Urban Design (Urban Studies)

Al-Fenaa': the courtyard has always been playing a reciprocal role in the shaping of the spatial arrangement and space organisation of the traditional courtyard house, on one hand, and the core of socio-cultural context of the society on the other. The courtyard is the kernel of the whole physical urban fabric of the Traditional Mediterranean Medina of Tripoli (fig1), as well as its socio-cultural milieu. It has an essential role, as an architectural element, in the formation of both realities. The Medina of Tripoli's astonishing story begins in the 7th century BC, and continues to the present day. Layer upon layer by meters in thickness of urban forms and spaces filled with artifacts, folktales and traditions that tell about the lives of communities once were there! Medina of Tripoli is not introduced, here, as a city of walls and fortifications nor gates and landmarks. It is more of a holistic urban fabric, which reveals a pattern of streets that is remarkably straight and...

Al-Fenaa': the courtyard has always been playing a reciprocal role in the shaping of the spatial arrangement and space organisation of the traditional courtyard house, on one hand, and the core of socio-cultural context of the society on the other. The courtyard is the kernel of the whole physical urban fabric of the Traditional Mediterranean Medina of Tripoli (fig1), as well as its socio-cultural milieu. It has an essential role, as an architectural element, in the formation of both realities. The Medina of Tripoli's astonishing story begins in the 7th century BC, and continues to the present day. Layer upon layer by meters in thickness of urban forms and spaces filled with artifacts, folktales and traditions that tell about the lives of communities once were there! Medina of Tripoli is not introduced, here, as a city of walls and fortifications nor gates and landmarks. It is more of a holistic urban fabric, which reveals a pattern of streets that is remarkably straight and...

ABSTRACTPrimary school gardens are areas where children spend extracurricular time. The gardens are influential on children's physical, social and academic development. School gardens should be designed according to the needs of the students from different age groups. During the design process of school gardens, the standards defined in the context of hierarchical space fiction are ignored. This leads to spatial inadequacies in school gardens and also affects students’ behavior. Thus, it is necessary to examine the behavior of the students as well as the spatial setting of the schools.The purpose of this study is to perform spatial-functional analysis and school gardens and to create behavioral maps based on student’s use of the school garden. The study was carried out in five primary schools, selected from various regions (city center, arear close to the city center, residential area, newly developed residential area and rural character areas) in Trabzon. First, the spatial sit...

Malay Royal towns in Malaysia are the finest examples evolution of early Malay towns dating from the 16th century. However the identity and characteristic of Malay Royal towns is still unclear and continuously been threatened from tremendous changes due to rapid industrialisation, economic development and urbanisation. The extensive urbanisation and rapid development occurring in most of historical towns have significantly eroded the identity, sense of place and physical attributes of the Malay Royal Town. Besides monuments and sites, the scope of this research also covers all properties which are of historic and cultural significance. This research employs qualitative approach that encompasses of literature review of scholarly articles and reports, in-depth interview and structured observation. Based on the historical and physical evidences that are still exist, 9 historical town that gazated as Malay Royal town will be selected as a preliminary study and 5 historical towns will be...

Between the In-between: Research Findings on Data Driven Strategic Urban Design. In: X. Lu, S. Trumpf & I. Valin, eds. Interstitial Hong Kong: exploring the small and marginal landscapes of high-density urbanism. Berlin: Jovis, pp. 40-61.
The provision of pocket parks dotted between Hong Kong high rises is a consequence of the city’s open space standards, regulatory rules  and development intensity. Between fate and chance encounter, in the intense city what would be left elsewhere as lost areas or space (Lynch, 1960; Trancik, 1986), border vacuums (Jacobs, 1961), crack in the city (Loukaitou‐Sideris, 1996) or even terrain vague (Solà-Morales, 1995) are put to use as Sitting-out-Areas (SOA) that generates a new urban script of in between spaces. In Hong Kong, public open spaces are linked by streets, indoor and outdoor skyways, and underground passages. In such a complex multilevel city, can computational methods reveal hidden patterns in the allocation and planning of these interstitial spaces? Would the pounding of the walkways by synthetic “agents” enabled with simplified human route choice preferences (Shatu, Yigitcanlar, & Bunker, 2019) exploring systematically the walk from one interstice to another, from the one to the many and the many to the one, leaving trace of all their meandering let us discover if the between the in-between spaces reveal an intangible configuration, a spatial cognitive map skeleton (Kuipers, Tecuci, & Stankiewicz, 2003)? Is there a hidden pedestrian network ordering? This chapter investigates the spatial relationships of SOAs and their qualities in Central Hong Kong. To this end, we use an open space citywide opinion survey, 3D network science spatial analysis and machine learning automated classification to investigate the present condition and to reveal how size, high visibility location and design qualities interacts. We find that size and location on most frequented daily routes matter. The findings lead to sketching a design brief for a “cool network” that link open spaces by most frequented daily routes to enhance all age group co-presence.

This article explores design debates through a radical political lens. Examining ways in which architects, urban historians and townscape consultants view speculative office developments and profit-driven building height in the City of London, I argue for the democratization
of the cityscape. I contest the prevalence of the consensual city-image in which towers are framed as structures that visual enhance historic landmarks and buildings of 'civic importance' in order to emphasize the importance of critically engaging with consensual pro-market governing processes and the role of tradition therein. Distinguishing between radical aestheticization and conservative beautification, I show how the Royal Fine Art Commission cultivated the latter and prepared the ground for today’s city-image. I suggest that design review can contribute to democratic urbanization processes if a radical conceptualization of aesthetics is being developed.

