On Public Interior Space

Author(s): Maurice Harteveld and Denise Scott Brown

Source: AA Files , 2007, No. 56 (2007), pp. 64-73
Published by: Architectural Association School of Architecture

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/29544674

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On Public Interior Space

Maurice Harteveld and Denise Scott Brown

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In the city today, we meet in public atria and shop in malls, we move along for the purpose of making certain information better known'. This,
covered walkways and go from street to street by taking shortcuts through I think, is different from what you intended. How such publicity
the buildings of a city block. In recent decades, the amount and proportion is achieved through architecture and urbanism interests Bob and me
of public space within urban buildings has steadily increased, with much very much: however, weren't you referring in your question to a
of itforming part of a larger interior and exterior pedestrian network. more general and abstract idea of'public quality'?
Yet, although interior public space has become an important constituent of the
contemporary city and of our urban experience, it is rarely designed as such. MH: When I use the term 'publicity' I'm referring to sociologists
Prompted by this disconnection, Maurice Harteveld has followed different who categorise interiors public if they are part of the so-called public
leads to examine contemporary urban design in relation to public interiors. realm. In the 1950s, through writers such as Hannah Arendt, this
Through this research, he has documented in particular the urban analyses and realm was defined as the sphere of action and speech. So, in its origin,
architectural designs of Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown, in which the notion is closely related to communication. I would say that
interior public space is accorded significant and multiple roles. Ideas pioneered interiors are public when they open themselves to the knowledge of
by Venturi and Scott Brown have become absorbed within architectural a community. A shopping mall, for example, unlike a home or
practice, notably their use of the Nolli Map introduced in their 1972 study private club, issues an invitation to the general public. Therefore, to
of Las Vegas. Similarly, the concept of the 'rue Interieur' seen in their earliest continue this reasoning, it is open to general regulations similar to
projects, has matured in their later work to include an internal street imbedded those for an outdoor street. But you are right that, in design, the state
in a network of urban public spaces and pathways, both interior and of being publicly known is only one aspect of a much broader
exterior. However, although they refer to interior public space frequently in quality of being public. Others might include being inviting to the
their writing, Venturi and Scott Brown have yet to describe their views on public, and being part of a network of public spaces and pathways.
it in any great detail; a more focused examination that the following dialogue In considering these broader aspects, the emphasis on the public
between Maurice Harteveld and Denise Scott Brown seeks to provide. quality of the space becomes most important.

MH: 'The street through the building' is a recurring theme in your DSB: The difference between 'public' and 'civic' should be noted too.
design work. In your recent book, Architecture as Signs and Systems: And you're right: our various internal streets and spaces have very
For a Mannerist Time, I learned that this street always ties into the different public qualities - as different as those of a city. As we design
exterior pathway system leading to the building. With this approach, them, we find metaphors in a range of urban prototypes, from medieval
the internal street can be designed to support the urban circulation market routes to expressways, and we bear in mind the issues of
system while at a smaller scale it forms the spine, as you call it, of the location and capacity that transportation planners consider. We develop
public sector of your building. To make appropriate public interiors our categories and hierarchies of street types from, among others,
you closely study the surrounding urban patterns then design the transportation engineering, from Lou Kahn's famous plan for
architecture to fit with these and to encourage communication.This Philadelphia's streets, from our 1960s analyses of Las Vegas, and from
seems to bring the two of you together: the urbanist and the architect. David Crane's 'four faces of movement'. Crane was one of the few
members of the University of Pennsylvania planning faculty during my
DSB: I am happy that you have found the book useful. It attempts to time there who tried to maintain a link between architecture and
broaden our grasp, as architects, by applying urban ideas to architectural social-sciences-based, 'non-physical' (as they called it) urban planning.
design, in and out of buildings. But it's perhaps an over-simplification It was Crane who set me to study regional science, and whose interest
to call Bob an architect and me an urbanist. We are each both. The in urban change and unpredictability has been an influence on my
dichotomy is within us as well as between us. It's a four-way dichotomy. work ever since. These, then, are the underpinnings of our ideas on the
design of the public sector, or street, in buildings. But this is half the
MH: In looking at these internal streets, there seems to be significant story. The other half concerns specifics of the brief or programme,
variations between projects - in both their public nature and how they which give the basis for the project. In the client's intended activities,
are designed. For example, the street between the Life Sciences the relation between them, and the spaces required to accommodate
Institute and the Commons Building in your University of Michigan them lies the first definition of the public realm. And the first role of
complex is more accessible than the one between the two wings the 'street through the building' is circulation. It forms part of the
of the regional governmental complex in Toulouse. In both designs, movement system, along which the building's spaces are located, and
the major street is internal to the project but outdoors, and it is aligned from which access to and among users' activities is obtained. Urbanists
with surrounding pathways. But in Toulouse it can be closed off study urban economics and transportation engineering to understand
by gates, therefore it is perhaps more private. In the Trabant Student how patterns of circulation affect urban development and how land use
Center of the University of Delaware the route is interior; it is and movement are interrelated in the city. And Crane includes 'giving
both a street and the major public area of the building. And within the access' as one of his four faces of movement, pointing out that this
existing Princeton building that you converted to the Frist Campus quality defines the street as a 'city builder', because giving access to
Center the streets are low and narrow. They are the least open in land enables its development. In the same way, we consider the street
the series, and are also set at right-angles to the outdoor path. Could you through-the-building as an access-giver and try to combine activity
explain how these differences in publicity are affected by the design patterns and circulation in designing buildings as we would in planning
assignment and the urban analysis? In what sense are they all public? a city. This forms the basis of our claim that we do land use and
transportation planning inside buildings. Yet, as 'interior urbanists',
DSB: It would take a book to answer these questions. But first, a we find we must work with categories of function beyond those of
linguistic issue: in English, 'publicity' commonly means 'communication the brief. These relate to the building's role in the community, and

