Cognitive Risk

Les Deux Magots, a Parisian café 

Upon each successive reading, I am always surprised by how well Bill Kleinsasser’s essays on the importance of experiential considerations in architecture have stood the test of time. They remain constructive and useful to designers because how people actually experience their physical environment is too frequently neglected in contemporary design in favor of aesthetic flash or fashion. The fact is the invariable human capacity and need for rich and expanded experiences demand that architects appreciate how to provide supportive conditions and important opportunities for people. He may be gone now, but Bill’s thoughtful lessons endure. 

The following excerpt from the 1981 edition of Synthesis addresses Bill’s notion of “cognitive risk” and the means by which designers can mitigate its effect through architectural means. Decades on, the words are more cogent than ever: 

Cognitive Risk
People often avoid desirable experiences because they anticipate some kind of personal risk in those experiences. 

Before one can relate to and comfortably choose to have a new experience, one must be able to preview the experience by imagining its impact and meaning; one must be able to assess its opportunities, the possibilities of “success” or “failure,” if there is something to be gained or lost, whether another experience is better, etc. 

A simple response to this frame of reference is described in Peterson’s paper, The Id and the Image / Design Implications of Human Needs: 

“We should make convenient indoor and outdoor gathering places where one can watch things happening without having to participate oneself. The French sidewalk café is an example: Loitering is encouraged by the sale of food and drink and the availability of games. People come and linger. They have a chance to look out over a street scene which is rich with activity, both human and non-human, and which would be, without the opportunity to pause and observe it, formidable and less accessible.” 

Another example which demonstrates response to this hypothesis is the workplace for 15 students built at the University of Oregon in the spring of 1969. The plan configuration provided several opportunities for those passing by the place to observe what was happening inside, together with several opportunities (varying in degree of required commitment) to come in and participate. The purpose of this plan-arrangement was to invite passersby to observe, come in, and learn about what we were doing. It worked too well: everyone came in and we were almost driven out. But compare this situation to that occurring in corridors where there are many doors with no windows, no stopping or tarrying places where information of some kind might be gained, and where one usually feels that entering any of the doors is very “risky.” 

In a more complex sense, this Frame of Reference is based upon the tendency for people to be overwhelmed or confused by places, people, and situations that are complex, that “come on too strongly,” or that reveal themselves all at once. In making the physical environment, this suggests the need for clear articulation of parts and places (parts and places that are differentiated or otherwise made more realizable). It also seems to imply the need for the gradual, rather than sudden, unfolding of the organization of places and the nature of their parts. 

Summary: 
Cognitive risk (anticipated personal risk) apparently may be reduced by providing the following in the built environment: 

1. Overview of what is to come (allowing detached participation)
2. Preview (beyond overview)
3. Slow reveal (not all at once or too much at once)
4. Precise separation (maybe controllable separation)
5. Other hints of what is coming (visual traces)
6. Clear evidence of boundaries, limits, hazards, conditions (clarifying territories, subspaces, and layers so that contact is not avoided because of apprehensive withdrawal or avoidance)
7. Opportunity to commit oneself in stages (to choose the degree of commitment)
8. Cross-views, back-views, reinforcing views (to allow a buildup of spatial or place understanding)
9. Clearly differentiated subparts and subspaces (to achieve #6 above)

WK/1981

Influences: Robert Venturi

Robert Venturi, FAIA: 1925-2018 (photo by Todd Sheridan [CC BY-SA 2.0  (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons)

An earlier blog entry of mine, “Genealogy of Influence,” promised a series of posts about the architects and theorists who influenced my architectural world view. This is the latest post in the series. 

This weekend is a busy one for me, but I could not let it pass without acknowledging the death of Robert Venturi this past Tuesday at the age of 93. Venturi truly was one of the major architectural figures of the 20th century. He was a Pritzker Prize laureate and a recipient (along with his wife and professional partner Denise Scott Brown) of the AIA Gold Medal. Eulogies cite his enormous influence as an architect and theorist upon a profession that had by the 1960s and 70s become sclerotic and often out of touch with those it served. He was a pioneering postmodernist though he famously disavowed the label. He contributed greatly to the broadening of architectural discourse during a culturally transformative time. Many buildings and places today are nuanced, erudite, subtle, witty, and more in no small part because of Venturi’s own work and writings. 

