Warmth of a New Year

Inviting materials of Hamann House interior by Michael Belleau Architect.

When the holiday season comes along we thankfully switch our thoughts, concerns and feelings from me to us. Many of us naturally spend much of our year in a competition mode for perceived scarce resources or to protect our families in different ways.

But when December rolls around we begin to smile more, give more heartfelt greetings and as a culture agree to treat each other more as extended family. That warmth and generosity we normally reserve for guests in our homes extends out into the public space.

The care we put into making our homes as welcoming and warm and friendly and happy as possible can be extended into our public spaces in order to support our care for each other year round.

We need more chances to mix in public naturally, without signing up for anything.

I remember when I was studying in London and on new years eve my partner and I decided to go into the center and just be there. At this time in early 90’s there were armed police in the train stations due to terrorist attacks and in general people were more emotionally guarded.

We were in a random pub when the clock struck midnight and someone put on the old Monkees hit ‘Daydream Believer’. To our happy surprise immediately everyone began to sing along! People of all different walks of life bonded in that special moment.

Happy Holidays! -mB

20 Years of Urban Design in Maine 20

To finish this series of blogs on my urban design work in Maine, here is an article from Maine Home and Design ( https://mainehomedesign.com/aia-design-theory/1948-the-poetry-of-place/ ) articulating my approach to architecture and couple of sketches from my student thesis long, long ago; a mixed use project on Union Wharf in Portland incorporating urban spaces.

The Poetry of Place

Architect Michael Belleau’s favorite Emerson quote is from the essay Nature: "Standing on the bare ground,—my head bathed by the blithe air, and uplifted into infinite space,—all mean egotism vanishes. I become a transparent eye-ball; I am nothing; I see all;...". This transcendent state involves both a heightened awareness as well as a sense of peace within. Belleau says his work seeks to create such an opportunity for his clients. “When I begin designing a project my goal is to create a poetic condition- a space that the client would describe to a friend in poetic terms because no other terms would suffice. This involves manipulating light, space, materials, history, so that one is allowed to feel uplifted and moved to positive emotion inside.” MH+D asked Belleau to elaborate.

Q: HOW DOES AN ARCHITECT DESIGN A POETIC PLACE?

A: First, an understanding of what “place” means and how our senses process our surroundings is necessary. For me, “place”, is both a regional term in that there is an implication of a larger geographic area distinct from another (New England vs. Deep South), and an idea of a precise smaller definition so that you know when you have entered and when you have left (The Old Port or the inside of a cathedral). The former involves geography and culture, the latter as well but for me can also be a specific neighborhood, building site, or one space. When I was a young fisherman working on a dragger off Cape Cod I stood on a regionally crafted purposeful vessel full of construction detail and imbued with local culture. In Kenneth Frampton’s essay, “Towards a Critical Regionalism: Six Points for an Architecture of Resistance”, he argues for the creation of buildings which are of their place, reflecting the local culture as a way to avoid the placeless quality of so many modern buildings and the kitsch of so many postmodern buildings. We see this placeless effect and kitsch in generic places like chain stores and restaurants and parking lots and logos that fail to change as we move from one end of the country to the other. As Gertrude Stein said: “There is no there, there.” Frampton however, addresses the design of buildings and how they can both participate in the local culture as well as the universal culture. By using materials, construction methods, programs, which are local, and some universal properties such as the industrial process of manufacturing. It’s no surprise this approach is the most sustainable as well because we need to use the common sense climatic building techniques of the past with the building science advances of the present. When I teach I have my students read this essay.

Q: HOW DO OUR MINDS PERCEIVE PLACE, ESPECIALLY IN AN EVER-CHANGING ENVIRONMENT?

