Modeling the City and Musings on Density

So if you are a regular you potentially noticed that its been a while since I’ve done any real posting. Lately I have been concentrating most of my efforts on a studio project I have been working on. We’ve (My Group and I) been putting together a proposal for the implementation of a Light Rail Transit (LRT) line down Avenue Du Parc in Montreal and I have been working on a lot of the 3D images. 

I’ve also been working over theories on density and its measurements in preparation to discuss potential thesis topics with my adviser in the next couple of weeks and have been finding the concept of density a bit of a quandary when it applies to Urban planning. I mean sure we all think of density in terms of the number of people within a certain area, but is that really an adequate measure for density. Highly built downtown areas can end up measured as having very low density if you have a downtown area that few people actually live in.

Should building volumes be our measure of density? what is the total amount of built space within a certain area, and how much volume does it take up? This could certainly give a better view on what density feels like to the pedestrian, but then there is the issue of neighbourhoods with similar volumes but much higher population levels. Take a small apartment building in Korea and a building here in Canada, in Korea there are likely to be twice as many people in the building.

Until now density has been a fairly loose measurement, it has been ok for statistical purposes and when considered as an abstract number but as we move into a future where compact and efficient cities are the new goal, we are going to need to take a closer look at this measurement.

Neighbourhood News March 30th 2009

Critical looks at the future of city building.

The Washington Post

In Va., Vision of Suburbia at a Crossroads

Targeting Cul-de-Sacs, Rules Now Require Through Streets in New Subdivisions

Virginia is taking aim at one of the most enduring symbols of suburbia: the cul-de-sac.

The state has decided that all new subdivisions must have through streets linking them with neighboring subdivisions, schools and shopping areas. State officials say the new regulations will improve safety and accessibility and save money: No more single entrances and exits onto clogged secondary roads. Quicker responses by emergency vehicles. Lower road maintenance costs for governments.

Although cul-de-sacs will remain part of the suburban landscape for years to come, the Virginia regulations attack what the cul-de-sac has come to represent: quasi-private standalone developments around the country that are missing only a fence and a sign that says “Keep Out.”

Homeowners choose cul-de-sacs because, they say, they offer safety, security and a sense of community.

“Cul-de-sacs are the safest places in America to live,” said Mike Toalson, executive vice president of the Home Builders Association of Virginia, which opposes the new rules. “The first lots sold are often on the cul-de-sacs because they are safe.” As for developments with single entrances and exits, Toalson said, such configurations ensure that all traffic is local, neighbors watch out for each other and speeds are kept down. “Crooks look for multiple exits.”

Prince William County residents Brian and Donna Goff chose to raise their children in a cul-de-sac life. They live on Vixen Court, one of seven cul-de-sacs in Bridlewood Manor, a subdivision in Bristow. “You’ve got a family atmosphere. It stays quiet here,” said Brian Goff, 42. The couple, who have two young children, have lived in the cul-de-sac for nine years.

The changes come as cash-strapped states and localities can no longer afford the inexorable widening of secondary roads that are overburdened with traffic from the subdivisions, strip malls, schools and office buildings that feed into them. The system forces drivers to enter these traffic-choked roads to go even 50 yards or so to the neighborhood coffeehouse or elementary school. North Carolina and Portland, Ore., are moving on similar fronts.  Read More.

NYTimes

Reinventing America’s Cities: The Time Is Now  

THE country has fallen on hard times, but those of us who love cities know we have been living in the dark ages for a while now. We know that turning things around will take more than just pouring money into shovel-ready projects, regardless of how they might boost the economy. Windmills won’t do it either. We long for a bold urban vision.

With their crowded neighborhoods and web of public services, cities are not only invaluable cultural incubators; they are also vastly more efficient than suburbs. But for years they have been neglected, and in many cases forcibly harmed, by policies that favored sprawl over density and conformity over difference.

Such policies have caused many of our urban centers to devolve into generic theme parks and others, like Detroit, to decay into ghost towns. They have also sparked the rise of ecologically unsustainable gated communities and reinforced economic disparities by building walls between racial, ethnic and class groups.

Correcting this imbalance will require a radical adjustment in how we think of cities and government’s role in them. At times it will mean destruction rather than repair. And it demands listening to people who have spent the last decade imagining and in many cases planning for more sustainable, livable and socially just cities. Read More

Neighbourhood News Feb 2 2009

Viet Nam Net

French-Vietnamese artist unveils city of the future

An overseas Vietnamese artist’s vision for a cultural city of the future may be one step closer to fruition as many local architects praised it as a bold and creative vision that reflects his whole-hearted love of his home nation.

