CIVIC ART

CIVIC ART

The art of creating great places "Urban design and city building are surely among the most auspicious endeavors of this or any age, giving rise to a vision of life, art, artifact and culture that outlives its authors.  It is the gift of its designers and makers to the future." -Donald Watson Civic art is one of the highest art forms - it's what makes great cities unique and special.  Civic art is the sum total of the architecture, public spaces, monuments, urban design, and landscape of a city, but it is far more than the sum of the parts.  Civic art is place making into art that creates timeless civic values and helps define cultures.

Paris

"Civic art emphasizes the essential relation between a building and its setting, the necessity of protecting the aspect of the approaches, the desirability of grouping buildings into harmonious ensembles, of securing dominance of some buildings over others, so that by the willing submission of the less to the greater there may be created a larger, more monumental unity;  a unity comprising at least a group of buildings with their surroundings, if possible entire districts and finally even, it may be hoped, entire cities."  -Werner Hegemann and Elbert Peets, Civic Art