A: When my first son learned to walk on the steps down to Camden harbor, I felt a very distinct sense of place. Often a pattern of some kind- like a string of row houses or a group of piers- can define a distinct place. Patterns are sought by the mind to interpret our surroundings. How our senses process our surroundings is key to understanding how architecture can create poetic places. Architecture is the stage for one’s interaction with space and objects around them. Our minds process the information taken in through the senses and send reactive signals to our bodies for physical response and to our minds to create emotions and stimulate pattern searching. It is the architect’s responsibility to create spaces that provide appropriate emotional states and patterns for the pleasure of the mind and comfort of the body. When my children walk to school their feet fall on ever changing brick pieces with various colored plant debris while moving through a space filled with building volumes, trees hovering above and paths that bend opening up new vistas. Every new day brings different colors and weather and modifications to the day before. The world is a constantly mutating organism, each pattern of growth and decay changing so that no such fixed state exists. This is true of our thoughts individually and collectively. Every interaction of one thought with another changes each thought into a new mutated one. The sciences of chaos, complexity, fuzzy logic and fractal mathematics attempt to identify the patterns of growth and change. Architecture must allow us to feel comfortable in the world we find ourselves. Thus, the places we create should allow for thoughts of constant mutation, recombination, dissolution and birth. My work seeks to harness this energy to enhance the users quality of life.

Q: WHAT IS A PROJECT EXAMPLE WHERE THIS IDEA CAME INTO PLAY FOR YOU?

A: I designed a little studio addition to a farm house in Cape Elizabeth for Guggenheim fellow and Princeton faculty photographer Jocelyn Lee. We have primal safety instincts to gravitate to the cave or the tree and this project creates a sort of tree house effect by hovering up and away from the rest of the house. Our regional culture feels comfortable with gable roofs and wood shingles. Our universal culture is comfortable with ribbon horizontal windows that allow broad uninterrupted views of the landscape in back of the house, the obvious “place” which the project focuses on. And when walking up into the studio space a sense of a distinct “place” is apparent. The structure further displays modern traits by cantilevering out in two directions; there are frameless glass window corners, and one set of glass doors below lies across an end of the volume above. On the other hand the roof is of plain old corrugated metal. The studio commands the back yard, the play space below creates indoor/outdoor connections and a deck above and behind the hovering studio allows access to nature from the large multi-dormered attic level of the original farmhouse. Architects can transform the ordinary into the extraordinary even in small projects. I often pass by small beach cottages and imagine how they could be transformed from the banal to the wonderful.

20 Years of Urban Design in Maine 7

"Arc of a Sturgeon" Casco Bay Bridge sketch

In spring 1992 George Neavoll, the Editor at the Press Herald, didn’t like the proposed new Casco Bay Bridge which looked like just a highway over the water so he called for sketches from the readership. I proposed a big arch thinking of St. Louis and called it ARC OF A STURGEON. He published 3 of the sketches with mine at the top stating:

"I rather like the top design, myself, submitted by M. Belleau of Portland. When I learned he wears a T-shirt with the Einstein quote, 'Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds,' I thought to myself, this is my kind of guy."

Portland Press Herald snippet.

And no drawbridge.

20 Years of Urban Design in Maine 5

1992 article in Maine Sunday Telegram.

In 1992, a recession year, I wrote this article as a pep talk to the city. I talked about what an amazing pedestrian experience we had here and how we could strengthen this by looking at our past, our present, and our future. 

Using the diagrammatic historical analysis described in my previous post, I laid out a roadmap for urban design work that built on the cities past. 

Diagram from article.

We needed to reconnect streets from Congress across Commercial Street out into the waterfront and be able to walk all around the piers. The whole peninsula I suggested could have a marginal way walk around it. Plazas along the waterfront would encourage public use and hence economic activity. People should be able to walk all around the nooks and crannies of the waterfront. Mixed use buildings with waterfront use out on piers at pier level and other non-residential uses above with most density at Commercial Street. Imagine an outdoor fish market.

Graphics from article using my thesis project as example.

Commercial Street itself at the time was a giant gap between the waterfront side and old port. I proposed narrowing this length for pedestrians by extending the sidewalks the depth of the angle parked cars narrowing the distance from 60 feet to 36 feet. Also, to plant trees and put lights and bench infrastructure in. And to use form based coding to create a variegated building profile along the water's edge (nooks and crannies).

