CHRISTOPHER ANDREWS ARCHITECT & TOWN PLANNER

RIO VISTA CALIFORNIA RESIDENTIAL DEVELOPMENT PART III

A SUSTAINABLE PROCESS OF SITE & TOWN PLANNING  

Sustainable development “meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.”  (Our Common Future, World Commission on Environment and Development, 1987, p. 8)  It encompasses not only human habitation and settlement but the restoration of natural habitats as well.    

This method is process oriented, rather than product oriented.  When this process is fully realized places can be created which are whole.  The concept of wholeness may be difficult to describe, but it can be intuited—it can be agreed upon in relative terms (this is more whole than that...).  The architect Christopher Alexander refers to this comparative method of ascertaining wholeness extensively in his manuscript for The Nature of Order (1993)  Kevin Lynch does not refer to wholeness directly, but in reference to an organic model of cities he says  “The organic metaphor...looks especially to such values as health and well being, homeostatic balance, successful child rearing, and species survival.” (A Theory of Good City Form, 1981, p. 360)  

Balance, durability, or in current parlance, sustainability, are ways of apprehending wholeness. The principles of urban ecology suggest that we work within environmental carrying capacities, “living off the interest rather than consuming natural capital ” (The National Commission on the Environment, 1993, p. 2) , protecting the environment for future generations.   Ann Whiston Spirn speaks about the potential of integrating urban design and ecology—“Nature pervades the city, forging bonds between the city and the air, earth, water, and living organisms within and around it.”   (The Granite Garden)  

There are precedents for this environmental awareness in many late nineteenth and earth twentieth century American town layouts.  The plan and architecture of the town of Oak Bluffs Massachusetts (see plan and photo above) illustrates a process of a town developing in an organic fashion.  This process is well illuminated in "City in the Woods", by Ellen Weiss, Oxford University Press, 1987.    

The use of typology and patterns in the design of this new residential development is an extension of the process of reading the landscape, with more focus on the finer grain patterns of human habitation and use.  These responses to environmental challenges and opportunities are unique to a place and its inhabitants.  Initially we document and analyze these patterns, then in the process of development we transform these networks to realize new emergent visions.

In a successful environmental pattern two conflicting spatial functions are brought to resolution.  For example, a front porch is a pattern that resolves the conflict between a place that is enclosed, yet also a part of the public realm of the street, a buffer between inside and outside, public and private.  Building typologies are formed by the larger assemblies of environmental patterns that are shared by a culture.  One-story houses with porches on the street are a typology that one finds in many settlements in temperate climates throughout the world.   Entire towns can manifest a typology in their layout as well.  The typology of houses with porches is often connected to a pattern of streets that lead to central gathering place for the town’s inhabitants.  In many American towns this pattern was subverted by higher densities and the imposition of a gridiron street pattern.  A vital example of this pattern still exists in Oak Bluffs Massachusetts, in its Methodist Campground cottages with porches on streets loosely radiating around the central tabernacle.

The typical houses in the old town of Rio Vista follow a similar pattern.  They are simple one story and two story bungalows with porches fronting onto the streets (above right).  These houses, although small, extend the space of their private domain, encouraging neighborly interaction.  

The residential streets of the old town in Rio Vista also follow a simple traditional hierarchy.  There are wide tree lined streets which the houses front upon (above left) and alleys at mid block, sometimes in both directions, that serve for service access.  

An understanding and appreciation of these particular building and street patterns and typologies is reflected in the design of the proposed new development.

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