Topic:
Urban Density and 'Flexible' Architecture
Issues:
-The population of urban centers is growing and the demand for space is becoming much more critical.
“Today for the first time in history, half the population lives in cities and in thirty years’ time it may rise to as much as three-quarters. The urban population is increasing at a rate of a quarter of a million people per day-roughly the equivalent of a new London every month. The world-wide growth of urban populations and grossly inefficient patterns of living are accelerating the rate of increase of pollution and erosion.”
-Richard Rogers
-As a result of the increased urban population and the high demand for space, cities have typically adopted the high-rise typology as a solution to density. This model disconnects the users from the street and other common forms of interaction.
-Additionally, those who’s life style does not fit the conventional high-rise building typology, typically young families, move from the urban centre and sprawled across the greenbelt into the suburbs.
“We atomize ourselves into a low-density spray of individual houses across the land, sometimes in enclaves protected by walls, gates, guard dogs, but mainly by distance. How do we break out of this socially and ecologically unsustainable pattern of settlement? How do we better engage and embrace each other and, in so doing, urbanity?”
-Peter Calthorpe and Lars Lerup
-The current practices in city development and planning are not the most efficient or sustainable methods of dealing with population growth.
-Richard Rogers
-The existing architecture and infrastructure that make up the urban context have a very static function and do not consider the future needs or uses of the site and its inhabitants.
Position:
Changing cultural trends in urban environments are demanding a new type of architecture that is able to create density through the manipulation of the existing building fabric in order to meet the needs of a growing population.
Idea:
A new architecture typology needs to be developed that will create flexible urban typologies, by strategically overtaking underutilized spaces within the city that can be developed to fulfill the needs of the current and future cultural trends.
Strategies:
1. Develop a ‘modular’ plug in system that is able to overtake present structures.
2. Use buildings and their existing services and structures to develop space, not a defined property.
3. Consider density by designing efficiently to allow more people to comfortable inhabit the space.
Not a bad position given your preamble though it is recommended that within this formatting you may wish to state your thesis position along the lines of "I believe that a new type of architecture is able to..." as it is more emphatic and declares a novel spin on contemporary praxis.
ReplyDeleteThe strategies at this point in time are workable and we can massage them as the term progresses but here are a few cautionary points:
-"modular" cannot be equated to "mass customized", "prefab", or "unitized"; the absolutely LAST thing you want to do is something similar to those cliched, lame shipping container thesis projects
-define the parameters and limits of your "overtaking" of existing structures with your "modules"; recall the discussion at the desk review that indicated that you should define this sooner than later so that you do not run the risk of emulating that which you oppose (i.e. developing a low-rise solution that negates social/cultural benefits and interconnection to other systems)
-the second strategy you propose is interesting at least on a descriptive level; draw this out in the design and the clarity will allow for greater insight on the direction this would take
-the third strategy is quite ambiguous based upon the wording; as with the second strategy, perhaps it would be best articulated in a design
-your strategies do not directly connect to the notion proposed of creating a design that "meets the needs of a growing population"; if it does, that would imply that strategy one is fundamentally tied to a residential typology; be mindful of a universality of these strategies as applied to a broader scope of architecture rather than specific typology
Dustin (and everyone else who is looking into urban density issues): Sir Peter Cook today looking back on Archigram: This was our Utopianism! - an interview with P.Cook
ReplyDeletehttp://www.archdaily.com/472429/this-was-our-utopianism-an-interview-with-peter-cook/
You should also, maybe, rename your blog to better reflect what you are doing (i.e. symbiosis and metamorphosis - as far as I remember) :)
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