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July 9th


Today we had the pleasure of attending both a presentation and a walking tour (of Copenhagen)  by the world-famous design firm; Gehl Architects. Gehl focuses on urban design and planning consultation. Started by Jan Gehl with the approach of "human beings are the starting point", they look to put humans in the center of all their designs with simplicity.

Much like Copenhaganized, they will come into cities as a third-party consultant, who then eventually offer up a new design, or alternative to what the city is doing now. For example, they were hired by New York City to come in and try to fix the traffic issues around times square. This was fixed by simply adding in a pilot program of taking out a lane and adding some bike lanes with paint. This pilot worked so well that the city decided to keep it. It's important to note that Gehl doesn't strictly work within the realm of transportation, but that it is one of their main focuses.

Their work starts with intense research. This comes in multiple forms, but the most effective is on sight research. They then take what they learned about the sight and research projects that have had similar situations and whether or not the solutions made them better. Once this is over they redesign or consult their clients about how they could fix their problems.

This goes to show how far research can take you. Many of their projects are world renown and they continue to work with the bases of researching before they begin to design. Not to say that people aren't researching now, but there's is something about bringing in a fresh set of eyes and having them look at and try to solve problems that can make the solutions so much better. I think that third party urban design such as Gehl and Copenhagenized are the future because it allows you to think in ways and collaborate in ways that were never possible beforehand.

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