Suburban Drivers
So much of architectural and urban thought is a disguised rant against the suburb. There is much that is inherently wrong with suburbia including the underlying economic incentives and biases. However most North American people choose to live in suburbs. Askew’s Salmon Arm ( On Site review 27:rural urbanism ) is a thoughtful attempt to weave broader community sensibilities into the suburban reality. Our current design culture is focused on the religion of high art with a resultant emphasis on art galleries, museums, libraries and theatres as the vessels of culture. But these are the formal expression of a culture that also resides in the matter-of-fact realities of daily living that includes buying groceries. Of course this current architectural predilection has not always been the case. Modernist architects of the 1920s up to the 60s did pay attention to domestic and community design. Perhaps as a result of some of their well-documented failures, architects have abandoned these areas of investigation. I applaud Allen+Maurer and Fasr+Epp for approaching this prosaic commission as an opportunity to create a meaningful experience in a suburban grocery store and parking lot. Fundamental to this type of design exercise is how to accommodate the car. The challenge with suburban development is in responding to the standard metrics of parking stalls per square foot of retail space. An architect’s ability to effectively design around these limitations is key to managing all the economic drivers of suburban development. In other communities there are recent trends away from the big store surrounded by acres of parking. It would have been informative to see an actual parking plan and the relationship between the topography, parking and the proposed buildings on site. I look forward to seeing the finished project documented to better understand how well the architecture has advanced the too-quiet suburban design conversation. Paul Whelan Toronto
Florian Maurer, of Allen Maurer Architects, replies —
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Paul Whelan makes many good points in his letter, for instance, that ‘serious’ architecture has largely abandoned suburban architecture in general, and shopping centres in particular, being more interested in cultivating its ego through signature buildings that have little effect on the life of the ordinary guy. However, that this may not have been so much the choice of the architectural profession, but the business reality driving these developments in our particular economic and political system: developers want to first and foremost turn a profit, and going against the grain and proposing alternatives to proven (in the economic sense) development models is not part of their game plan, nor is engaging the architect to do more than the absolute minimum required to perpetuate the status quo. I credit our client, Mr. David Askew, for breaking this cycle. Without being allowed to do so architects cannot do good work. I would also like to comment that most North American people started choosing to live in suburbs at a time when even Le Corbusier thought this was the way of the future and that the automobile was the greatest invention since sliced bread. Half a century later we are not so sure anymore, but the reality that has been created since then has changed the world profoundly and has an inertia that may be impossible to stop, if we want to be pessimistic (which I don’t). Finding a way back (or forward, if you will) is a long and painful process. Our Askew’s project is a baby step in that direction. The Askew’s store is phase one of a much larger mixed use development. We do have a master plan that will not only show the final parking configuration, but also how we use buildings to enclose streetscapes, rather than being the usual ‘islands unto themselves in a sea of parking’ so typical of suburbia. This master plan also shows how we could successfully argue a significant reduction of parking, based on the argument that the new development is in the precise centre of a large area of residential use within easy walking/cycling distance. This is another baby step. If we keep making these, we’ll get somewhere. The irony of the culture that has created ‘starchitecture” is that it has had profound influence on how the anonymous architecture of suburbia gets its form: every strip commercial is an accumulation of solitaires that badly want to stick out amongst the other solitaires, shout each other down, with larger neon signs, more garish colours, glued-on attributes whose only purpose is to say “look at me!” To find a way back to a culture that joins buildings to create streetscapes would not violate people’s desire to live in suburbs. Florian Maurer Penticton
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