It is never easy for me to explain in a few words why the street is such an exciting theme. All right, I can say that the street represents the city and its residents, that is true. It is also true that social relations are reflected in the street’s architecture. But as soon as this claim has to be substantiated and described in detail, the narrative seems to run out of steam and not to be up to the task.
Apparently, the story of the street does not emerge in a well constructed theoretical framework; it is less polished and more colourful. In other words, the exciting thing about the story may not be that it tells a truth, but that it reveals a perception. That it is how I see it, my way of seeing it. If that is the case, an entirely new reality opens up: the reality of perception – the way things are perceived by us. Reality does not exist as such, it is what we make of it.
Of course, this conclusion is an enormous relief. It is exactly what keeps a designer ticking: conferring meaning on the things that you make, knowing that there is a common denominator between what people expect or welcome, but that there are also large individual differences in this respect. For a designer, the function of a space is thus never confined to what it is, but is always what we find it to be.
What one person finds cosy, another finds claustrophobic, but it is the same space. What one culture regards as normal is regarded by another as exotic. What used to be considered dignified may now be considered authoritarian. Whether aware of the fact or not, a designer is concerned with the impact of the design on the user. The designer twiddles the knobs of perception and can decide whether the user gets what he thinks or not, whether something looks solid or innovative, fits in with the conventions or deliberately departs from them. Customs and fashions come and go.
The question of meaning has always interested me enormously because it describes the dynamism of the interface of object and person. That‘s where it‘s at, that‘s why we do it. The rest – the dogmas and theories – are good intentions, or well-chosen instruments.
This logic of perception is particularly true of the city. It is not just about individual preferences or points of view, but also about shared experiences and expressions. Here too there is deliberate or unconscious direction in the way the environment is experienced. Unlike an object or a building, generally speaking the city is not the result of the choice of one individual, but that of the sum total of many individuals over a longer period. The resulting complexity is comprehensive and thus intriguing.
Which brings us back to the street. In spite of all differences of place and time, of economy, topography and climate, there is one constant in every village, town and city, and that is the street. The street is original, universal and belongs to everybody. Streets form a network, the sum total of all the streets forms the city. Because nothing is without meaning, the street and the network of streets express the collective intentions of a city. The collective intention can be the consequence of the actions of many individuals, or may be the result of a single person‘s intervention.
As the basis of the street is always the same everywhere – a linear space bounded by two walls, a beginning and an end – it is an ideal object for study. What we shall see is that, in spite of the simple correspondences, no two streets are the same. The width of the street, how the street starts and ends, and how the buildings relate to the street are determined afresh each time. This research is about my fascination with the phenomenon of the street. I try to show what a street can tell us. They are observations that are not meant to be exhaustive, but which offer clues to the many ways in which the image of the street can be influenced.
Henk Hartzema, introduction Summer Sketchbook, June 2009
