For many years, I’ve stressed the importance of the urbanism of experience, finding layered examples that show how people relate to the built and sociocultural communities around them. This exercise is not merely academic, but is also useful as a supplement to today’s urbanist dialogue and placemaking efforts. In Novenber, […]
I suggest a patient and mindful perception about what we sense, particularly for those of us fortunate enough to see. Which is the focal point of this image, people in contemplative discussion, or their surroundings? For me, the fusion of a seated couple blends and merges with a wood-framed geometry […]
Throughout the past few months, it has been harder than ever to understand ideas and experiences of place, and the forces that contribute to their definition. With the nature of safety, equity, and human behavior in tangible spaces redefining every day, I’ve looked for grounding and meaningful events to offset […]
With apologies to Julius Caesar, all pandemic rail transport behavior is divided into three parts.
Soon, after almost three years, we’ll be less Thames-side on a daily basis, replacing its ever-evolving majesty with the scaled-down realities of the Rivers Lambourn and Kennet in West Berkshire. Aided by the contemplations of the pandemic and lockdown, I’ll go back to two rivers with more hopeful, Thames-based revelations […]
If anyone doubted how concerns for public safety and associated protective rules guide human behavior, take a look at the seating configurations depicted above. In my mind, I hear Fred Kent, Kathy Madden, and other inheritors of William H. Whyte’s legacy. “I told you so,” they say, as public spaces contextually […]
Richmond Park is to many the most significant urban natural space in the United Kingdom. Yet, London visitors from overseas (when visits are possible) make it only to nearby Kew Gardens–leaving their London park experiences to Hyde Park, Kensington Gardens, and other “close-in” experiences. As Sir David Attenborough (a 60-year […]
We all feel the remarkable lack of control over the day-to-day, many of us for the first time. Today effortlessly merges with yesterday; washing hands, masking up and measuring two-metre spaces are the new human agenda. My self-therapy is to continually revisit the lenses and landscapes and place, including the […]
After months inside, the outside certainly beckons, an invitation to explore from an old and treasured friend. Where better than where the Romans walked, across a West Berkshire field? In Speen, the “mother of Newbury,” post-Roman history was lost and re-emerged in Saxon times, and, later, in the Domesday Book. […]
