Bad Urbanism – a house for people or cars?
The design of this duplex house in Philadelphia does a number of things to ruin the urban fabric of its street. The garages are paired together which creates a giant curb cut in the sidewalk. This curb cut prevents any cars from parking or trees from being planted in front of the house.
The garages project out into the side walk which is reminiscent of a traditional entry stair. But the garages do not create the same transition space the way a stair does. See this earlier post for a discussion on the design of entry stairs.
The design of the house also has no human scale elements or windows on the ground floor. The few windows present look like glazed garage doors. There is nothing in this house that relates to people or the city street. It really looks like a house that is designed to be inhabited by cars.
So, what could the designers have done differently? One option would be to put the garages in the rear of the house along an alley. Of course, that is not always feasible given an existing urban fabric. Another approach would be to separate the garages and move them to the outer edges of the building, creating two curb cuts. This would allow for the planting of one tree and possibly the addition of one parking space on the street. The garages could also be set back and the doors for people, brought forward. A facade design that had more, smaller windows would help give the building some human scale.
Tags: architecture, garages, new urbanism, street life, urban design, urbanism
