Jan Gehl had just graduated as an architect; it was 1960 and he had been schooled in how to “do modern cities, with high-rises and a lot of lawns and good open space – good windy spaces”. About to put those years of study into practice, he met his future wife, psychologist Ingrid Mundt, and everything changed. In the years that followed, he would develop the thinking that has made him a pioneer of so-called “liveable cities” around the world. Meeting Ingrid, someone who had studied “people rather than bricks”, says Gehl over the phone from Copenhagen, catalysed a host of discussions between young architects and young psychologists questioning why architects were not really interested in people, how architecture can “influence people’s lives”, and “how cities are used by people”. Ultimately the idea was to think up ways to make cities “that people would be happier using”. Typically, says the 78-year-old – not long off a plane from Japan but sounding sharp – “the main focus [of urban planning] has been to keep the cars happy”. But Gehl, bolstered by psychological thinking, spent the next 40 years developing principles based on how the shape of cities can impact on the human lives lived within them, rather than on traffic efficiency and parking spaces.
Posted on: Mon, 08 Dec 2014 13:25:49 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015