My introduction to Robert Venturi came from reading his landmark treatise Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture. I purchased my now thoroughly dogeared copy in 1977, immediately upon publication of its second edition by the Museum of Modern Art. It’s important to understand the zeitgeist at the time: the most celebrated architecture of the 1960’s and 1970’s generally conformed to doctrinaire Modernism though change was in the wind. Before discovering Complexity and Contradiction as a first-year student at the British Columbia Institute of Technology, I regarded “architecture” to be limited mostly to the examples of de rigueur Pacific Northwest Modernism with which—having grown up in Vancouver—I was most familiar. The book was a total revelation for me: I realized Architecture, with a capital “A,” could do much, much more than merely solve a design problem with a pleasing composition of forms. I learned Architecture also had the capacity to be a conveyor of meaning, which many historical examples and styles from all periods provided in rich abundance. My eyes had been opened to see a vastly more inclusive and complex architectural universe. 

Rather than expound too much more about how Robert Venturi fundamentally changed how we look at and talk about architecture, I’ll include the following excerpt from Complexity and Contradiction. This passage is the first, short chapter of the book. By characterizing it as a “gentle manifesto,” Venturi sought direct and ironic comparison with the more bombastic declarations of Adolf Loos, Le Corbusier, Walter Gropius, and others from the early years of Modernism:  

Nonstraightforward Architecture: A Gentle Manifesto 

I like complexity and contradiction in architecture. I do not like the incoherence or arbitrariness of incompetent architecture nor the precious intricacies of picturesqueness or expressionism. Instead, I speak of a complex and contradictory architecture based on the richness and ambiguity of modern experience, including that experience which is inherent in art. Everywhere, except in architecture, complexity and contradiction have been acknowledged, from Godel’s proof of ultimate inconsistency in mathematics to T.S. Eliot’s analysis of “difficult” poetry and Joseph Albers’ definition of the paradoxical quality of painting. 

But architecture is necessarily complex and contradictory in its very inclusion of the traditional Vitruvian elements of commodity, firmness, and delight. And today the wants of program, structure, mechanical equipment, and expression, even in single buildings in simple contexts, are diverse and conflicting in ways previously unimaginable. The increasing dimension and scale of architecture in urban and regional planning add to the difficulties. I welcome the problems and exploit the uncertainties. By embracing contradiction as well as complexity, I aim for vitality as well as validity. 

Architects can no longer afford to be intimidated by the puritanically moral language of orthodox Modern architecture. I like elements which are hybrid rather than “pure,” compromising rather than “clean,” distorted rather than “straightforward,” ambiguous rather than “articulated,” perverse as well as impersonal, boring as well as “interesting,” conventional rather than “designed,” accommodating rather than excluding, redundant rather than simple, vestigial as well as innovating, inconsistent and equivocal rather than direct and clear. I am for messy vitality over obvious unity. I include the non sequitur and proclaim the duality. 

I am for richness of meaning rather than clarity of meaning; for the implicit function as well as the explicit function. I prefer “both-and” to “either-or,” black and white, and sometimes gray, to black or white. A valid architecture evokes many levels of meaning and combinations of focus: its space and its elements become readable and workable in several ways at once. 

But an architecture of complexity and contradiction has a special obligation toward the whole: its truth must be in its totality or its implications for totality. It must embody the difficult unity of inclusion rather than the easy unity of exclusion. More is not less. 

Vanna Venturi House (1964)

I would subsequently acquire Learning from Las Vegas (coauthored with Denise Scott Brown and Steven Izenour), which celebrated the common, the vernacular, and the use or interpretation of signs and symbols, further cementing my appreciation for the value to architects of a catholic, all-embracing, and eclectic knowledge base.

Venturi’s books and designs did prefigure a proliferation of some awfully bad, kitschy, cheap, and vulgar buildings by lesser architects during Postmodernism’s late 70s, 80s, and early 90s heyday. Critics maligned much of the work executed under its banner. The use of irony—which knowing architects could expertly employ—frequently would be unintentionally absurd in the most trivial work of others. Too many thoughtlessly quoted historic motifs at random. For his part, Venturi claimed he used history as a reference but never used it for direct inspiration. Today, it’s fashionably hip among some to look back at Postmodernism with sardonic affection for its melding of wit and picturesqueness. I suspect Robert Venturi was bemused by the interest of millennials in the more superficial traits of a movement he helped spawn rather than in its more substantive and lasting lessons. 

