matters, it's the density and human scale in design which matters.
 
To be blunt: no, style matters. It embodies the values and spirit of a building, a neighborhood, and a city. Debates about style are debates about culture and meaning.

It's a fair point to say it doesn't matter as much, but I, for one, would not go that far.
 
And besides, we all know "density and human scale" are good things. They're only up for grabs in parts of this country where urbanism has been an endangered species over the last 50 years. The real debate among us (and in the world beyond mistakes like sprawling suburbia and towers-in-the-park) is about style.

And even if it weren't, style is sometimes so overwhelmingly accountable for the choices that comprise urbanism, it would leave out quite a bit of the story not to talk about it.
 
Style does matter, but only modestly. What?s delightful about the West Village is that it gets the urbanism and human scale right. Both buildings in the photo below qualify:

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The buildings have different styles, however; in a context of mostly classically-detailed neighbors, the corner structure startles gently with its medievally-inspired accessories (that is, if you?re inclined to be observant when you walk by) and its startling choice of color.

Or how about the effect of the grey building, heavily encrusted with Grecian temple front:

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Provides an extra dollop of variety, delight and cultural meaning that --combined with the frequency of other such events-- lifts the West Village to perhaps a higher level of interest than Beacon Hill.

An even more potent instrument of delight, however, is that shops are more evenly distributed into West Village fabric than they are on Beacon Hill --and that?s not a matter of style:

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.
 
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pelhamhall said:
All this talk about Seaside has me thinking about my absolute favorite real estate brand created in the past ten years of so (since NYC's eWalk):

Crank your speakers and behold, the Town of Lost Rabbit:

http://www.lostrabbit.com/

This isn't marketing, this is branding. With the coolest name for a real estate development in a long, long time.
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Lost Rabbit shares similar principles to the already built, and hugely successfully Rosemary Beach (just down the street from Seaside): http://www.rosemarybeach.com
 
Ron Newman said:
Is the grey building a synagogue?
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That's right, or at least it was built as a synagogue. Nicely unhampered by the wisdom of zoning, which might have consigned it to a corner lot.

One of the nice things about the West Village is that it's mixed together, not sorted out. Beacon Hill is a bit too sorted out, though still pretty good.
 
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