viewshaft

plural viewshafts · alternative view shaft

1. A gap between buildings or other visual obstructions that allows a view of something scenic.

   Older layers and traces of history in the city are covered or removed or being transformed beyond recognition, viewshafts are being disturbed or eliminated.

   2010, Stephanie Herold, Reading the City: Urban Space and Memory in Skopje, →ISBN, page 44

   3 more examples

   Enthusiastically adopted by city planners, the viewshafts have survived a quarter-century of growth. Plenty of developers have cursed Turner’s viewshafts but few have challenged them.

   2002 November 16, Geoff Cumming, “Showdown over city’s volcano zones”, in The New Zealand Herald

   My fundamental concern is that we don’t make essentially irreversible decisions to develop the waterfront in ways which we will not be happy with in 10 to 30 years’ time. I want to preserve viewshafts of the harbour, minimise the loss of public space to private ventures, and not have too many buildings cluttering the unique and wonderful harbour edge.

   2003 July 26, “Who can you trust with the waterfront?”, in The Dominion Post

   I ponder the Christchurch Beautifying Association planting thousands of native plants along here from 1897. The meanders provide myriad spaces in our city. The wonder of the grid design, enabling the viewshafts to mountains and Port Hills; the grid allowing a sense of orientation across the convolutions of the Otakaro-Avon River.

   2014, Barnaby Bennett, Ryan Reynolds, James Dann, Once in a Lifetime: City-building after disaster in Christchurch, →ISBN