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 P^S^^ffffiB^ ^^^^^^^^^^^
Title page-. The main staircase of the National Gallery's Sainsbury Wing (1988-91). Clockwise from top right A 1900 colour photograph of the internal arcade street that runs within the half-timbered houses
parallel to Chester's Bridge Street; an 1830 engraving of the interior of the Galerie d'Orleans, Paris; plan of the Forum in Rome from Camillo Sitte's 1889 Der St?dtebau; and a portion of Giovanni
Battista Nolli's detailed map of Rome, 1748. All images courtesy Maurice Harteveld, except for Chester street (?Ullstein Bild/TopFoto).

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may concern the size and volume of movement or activity. Particularly cross. In lab buildings, we place coffee lounges off the main corridor
important are categories that differentiate between public and private near the elevator. In exterior spaces around intensely used buildings
activities or spaces, and help to define the character of each and the we provide informal seating, sometimes cafe chairs, often just steps,
relations between them. In considering public-private relationships in parapets and ledges. Here in good weather students can study or
architecture, we have learned from a comparison of Nolli's map of workers eat lunch. These informal opportunities along the way reveal
Rome and our Nolli map of the Las Vegas Strip, and from Crane's idea rather than demonstrate their function. People, especially students,
of the 'Capital Web', which he describes as the infrastructure of all seem happy to discover and define uses for themselves. Give students
public facilities in a city. a bench to sit on and they will lie on it or dance on it, but provide
a parapet or ledge and they will treat it as an engaging opportunity.
MH: So understanding public space means understanding its relation The major route that passes through the Trabant Center lies on
to private space, and especially so as we consider public interiors. a direct path between the college dormitories and the lecture halls.
I am reminded of a discussion that was at the centre of the discourse It serves the two primary functions of all streets - to join points
on urbanism in the late nineteenth century. The pioneering urban longitudinally and to provide access to activities and structures
theorist Josef St?bben pleaded for a clear division of public and bordering it. Sitting spaces along it purvey the feeling of a combination
private space, while Camillo Sitte argued in support of an interwoven seminar room and sidewalk cafe. It is therefore much more than
relationship because a great part of public life took place within a food court. The narrow streets of the Frist Campus Center emerge
buildings. Not only public squares but also enclosed spaces were, directly from the heavy basement structure of the existing building.
he claimed, used publicly. This is what we see in the city today, Bob managed to draw from this picturesque but uncompromising
but many designers seem to have forgotten the complex symbiosis heritage a needed interplay between the Center's tight, low spaces and
that exists between public and private. its high, expansive ones. The right-angle turn that concerns you
at the main entry to the building must be seen in the context of the
DSB: A beach is public and a town hall is civic. In the first we all circulation plan in that part of the campus. A pathway does indeed
share a common good but don't join together to do so. In the second traverse the front of the Frist Building, and it widens to form a patio
we are part of a community. But public and civic functions may also at the entrance; but it's less used for access to the Center than is
be served by the interiors of some private and institutional buildings. McCosh Walk, which runs parallel to it, to the north. The entry arcade
Shopping malls are to some extent public today, and Las Vegas added to the Frist exterior is designed to draw from this larger
simulates the public sector both indoors and out. The combination crowd of pedestrians, bringing them from several directions into the
of public and private has a long and varied history. An auspicious building via a series of new doorways, created from what were originally
