XSECTION: What is your first memory of place? BG: I grew up in Kansas City, Missouri. I was remembering
back to when my sister was born, I was three years old. It’s an old suburban neighbourhood in Kansas City with no fence lines, big trees and shade. There are very nice street trees in Kansas City and I remember playing back and forth amongst those houses. I had to go over to the neighbour’s because my sister was going to be born, so running in and amongst those spaces. There’s also a great park legacy in Kansas City and one of my favourite places growing up is Loose Park. It’s a big English-style park built in the early 1900’s with big sweeps of lawn and chances to run and places to fly kites. There’s a little duck pond there and my dad had given us these little pond boats. We would sail them across and run back and forth. There’s a spot where there are stepping stones to cross, and one time, running too quickly to go and catch that boat, I just totally missed one and just pssshhhhhhh! Right in the pond. First memories of place…
XSECTION: It’s actually amazing how far we can remember back in quite good detail…
BG: It’s something I try to watch for in my own kids, trying to
imagine what they will remember. They will have memories from 3 or 4 but you never know which one.
XSECTION: They can be quite random BG: Yes, what we think is important or special as adults is totally different for them.
XSECTION: Given those sorts of memories what do you think needs to be built into a place? BG: I think that the notion of building “place” is a tricky
one, I think in some ways “place” happens whether you like it or not, kind of like ecology. An ecology is present even if it’s desolate or empty, the term doesn’t imply a judgement on the quality or function of the ecology. Likewise, “place” is the set of conditions that describe human interaction with our environment. It doesn’t say anything about whether it’s a good place or a bad place. I guess the important question is whether or not the qualities of place are ones that inspire us, or engage us, or suggest some kind of better collaboration as human beings and so “place”… I guess “place” happens. Shit happens and I guess “place” happens. So I think “place” is one of those tricky ones - the more you try to set out and make it, the further away you can get sometimes.
XSECTION: Do you think there needs to be a lot of collaboration between people during the making and designing process? BG: Not necessarily. I think that certainly there can be many,
many benefits that come out of that kind of collaborative process and I think sometimes the process is just as important as the end result. The process can create connections that last well beyond even the park or the streetscape, or whatever the project may be; it may be more important that people
actually talk to each other and start to understand themselves as a community. However, when it comes to designed environments, there are also many examples of either places that were designed with no collaborative spirit that function as incredible places (Thank you, Jane Jacobs!) and then those that are the end result of a highly collaborative effort and they… they…
XSECTION (in chorus): just don’t work? BG: Yes.
One successful example to consider is the Citygarden project in St Louis, which was the product of a commission from a private organization that paid for the design and the construction, and then gave the park to the city of St Louis. Because they structured the project in that way, there was minimal public interaction or design input. We talked with the organization about whether we thought that was a good strategy or not, but they’d seen so many situations where you open it up and then you end up with a design that can end up watered down trying to appeal to too many different people or voices. And yet the project has become a highly successful urban environment [Xsection: and it’s beautiful!] and it was a confirmation that our profession has the skill set and capacity to collaborate to create successful public places. It actually was a big team. It’s not like the project was the hand of a single ‘ ‘genius designer’; it was a huge collaborative team of consultants, the owner, and the city, even though there wasn’t a big public engagement process. One really great confirmation that this process can work is that Citygarden was recognised with the Amanda Burden (Urban Open Space) Award, which is not a just a design award, but actually a a national award that is given out to a public space for its positive social and cultural contributions to a city. We didn’t make a big deal out of it, but it’s sort of interesting that the project happened with little public engagement, and yet it has still been very successful in doing all of those things that you would hope to have gotten out of that process. All that being said, we don’t try to model that everywhere each project is different; we try to find ways to adapt and work in many different fashions.
XSECTION: That seemed to be the case with Young Nicks Head
as well; you worked with a lot of different experts and local experts.
BG: Absolutely. Working at a great distance takes either a tonne of ego or a tonne of humility. I think we’re on the humility side of things because we just can’t pretend to be experts at everything everywhere.
Working in different locations you want to actually align yourselves with the people who really know what’s going on. The great benefit of coming at a distance is that you can ask the question that might be a little bit silly or impertinent and that’s an advantage for anyone right? To maybe turn what might be some sort of traditional thinking on its head a bit, because we can all get kind of stuck sometimes in our own patterns.
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