This chapter draws on two of David Frisby's major contributions to our understanding of cities-Fragments of Modernity (1988) and Cityscapes of Modernity (2001) and positions itself in-between these texts by exploring a fragmentation of cityscapes. Frisby once observed that there is a lack of a critical theory of skylines. He made this observation in the context of my research on London's towering cityscape and it was this lack that attracted him to my topic. Yet, what does a fragmentation of contemporary cityscapes involve? The fragmentation of cityscapes that I develop in this chapter focuses on Benjamin's approach. Here, Benjamin's and Deleuze's approach are related through Leibniz and through the built space of the city. I suggest that a fragmentation of cityscapes as we find it in Frisby's analysis of Benjamin's work opens up a space for political action. This space is crucial for a critical theory of skylines because it opens up the possibility of different cities to come.

During the post-World War II period, Turkey’s housing supply models were limited to individual housings. Three main trends in the construction industry helped overcome this limitation to a certain extent. These were cooperative societies, spontaneous squatter housing and the build-sell process. Build-sell process later became the most obvious reflection of urban transformation in the 1950s and 1960s. Within this context, this study examines the housing policy of the period
and the build-sell process as well as the Rer-1 Apartment Block designed in line with the build-sell process. The Rer-1 Apartment Block was designed and implemented by architect Nejat Ersin between the years 1962-1964, and was constructed in Aşağı Ayrancı District in Ankara . This specific apartment block was examined as an extraordinary example of the build-sell process - which rejects architectural concerns and prioritises profits - as it still incorporated such concerns
despite being designed adhering to logic of the build-sell process. For the purpose of this study, an oral history study was conducted with Nejat Ersin. It was, therefore, possible to evaluate Nejat Ersin’s apartment block, presenting a new experience in the build-sell context, within the scope of era’s social, cultural, political and economic conjecture.
The Rer-1 Apartment Block was scrutinized from the build-sell process aspect within the scope of the architect’s professional
approach.
Keywords: Ankara, Build-Sell Supply Model, Housing, Rer-1 Apartment Block.

6 examples showing the specific qualities:
-Shared facilities
-Access structure
-Threshold areas
-Parading
-Corridors and interconnecting doors
-Public private spaces
-Framework
And a demonstration of the design method for cohousing: 'Field and Volume

« La crise se produit quand le vieux monde tarde à mourir et le nouveau à naître. Dans ce clair-­‐obscur peuvent surgir des monstres » Antonio Gramsci
Les temps changent. Les mutations en cours qui bouleversent nos habitudes et nous obligent à changer de paradigme pour imaginer d’autres formes d’intelligence collective, d’organisation et de coopérations dans lesquelles les figures du design et du territoire soient convoquées et associées afin que « dans le clair obscur de la crise ne surgissent pas les monstres » annoncés par l’écrivain italien.

Since the 1990s, a recurrent trope of the 'global sustainable city' has emerged in popular and professional discussions of globalization, sustainable development and urban innovation. Published in commercial publications and grey literature on policy, design and global trends, the trope is also articulated in a genre of trade books by urban consultants and in public showcases that project the city as a socially, economically and environmentally beneficial entity-a sustainable complex system that is even promoted to be humanity's best hope for solving the global ecological problems of the twenty-first century. This article traces how urbanist Jane Jacobs's notion of urban complexity becomes an allusive reference in examples of popular global sustainability discourse that present the city as an evolutionary self-organizing entity of systemic networks and physical flows. It examines urban economist Edward

This essay examines the ways the paradoxical relationship between distinctiveness of place and uniformities of placelessness has varied from the subservience of placelessness to place in premodern times, to the era of modernist planning and architecture after WW2, when placelessness began to overwhelm place. Since then there has been an apparent resurgence of place distinctiveness, for instance because of heritage preservation loacalism, that has  happened in the context of increased mobility, migrations and transnationalism, globalization and telecommunications. The evidence of urban landscapes suggests that placelessness has become intertwined with place distinctiveness. What was a dualism has become a fusion. Places in the 21st century are hybrids, simultaneously local and filled with remote and global influences.

These are my comments about the contributions to a book that examined the continuing importance and changing character of ideas about place and placelessness, forty years after the publication of my book Place and Placelessness. See  also my own contribution to the book: “The Paradox of Place and the Evolution of Placelessness.”

- disurbanità -
«BREVE GENEALOGIA DELL'URBANISTICA DEL DECORO» di Margherita Grazioli
È quantomai urgente riconoscere come la logica dell’eccezionalismo, delle «emergenze» (freddo, così come di quella «abitativa») siano l’altra faccia della medaglia di quella urbanistica del decoro che è legata a doppio filo alla cultura della rendita e della proprietà immobiliare. Quest’ultima trasforma la proprietà privata ad ogni costo (inclusi l’indebitamento insostenibile, e l’insolvenza) nella modalità abitativa, economica, e sociale di riferimento. In questo quadro, l’urbanistica diventa la disciplina che modella il tessuto urbano, e i paradigmi abitativi, per favorire e riprodurre tale egemonia. Eppure, i Piani Regolatori (e dunque l’urbanistica) dovrebbero essere «problemi di solidarietà umana, di coerente valutazione delle possibilità e degli ostacoli. Essi devono rappresentare la condanna delle ambizioni egoistiche, il ritorno nell’ora critica della solidarietà e della comprensione, la manifestazione di una volontà tesa verso scopi coerenti, costruttivi, creativi».