Commercial Architecture July 2017 - 13

FEATURE

"Architecture is secondary," Torti said. "The architecture supports the design of the
city. If you travel and you go see the places that attract people, whether it's to a New
England square or a plaza in Rome or a wonderful park in Paris, you understand that
you go see the places more than you go see the city, and the city makes those places
with the fabric or background buildings more than the hero buildings, if you will. The
churches, museums, synagogues, and town halls are the special hero buildings in a city.
They make the places of significant points of interest, but the city itself is made up of a
fabric of simpler, more plain buildings that are normally the shops, offices, houses, and
apartments of the city. The fabric of the city creates and forms a public realm and that
public realm is punctuated by the important buildings of the city."
OBSTACLES AND CHALLENGES

new urbanism

STOREFRONT THEATRE
Among those recognized by CNU was artist Matthew Mazzotta for his Storefront Theater in Lyons, NE,
a project that is itself a work of art, and also encourages artistic events.
Working with local craftspeople, Mazzotta created a theater that folds out from a vacant brick
façade, using two hydraulic pump arms to raise and lower it for events. The theater can be engaged
with the push of a button, providing seating for 100. Typically, a movie screen is pulled into the middle
of the street with a tractor-a fitting sight in this prairie settlement, population 851, about 50 miles
from Omaha. In the process, Main Street becomes a town square, a focal point for the community
once again.
Since the opening, the catalytic theater has hosted movie screenings, video-game nights, an antibullying event, and music concerts. The new energy brought by the venue has inspired another Lyons
native to purchase the empty building next to the theater and turn it into an art gallery that had its
first show in 2016.

One of the obstacles to new urbanism in its early days 20 to 25 years ago was convincing people that it could be done "because we had spent from 1948 till 1995, 40 to 50
years, making the rules that in essence built the suburbs. We perfected a separate zon-

compact communities that looked different than the suburbs was a hurdle," Torti said.

ing set of categories; we perfected how to get the federal government money to build

"We've really gotten rid of a lot of obstacles," Moule commented. "There used to be

big roads; we perfected a lifestyle of having to get in the car to deliver Johnny to the

many, many more. There were obstacles for financing, obstacles or rules about streets,

soccer game and get in the car again to deliver Mary to school. We had to get in the car

or rules about parking, or single-use zoning that required or disallowed mixing of uses,

yet again to go to work and once more to go shopping. The notion of building more

or public works departments that wanted to emphasize high traffic speeds over slower
commercialarchitecturemagazine.com

JULY 2017

COMMERCI A L A RCHI T EC T URE

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Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Commercial Architecture July 2017