I've given Mr. Rudy's comment some serious consideration since all designers know how difficult it is distill simplicity from complexity and confusion. The text below is my latest effort.
"Mr. Hosack's erudite essays contain gems of insight imbedded in a style of prose that is difficult to understand and typical of a problem endemic to our profession. Written communication is hard for us."
Cities are built from pieces that fall into Shelter, Movement, Open Space and Life Support divisions. The thinking required to design shelter is organic, but the result is tactical achievement that adds to a speculative strategy of sprawl. This is because land is taken for granted as a speculative commodity and a city design strategy for a symbiotic future is missing.
Symbiotic buildings will be tactical achievements in their own right, but it does not follow that symbiotic cities will emerge without a strategic city plan for urban form and intensity that is focused on a sustainable relationship between the Built Domain and the Natural Domain. If architecture becomes symbiotic without a city design strategy, it will quickly fail as speculative sprawl consumes its source of survival. In my opinion, this is simply common sense based on instinct and intuition; and this is the gift of adaptation we have all been given. It is there to use before it is imposed, but it means we must respect all of the gifts we have been given.
The relationship between buildings, pavement and open space within shelter projects, city plans and the Built Domain sets the stage for our quality of life. I've called these relationships "intensity" and explained the forecast model choices, design specification variables, embedded equations, definitional notation and planning forecast choices in previous essays, more extensively in my blog and comprehensively within my book and software. I've also explained context evaluation research that compares predictions to existing conditions. It is similar to blood pressure, since blood pressure measurements and predictions needed research to place them in context.
Architects who focus on shelter construction to serve special interests will remain at the tactical level of effort serving speculation and investment. Architects who look beyond to study symbiotic architecture within symbiotic cities will have stepped to the strategic level of architectural effort. I've called it the city design of urban form. The emphasis will be on the physical, social, psychological and economic evaluation of architectural intensity in order to translate measurement into knowledge. The result will be architecture with a symbiotic foundation that shelters growing activities within a sustainable Built Domain. Fine art quality can then be debated within a more stable built environment.
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Walter Hosack
Author
Walter M. Hosack
Dublin OH
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