Stemming from his ambition to embark on a vast project to honor the source of the nation and symbolise Vietnam’s unique culture, Tran Van Liem, a French painter of Vietnamese origin, has spent 20 years developing the plans for Van Lang City. After living abroad for more than 30 years, the artist returned to Vietnam at the end of 2008 to deliver a lecture on the project.

The basis of Van Lang City’s design is rooted in Oriental philosophy, contained by a circle measuring 1,800m in diameter. The city would be capable of accommodating about 1 million residents and would possess eight, spoke-like boulevards leading from the rim of the circle to a central plaza.

Two of the city’s major landmarks are the “Thien tu thap” and “Hoang tu thap” towers, dedicated to Lac Long Quan and Au Co – the legendary ancestor of the Vietnamese nation. The tower dedicated to Lac Long Quan, distinguished by its square foundations, symbolises Yang-Heaven, whilst the tower dedicated to Au Co with circular foundations would represent Yin-Earth. Read More

Los Angeles Times

New Capitol Visitor Center: not a capital idea

Here at Urban Neighbourhood we came to a similar conclusion

With a half-a-trillion dollars of stimulus spending on the way and real-estate developers mired in what could turn out to be a decade-long slump, the federal government has emerged in recent months as this country’s only viable patron of large-scale construction, at least for the foreseeable future.

So here’s an idea: How about taking a careful, critical look at Washington’s recent architectural track record?

A good place to start is D.C.’s new Capitol Visitor Center. In fact, when it comes to the aesthetic and financial perils of government-sponsored architecture, you could hardly invent a more perfect cautionary tale than the one embodied by this grandiose complex sunk into the east side of Capitol Hill. Read More

Car sharing just got a whole lot bigger

Car sharing is becoming a much more popular way of having a car in the city. People are trading in the maintenance and costs of being an occasional driver for the convenience of having access to a car when they need it and letting someone else or some other company worry about it when they don’t.

“Carsharing is a model of car rental where people rent cars for short periods of time, often by the hour. They are attractive to customers who make only occasional use of a vehicle, as well as others who would like occasional access to a vehicle of a different type than they use day-to-day.” From Wiki

There have been a couple companies that have offered this service till now; Zipcar, Autoshare, CommunAuto, StattAuto, and others. up until this point Car sharing has been considered a bit of a fringe industry with most people turning up their noses at the idea of ’sharing a car.’ That is likely to change as a number of major car companies have started eyeing car sharing as a way to find profit in this day and age that has been less then kind to the Car companies.

The Hertz Corporation which is considered to be the worlds largest general use rental company recently announced that it has decided to get into the car sharing business as a method of increasing revenue and activity at its non airport locations in particular.  The company has termed the new division ‘Connect by Hertz ‘ and will be the first global car sharing organisation. You could join in Toronto but still have access to a car share in Atlanta.

“Hertz’s vision is to offer total mobility solutions and car sharing is a logical step for the Company. In line with Hertz’s long term growth plans, Connect by Hertz supports Hertz’s diversified business model by providing best-in-class transportation solutions across the spectrum of customer needs,” commented Mark P. Frissora, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of The Hertz Corporation. “In addition to being environmentally friendly, Connect by Hertz cars can save members thousands of dollars a year in vehicle ownership costs and, by leveraging Hertz’s established infrastructure, we’re the first major car rental company to be able to offer members the first global car sharing program. With aggressive plans for expansion, Connect by Hertz has all the elements to become a successful and profitable part of Hertz.” S

No matter what your opinion on Hertz,  the company’s entry into an industry that has up till now  been dominated by small environmentally conscious co-ops and independent operators signals that the car sharing business is moving from a fringe service to the mainstream.

Proposals for the next generation Routemaster double decker

The Collaboration From Aston Martin and Foster and Partners

Two blue chippers Aston Martin and Foster + Partners raked in a not-much-needed $38,000 (£25,000) and a first-prize award along with Capoco Design for re-jiggering London’s famous double decker bus, the Routemaster. Read More…

The Design By Capoco

Cross Section of Interior Configuration

A new-generation eco-friendly driver-and-conductor Routemaster, which could make a return to regular service. The new bus, which would be emission-free and have a hydrogen-fuelled engine, was backed in 2007 by Boris Johnson. S

Open Source Sketch Books

As the end of this year rolls around and I realise that I have only about one more semester to choose a direction for my thesis proposal I have been keeping an eye on some other projects. The first one to make mention on here was the Miniature Activism post and today brings another. While still in an embryonic state, A Stage For The City is an interesting concept for collaboration and public consultation while exploring ideas in public space.

A stage for the city
The use of urban space fused together with the access of technology. This blog is an Architectural Design Thesis for Adam Lee, Leeds Metropolitan University. The idea is that I will post my design research and development allowing Internet collaboration, acting as an “open sketch book”. This will be submitted as part of my overall research.

