| Topic: | Re:Re:Re:Re:Re:Re:High Street Urban Design - Look and feel of the street scene | |
| Posted by: | Nigel Moore | |
| Date/Time: | 17/05/07 17:15:00 |
| Andrew, I took the point of not regarding this visual as being definitive, and obviously I recognise that everyone will have a different interpretation of a good marriage between local and developer aspirations. My post reflects my own, very personal, instinctive reaction to the visual, from which I could see the potential dangers in moving from accepted principle to suggested practise. As you know, I am attracted to the idea of formulating a plastic rendition of a pragmatic design; this has simply made me more cautious about it. I wonder whether a collection of alternatives might not be better, if we must have one? “A mistake mixing the two objectives”? Perhaps. I see both Chris’s view and your own. The visual is certainly provocative, and maybe that is what’s needed to elicit a greater degree of feedback from the public. While I shall of course, make some specific observations to Chris and yourself time permitting, I have some concerns that relate to the observations in your last paragraph. The BAAP is the best and most clear of all those I’ve seen, and the Visioning Project’s collation and analysis of material is excellent. Nonetheless I agree, “everyone will read what they want to out of the text”. But that is a situation that will always obtain, regardless of the precision of the wording, and it is far easier, and probably preferable, to make a communal critique of someone else’s interpretation than to arrive at one ourselves. There must be a danger inherent in a small steering group coming up with an interpretation, in that, for precisely the reason you identify, it can never be representative of the wider resource of contributors? Don’t get me wrong, I understand and concur with your rationale, I think it needful however to flag up a concern. I would hope, and know that the opportunity will be presented for this, that others will sketch out their own ideas based on the ‘Vision’, as you, Chris and I have done. Forgive me if I’m floundering a bit here, trying to enunciate clearly the core of my concern. I’m wondering perhaps if it cannot be characterised best as a concern that a magnificent body of work could become necessarily limited by this reduction into graphic form. |