I learned from Robert Venturi that the ordinary can be extraordinary, and that history provides many lessons from which to draw. By his own account, he was guided not by habit but by a conscious sense of the past—by precedent, thoughtfully considered. Ultimately, his legacy for all architects will be how he expanded our perception of what architecture was, is, and can be. 

Civic Park Groundbreaking Celebration!

After two+ long years of design and permitting work, it’s hard to believe construction of Eugene Civic Park is about to begin. Mark your calendars: The Eugene Civic Alliance (ECA) invites everyone in the community to celebrate the project’s groundbreaking on Sunday, October 7 at 2:00 PM.

To properly launch the construction of a facility as unique as Civic Park, this won’t be a run-of-the-mill groundbreaking ceremony. Make sure you bring a shovel with you! While the event will begin with the requisite words about Civic Park from ECA team members and stakeholders, the real fun will immediately follow. To commemorate the event and provide it with a fitting flourish of community fanfare, everyone will have a chance to find his or her own place on the site, dig in, and ceremonially break ground for the Civic Park project! 

The groundbreaking will mark the start of the project’s initial phase. Earlier this year, the ECA board of directors decided to construct the facility in two separate packages over time. Phase 1 will include the KIDSPORTS fieldhouse, parking lots, and the synthetic turf, all-weather playing field. The second phase will consist of a capacious grandstand and associated concourse, restrooms, press box, ticket office, and other amenities. The two-phased approach leverages the funds and pledges ECA already has in place to bring critically needed facilities online as quickly as possible.  

ECA is lining up a roster of special guest speakers, as well as food and beverage vendors for the groundbreaking, so it’s certain to be a spirited event. There’s no doubt this is an exciting milestone for the project, one that I as one of the architects involved have personally looked forward to for a long time.

Play On!

What:  Civic Park Groundbreaking

When:  Sunday, October 7; 2:00 PM

Where:  The Civic Park site, at the former Civic Stadium location between Willamette Street and Amazon Parkway south of 20th Avenue in Eugene.

Cost:  Free

TinyFest Northwest

Emerald Village, a tiny home community providing low-income individuals the security and benefits of a permanent home (photo from SquareOne Villages Facebook page)

TinyFest Northwest will be in Eugene on Saturday, September 29 and Sunday, September 30 at the Lane Events Center. Builders, tiny dwellers, and tiny living fans alike will be inspired and informed by educational workshops and leaders in the tiny home movement. They’ll meet and share experiences with fellow tiny living enthusiasts, peruse Marketplace offerings, and check out the DIY/Tiny Dweller Village.

Sunday’s keynote speaker will be Andrew Heben, Project Director with SquareOne Villages. SquareOne is a non-profit organization based right here in Eugene, dedicated to developing self-managed communities of cost-effective tiny houses for those in need of housing. SquareOne’s first project, Opportunity Village, opened in 2013 as a transitional micro-housing community for otherwise homeless individuals and couples. The next iteration, Emerald Village, aimed to create a permanent tiny house village affordable to people with extremely low-incomes. 

Andrew’s background is in urban planning and design. In addition to being SquareOne’s project director, he is the author of Tent City Urbanism: From Self-Organized Camps to Tiny House Villages, based on his extensive field work, personal research, and hands-on experience with SquareOne. The book is available for purchase through SquareOne’ website or at Amazon.com.  

The tiny house movement has been gaining a lot of momentum in recent years. Downsizing and simple living may appear to be fashionable trends but the environmental and social merits of tiny houses and living with less give the movement real staying power. If you’re a tiny home enthusiast, or simply are interested in learning more, don’t miss TinyFest Northwest.

