This simple diagram elegantly illustrates the importance of the rural to urban transect, solar access and the proper organization of spaces, buildings and density.
Design: EEK Architects
Recent Projects
Clean Energy and Placemaking
Townscape Design has partnered with Energy Stewardship and the Maryland Clean Energy ...
Covenant Woods
Covenant Woods is a continuing care retirement community in Mechanicsville, Virginia. Townscape ...
Notable quotables
– Winston ChurchillSuccess is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.
– Ian L. McHarg, Design with Nature, 1969The work is abundant, we require only a deference born of understanding to fulfill man’s promise. man is that uniquely conscious creature who can perceive and express. He must become the steward of the biosphere. To do this he must design with nature.
– Thomas Sharp, The Anatomy of the Village, 1946A study of the principles of design, whether they were conscious or unconscious, which have given our villages their beauty, their charm and their character, may well elucidate principles that will be useful in our new building.
– Dhiru A. Thadani, The Language of Towns and Cities, 2010I believe that society must return to basic principles of urbanism, and we collectively must stop wasting resources on untested, technocratic solutions. Only then will cities continue to serve future generations as centers of culture, innovation, and discourse of humankind.
– Leon KrierThe forms of present buildings and settlements are largely the product of an intemperate use of petrochemical energies, of synthetic materials, and industrialized mass production. Traditional towns and villages instead depend essentially on the use of natural local resources and materials, on individual manpower and skills.
– Christopher Alexander, A Pattern Language, 1977Patterns (of towns and communities) can never be “designed” or “built” in one fell swoop – but patient piecemeal growth, designed in such a way that every individual act is always helping to create or generate these larger global patterns, will, slowly and surely, over the years, make a community that has these gobal patterns in it.
– Douglas FarrAll sustainability is local.
– Albert EinsteinIf a physical theory can’t be explained to a child, it’s probably worthless.
– -UN Brundtland Commission, March 20, 1987Sustainable development is development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.
– Richard BurdickLawns use more equipment,labor, fuel, and agricultural toxins than industrial farming, making lawns the largest agricultural sector in the United States.
– William Whyte, The Last LandscapeOur (town) planning should take its cue from the patterns of nature itself – the water table, the floodplains, the ridges, the woods, and above all, the streams.
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