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ALBION DISTRICT LIBRARY BY PERKINS + WILL IS A 2018 COTE TOP TEN RECIPIENT. IMAGE: DOUBLESPACE PHOTOGRAPHY

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The Committee on the Environment (COTE®) is an AIA Knowledge Community working for architects, allied professionals, and the public to achieve climate action and climate justice through design. We believe that design excellence is the foundation of a healthy, sustainable, and equitable future. Our work promotes design strategies that empower all AIA members to realize the best social and environmental outcomes with the clients and the communities they serve.

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Growing up in a walkable transit city in 1950s Gerrnany

  • 1.  Growing up in a walkable transit city in 1950s Gerrnany

    Posted 12-11-2019 05:30 PM

    Growing up in a walkable transit city in the 1950s 

    When I was born in Stuttgart, Germany, 5 years after WW II, the city was still a mess. Back then it was only about half the size of Baltimore. Today the massive shrinkage of my new hometown and modest growth of my old one make them equals in population.
    Stuttgart Market Square after air raid. The tower building is city hall which
    was later demolished in favor of a modernist building

    Heavy air raids by the allies aimed at vital industries (cars, pistons, transmissions and the like), large parts of downtown lay in rubble way into the 1950s. Quickly erected one story buildings provided some of the essential services. But while streetcars still cleared the ruins, on the drafting tables of planners and traffic engineers emerged the blueprints for a car-friendly postwar city which would bring about a second wave of heavy destruction in the name of progress and mobility.

    My first memories, though, involve my mother taking me by the hand to go shopping. Stuttgart and its neighborhoods were still a town of pedestrians, bicyclists and streetcars. In part because of the war, in part because no other country had been as motorized as the US had been already after WW I, cars in Germany were few, they were tiny and for most not affordable. My parents certainly didn't have one. The only wheels in our family's possession were those of a wicker pram (baby carriage) in which I was initially placed, later replaced by an open convertible "sportscar" as my parents called it, in today's terms a stroller. Both designs clearly inspired by automotive aspirations.
    Wicker pram, inspired by automotive
    design

    My parents didn't have a washing machine either, nor a refrigerator, central air or even a bicycle. Being accommodated by emergency law,... READ FULL ARTICLE


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    [Klaus] Philipsen FAIA
    Archplan Inc. Philipsen Architects
    Baltimore MD
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