ashlayla, Jencks

Out of all of the concepts that Jencks talked about in his essay, urbane urbanism was easiest for me to understand. I was in Dr. Foglesong's Disney and the City intercession this semester and we talked a lot about new urbanism. During one of our field trips, we went to Celebration which is a town that uses principles of urbane/new urbanism. It's pedestrian oriented and most buildings are "mixed use." When I was reading Jencks, I got excited because I knew what he was talking about. In my intercession we were asked if we would ever want to live in a town like Celebration, and well, I'm still up in the air because Celebration is almost too perfect for me. One of the pictures on the powerpoint was a building that looked exactly like the Bank of America building in downtown Celebration. The staircase is on the outside but it goes nowhere. When Disney owned Celebration that used to be their headquarters, but now it’s just a bank. To me, the most unique concept that Jencks talked about was anthropomorphism. I think it’s a really creative way to build unique buildings. I see it as a way to get more business, because how many businesses have buildings that look like a face? It almost makes the business, or house, like a tourist attraction because they are somewhat rare. I’m excited for our field trip to downtown Orlando because I want to be able to pick out these different concepts that architects have used in their designs.

-ashlayla (Jencks post)