City: Rediscovering the Center

8 Water, Wind, Trees, and Light

8 WATER, WIND, TREES, AND LIGHT I was fairly sure that sunlight would prove to be critical to the success of a space. For that reason I was greatly pleased with our first timelapse film of the sun passing across Seagram Plaza. In late morning the plaza was in shadow. Shortly before noon, a narrow wedge of sunlight began moving across the plaza, and as it did, so did the sitters. Where the sun was, they sat; where there was no sun, they did not sit. It was a splendid correlation and I cherished it. Like the urban design people, I thought a southern exposure would be a necessity. Here was abundant proof. Then something went awry. As we continued our time-lapse studies the correlations vanished—not only at Seagram but at other places we were charting. The sun still moved, but the people did not. At length, the obvious dawned on us. May had been followed by June. Earlier it was just chilly enough that one was not comfortable sitting unless he was in the sun. Now the temperatures were high enough that one could sit comfortably, sun or no sun. So people did. Sun, we had to recognize, was not the critical factor we had hypothesized it would be. It was about this time that much of Paley park's sunlight was beginning to be cut off by an office building going up across the street. Water, Wind, Trees, and Light [133] From its scaffolding we focused time-lapse cameras on the park and recorded the progressive loss of sunlight and its impact on the park. The impact was surprisingly slight. People used Paley about as they had before. It is possible there might have been a net increase in their numbers had the sun not been curtailed; without an identical park as a control, one could never be sure. Unfortunate as the loss of sun was, we had to conclude, the park continued to function very well. What attendance figures do not measure, however, is the quality of the experience. It can be greater when there is sun. For then you have choice—of sun, or shade, or in-between. The best time to sit beneath a tree is when there is sunlight to be shaded from. The more access to sun, the better, and if there is a southern exposure, it should be made the most of. The zoning guidelines that were later adopted required a southern exposure if at all feasible. I do not think it should be mandatory. Our seemingly negative findingsabout sunlight suggest that places with little direct sun are not a lost cause. With adroit design, that little sunlight can be made to seem much more. As I will go into in detail in the chapters on sun and light, there are ways to snatch somebody else's sun and to get it bounced from neighboring buildings. Warmth is just as important as sunlight. The days that bring out the peak crowds on plazas are not the sparkling sunny days with temperatures in the low seventies, good as this weather may be for walking. It is the hot, muggy days—sunny or overcast—that bring them out. You would think these are the days when people would want to stay inside and be air conditioned. But this is when the peak numbers are recorded. We must have some primeval instinct for the tropical. People do like warmth. In summer, they will generally sit in the sun as well as the shade. Only in very hot weather—ninety degrees or more—will the sunny spots be vacant. Relative warmth is important, too. One of the peak sitting days is the first warm day in spring. The absolute temperature may be what would ordinarily be considered on the cool side. It is the sudden change from cold that makes the difference . Similarly, the first warm and dry day after a stretch of cool or rainy weather will bring out the crowds. I have related the counts of the number of people at various parks and plazas with the weather records. Most of the correlations are obvious enough: sun and warmth bring people out; rain and cold keep them away. It is the marginal days that are most interesting. They indicate that the difference between use and nonuse can rest on minor design features. For microclimates, to put it another way, slight causes can produce big effects. Which brings us back to warmth. Of...