Some years ago, after living in several different intentional communities, I came back to regular city life feeling refreshed and renewed. The communities I had visited were set in beautiful wilderness areas. While living and participating in them, I experienced a sense of deep connection to others and myself. It was easy to feel that my work and my interactions were meaningful and, therefore, satisfying and nourishing. Feelings of belonging, inspiration, fulfillment, joy, pride, optimism, and excitement were normal.
After my return to Santa Fe, I wondered why city life didn’t nurture me at the same deep levels. Many cities and towns are worlds unto themselves—carved out of the natural world but not integrated with it. General busyness (and driving instead of walking) reduces opportunities for meaningful interactions with people and the land. But what if we decided to weave cities and nature together? What if cities were designed out of a holistic thinking process, rather than partitioned into malls, office parks, and subdivisions?
I found a man in Santa Fe who has dedicated a large part of his life to transforming city separation into communal unity. An architect, Albert Moore specializes in urban design for smaller cities throughout the United States. His professional and personal backgrounds are equally broad and rich. What follows are details from a series of conversations we had in August 2008, at Moore’s office on 2nd Street in Santa Fe.
Trend: What inspires you?
Albert Moore: Creativity is my reason for being, experiencing within myself what is new and expansive—whether in architecture, urban design, painting, writing, ceramics, or in relationships. I’m inspired by unifying experiences and emotional responses to art, music, and great thinkers more than by other architects. However, I was deeply moved the first time I experienced [Frank Lloyd] Wright’s [Solomon R.] Guggenheim Museum in New York. The elegant simplicity of the building struck a deep chord in me. There, I was introduced to the paintings of [Wassily] Kandinsky, who taught at the Bauhaus. As a result, I became a great believer in Modernism, which strives to capture the essence of form and function. It is not encumbered by extraneous decoration found in classical architectural styles, which foster a hierarchical social structure. Modernism is much like me—stripped by the spiritual honing process of all extraneous nonessentials.
My urban design philosophy was influenced by Jonathan Barnett, founder of the Urban Design Division of New York City’s Planning Department. His book Urban Design as Public Policy [1974] addresses America’s need for an interdisciplinary approach to city design.
Trend: How do you view the role of an urban designer?
Moore: In some ways urban designers are like conductors of a symphony. The conductor synthesizes the individual musicians, instruments, and notes into harmonic wholeness. Similarly, urban designers blend the notes of architecture and space with finance, regulation, engineering, zoning, and social dynamics to create a harmonic whole city that balances human and natural systems. Urban designers seek ways to celebrate our common unity. Both conductors must be whole-systems thinkers.
Trend: What are your thoughts about the current trend of green building initiatives and their ability to help save our environment?
Moore: I commend all the efforts of the U.S. Green Building Council, Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, and the 2030 Challenge, an initiative by Edward Mazria and Architecture 2030 asking the global architecture and construction community to adopt a series of greenhouse-gas-reduction targets for new and renovated buildings, and countless other efforts for making it clear that our buildings are a major cause of America’s energy and resource consumption. Their work has altered the course of building design and will assist in worldwide environmental recovery.
However, in green-building discussions to date, our land-use patterns have been largely ignored as a leading cause of energy consumption and resource depletion. The separation of housing, shopping, and working, required by zoning, are as significant to our climate crisis as are our buildings. Most of our population lives miles from work and commutes by car, thus consuming millions of gallons of gasoline each year and millions of tons of natural resources to maintain the separation of land uses. Implementing mixed-land-use planning will not only help reduce the carbon footprint, it will also reinvigorate the American economy.
Trend: In addition to mixing land uses, what else needs to be addressed?
Moore: Local governments have abdicated their responsibility to plan and design our cities and towns to real estate developers. When the developer submits his market-driven plans, [he or she and the government] fight over the perception of their separate interests. This is not the way to design our communities. This is where urban designers can make a significant contribution. We can assist both parties to find common ground and balance the socioeconomic and life-quality interests of people and the environment.
The whole concept of zoning needs to be revamped. The public entities need first to specifically define the public spaces of a community, its uses, and its aesthetic and social nature instead of attempting to control private development. Control does not work! The public entities need to self-define and design the space they have purview over first, then learn how to engage private development interests in a co-creative manner that supports the unification of public and private interests instead of the present hostile atmosphere.
Trend: Do you think modern cities have the potential to support interconnectedness on deeper levels?