early twentieth-century example is the much loved interior of the John basement windows. People walk across the pathway and into the
Wanamaker department store (now Macy's) in Philadelphia. It's a basement. Once there, they move between the heavy supports, through
large atrium inside a private building, but people arrange to rendezvous tight, low ways, past campus centre facilities in a Las Vegas-like
there as if it were a public square. It feels civic and it has a role, both setting, then on to the vast, light spaces of the cafeteria and student
retail and ritual, in the communal Christmas celebrations of the city. offices above. This sequence converts what was once a building serving
In Toulouse, the client saw our diagonal street across the site as one academic department into a facility for the whole community.
highly civic but in addition to its civic functions it provides a pedestrian Although the original front door still admits students and faculty to
shortcut between two existing commercial areas. I had hoped it classrooms and a library above, a more civic entry and access pattern
could contain a street market as do other Toulouse streets, however has been added for the campus centre. But 'civic' for undergraduates
the client would not countenance a commercial use and although can be funky and a little (but only a little) like Las Vegas.
this street is the public access to all government offices it is shut off
at night for security. There is also a small civic place before the Salle MH: In all these designs the internal street is used as a connector and
de rAssemblee that is lined with trees and benches like the square communicator between the private and the public domains, linking
of a traditional French mairie. Unfortunately this has been closed to the pathways, interweaving the public sector, and using communication
public again for reasons of security. But children walk to school along graffiti (signs and symbols).
our street and the local community gathers there for events. And some
internal spaces have developed ancillary uses. The assembly hall DSB: Streets can play many roles. Crane's Tour faces of movement'
complex is used for important public announcements and conferences, suggest that they function as channels for the circulation of people,
and a market for fruit and vegetables has appeared, unofficially, goods and vehicles; city builders, in that they give access to places
underground in the parking structure along the route to the elevator. for settlement; rooms for activities, especially in mild climates and
At our University of Michigan Life Sciences complex, a series in developing areas, where much of life takes place outdoors and
of pedestrian paths, bridges and public spaces connect the academic on streets; and information givers, telling travellers where they are in
sciences, a life sciences research facility and the medical centre. the city, providing the locus for communication between individuals
These routes are more like medieval streets than a civic plaza. They and purveying messages, communal and commercial. This is the
take users directly where they need to go, via relatively narrow publicity function, whose iconography we studied in Las Vegas.
pathways that widen to give access to doorways or to allow eddy In all its roles the street is a link between the public and the private,
space in which people can congregate. Encouraging serendipitous at scales that range from the sidewalk access of a row house to the
meetings between scholars of different disciplines is a major aim movement networks that serve major facilities and urban areas. And
in the planning of our academic streets. We therefore locate informal this applies to interior streets too. Yet if interior public space is to
stopping places at points of encounter where important pathways contribute to urban circulation, careful study of its context is required.

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 ttrtat aooi Brown t Minimi, ho. *?l fit 1006 ^^otlu^c*a*,19>M99B ia

Mapping distribution and programmatic networks at the University of Michigan, 1998 (above) and 1984 maps of public-private relationships and linkages for the Republic Square District, Austin, Texas (below).

