Tag: design patterns

“Writing about music is like dancing about architecture.” – Martin Mull

Walking across a recently re-designed section of Times Square last week I had a pleasant sensation that the design was working on me, on us pedestrians, guiding us along certain paths and shaping our sense of space. Sometime last year I read a New Yorker article about the architectural changes in store for Times Square. The city had hired the Norwegian architectural firm Snøhetta to make the area more people friendly. The firm studied patterns of pedestrian movement and found that despite the existing walkways being closed to traffic and painted bright and non-street like colors, folks still preferred the sidewalks–in part because the sidewalks were raised higher than the street and thus felt safer. The proposed renovation (to be completed by 2015) aims to get rid of this height differential between road and sidewalk, unifying everything with a series of interlocking and slightly contoured concrete blocks. Here’s Snøhetta’s description of their design:

“clear and simple ground surface made of pre-cast concrete pavers creates a strong anchor for the space, allowing the excitement of Times Square’s commercial components to shine more brightly above […] The area’s new two-toned custom pavers are embedded with nickel-sized steel discs that will capture the neon glow from the signs above and playfully scatter it across the paving surface. In addition to simplifying the ground surface by consolidating both moveable and permanent sidewalk and street elements, Snøhetta’s redesign also addresses practical issues such as drainage and maintenance and programmatic flexibility.”

And here’s a close-up of the concrete blocks:

It wasn’t until I walked on the blocks in a completed section that I felt the power of Snøhetta’s design. What was most striking is that the space seemed to foster a sense of expansiveness and possibility as I walked around it. Something about its subtle textures and angles re-oriented how I felt the plaza.

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Walking about the Snøhetta plaza, I thought about how music shapes and directs our sensations. In fact, it does this so effectively that sometimes we hardly notice the sounds working on us–whether they be steady beats that induce dance, noisy and distorted timbres that suggest aggression or maybe defiance, or static drones and long tones that invite contemplation. Of course, each of us bring our experience to our listening, yet the shape of the musical object remains primary. Like the interlocking and angles concrete bricks at the Times Square plaza, the design of a music works on us, sometimes despite us. We go in feeling one thing, but soon start feeling something else.

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As I took in the environment of new textures, shapes, and angles, I also remembered a book by architect/philosopher Christopher Alexander called A Pattern Language (1977). It’s about the aesthetics of architecture and urban design, proposing a set of some 253 different design patterns found in human-built environments that encourage meaningful living. From the public patterns of town, neighborhood, and street design, to the patterns of home and garden, A Pattern Language suggests that it’s the relationship between the small elements of ordinary places that create the good feeling we get when we’re in them. These relationships explain why we find say, a reading nook at the top of the stairs “safe”, an archway “mysterious”, or a stone walkway out to the garden “inviting.” Whether we’re talking about the design patterns of spaces or music, our environment matters.