City: Rediscovering the Center

18 Bounce Light

18 BOUNCE LIGHT So far we have been dealing with measures to curb shadows. But there are many more positive aspects to be explored. The same big bad buildings that are cutting off light to one area can reflect it to another. The potentials for such bounce light should be explored; so, too, should spotlighting techniques for redirecting the sun into dark places that never had it before. The prerequisite is a thorough microclimatic study of the effects of new buildings on their surroundings. This review should be done by the planning commission or by an independent body on its behalf. It should not be left to the architects. On technical matters, planning bodies usually accept the data given them by the architects and developer. They do not have the budget to do their own studies or commission them. So they're grateful for the data, when they should be just a bit suspicious, and they usually adopt them as their own in the final statement of findings. Sun studies are a case in point. It's not that they are slanted—not deliberately , anyway—it's just that they can be grossly inaccurate. Three that I examined recently were not only in error but palpably so. One had true north 6 degrees to the west of true north. Another, by one of the biggest firms, had shadows falling on abstract space, with no indication as to what buildings, if any, were in their path. A third had late afternoon sun at 340 degrees; the sun itself gets only to 270 degrees when it calls it a day. In none of these instances did the review bodies spot the error. If the studies had shown the sun setting in the east, the review bodies probably would not have spotted the error. There is something in the [268] CITY process that militates against it. Too much faith and trust proved troublesome for San Francisco's planning commission. One of the worst shadows was the product of a building that the architect's study indicated would be exemplary. When it proved otherwise, the planning commission came in for a lot of criticism, and it resolved never to make the same mistake again. Luckily, across the Bay in Berkeley there was just the kind of body the planners could turn to for help. With a grant from the National Science Foundation, the late Donald Appleyard had created the Environmental Simulation Laboratory . One of his first studies was of the view from the road. Over a room-sized topographical model of Marin County he suspended a 16mm camera. With a computer-driven mechanism the camera could be instructed to move along a given route at any simulated speed. Thanks to a periscope attachment to the lens, the camera would record the scene from the driver's-eyeviewpoint. The technique was to be highly useful in studying the street-level effects of San Francisco's sun and density problems. With a large model of the city inherited from its world's fair, Appleyard and successor Peter Bosselmann tested various alternatives: the sun and light patterns as they existed, at they would be if heights were increased or decreased; the effects of different setback limits. And these were not static examples. With astonishing verisimilitude, the camera would take one on an eye-level walk or brisk drive in a car. As I noted in the previous chapter, these simulations helped San Francisco's planners come up with new and tougher height and bulk requirements. They were also helpful in reviewing particular projects developers wanted to put up. More times than not, the simulations showed that the buildings would cast more shadows than they were supposed to or had to. The simulations also showed that with some adroit revisions the buildings' shadows could be substantially mitigated . Some architects screamed and yelled at first, but they came around. The laboratory's equipment is expensive but the basic job can be done without fancy hardware. Bosselmann demonstrated this when he came to New York to lend a hand on a study of Times Square. The Municipal Art Society of New York feared that zoning of the area was likely to be disastrous. It asked Bosselmann if he could do a quick study with simple instruments. He could. He created large-scale cardboard models of all existing buildings, with their facades made of color prints of the actual buildings and signs. Additional models incorporated different design possibilities. The models could...