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An Algorithm for Creating Enduring Places

The Netherlands is the perfect example of a country with a long history of places that inspire a fierce sense of pride.

When I first arrived here, I stood at an intersection in Amsterdam and watched the city flow in front of me and had an epiphany. I saw how everyone–including pedestrians, cyclists, and car drivers–knew what to do and how to respectfully interact with each other, even without stoplights or traffic signs. And even though the compact streets were busy, there were no honking horns or road rage to be found.

Typical carfree lane in a Netherlands town center.

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The Town That Facebook Built

Despite Facebook’s turn as a tool of the empire, this video tells the story of their experiments in office park and urban design. 

Ultimately, though, we’ve gotta give them credit for pushing Silicon Valley well outside its car-park comfort zone to offer a pedestrian pocket of productivity in a sea of some of the most banal, soul-crushing, suburban wastelands around.

We cheer Facebook’s human-scale building strategies, while still reminding everyone that Frank Gehry’s industrial modernism is best when used sparingly. It should be seen as filling in between an existing historic urban fabric. But this is California after all, so even doing as much as they have is a true miracle.

The upcoming Willow Campus residential-focused, vertical mixed-use development earns 4 out of 5 B4place stars for pushing so hard, when most of their contemporaries are still contributing to the sprawl.

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Rural Pre-Viz Series

We’re collecting plans and renderings of exemplary compact rural developments. These will include computer-generated and traditional illustrations.

Here’s a sampling from Driehaus Competition, Cities: Skylines, Dennis R. Holloway Architect, and Starr Sanford Design:

Acoma Pueblo, New Mexico
Acoma Pueblo, New Mexico
Dennis R. Holloway is a Southwestern Architect. He generates VR-based simulations of indigenous American architecture, analyzing the way ancient compact village ruins looked when they were new.
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