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For this reason we analyse activity and movement systems around If we don't, trucks and maintenance vehicles will invade the public
the project site and document the quality of nearby public space, places of Main Street and the pedestrian paths of the campus.
exterior and interior. And we consider trends within these systems
and demands on them. This gives a framework for the planning MH: There is a more extreme version of the internal street in the form
of relationships both within the project and beyond it. And from these of the suburban mall. Architects who design them seem to focus only
planning studies of the broader surroundings our designs frequently on the inside. Their building complexes are introverted; blind outdoor
spring. In evolving designs from context, we've found the facades form a blank box surrounded by parking lots. But recently
transportation planning concept of 'desire lines' to be useful. These there has been development towards a more outdoor-oriented typology.
lines are drawn directly between where people are and where Competition with renewed city centres and with other retail areas
they want to be, regardless of whether direct routes exist. Many VSBA has forced some malls to be abandoned. Others are being redesigned
project partis stem from desire lines. Sometimes the building or to introduce outdoor pedestrian spaces, which surround parts of
complex encloses a portion of the area-wide movement system and the complex and open up the facades of the buildings. It seems that
is literally built around the desire lines. interior public space needs outdoor space and more important, needs
to be part of a differentiated and hierarchic system of public space.
MH: The internal street seems very much akin to the model of
the Parisian arcade. These covered streets are part of the network of DSB: This is a major finding of both your work and ours. From it,
public space, giving access to shops and theatres, and they also further questions derive. For example, how should the advantages of a
display signs. But more important to this comparison, arcades also lively indoor street be weighed against the need for vitality on the
function as systems of shortcuts that have survived over time. exterior? We made a study of the Republic Square district in Austin,
Texas, where our client was planning to build office buildings and
DSB: Yes, it's important that interior streets take people where they hoped to achieve vital retail activity on the street. We analysed ways in
want to go and, just as the market place sits at the crossroads in a town, which building entrance and access patterns could be designed to
so the more public functions must be located at major access and support and enliven ground floor, street-facing retail. If the entrances
crossing points, where most people pass. And yes, arcades that run within to the office building are located too near the road intersection, then
buildings make an interesting comparison with the street. Your mid-block retail uses may suffer because fewer people will go by
research reminds me of the two-level main street of Chester, England. them. But mid-block entrances draw people past storefronts as they
Here interconnected pedestrian ways are set one above the other. head toward building lobbies and elevators.
They face the street on one side and are lined by shops on the other. As you have noted, mall developers are seeking ways to open up
This building section occurs in all the private buildings along the shopping malls and give them some of the interest of Main Street.
length of the street. It has been maintained by successive builders over When we plan for small main streets, we try to help storekeepers to
hundreds of years, so valuable is it to the retail uses of the city. We differentiate themselves from the malls by using the fact that they have
also experienced the longevity of shortcuts in Toulouse. The site, when the great open sky, not a mall roof, over them, and by imaginatively
we first saw it, had already been cleared and we planned our diagonal adapting their historical buildings to create unique outdoor and indoor
across it to serve as a shortcut between two nodes in the city. But only shopping spaces. For this work we must find economists who love old
when our project was well into construction did we discover from an buildings and understand their possibilities. We have also tried to apply
old map that we had sited our route exactly where a street had once run. concepts of retail planning to the major thoroughfares that pass through
and around our institutional buildings. Meeting places, which could
MH: Although a comparison could be made between urban internal be lounges, cafes, community buildings, or outdoor congregating spots,
arcades and the internal streets in your designs, the urban contexts belong where routes cross. The 'hundred per cent area' of urban
are quite different. VSBA buildings are mostly free-standing, while in economics is at or near the busiest crossing. Here should be the most
general the arcades are embedded within a city block. Your buildings intense group activities, physical or mental, of a city - and also, we
are surrounded by public open areas while arcades have backs which suggest, of a building. Large-volume lecture halls require wide corridor
are private. How, then, in your designs do these open spaces keep access space. This is congested only every hour, when classes change,
or achieve their public meaning without contradicting the objectives but as students wait there they can meet and chat. We try to provide
of the internal street? How, through architectural and urban design, seating and a glass wall facing the campus, so this corridor can augment
do you prevent rear areas and anonymous outdoor space from flanking the sparse common-room space that is all most universities can afford.
the building? As it continues to other parts of the building, this way may widen or
narrow to serve its access functions. It may give information via notice
DSB: The internal arcades are lined on either side by private (mainly boards and provide convenient locations for telephones and electronic
retail) uses. They are connected, as well, with service and loading communication systems. Off it, indoors or out, we like to provide
areas at the back. In our work as urban planners we sometimes eddy places with a coffee machine nearby, so that fruitful discussions,
collaborate with retail economists who help us define the commercial initiated as students walk out of lectures can continue informally.
nature of the street and set up the relationships you are discussing.
They choreograph the various retail uses to achieve the most MH: You could also refer to the unique Las Vegas Strip of the 1960s.
profitable selling environments for individual stores and the community. It showed that a vast system of public interiors could exist that, as you
We must also plan carefully for service functions. Though these explained in Learning from Las Vegas, was disconnected from the
may lack beauty, they can't be evaded but must be adequately sized outside in order to keep patrons disorientated in time and space so they
and well located. We wax lyrical on the subject of service planning. would lose count of the hours and remain at the gambling tables.

