Ray Sawhill

Another look at the many ways our developers and designers have come up with to create dead and unused spaces. A quick reminder: traditional spaces don't often go unloved. Trad piazzas, parks, public squares and verandas have, in many cases, delighted, attracted and served users for centuries. It took we moderns to come up with such a variety of repellant spaces.

Today's example is almost brand new -- a Greenwich Village patio atop a restaurant's roof, in a notch-like shape defined by two low-ish buildings that, for whatever reason, don't abut. Forgive the borders and the drop shadows in the visuals, by the way. I've been dicking around with a cute little photo editing program, and couldn't resist. Still, the orange circle may be useful.

Does this empty wedge of space exist because zoning laws require it? Because the restaurant at ground level refused to sell air rights? Because the designer and developer behind the the metal-and-glass building on the left thought it would look cool? Beats me. In any case, you can see that the patio space is, by NYC standards, pretty large. You can also see that, despite the sunny spring day, and although someone has gone to the trouble of putting some chairs and a plant out, no one's using the patio. In fact, I've walked by this little gem dozens of times, at many different times and on many different kinds of days, and I've never seen anyone making use of this patio.

Why should this be the case? Perhaps it has to do with the fact that it's noisy. Only ten or so feet above the sidewalk, it can't give a person much protection. But maybe there's more to it than that. Let's take a closer look.

The closeup helps illustrate my guess about why this patio is such a dud. Actually, two guesses. One is that the patio is featureless and abstract. There's something about blankness that puts most people off. As chic as emptiness might look, everyday people find pure geometry barren and bleak -- anything but welcoming and uncozy. The second reason I come up with has to do with the wall behind the chair and the plant. Hard to tell from my snapz, but it's made of metal -- dazzling, chilly, highly-reflective, unyielding and hugely unfriendly stuff. Sitting out there when the sun isn't out -- well, what would be the point? But sitting out there on a sunny day? It must be like sitting in a solar oven. Nice work, designers!

What's your hunch about what it is that makes this patio such a convincing piece of crap space? Click on the "Crap Space" tag below to marvel at other entries in this series.

Near Bleecker and E. 4th in New York's Greenwich Village is this peculiarity.

Some designer, encouraged or at least permitted by his/her employer, thought it would be neat to interrupt the streetfront with a little triangle-shaped notch. Good lord, why? It provides nothing in the way of protection or shelter. It's featureless. And, in terms of what it accomplishes, it's worse than a zero. It mars an otherwise harmonious block and, when the wind is up, provides a space where leaves and garbage like to swirl. At its best, it's something people hurry through and hurry by -- a barren little geometric interruption in an otherwise beautiful, regular and ordered streetfront.

Don't get me started on how bad a patron of artchitecture New York University is ... More generally, though: Why is it that some of our largest institutions -- the government, our schools -- which commissioned some of our most dignified and beautiful structures, now sponsor some of our worst? What happened? And when?