Articulation is one of those planner-y terms that gets thrown around quite a bit. Worse than that, it can get thrown around without people really understanding what they're saying. To that issue, let's let Wikipedia drop some knowledge.
What I wanted to talk about today is called "Rooftop Articulation". Whenever you see a building where the top few floors have got something interesting going on, that's rooftop articulation. There are some cities and schools of planning thought that like to make rooftop articulation mandatory in new construction, especially in business districts and downtowns. Opposing viewpoints call these types of zoning restrictions silly. They claim such requirements are a dictation of design from the city planner's office and stifle the innate creativity of architects. Other people claim that it can create a "wedding cake" effect where you'll end up with a bunch of weird stuff on the upper floors of buildings and a monoculture of rooftop articulations.
Sometimes it can be awesome:
Other times, not so much....
Other times, not so much....
But! This isn't the "be bitchy about architects" blog, this is Industrianism. To that end, I wanted to talk about the rooftop articulations that I've found in and around my neighborhood. Now, these weren't regulated and required articulations, but rather go back to an earlier era when greater stock and pride was placed in the industrial spaces created within a city. Too often, new industrial space is cheaply constructed cubes made of cinder-block. Too often, new residential urban units are a mishmash of modernist architectural styles that comes out looking like crap. Planners and developers should take notice of the wealth of examples around them and try to incorporate that beauty into new developments.
This rooftop articulation, placed on the tower of the building, overlooks a large intersection. The tower on the corner, and the articulation on it that demands attention, helps to put an otherwise wide-open intersection, that would be extremely pedestrian unfriendly, into better perspective. Imagine, an old industrial site that happens to have modern sound planning principles! Maybe we should just look around a bit more...
This rooftop articulation, placed on the tower of the building, overlooks a large intersection. The tower on the corner, and the articulation on it that demands attention, helps to put an otherwise wide-open intersection, that would be extremely pedestrian unfriendly, into better perspective. Imagine, an old industrial site that happens to have modern sound planning principles! Maybe we should just look around a bit more...
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