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Nowadays along what was once the Strip, the outdoor space is more DSB: In deciding what kinds of analysis and analytic mapping to do
established and more part of the whole system. Outdoor piazzas and we face a dilemma: the range of possible investigations is vast and the
open areas between buildings and on what is now Las Vegas Boulevard tasks could go on forever but funds are limited. So we consider how
are introduced. So both Las Vegas and the malls have transformed to focus from the start. We try to avoid what one of my professors called
or evolved. Do you think these transformations share a similar logic the 'whale method' of urban research. The whale opens its mouth
concerning the differentiation of the public system and the elimination as it swims, and whatever flows in is what it eats. This is not effective.
of anonymous outdoor space? Therefore, as urban researchers, we must devise techniques to discover,
early, the most relevant research variables for a given topic. We may
DSB: On Las Vegas Boulevard today hardly anything is public and do this by conducting a brief, once-over-lightly overview of the project,
probably in the malls it never was, but both try to imitate a public before delving into detail. We have also learned to introduce a first
sector. Malls encourage semi-civic and political events to take place on attempt at design deliberately too early in the process to help structure
their parking lots or in their interior courts and 'community halls', the next rounds of research. So design can serve as a research tool -
which are usually tucked-away spaces unsuitable for retail use and with as a heuristic for further research - as well as vice versa. But generally
little public presence. Las Vegas has created a private-public sector. we examine patterns of activities and movement, and differentiate
The Boulevard is so different from the Strip we studied in the 1960s. these by type and intensity, preferably over time. We also consider
Highly pedestrianised, it seems like an elongated Piazza Navona. natural patterns and systems and those of built structures; and we
The 'public' plazas that lie between the Boulevard and the casinos distinguish between activities and the structures that hold them. The
imitate the public sectors of historic European cities. Where strident age of structures is an important variable, and there are many others,
signs, a porte-cochere and a reassuring view of parking once beckoned particularly those to do with capacity and location. Mapping the raw
the automobile, now, famous plazas of Europe are jammed together data of use and structure is just a first step. Beyond that, we may
to beguile the pedestrian on the boulevard. Why go to Venice, want to break our information down further. The computer allows us
Italy, they seem to ask, when you can experience Venice, Nevada? to disaggregate one variable, for example, the distribution of all
But the more the casino front yards have been made to resemble sciences on campus, and to study the pattern it makes. And our analysis
old civic places, the more private they've become. There is almost includes synthesis (we are after all architects). We may juxtapose two
no public sidewalk left. Everything that looks like a civic plaza is variables. For example, for Tsinghua University in Beijing one of our
private to within half a meter of the street. And 'private-public' in not most cogent maps superimposed densities of people on a map of
really public, as would-be protesters discovered when they tried campus green space. It showed that there was little match between
to assert their right to public assembly on Boulevard sidewalks. where people and landscape were. At Michigan, we derived the
Both Las Vegas and the malls must think hard-headedly about location and the conceptual design of our Life Sciences complex from
systems for service and parking, especially customer parking. On the juxtaposing mapped distributions - of campus sciences, theatres
Boulevard, parking has graduated to structures behind the casino (on campus and in downtown Ann Arbor), museums, topography and
hotels, leaving the front yards available for a pseudo civic townscape. pedestrian pathways. For the Las Vegas Strip, we mapped signs
But vast parking lots remain the prevalent and reassuring first view and lighting by intensity, location and purpose. The maps that resulted
of the shopping mall. In both cases, the store service system is out of portrayed the feel of the place better than could traditional urban land
view and anonymous. use maps or the orthogonal plans of architecture.
Now Las Vegas is changing once again. Like contemporary These analyses and syntheses provided information, but they were
architecture it is moving away from architectural allusion and the also design tools. They helped us move seamlessly into the process
aim to communicate and toward architectural abstraction and of synthesis architects call design. And they had a heuristic value,
the projection of luxury and quality service. It is hard to imagine in that some early syntheses of variables led to astonishing insights
a Las Vegas hotel that no longer romances you off the boulevard but and in many cases to the parti. For us, design and analysis proceed
purveys, instead, an air of privacy and high-class exclusiveness. in tandem throughout the design process. In sum, what you analyse
What will be the nature of the public realm in such a complex? I suspect and how you do it depends on your problem. You hope that your
that landscaping will provide the primary image, and that it will be once-over-lightly study and your successive cycles of analysis and
used to shield the view, while disclosing discreet but fascinating hints synthesis will give you a good sense of where to go.
of the facilities reserved for just a few inside. Perhaps this will work.
Perhaps by the laws of contrast, abstract neo-modern architecture will MH: Either intense activities or a good urban location can make
present an irresistible attraction to a public jaded by the old Las interiors appear more urban. Beside this, public interiors, for a casino,
Vegas. But how soon will people of the 2010s tire of architectural campus centre or church, require high-quality space where urban
abstraction, as their grandparents did in the 1960s? discomfort is eliminated. This brings me back to Nolli's plan. In their
ability to clearly reveal the urbanistic network - the mazes of public
MH: It seems that for you mapping is the single most important element space - these maps clarify the urban designer's role in forming interior
in understanding interior public space. It helps to depict the public spaces. In this sense, they redefine the dichotomy between the city
interior as a segment of a pedestrian path system or part of a bigger planner and the architect. As you once wrote, Nolli's map reveals the
network of public space. In the past you have explained your use of sensitive and complex connections between public and private space.
different techniques of analysis. I would argue that interiors contribute
to the city if they have an urban use and an urban location. It seems, DSB: The relationship between public and private has always
therefore, that analyses should be made of the numbers and patterns of been very important in our work. This topic has perhaps different
users. Do you recognise these themes in your analysis? ramifications in American urban planning from those in Europe,