What: TinyFest Northwest

When: Saturday, September 29 and Sunday, September 30; 10am – 7pm both days

Where:  Lane Events Center, 796 W. 13^th Avenue, Eugene, OR  97402

Cost:  Weekend Pass at the Gate $20, Online* $17. Single Day Ticket at the Gate $15, Online* $12. Kids 12 & Under are FREE! *Online prices are available until midnight PST on Friday, September 28. https://www.eventbrite.com/e/tinyfest-northwest-volunteer-tickets-48780185849

*    *    *    *    *    *

Eve McClure, a volunteer with SquareOne, told me about TinyFest Northwest. I met Eve and two Emerald Village residents while they were selling SquareOne-branded clear plastic tote bags and drawstring bags on the sidewalk in front of J. Michael’s Books, just down the street from my firm’s office in the Miner Building. The University of Oregon has a brand new rule that disallows bringing anything into Autzen Stadium that isn't in a clear plastic bag or container. If you’re an Oregon Duck fan and still need your own clear bag to bring to games with you, be sure to support SquareOne by purchasing one of their bags. Look for SquareOne tables in front of Autzen Stadium on game day (they’ll be on site for the next two home games: September 15 and September 22).  

Eugene’s Town Square

Aerial view of the future Eugene Town Square: North is to the left; the yellow rectangle is the existing "butterfly" parking lot owned by the County (base image © 2018 Google) 

In a decidedly snarky editorial last week, the Register-Guard threw shade upon the City of Eugene’s latest bid to provide our community with a physical seat for its civic government. The paper likened the City’s proposed bundling of a new Eugene City Hall on the county-owned “butterfly” parking lot along with a year-round Lane County Farmers’ Market and Parks Blocks improvements in a combined project it dubbed Eugene’s “Town Square” to a self-interested marketing ploy worthy of fictional Mad Men ad agency Sterling Cooper. While the City’s culpability for the City Hall debacle is not subject to debate, I do know the folks in COE Planning & Development are genuinely earnest and sincere in their efforts to improve downtown and make the best of its leaders’ botched handling of the City Hall replacement project. The R-G piece likely inflamed cynicism among its readers, which is unfortunate and unhelpful. 

The Town Square concept is not Madison Avenue packaging. It is instead an organic outcome of a multiplicity of factors stemming from historical and contemporary roots, many of which were and are beyond the control of COE planners. That we’ve arrived at this point is due in equal parts to dumb luck and serendipity. Thanks to the prospect of a proposed land swap with Lane County, the City can now consider three previously separate projects to be a singular opportunity to generate what Christopher Alexander refers to as “wholeness” in the built environment. The City and County are not always known for thinking outside the box or cooperatively(1), so this cross-agency collaboration is commendable. We owe thanks to the elected representatives and members of the joint coordinated downtown development task force who recognized the opportunities inherent in developing an equitably beneficial and collaborative vision for downtown Eugene.(2) 

Any functioning city is a complex adaptive system, much more than the sum of its parts alone. Rather than separately regarding a new City Hall, a covered Farmers’ Market, and the Parks Blocks, designers will be able to approach the three elements with coherence and a compelling vision in mind. The goal now is to create something so intertwined and whole that it is difficult to imagine how it can be considered or function well as discrete elements. Combining the three projects magnifies the prospect of a generative design process that emphasizes the interrelatedness of the projects and ensures every building increment will form a greater whole, which is both larger and more significant than itself (this is Alexander’s Rule #2: The Growth of Larger Wholes, from his 1987 book A New Theory of Urban Design). 

From both morphological and symbolic perspectives, a recognizable city hall is necessary and important because it is an expression of municipal authority and democracy in the spatial order of our urban fabric. Its symbolism resonates with people because civic ritual and ceremony encourage participation in the collective life of the community. If anything, the concept of shared ritual is necessary now more than ever because of the increasingly fragmented and digital nature of our interactions. Properly handled, a city hall and its architecture, along with that of a permanent Farmers’ Market structure and the refurbished Park Blocks, will enhance literal and conceptual perceptions of centeredness, wholeness, and urban order. 

In the past, city halls often bordered or occupied a town square in the historical heart of the community. Functional town squares offer a gathering spot for people and social, cultural, and political activities. According to Project for Public Spaces, public squares bring diverse benefits to a city. They can nurture identity, draw a diverse population, serve as a city’s “common ground,” and catalyze private investment. PPS’s principles for successful squares include image and identity, attractions and amenities, access, and management plans that promote ways to keep them safe and lively. As presently envisioned by COE planners—bounded in part by an attractive and welcoming new City Hall—Eugene’s Town Square would be a place even more inseparable from our civic identity than the current Park Blocks are today. 