Moore: In Santa Fe, look east from the Plaza while standing on the south side of East San Francisco Street. In the foreground you see people. The St. Francis Cathedral is in the background. Further in the background you see the mountains and sky. These are examples of the three kinds of connections that I look for in what I would consider good urban design. Combinations of elements like this could be multiplied in an infinite number of ways in cities to promote interconnectedness.
Trend: You have given a lot of thought to the current site of the DeVargas Center here in Santa Fe. How could this combination of types of connection be emphasized in an area like that?
Moore: Let’s begin by looking at why the DeVargas mall, and malls in general, are disturbing to both urban designers and the public. First, from an aerial view, seventy percent of the land is dedicated to parking cars. This enormous mall structure is an anomaly, disconnected from the public space—the street—by the parking lot. Mall typologies fracture the original urban fabric, displacing mixed-land-use traditions, human-scaled structures, and walkable streets.
If, however, you create a street-and-block pattern, the public spaces and the buildings are woven together in an interdependent relationship of urban fabric.
In cities such as San Francisco, Seattle, and parts of New York, for example, the public space—streets and sidewalks—is clearly defined by the placement of the buildings. It is a joy to walk there. In safe, walkable communities there is an intimate, co-defining relationship between buildings and streets. When the automobile is the predominant urban form-giver, this intimate relationship is not available.
Trend: In your redesign of DeVargas Center, with spaces for people to live and work, would there still be an Office Depot and Albertsons? What happens to those places?
Moore: In our study two 40,000- to 60,000-square-foot anchor stores have been included because they are essential to marketing retail development. The topographic change along Paseo de Peralta and Guadalupe allows us to accomplish underground parking. We demonstrate that you can take the same area, have the same amount of retail space, and achieve more parking. We also added housing, office space, and a park to the site. This achieves walkability and social, economic, and environmental sustainability. Paseo de Peralta and Guadalupe become walker-friendly streets because retail is on those streets. Because the scale of the buildings is much smaller, the project is better unified with the surrounding community.
Trend: Now that I understand more about issues of land usage, how could things be done differently?
Moore: Let’s look at two of our recent projects, the New Town Center for the strip mall world of Edgewood, New Mexico, and our master plan for Hot Springs Boulevard in Pagosa Springs, Colorado. Edgewood sprang up at the crossroads of two highways and spread out to meet the needs of automobiles. As a result, you might say it has no true sense of place. This is a common suburban experience. Establishing the “genius loci,” or spirit of place, is the essential first step. In Pagosa we accomplished this by asking community members to tell us what they love about their community. Their stories helped them see their common bonds, and from this, sound urban design concepts emerged. Edgewood had recently completed a comprehensive master-planning process that established specific intentions for a new direction. Successful urban design is related to the strength of the common bond established between the people and the place. The urban design team facilitates and employs a process to create sustainable cities and communities.
Trend: What have been some turning points in your life that have led you to think this way?
Moore: Simply stated, it was the experience of being born different physically. I was born with nine fingers, only four of which you would call normal, fostering a deep sense of separateness and being less than others. The first words spoken at the moment of my birth were, “We have a little problem here!” In first grade a classmate protested that holding my hand in a game on the playground was disgusting. He thought my condition was contagious. At the age of six I was told that because of my deformed hands I could not be a priest. Not that I wanted to be a priest; that was my father’s hope. The thought of anyone telling me what I could and could not do instilled in me what might be called an attitude. I vowed: I will show the world what I can do with my hands!
Trend: Do you remember what your first encounter with architecture was?
Moore: When I was seven my friend Jimmy took me through his father’s home office. I was mesmerized by pictures of buildings on the walls. “Jimmy, how did your father do this?” I asked. “He drew these pictures from his imagination. He’s an architect,” Jimmy said. Instantly, I knew my mission in life. Drawing beautiful pictures of buildings with my hands would show people what I could do.
Trend: Where did you go from there?
Moore: Over the past 20 years I have been committed to the often-stormy search to find my true self. This odyssey has led me to courses, books, gurus, shamans, masters, and travel to exotic places looking for a sense of unity to heal the separateness I felt inside. Approaching 60, I can honestly say that I am at peace with myself and my life. The best answer I found to my questioning is that the purpose of life is to expand. In addition, there is in this dualistic world one simple abiding truth: that all things have come from one place and are therefore united. What we call that place is of no consequence. Along the way I learned that living for answers is less important than becoming comfortable with living in the question and accepting life’s paradoxes. •