Ørestad College

Ørestads Boulevard 76, DK-2300 Copenhagen S

3XN has shot another bit of news our way this past week, Ørestad College has been nominated for the 2009 Mies van der Rohe Award.  The firm issued a press release explaining the purpose of the building and provides an explanation on the firm’s portfolio.

Ørestad Gymnasium (upper secondary school) creates a framework for cross-disciplinary and an extended use of IT-based learning by revolutionizing educational space in a structure without traditional classrooms With a profile of media, communication and culture studies, and providing wireless Internet and laptops for all students it soon got the knick-name “the Virtual Gymnasium.”

Four boomerang shaped storey decks rotate in relation to each other like the shutter of a camera. They form the superstructure; the overall framework of the college, and provide space for the college’s four study zones. Each zone is on one level, providing organisational flexibility, with the option of micro adjustment to create different spaces, learning environments and group sizes. The rotation of the storey decks projects a part of each deck into the high central hall. This part is the so called X-zone; a spatial expression of the colleges’ ambition to promote interdisciplinary expertise between study zones with physical and visual links.

The storey decks are open towards a central core, where a broad main staircase winds its way upwards to the roof terrace. The main staircase is the heart of college educational and social life; the primary connection up an down, but also a place to stay, watch and be seen. Three ‘mega columns’ form the primary load bearing system, supplemented by a number of smaller columns positioned according to structural requirement, not as part of a regular grid. As a result, each floor has few permanent elements and can be laid out and rearranged almost completely at will. The superstructure is supplemented by a series of newly developed ‘room furniture’, which accommodate the need for the flexible and temporary room arrangements and learning environments required by varying group sizes – from one on one to an entire cohort.

The rotated decks are mirrored in the facades. Due to their rotation, the decks create openings double- and triple high while drawing lines on the façade. As a rule, the glass is smooth with the deck fronts, but on each floor, one façade is withdrawn to create an outdoor space. These outdoor spaces are connected from ground to roof. In front of the glass facades, a series of coloured semi-transparent glass louvers can open or close to protect from the sun, while adding dashes of colour to the indoor environment.

Ørestad College was built in immediate continuation of new legislation in the Danish educational sector in 2005 and is an educational building remarkable for its complete absence of class rooms in the traditional sense. At present, the gymnasium is the most-applied-for in Denmark.

Best building i Scandinavia 2007
Nominated for the Mies van der Rohe Award 2009
Forum AID Award 2008 for Best Architecture in the Nordic Region

The building is an intriguing take on an educational facility with its free form design and open concept. I must admit I find it a little hard to imagine what kind of classes could be held in this type of building.  I’m curious if it functions as a teaching area or if it functions as more of a study space.  As a student I would definitely enjoy studying in this type of building, but I also have to wonder whether noise from my fellow students would be an issue.  This building is a forward thinking design that reinterprets the way we look at study spaces.

If any of our readers has visited, or better yet attends Ørestad College we would love to hear what it is like to use this building! Send us an email or comment below!

Marmormolen: The Marble Warf

The handshake across the harbour

The City of Copenhagen has been working on a master plan to redevelop its port area and create and attractive neighbourhood between Amerika Plads and Nordhavnen. The project is called Marmormolen, or the Marble Wharf. It is a comprehensive plan to give the quarter of Østerbro access to the harbour and to the waterfront.

The project is made up of three islands, this will add approximately 1.3 kilometres to the length of the whole wharf system. A major tenant of the plan is to create a bridge will connect Østerbro and the new neighbourhood. What is most interesting about this particular bridge is the scale. The plan calls for a monumental structure that is both a bridge and also a town gate, creating an easily identifiable entry point to the city on a monumental scale that measures up to the size of the ships and cruise boats that will pass through it.

The master plan for the area was put together by 3XN and lays out the general guidelines and design goals in a manor specific enough to properly direct growth, but at the same time also leaves creative licence for the developers of the individual parcels to create a diverse and lively architectural environment.

The winner of the competition for the bridge structure was the office of Steven Holl Architects.

Two compact towers with the pedestrian link

The proposal at night

The jury was convinced by the compact towers adapted to the harbour environment and the bridge being “like a handshake across the harbour”.

The winning project is characterized by two spectacular and robust towers – one at Marmormolen and one at Langelinie. The towers are connected by a delicate pedestrian bridge that, according to the jury, resembles “a handshake” between the points of the two wharves. The jury finds the expression of the suggested plan “exclusive” and notices that it is also open for facilities appealing to the public, e.g. terraces, restaurants and, of course, walks on the spectacular pedestrian bridge connecting the two areas.S

As a planner and an urbanite, or maybe just as an urban romantic I feel that to an extent right now there has been a lack of truly monumental structures being built, there are a number of starchitect buildings being done and a number of large projects, but in terms of things like town gates, visual focal points, and monuments are in short supply. Of course an economic recession may not be the time to build these projects, but none the less Copenhagen is building one of these monumental structures so we have an opportunity to create one. While the proposal that the jury selected is a dynamic proposal and there are very few examples of buildings of this scope, to a certain extent it doesn’t quite go far enough. The project still appears to the eye as two separate buildings with a bridge connecting them.