Portland has the bones of a medieval european pedestrian city with our brick sidewalks and historic center. In 1992 while malls ruled the country, this article stood for the human scaled life. Next, further discussion of the article's ideas.

20 Years of Urban Design in Maine 4

I drew these diagrams in 1988 studying Portland Maine while working on my thesis, a mixed use project on Union Wharf. At the time I lived in Boston. For me, being from Maine lent a sense of urgency to working on our urban design issues. I chose Portland as the most interesting urban environment. As a former commercial fisherman, I wanted to explore the overlap between the working waterfront and regular urban living. The first step was to use historical maps to analyze the waterfront.

In the first sketch a street along the waterfront (now Fore Street) for water access is balanced by a street up to the peninsula spine and one to the eastern shore. Just enough path to manage a settlement.

The 1775 diagram shows wharfs for ships but three horizontal as it were (Fore, Middle and Congress), dominant streets tell an almost agrarian story in that movement along the peninsula was important.

1823 diagram clearly shows a radical change. You can see how the city streets used to go right out into the water. The pattern is for a very aggressive urban leap out into the harbor. Sea commerce was in full swing. The Portland urban experience became constantly moving along a street with buildings on both sides that may or may not be hovering over the water. You could look between buildings to verify this.

The 1831 diagram highlights the delicate "soft edge" created by all the wharfs and large and small buildings and pathways along the water front. This crenallated edge provided a rich variety of pedestrian experiences unique to Portland defining it experientially from another place as all site specific spaces do.

Then they built the railroad which after filling in behind became Commercial Street which cut the city off from the sea. The bottom four diagrams describe this new beginning; loss of the delicate soft edge; loss of the streets all running right out over the water; and finally a separation of the waterfront from the rest of the city.

Analysis like this helps us all create urban design plans which strengthen what we love about a place and move in a direction with confidence.

Here are two sketches of my thesis a mixed use development on Union Wharf using the above analysis. Offices and retail are toward the street and fish unloading and processing buildings are toward the pier end. The first sketch shows a movement from dense brick Commercial Street fabric (tiny piece of this shown far left and poking out at mid pier at bridge) to a pier column structure lighter wooden fabric with walkways along the edge.

Union Wharf thesis drawing. 

The next sketch shows the glass atrium arrived at from the brick courtyard just behind Commercial Street. The atrium has the brick fabric 4 stories on one side and the 3 story wooden fabric on the other. Eventually walking to the end of the atrium leads back into the brick fabric and either out to the fishing buildings from a fish market at grade or on second floor to the pedestrian bridge linking to the adjacent pier. This sketch is looking back toward Commercial Street direction.

Union Wharf thesis drawing.

Next we'll look at how the diagrams can inform an overall urban strategy for Portland.

20+ Years of Urban Design in Maine 2

I grew up in Orono Maine, a small college town in the middle of the state outside Bangor. We lived right on Main Street across from the road up to the schools. I walked to school every day and walked downtown to meet friends. The schools sat behind Main Street as they do in many Maine towns. The downtown had the town hall, police/fire station, post office, etc. all right there. Nice homes and churches lined Main Street close to town.

The state university main campus is on the other side of the Penobscot River which runs through the middle of the town. The University of Maine at Orono (UMO) is organized around a quad with the library on one end and the gymnasium on the other; mind and body. Students walk around, along and across the quad from class to class.

It's about the same distance, 1400 feet, from my house to Pat's Pizza (the original where Pat would stand behind the counter with his cigar and lip burn) as it is from the UMO library to the gym. This is the foundation for my personal sense of walkable neighborhood space and scale. I believe we can use these two examples to strengthen our state's town and city urban fabric ensuring economic success in the long term.

