Danish Design Interview / Jan Gehl

Check out this interview we spotted over on DutchDesign - a research program from the School of Interactive Arts and Technology at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, Canada. This interview with Jan Gehl, a Danish architect and urban consultant for Copenhagen, is part of the program’s research to understand how cities function on a larger scale. Within just the first few minutes of the interview – when Gehl explains the importance of the “people scale” of the city and studying human behavior – we were interested and wanted hear more of his thoughts on planning. Further into the interview, Gehl notes that a successful piece of architecture is not merely creating a form, but rather a project that encourages some kind of interaction with the form. As Gehl explains, “ Form is center of attention, and life has been almost forgotten, and the interaction is something we don’t talk about much….” This interview touches upon large issues of planning such as redefining the streetscape to widen the sidewalks for pedestrian and cyclists access, and the notion of “parachuting the little scale into the big scale” to infuse small structures in bigger spaces to make them more relatable…all within the underlying concept of making the city for the people.