City Hall needn’t be a palace, and the City’s currently proposed funding is certainly insufficient to realize anything remotely close to one. The same is true for the relatively modest amount of urban renewal district dollars earmarked for the Farmers’ Market and Parks Blocks. The key will be leveraging the limited resources to maximize bang for the buck. For example, a covered Farmer’s Market might double as a venue for large town hall gatherings or entertainment events. Perhaps there are other functions or activities that might benefit from the synergies inherent in a combined project. Certainly, a primary role for a new City Hall to perform will be as a backdrop for the activities occurring on the Town Square. The City should otherwise scale back its expectations for what its new City Hall will be. A pragmatic strategy will be to continue to limit its scope to that of a symbolic seat for city government, housing at most the ceremonial council chamber and offices for the mayor, city councilors, and the City Manager. Other COE offices would remain in leased space distributed throughout downtown. 

The 40 acre parcel donated by Eugene and Mary Skinner to Lane County in 1856. 

Of course, as the Register-Guard pointed out, still unanswered is whether the proposed land swap between the City and the County will be allowed to proceed. I’m presuming the court ruling will favor the transaction. Even if it does not, the community founders’ original vision of a public square would still be attainable, the difference being the County’s new courthouse might rise on the “butterfly” lot parcel instead of a new City Hall. I do know in terms of programmatic fit, a new courthouse—which will be many times larger than a ceremonial City Hall—is much better suited to the former City Hall site, and vice versa. In my opinion, a scenario wherein the City Hall occupies the Town Square would fulfill the founders’ vision in spirit if not the letter of the original deed restrictions. I don’t see a problem as long as the property is kept under public ownership. 

If the land swap falls through, I’m inclined to favor moving City Hall to the riverfront EWEB headquarters building rather than once again attempting to rebuild on the former city hall site. If newly constructed on the old city hall site, the building would look oddly diminutive and the remainder of the block would by necessity remain fallow if it is to be reserved for future consolidation of COE offices.(3) 

The City of Eugene’s self-inflicted wounds have not helped its efforts to develop a new City Hall. The narrative today would be much different if the City and the County brokered the land swap and the Town Square concept from the outset. If they had, chances are the City of Eugene would have been spared much of the controversy and bad press that has accompanied more than a decade of poor decisions, false starts, and equivocation. Hindsight is always 20/20. The fact is we are where we are today. 

In a scene from what is now part of pop culture lore, Mad Men protagonist and Sterling Cooper creative director Dan Draper memorably declared “If you don’t like what’s being said, change the conversation.” The City of Eugene has changed the conversation, but this isn’t a marketing gambit. This is a laudably deep reset, one that might achieve the best outcome we can reasonably hope for.

(1) A written history of the site by Dan Armstrong is particularly informative. The use and conditions of use of the “public square in Eugene City” have been issues of debate multiple times in the one hundred and sixty-plus years since the square’s creation.

(2) Full disclosure: In 2016 the City of Eugene and Lane County retained Cameron McCarthy Landscape Architecture & Planning and my firm—Robertson/Sherwood/Architects—to explore the opportunities inherent in three development scenarios for publicly owned properties in downtown.

Scenario A: City Hall and Farmers Market on the Site of Former City Hall and the Courthouse on the Butterfly Lot

Scenario B: City Hall and the Courthouse on the Site of Former City Hall and the Farmers Market on the Butterfly Lot

Scenario C: City Hall and the Farmers Market on the Butterfly Lot and the Courthouse on the Site of the Former City Hall.

(3)  If the City does need to lower its sights for City Hall, it could do much worse than purchasing and repurposing the EWEB headquarters. As I wrote six years ago, converting the EWEB headquarters into Eugene’s new city hall can be a win-win scenario. EWEB could entrust its prominent, uniquely situated, structurally sound, and energy-efficient building to the City of Eugene rather than to a private enterprise that might permanently remove it and its riverfront prospect from the public realm. The City would secure an attractive new home for itself at a considerable discount compared to the cost of constructing equivalent space from scratch. The downside, of course, would be the distance between that location and the historic center of Eugene.