King Charles built a completely new town and it’s MORE than just a normal town...

A thread🧵 1/ Experiment that worked

Poundbury was an experiment that many thought would fail. But, guess what? It became an enormous success.

Ever wondered why some buildings are more loved than others?

The reason might surprise you… 🧵

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Our cities are becoming increasingly ugly day by day.

Concrete overpasses, outdated business parks, strip malls...

It makes us wonder, where's the beauty in these designs?

Paseo Cayalá in Guatemala is a new development masterplanned by Léon Krier and designed by Estudio Urbano, a Guatemalan architecture firm spearheaded by Maria Sánchez and Pedro Pablo Godoy.

It has been criticised, but why - and is that justified?

A short thread 🧵 Part of the critique of the place is that it is a relatively safe place from the otherwise relatively unsafe rest of Guatemala city. This safety is not due to gates protecting it from the 'common people'; rather, the area equips security to achieve this goal.

But that is not all

Continuing the AI experiment.

What happens if I ask Midjourney AI to create a beautiful, liveable street at eye level?

Interesting: when I only ask for a nice street, it gives traditional architecture. When I ask for a nice street with brutalist arch, the outcome is... dead Those public spaces don't look like what I asked for in the prompt.

Harsh open plains, of course little detail in the buildings. These streets (although mostly car-free) look hostile. In autumn you'd get blown away here.

Just an interesting observation.

To celebrate 25k followers, here a thread with something fun:

"What if ... architects designed a theme park?"

Starring the incredible Midjourney AI image generation.

Let's start off with Palladio:
/1 The next one: Le Corbusier and Gropius

Quite colorful, but unmistakably modernist:
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Letting OMA do urban design vs. letting Midjourney create an urban design.

Prompt:
Bird's eye view of a beautiful, human scaled city with beautiful ornate buildings, attractive squares, happy people - etc.

Where would you rather live? The maquette is Euralille, truly a beacon of beautiful, human scaled urbanism that is designed for humans - not cars /s

The Greek Classical Orders & Classical Proportions - A short thread

First: Greek Doric. A sturdy classical order, associated with the masculine.

The Parthenon is a famous example (Acropolis, Athens)

1/ Another beautiful Doric example, the temple of Hephaestus. A peripteral temple. Note the lack of a base, the column rests directly on the stylobate
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19th century urbanism in Amsterdam.

A formula that seems to work quite well; even the then hated speculation-driven developments turned into popular although somewhat cramped places. The density supports a lot of shops and cafés, it's liveable - could be greener though It has changed the last few years of course - Amsterdam was a no man's land in the 70's; those lucky enough to not have taken their losses to leave the city now live in the most sought-after, expensive houses.

Those same houses were *very* problematic. Quickly and cheaply built