New house on the block

[simsurace]

Simone: The idea of this thread is to show the house from different angles to get the idea.

It it a corner building connecting the 19th century "Münsterstraße" --- the street leading to Bonn's big central Basilica: http://bonner-muenster.de/ and the "Mühlheimer Platz" with the old townhall build in the 18th century. The connection was originally perforned by a house called "Siemens-House", a heritage building from the 1950ies.

On the other side there is the "Cassius Bastei" a very ugly building, featuring the "Coiffeur / Friseur Slamanig" as you can see on yesterday's rendering, an ugly concrete silo build in the 1970ies to replace two nice blocks of 18th and 19th century heritage buildings.

On the other side, best seen on the little planet above is the "Karstadt" deartment store (backside of it).

The "Mühlheimer Platz" is not a plaza, it is more of a hose, a tube a long space a bit wider than a normal street but on both sides large buildings tower over it and the exit ramp of a huge underground parking does contribute to the not so nice a place for a pleasent stay. Trees are missing also, a lot of Lories in the morning bringing their delivery to the department stare and a lot of illegal parking and private car taffic is there too.

I guess a few trees and cafes and an efficient traffic management could create a nice place there and the Cassius Bastei should sure be redeveloped to have a lighter and greener effect on its environment. It all feels too dense like a steep gorge or canyon full of dusty air, hot in the summer cold in the winter, univiting.

Thanks for the background info! I can understand your criticism.

[pluton]

More trees and less (or zero) cars is a formula for a better life experience.  Thanks, Frank, for covering an interesting public space issue.

[Frank Fremerey]

Pluton. You know I currently write a book about these issues?

Last piece I posted to my blog was about organically rebuilding a city.

The idea to wipe and rebuild has no roots in European culture. This is how  NYC can be developed
or redeveloped.

Here you have to be very careful to protect but not overprotect heritage.

I started to think of "living spaces" .... spaces people love to live in.

We need such spaces for everybody. Rich and Poor. Sophisticated and Flat.

A living city will have to cater to a great diversity of inhabitants.

The old structure:

Concentrated workspace
Concentrated dwelling
Concd trated shopping

is inefficient stupid expensive and requires cars.

It might even have been the plan of this kind of development to sell more cars.

Walkable Environments with work shopping and home all near by.

This is density done right.

Great diverse neighbourhoods.

[pluton]

There is a fascinating book about the design(or lack of good design) of the public spaces in North America called "The Geography Of Nowhere" by James Kunstler. 
Kunstler has stated elsewhere that the decision of the United States to conduct it's big, post World War 2 expansion/buildout competely oriented around the automobile constitutes the greatest waste of resources in the history of the world.
All based on oil costing US$1.50 a barrel!
I try my hand at documenting it (the grim stupidity) from time to time, but it's difficult and challenging to get an interesting or satisfying photograph out of it.

[Frank Fremerey]

There was a tram network in the west before cars became a commodity.
It was bought by oil people an deliberately destroyed to foster the market for cars.
Iirc there are photos documenting this.

[Gary]

Pluton. You know I currently write a book about these issues?

Last piece I posted to my blog was about organically rebuilding a city.

The idea to wipe and rebuild has no roots in European culture. This is how  NYC can be developed
or redeveloped.

Here you have to be very careful to protect but not overprotect heritage.

I started to think of "living spaces" .... spaces people love to live in.

We need such spaces for everybody. Rich and Poor. Sophisticated and Flat.

A living city will have to cater to a great diversity of inhabitants.

The old structure:

Concentrated workspace
Concentrated dwelling
Concd trated shopping

is inefficient stupid expensive and requires cars.

It might even have been the plan of this kind of development to sell more cars.

Walkable Environments with work shopping and home all near by.

This is density done right.

Great diverse neighbourhoods.

Los Angeles exploded during the car revolution. The city was designed around the car, spread out with multiple 'City Centers'. Most Angelenos feel that this concept didn't work out well. For decades the City has been trying to reinvent itself, investing in mass transit, investing in a centralized city center, creating neighborhoods with personalities.

Shops on the bottom with apartments on top ... greater concentration within communities ... less emphasis on the car.

[Frank Fremerey]

Gary: and does the effort fruit?

[Gary]

There was a tram network in the west before cars became a commodity.
It was bought by oil people an deliberately destroyed to foster the market for cars.
Iirc there are photos documenting this.

All very true. The old Red Car system in Los Angeles was deemed the world's best trolley system at the time. Automakers, oil companies and tire companies convinced/bribed the city to convert to buses and cars. The auto/oil/tire people even insisted that the tracks be removed from the streets to guarantee that a revival of the street trolley would not happen easily or cheaply.

[Gary]

Gary: and does the effort fruit?

It will be a long haul to transform a multi-centered horizontal city into a more centralized vertical city. But there has been significant, measurable and positive changes to the downtown area becoming more 'gentrified' and attracting a younger, better educated and upper-economic scale population. Many of the outlying neighborhoods are becoming more defined with distinctive personalities. There is a bonafide 'Arts' district, the San Fernando Valley areas are redefining themselves in a positive way. Even the less desirable areas are attempting to change their name as an attempt to distance themselves from the old community stereotyping and association with poverty and crime.

With transformation other problems arise. One of which is the gentrification of a poor area to an upscale area ... is what happens to all the poor people. Where will they live now that they cannot afford the more expensive lifestyle produced by the transformation. While in the U.S. there are government agencies and programs to help the less fortunate ... they are not as well funded or as universal as similar European institutions.

[Frank Fremerey]

Gary. From your archives. Can you show the change of your city in the course of your lifetime from boy to grandpa age?

[Gary]

Gary. From your archives. Can you show the change of your city in the course of your lifetime from boy to grandpa age?

I can't. I never felt a need to document the evolution of LA.  While I worked in LA, I only lived in LA for roughly tens years, early 80's through early 90's. I grew up in Chino, (35 miles east in San Bernardino County), Huntington Beach (35 miles south in Orange County), Pasadena (10 miles north in LA County), Manhattan Beach (20 miles west in LA County), San Pedro (25 miles west in the harbor area of Los Angeles) and now La Mirada (20 miles south-east in LA County).

[pluton]

All very true. The old Red Car system in Los Angeles was deemed the world's best trolley system at the time. Automakers, oil companies and tire companies convinced/bribed the city to convert to buses and cars. The auto/oil/tire people even insisted that the tracks be removed from the streets to guarantee that a revival of the street trolley would not happen easily or cheaply.

As a fellow SoCal(Southern California) resident, you have summed up the geographic issues nicely.
I will inject one note of caution when it comes to creating nostalgia for the Red Car system:  It was slow.  Really slow.  Natives of cities with high speed subways would have laughed at the insane amount of time it took to anywhere on the Red Car.  Of course, if kept, it could have been somewhat modernized with flyovers at major street crossings and the like, which probably would have been less expensive to retrofit onto the old system than the current plan of building light rail from scratch.

[Frank Fremerey]

they finally finished it. Now I can start to saee some new perspectives through the lights of the years...

[pluton]

At first glance, in a small photo on a laptop screen, the large, ornament-free areas of the new building seem visually boring next to the richer ornamentation of the existing buildings.  Even the standard glass and steel building to the left has, by virtue of it's many windows and frames, lots of detail for the eye to be entertained with. 
But- a lot depends on how light is modulated by the surfaces and shapes.  And the mosaic-like flat surfaces of the new building may turn out to be visually exciting in person...depending on the light conditions.