Exam 1 Review Flashcards
Urban Design cont.
“The common ground between architecture and town planning” (Gosling & Maitland)
“The interface between architecture, landscape architecture and town planning” (Bentley & Butina)
“An open system that uses individual architectural elements and ambient space as it’s basic vocabulary, and that focuses on social interaction and communication in the public realm” (Cuthbert)
Contemporary Urban Design
Evolving from an initial, predominately aesthetic, concern with the distribution of building masses and the space between buildings.
Has become primarily concerned with shaping urban space as a means to make, or re-make, the ‘public’ places that people can use and enjoy.
Urban Design: Scale
“The intermediate scale between planning (the settlement) and architecture (individual buildings)”
“Urban designers needs to be constantly aware of scales above and below the scale at which they are working.”
Also awareness of the relation to smaller buildings and overall typography of the area.
Traditions of thought in the field
Aesthetic objects for looking at- visual artistic tradition emphasizing form.
How people use and experience space- social usage tradition
Synthesis
Place making: urban places as physical/aesthetic entities and as behavioral settings
Emerging
Sustainable urbanism: “delivering quality of life locally & mitigating against unwanted consequences globally.
Gatje on Great Public Spaces
Call them squares, piazze, places, or platze, the essential elements of success are those of a sense of enclosure and pleasant usefulness.
Utility, integrity, and delight
Utility- usefulness
Integrity- structurally sound
Delight- beauty of structure
Three qualities for a successful building
Typography (Ground Plane)
“Lay of the land” the contour of the space (slope, flat, hills)
Section- a vertical slice through the ground plane)
Substrata: historical and geological
Materials (Ground Plane)
Artificial or natural, aka “hard” or “soft”
Organization, or layout (Ground Plane)
Axes (pathways, sight lines)
Circulation (human movement patterns)
Depth (Edge)
Abrupt or gradual
Height (Edge)
Scale, relative to human figures
Subdivision (Edge)
Arrangement of elements (such as building stories an defenestration, plantings)
Integrity (Edge)
Degree of closure: continuous or interrupted edge?
Plan shape (Edge)
Shape of ground plane defined by edges
Sculpture (Contents)
It’s nature and placement
Water Features (Contents)
Pools, fountains, waterfalls, etc.
To animate a space. Consider the noise.
Furniture (Contents)
Benches, lampposts, receptacles, etc.
Plantings (Contents)
Their nature, number, and disposition–> how it is placed or arranged in relation to other things
Scale quote
The rule of thumb is that for the observer an opposite wall should be close enough for one to recognize its architectural details, and, therefore, be able to judge its scale instinctively.
Fenestration
The arrangement of windows and doors on the elevations of a building
Catalhoyuk (Anatolia)
East Mound, level 6 houses, c. 8,000-7,700 BCE
Ur (Mesopotamia)
Ziggurat of Ur Nammu c. 2,000 BCE