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Clockwise from top left. An aerial photograph of the regional governmental complex in Toulouse (1999); a diagram mapping bicycle flows, pedestrian concentration nodes and spaces of student life at
Tsinghua University, Beijing (2005); and a plan and photograph of the internal street in the Trabant Student Center at the University of Delaware (1996).

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because American culture tends to avoid the use of government Taking such an approach to our more secular interiors could change
support or action in favour of the private sector. This brings up the discourse on future public space.
questions for urbanists and architects regarding the relation between
the public and private sectors, the opportunities for action within DSB: Of course, the churches shown by Nolli weren't public. Today
each and, for activists in the public sector, the public leverage we might call them NGOs (non-governmental organisations),
possible on private-sector decisions. All of this would still have been but the streets and plazas were public, and we consider the churches
important without the notion of mapping, however Nolli's map is as stand-ins for the public buildings that we study in our urban
influential and relevant in our work because it provides a method of analyses. The churches could also represent a private sector that
showing physical relations between the public and the private city. 'feels' public. We tried using other mapping techniques as well
In campus planning, in particular, we rely on the Nolli system, adapted to suggest different types of public-private relationship, particularly
for today (there were few grassy areas and no parking lots in his Rome). kinetic ones - for example, to show how an investment by
We map Nolli's variables, showing the pocheoi all public buildings government in urban development could lead to a reaction by the
and of major public spaces in private buildings. On these we juxtapose private sector. The opportunities lie in both sectors.
the system of pedestrian pathways that cross the campus. It forms
a nervous pattern of movement, resembling macrame, and running MH: In learning from Beijing, Newark, Philadelphia or Toulouse you
continuously between exterior and interior spaces. This pattern began by studying Rome and Las Vegas. It is generally known that
subtends the campus open spaces, which we differentiate by type you first travelled to Las Vegas in 1965, but when and where did you
giving special prominence to those we feel are highly symbolic. discover the Nolli Plan? Was it perhaps when you visited Frutaz's
A Nolli map for a university campus, in this way, portrays its overall exhibition in 1962 in Rome, or did you simply come across the catalogue?
public system and the relation between its public and private uses.
It shows where the capacity of pedestrian ways is not related to DSB: Bob believes he came across Nolli's map in Rome at the
the demand on them, and where gaps exist because new buildings American Academy in the mid 1950s, when he was a Fellow there.
were erected but the pathway system was not adapted to them. I think I first saw it in the early 1960s at the University of
The Nolli map has taught us a great deal about the character of Pennsylvania where it was much in evidence around the school of
public architecture, including the architecture of the street through the architecture. Perhaps some faculty member there, possibly Aldo
building. The map is all about the processional. Why wouldn't it be? Giurgola, had visited Rome in 1962. David Crane had been in Rome
It was conceived as an information system for religious pilgrims. Rome's in the mid 1950s and in his studio we applied the idea of the
winding and sinuous street pattern stands out in marked contrast capital web to the design of a new city. Our maps resembled Nolli's
