WTN 2006 Prize Nominations

World Technology Environment 2006 Awards: Jan Gehl

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Jan Gehl WTN 2006 Environment Award Nomination

"We have made cities that have been conquered by the car'".
- Jan Gehl

We are pleased to nominate Jan Gehl, the eminent Danish urban design consultant and shaper of public spaces around the world, for this year's World Technology Environment Award, for his transforming example and body of work. And to invite you to second this nomination by clicking here:

As is fitting for a prestigious award acknowledging outstanding accomplishment in technology, that ever so sharp two edged knife that cuts through our societies and daily lives in so many different and often unexpected ways, we commend him for this year's prize specifically for continuing accomplishment in the area of gaining control of one earth-shaping technology that, in some places at least, has "gone rather too far": cars in cities, and finding ingenious ways to show that large portions of public space can be converted to convivial uses by people and not cars.

Jan, is an internationally known and esteemed architect and urban design consultant based in Copenhagen and whose career has focused on improving the quality of street space and pedestrian urban life. As a "young architect working in the suburbs," Gehl married a psychologist and "had many discussions about why the human side of architecture was not more carefully looked after by the architects, landscape architects, and planners.....My wife and I set out to study the borderland between sociology, psychology, architecture, and planning." This partnership has marked his work over the years.

The results of his work - in every case the result of a collaborative project shaped by the active involvement of students and local residents -- can be seen in public spaces and city streets in several dozen cities across Europe, North America and other parts of the world, but he got his start in his native Denmark.

Gehl first published his influential Life Between Buildings in Danish in 1971, with the first English translation published in 1987. Gehl advocates a sensible, straightforward approach to improving urban form: systematically measuring urban spaces, making gradual incremental improvements, then measuring again.

Gehl's book Public Spaces, Public Life describes how such incremental improvements have transformed Copenhagen from a car-dominated city to a pedestrian-oriented city over 40 years. Copenhagen's Strøget carfree zone, the longest pedestrian shopping area in the world, is primarily the result of Gehl's work. Gehl participates in and advises many urban design and public projects around the world. In 2004 he carried out an important study in to the quality of the public realm in London, commissioned by Transport for London and supported City of Wakefield and the town of Castleford in developing and delivering better public spaces, as part of an initiative known as The Castleford Project.

For more on Jan

Metropolis Magazine interview with Gehl
Jan Gehl in Times Square (Quick Time video)
Gehl Architects