Cathy's Art Diary

Fascinating talk at RSA looking at how we can get the urban environments which are good for us. The talk was given my Richard Sennett, an academic and planning practitioner, who had recently written a book of the same title looking at the emergence of the urban age and the spaces which have worked well. He felt that the idea of community led planning did not always work and had in the past led to segregation   and that in current times there is a demand in developing countries for gated communities   but he feels these lead to ghettoising other areas of the city. He did however praise Nehru Place in Delhi as a space which has developed by use into an open place where different religions and castes mixed. He talked about the concept of open and closed spaces. Open doesn't just mean large and outdoors but spaces which were conducive to the mixing of people. He also looked at how to open up the edges of a city by placing public services on that edge to try to bri...

Confusing exhibition at the RIBA of the ten final proposals for designs to rebuild areas in the North West of the USA following Hurricane Sandy. I say confused because I thought at first it was just about the organisation which held the completion. Rebuild by Design was formed as a way to bring governments and communities together with designers to imagine innovative ways to help safeguard the area against the consequences of climate change. However I then couldn’t work out what the photos were of. Eventually I got that they were competition finalists! The show was displayed via a series of large banners with a description on one size and a large photo on the other. They fitted the space well but each one had a lot of information and I found them quite difficult to read and follow. However I did find some of them interesting, particularly those based near Asbury Park. I know the area from Springsteen trips and it’s great to see more redevelopment work being done there. ...