to its formal piazzas, for example the Piazza Navona. But the buildings, in that they showed the buildings, open spaces and circulation
with their strong black plans, are particularly suggestive of the systems of the public sector differently from those of the private sector,
difference between the public architecture of streets and institutions but in making them I don't remember using Nolli as a guide. In
and the private tissue of the city. The fact that the plans are baroque planning school we learned to pore over maps and aerial photographs,
does not indicate that public space should be baroque. The plans of trying to discern in them what was happening in the city. It was
modern architects, particularly Alvar Aalto, lend themselves to a similar great to discover in a land-use map or photograph that something you
analysis. But we have certainly learned from Nolli to think of the were considering recommending was already happening. Later,
street through the building as if it were an exterior street. Therefore in when we studied aerial photographs of the Las Vegas Strip, the parallels
our National Gallery Sainsbury Wing the main lobby and stairway between it and Nolli's map of Rome were obvious.
spaces are clad in rusticated stone, as are the facades of buildings on an
Italian Renaissance street. The entry area and main lobby are sinuous, MH: You begin Architecture as Signs and Systems with an acknowledgment
taking the shape of the crowd that uses them. We planned a widened of evolution as well as revolution. 'Viva pragmatic/evolutionary
sidewalk and sheltered portico where visitors could wait for the over heroic/revolutionary!' Bob writes in the introduction, echoing
museum to open, before proceeding through a narrow door into a larger sentiments you had expressed in Las Vegas in 1968. But given
space beyond. Here a crowd of people might all stop at once, while our growing recognition today that interior public space can be a
deciding where to go next. Our entryway is therefore pretzel-shaped. constituent part of the public city, where would you place what you
Similarly, in our lab and classroom buildings, seating occurs in eddy wrote in 1968? As evolution or revolution? Perhaps your formulations
areas off the main circulation. These are designed as widenings of on Las Vegas and Le Piante di Roma were not, in themselves,
corridors, not rooms. Sitting beside the continuing space of the street revolutionary, but did bringing them together cause a revolution?
should feel like a pause not a commitment. It should be possible,
while moving, to glance in and make a quick decision to enter for a DSB: Perhaps. We like the paradox that juxtaposing evolutions can
chat or to pass by. But sometimes the safety requirements for fire doors cause revolution. The 1960s was an era of paradox, when revolution
on major corridors are a restraint. Then we must specify hinge was stood on its head for good reason and anti-revolution became the
mechanisms to allow these doors to remain open unless there is a fire. new revolution. At that time, the real revolutionaries were those
So urban design concerns a door hinge as well as a region. who embraced the paradox and stood for evolution in architecture and
against the stultified revolution of late modernism. Today, architects
MH: Today's design guidelines cover accessibility and various public and urbanists are similarly challenged by the conundrum of public
qualities, but designers could still learn from Nolli: the churches he spaces within private buildings. But this, too, is a paradox that we
mapped were seen as both a retreat from daily life and a centre of the can embrace. History shows how richly the public interiors of private
society, and designing their interiors was considered a privilege. buildings can extend and enhance the city's public offering.

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