Visiting Artist: Alan Boniface

My very first impression of Alan Boniface was that he had great presentation skills. He was very articulate in his lecture, keeping consistent eye contact with the audience, and was very charismatic and humorous. Alan Boniface works at an architecture firm called DIALOG as a managing partner. He has contributed his work in places like Beijing, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and, of course, Vancouver, where he is from.

He talked a lot about what makes an "Urban Magnet," which was the idea centered around this lecture. In a sentence, an urban magnet is an urban area that attracts a lot of people, local and tourists. He talked a lot about the way to make urban areas successful (urban magnets) is that the area must have great architecture, but also include various areas of interest for all people. He said, "Urban Magnets are about PEOPLE. What are people doing? What are people interested in the area? Build upon that." He also mentioned that the wonderful architecture did not mean it had to be built from the ground up all the time. Some of the best architectural places are spaces that have existed in the area for a long time, but have been slightly renovated. He said using spaces that already exist keep the flavor and history of the urban area.

His "Ingredients to Successful Magnets" were:
1. Retail Experience
2. Production On-Site
3. Educational Piece
4. Landscape/Architecture
5. Festivals

A lot of his lecture included beautiful images of Vancouver. He showed us how a lot of the success in Vancouver has to do with the fact that they have these huge skyscrapers right next to beautiful parks. They integrate the spaces, rather than separate them, which is the traditional style of city planning.

Boniface also mentioned a term that is used in Vancouver, simply called "Vancouverism" which is the idea that people are not overwhelmed by the high buildings because they really can't see the tall buildings when they walk. The tall structures are generally built in a "tower-podeum" form. The shot below of Vancouver's city hall is a great example of this "tower-podeum" structure.

Boniface also mentioned that when housing structures are built within the city itself, there is still a sense of privacy, because the housing areas have a good bit of space between their home/apartment and the street.

Boniface helped the audience see the similarities between Vancouver and Downtown Memphis. I believe what he said makes a great urban magnet could be done in Downtown Memphis to revive life in that area. Prior to the main artist lecture we watched a video on the happenings of local urban areas being transformed into urban magnets. It was really cool to see that plans for this have already started. The main areas discussed in that video included Overton Square, Downtown Memphis, and Hernando, MS. It's exciting to see that there are plans in place to make our local urban areas more people friendly.

Just to Update....

Just to update my blog a little bit for those keeping up with it, I have been doing most of my posts on my team's blog page. I'll try to transfer some of that on here or you can just go to that link and read how we're coming along with our project at:

Group JACCT

Also, I'll be posting my thoughts on Thursday's visiting artist: Alan Boniface. So look for that later on tonight or possibly tomorrow.