Last week's threads...

Prompted by the presentations last Wednesday I mentioned some books and urban concepts that could assist you with your work, please find below some of these threads:

For urban public space (street project):

Gehl, Jan. Life Between Buildings: Using Public Space. New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold Company, 1987.

A great website dealing with the same topics discussed in the book at: http://www.pps.org/info/placemakingtools/placemakers/jgehl

Part of the PDF book can be downloaded from this website: http://a.parsons.edu/~creanm/interface/interface_readings/gehl_lifebtnbuld.1.pdf

Also check out Jane's Walk, a website dedicated to Jane Jacobs' work: http://www.janeswalk.net/

We also discussed some top-down approaches to the development of cities--Dubai and Brasilia were mentioned as examples. I suggested that comparison of cities such as these, conceived in different historical circumstances, need to consider the different social/ecological and economic context of today and that of some decades ago. Richard Sennett has extensively discussed the effect of these conditions in society and their resulting effect on cities, particularly in regards to people engagement or capacity to engage in social processes (including solidarity and democracy). See for example: "Fighting the flexible firm" and "Capitalism and the City". See also:

http://on1.zkm.de/zkm/stories/storyReader$1513

http://mondediplo.com/2001/02/16cities

and book in www.scribd.com, "The Culture of New Capitalism"

Finally, we talked about Rem Koolhaas and (in my view) his often contradictory critique to the current social/political and economic conditions--a critique that does not prevent him from successfully using these conditions to exercise a top-down approach to urbanism. Two articles reflect his views and perhaps epitomize his postmodern approach:

Koolhaas, Rem. "Junkspace." October, no. 100 (Spring 2002): 175-190. http://www.btgjapan.org/catalysts/rem.html

Koolhaas, Rem, and Sanford Kwinter. Rem Koolhaas : Conversations with Students, Architecture at Rice University 30. Houston, Tex: New York : Rice University School of Architecture; Princeton Architectural Press, 1996. (Available from the ABP library)

See you all on Wednesday. Presentations will run for 7 minutes and 3 min. for comments from your classmates, Prof Louis Sauer and I. Find details of your presentation and essay requirements in the website under Programe.


Beatriz C. Maturana

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Grocon awarded bushfire cleanup contract

Stumbled on an obscure bushfire-related link while doing some research for another project.

http://www.grocon.com.au/pdfs/melbourne/BushfireCleanup.pdf

further links:
http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,25116284-661,00.html

It is interesting because Grocon are known for their work with concrete-based construction. Eureka tower is an extremely unusual building because it is a concrete-based extra-tall skyscraper, rather then the usual steel frame.

Many of the residents of the bushfire areas were concerned about ending up in over-regulated concrete bunkers that would destroy their lifestyles in order to make them fire-safe. It is interesting that Grocon has won the contract for this job, as it would seem that the Government is indeed leaning towards concrete-based reconstruction. It should be noted that the contract is just for clean-up and demolition, but I'd imagine this would position the company excellently for reconstruction tenders.

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dream, time and reality

Yue and Hannah are investigating how imagination acts as the medium of understanding
the healthy ecologies of land by human minds. Through the study on ‘Walking City’
and other un-built imaginary architecture, the expression of discontentment with their
reality while seeking to a ‘dream land’ is explored. From there, issues arised
politically, socially, economically, environmentally are analyzed corresponding to 
particular period of time. By discovering these, we would able to identify the roots
and the social demand for sustainable developments. Cases such as ‘Palm Islands’
will also be investigated as a contemporary approach to how people are trying to
create sustainable ' fantasy' place.

We are really sorry for the late posting, because we could not use the
blog properly. We have to use Kelvin's account to blog it.
Thanks for his help.

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Imagination&Reality: It's role in Ecotopias

Nicole and Jingyi are looking at the role of reality and imagination in the steps towards a more sustainable future, and designs of Ecotopias. They argue that the roles of reality, imagination and the future are all interlinked and inform eachother in a continuous cycle. As a case study, they are investigating how the design elements of Ecocity, Dongtan, has responded to reality and imagination, and affect our future.

ImaginationShow&Tell

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PLAY: Understanding sustainability through experience of materials

Samantha and Cherie are researching the role of play of Understanding sustainability through the experience. Experiential play in our approach is the hands on learning process of understanding sustainability. Every small step of educating the society to change the worlds' take on sustainability makes a difference, and several model projects were taken to study the success of them. The Greenhouse by Joost, the Notley Green Primary School and the Children's Activity Centre (Melbourne) by Phooey Architects were chosen based on its high interaction with its users.
Sam and Cherie

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PLAY - Show and Tell

Justin and George are investigating the role that play can have in the design process. Analysing the Uluru-Kata Tjuta Aboriginal Cultural Centre using a model based on a psychoanalytic and sociological interpretation of play, they argue that play is means of communication which fosters creativity, builds trust and ultimately uncovers hidden truths, all which can lead to more socially sustainable design outcomes.

pLAY Show & Tell

Publish at Scribd or explore others: Screenplays & Plays How-to-Guides & Manu Non-fiction ed2009show & tell

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'Play' Presentation

'Play' presentation from 29th April

pLAY Presentation

Publish at Scribd or explore others: Homework Humanities How-to-Guides & Manu ed2009 assignments

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Presentation by Prof Louis Sauer

Presentation by Prof Louis Sauer on his extensive work. Prof Sauer presented some of his residential and urban design work to ED2009 tutorial group, University of Melbourne, 6 May 2009.
Presentation by Prof Louis Sauer