20+ Years of Urban Design in Maine 1

I've been working on solving Portland and Maine's urban design problems for over 20 years. My first urban design proposal was an article addressing how to build on Portland's existing at the time great urban fabric to create economic success during the 1992 recession. Since then I've outlined numerous urban design solutions for Maine and Portland in particular. Here is a link to the Pecha Kucha presentation I did last winter quickly summarizing my work in this area: 20 Years of Urban Design in Maine by Michael Belleau

The slide above represents the locations of the generations of my family. My great grandfather took big city tourists out hunting as a guide. My great grandparents raised my grandmother in Dover-Foxcroft, a small town, where they had a cow in their yard. My father went up to work during Med School summer and apparently got jaundice drinking the cows milk, a condition expertly diagnosed by his professor that fall.

My father grew up in Sanford, a small town from where he, at age 12, got dropped off on his own at the closest train station and went to Boston for the day. There, wandering the Commons, a group of kids playing baseball commandeered him to be umpire and then, when inevitably the calls did go someone's way, they yelled at him, sending him scurrying off. His dad, a manager at Stop and Shop, had a camp built on a lake nearby where where we kids went every summer.

I grew up first in the Boston/Cambridge/Lincoln PBS-ish world in Massachusetts before moving to Orono, a small town with a University. Many of my friends parents were professors and there was always an air of intellectualism about amidst the intense practicality of a rural environment. This combination of thinking while shoveling snow colored my future urban design outlook.

And now my kids are growing up in Portland on the "gold coast" as some of us Mainers like to snicker. They do, however, go to Bangor for winter vacations to hang out with my mother, their "Oma", and down to Shapleigh for summer vacations at camp and thus enjoy a similar geographical comprehension of the state.

City Center Streets for Bikes & Pedestrians

Currently we are on the cusp of the movement to convert our streets from automobile only to "complete streets", those that fully accommodate all modes of transportation. This means the creation of bicycle lanes first and foremost. These bike lanes are best made as separate from auto lanes with barrier to get parents with kids and the vast majority of people who will bike to feel comfortable. This means more width sometimes in street section and more infrastructure.

Of course this is wonderful to get the kind of dedicated bike lanes like Copenhagen has but perhaps in city centers we should think about how wonderful narrower streets feel to walk down and that it may be best to turn the street lanes in city centers into bike lanes. A gradual shift from sitting in a high speed vehicle to pedaling to walking as primary mode of transportation can follow the gradual shift in urban fabric from isolated building in countryside to tight walkable medieval pedestrian street city centers.

Sometimes its better to skip the intermediate step of building for current trends and save money by just converting what we have bit by bit.

Elements of NE Style: Hedges

Walkway Walls

I love hedges. Encountering ubiquitous hedges while living on Cape Cod and in England, I experienced them as living walls. They can define a space, shield you from the wind, screen out ugliness or create privacy. I think they are an element of New England design.

House Hedge

There are many different species of hedge plants but I think of only a few due to the time I spend on Cape Cod. The emerald arborvitae is evergreen, soft and can grow very high, but also susceptible to snow damage and deer nibbling; a good choice non-the-less for general purpose evergreen hedge. The Yew has poisonous berries but makes a nice hedge.

Cotswolds Yew Hedge

Here's video of trimming it

The deciduous north privet, though needing to be trimmed a few times every year, is my first choice overall due to density and ability to shape it in that you can do topiary with it. It's listed as invasive so if not already in your area, you may want to be consult your nursery to be sure it's okay ecologically. Only plant the fast growing privet if you can trim it regularly from all sides.

Knot Hedge

One way to plant a hedge using arborvitae as example is this. A good generic hedge choice site is this. Another generic hedge planting instruction is this.

Road Hedge

The largest hedge in the world is the Meikleour Beech Hedge in Scotland built in 1745 and over 98 feet tall. Hedges can define property lines or screen out your driveway and it's parked cars. Here's a classic shot of big pine tree hedges used as windblock in Japanese farms from Rudolfsky's "Architecture Without Architects":

 Shimane Prefecture Farm Hedges

You can also do cool topiary things with hedges.

Sculptural Hedge at Audley End

Here's a link to a nice blog entry on hedges in Nantucket.

Let's close with this:

Yew Hedge at Blickling

Is it a house or a hedge?