“Should one be satisfied then,” Sitte asks rhetorically,
“to place this mechanically produced project,
conceived to fit any situation, into the middle of an
empty place without organic relation to its surroundings
or to the dimensions of any particular
building?” (p. 75). Indeed, he was certain that one
should not.
Formalist ideas like Sitte’s can be seen in the
works of the recent generation of urban designers,
such as Allan Jacobs’ (1993) fine writing on street
definition. Edmund Bacon (1974) adds a number of
additional guides to good form, demanding that
good design should interlock and interrelate buildings
across space.
Bacon stresses that the human experience of this
articulated space happens along an axis of movement.
To define this axis, the designer may strategically
place small and large buildings to create scale
linkages receding in space; or insert in the landscape
an arch, gate, or pair of pylons that set the
frame of reference for structures appearing on a
recessed plane. The designer may also repeat similar
forms in diminishing perspective, as an arch may
be placed deep behind another arch, to create unifying
form in space and foster the human experience
of penetrating into depth. And the designer
may use stairs, ramps, and other changes in gradient
to engage the participant in the satisfaction of
experiencing ascent and descent.