Publish at Scribd or explore others: Arts & Architecture Research high density new bauhaus

Louis Sauer: an architectural statement
Focus: The Low-rise Housing Work of Louis Sauer, Toshi Jukatu Journal of Urban Housing,
(Kajima Institute, Tokyo), pp 6 – 7, January 1980 (monograph)

Architecture is a process and a product of civilization for solving specific man-environment problems. As a process, it is an intrinsically cultural and economic action, involved with complex issues and varied participants, to achieve political purposes through technology. To the extent that the interactions of these forces, issues and participants are understood, one can become more effective in predicting and modifying the outcomes of the designed environment. By understanding the separate goals and disciplines of the individual participants in each aspect of housing, architects can intervene for greater influence upon the quality of housing and its environment.

ARCHITECTURAL BELIEF

The values and attitudes of architects are the most powerful determinants of their work. The open door to change is to understanding and working with these values and their resultant accountabilities. In order to make design choices, one must advocate a particular set of values and thus, architecture is a political process and product.

DESIGN: A PROCESS AND PRODUCT

For the architect to be in control, to be able to modify his work for predictive results, he should understand the nature of the various participants, their power and the incremental goals and resources for each of them and for each phase of the work. Design programming is dynamic and is directly linked to formal design — each design tool (site plan, elevation, detail, etc.) is in fact a synthetic statement of program and solution. This should be seen as a contingent process. Evaluative criteria are rarely explicit for those very areas most essential to the quality of architectural form. Architects are aware and highly sensitive to the values of their clients and peer group, and to the extent that these represent larger societal interests, to this extent will these larger interests be incorporated into the design program.

ARCHITECTURAL PRECONDITIONS

Normally a people develop homogeneous traditions, forms and infrastructure that satisfy their shelter needs. But when populations change and or become heterogeneous in terms of lifestyle and cultural expectancies old traditions no longer satisfy needs, and an architect's implicit understanding of the environment no longer solves the problems.

In these situations man-environment architectural relationships need to be made explicit, in order to predict the user’s fit with the final designed artefact. One problem today is that many architects understand the values of the programmer and are not sensitive to when the user’s value differ from those of the programmer. But substantial social knowledge is available to help the architect and programmers. The need for this is understood. What is not understood are the non-architectonic conditions necessary for the successful creation and use of architecture.

The final product of the architect is not under his control. To produce a lasting architecture the inter-relationship between land, finances, users, management and architectural form should be understood; however, architectural form is perhaps the least necessary to regulate – to control.

BUILDING TYPOLOGIES

Cultures produce traditions of building that efficiently solve shelter problems. This tradition, in the form of building typologies (site, building and unit), is generally given to the architect. It is only the abnormal and non-generic situation that allows the architect to produce forms outside of the tradition (e.g. Habitat by Moshe Safdie).

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Adam's Work: Summary for Presentation Lecture

Here is my slide for the presentation lecture.

Adam Markowitz is investigating utopia, and the perception of the 'perfect future', and why Utopian ideals fail to engage with reality in the formulation of their doctrines.

In this vein, he is looking into the impact of Utopian ideals on planned public housing, by first investigating Corb's 'Radiant City', both the causative effects for this theory, and the proposed solutions.

He will then appraise these Utopian concepts in light of the mass tenement blocks that were the offspring of Corb's ideals, in order to investigate how such 'top-down' utopian planning failed to grapple with the 'bottom-up' needs on the ground, and understand why such facilities are considered such social failures.

Finally, he intends to investigate a modern planned public housing facility, K2 Apartments, which is being promoted by the state government as the 'sustainable future' in terms of medium-rise high density housing. He will appraise whether or not this project is dealing with the reality on the ground, or is blinded by top-down utopian ideals.

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Assignment - Kelvin & Tracy

Kelvin and Tracy - for presentation


Kelvin and Tracy are exploring the relationship between Reality and Creativity.

They both have agreed on that, apart from the Physical reality of matters, ie. everything we interact with the world with basic senses, there are also Reality that does not exist physically but mentally. They are products created by human beings such as Culture and Economy.

For Creativity, they believe that it is not something out of the thin air. Creativity is heavily rooted to the past experience and inspired by experiments. As a result, one must take in as much knowledge as he can in order to discover the chance for creativity.

To apply creativity to sustainability, one must studies the structure and reason for sustainability and experiment with different tools and model that we address the Real issues of the sustainable real world.

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Final submission: June 3, 2009

Assignment 4 is made up of 2 parts (both are important):

1. an essay of 1500-2000-words
2. and an analysis of a project from the point of view of your research topic (6xA3 pages min.)—we will discuss the total number of pages closer to the submission date.

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Exercise from last week - Utopia vs Reality in Planned Public Housing Estates

Exercise from last week.

The collage posters are intended to be read in relation to one and other as a series.

http://www.scribd.com/doc/14844956/Collage-1-Le-Corbusier-and-the-Ville-Radieuse

http://www.scribd.com/doc/14844978/Collage-2-Planned-Public-Housing-in-the-postwar-years

http://www.scribd.com/doc/14845024/Collage-3-K2-Apartments-a-modern-approach-to-public-housing

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tomorrows thoughts today

stumbled across this blog with a pretty ambitious mission statement :

"exploring the consequences of fantastic, perverse and underrated urbanisms"

.... maybe worth a look

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