The 3XN Proposal

3XN was nice enough to send us their proposal for the Marmormolen City Gate, when considered from afar, the 3XN harbour gate proposal satisfies the urge for a true monument or gate more completely.. in my opinion at least.  A bridge structure between two buildings isn’t all that revolutionary, while the span is longer then examples like the Petronas Towers or other commercial buildings with sky-walks or bridge links, it isn’t that surprising or unique. The 3XN proposal for the Marmormolen project in Copenhagen appears as a single structure that flows from one side of the harbour to the other rather then as two separate buildings with a bridge between them, something that we haven’t really seen before.

A bridge spanning a body of deep water, providing the only dry connection between two stretches of land, is one of the most powerful architectural experiences in the landscape. Another classical element is the town gate, which marks the boundary between the countryside and the town, and ‘contains’ the town, physically, structurally and aesthetically.

3XN’s proposal for a construction on Marmormolen in Copenhagen is both: a town gate and a bridge that links Marmormolen with Langeliniekaj, creating a new coherent area in Copenhagen Harbor.

The towers and the bridge constitute one single, floating dynamic movement, characterized by the bold span across the harbor entrance in terms of both the plan design and the facade. Establishing a connection across the harbor radically improves public access and creates brand new opportunities for life and growth in the area.

Write up furnished by 3XN.

The 3XN proposal as seen from the ocean

The 3XN plan view

Of course often it comes down to a matter of opinion, so what’s yours?

The Lilypad at Been-Seen.com

The Lilypad concept

As part of our Web Urbanists check up we bring you this great post from Been-Seen.com

“It’s 2100. Humans haven’t gained control of their carbon emissions. The earth has warmed up. The oceans have risen. Millions of ecological refugees have nowhere to go. Unless, of course, they had the foresight to build Lilypads.

The brainchildren of Vincent Callebaut Architectures, the Lilypad is a design for an auto-sufficient amphibious city. If you’ve seen Wall-E, it’s a bit like the Axiom spaceship – a giant city with everything needed for humans to survive a major catastrophe. It also looks a bit like something that might be built off the coast of Dubai.”

This is the best collection of pictures on this particular topic that I have seen thus far. Enjoy!

Been-Seen.com:: Art & Design – Lilypad.

Growing Water: A Vision of Chicago in the Future

The Growing Water proposal was put together by UrbanLab for the City of the Future Competition hosted by the History Channel. The History Channel’s competition preamble lays out the historical context of epic engineering projects that are remembered through time.

“The civilizations covered in Engineering an Empire on The History Channel achieved the impossible—they were the first to design and engineer marvels that astonished the world and transcended time.

This competition, in the spirit of visionary thinkers and planners, world’s fairs and literature everywhere, challenges participants to imagine tomorrow’s buildings, transportation networks, and centers of commerce and begin to give them form by creating bold and visionary designs reflecting what their city might look like and how it would function 100 years from now.

The competition aims for clear architectural and engineering responses with the goal of using what we have learned from past civilizations in order to peer into the future. We want to see tomorrow’s cities foretold in three dimensions, not merely written about or described. We are looking for tomorrow’s architectural and engineering marvels, which like the engineering and architectural marvels of past civilizations, have the staying power to endure beyond their times.” s

The Growing Water Proposal for Chicago puts out a few basic underlying points about what it sees as the conditions facing the world in the upcoming century. It is projected that by the year 2106, the most precious commodity in the world will be water. The Chicago proposal suggests that the city become a fresh water factory in a sense. Reversing the hydrological design which has the city draining water from the great lakes and diverting it across the continental divide into the Mississippi watershed. Currently almost none of the water is returned to the Great Lakes water system.

The project installs a network of Eco-Boulevards designed to function like a giant living machine that will feed used water and storm run off back into the lake after filtering it through a series of engineered marshes. The proposal enhances the ‘Emerald Necklace’ of parks that Chicago is known for and expands them, converting them to a system that not only provides an urban oasis and parkway system but turns the City into a giant fresh water factory.

Fresh water is foreseen to be the Oil of the coming century and as such positions Chicago to enjoy the wealth of living next to one of the largest fresh water deposits in the world.

The proposal is inspiring when especially when you consider that this hydrological utopia is completely achievable with contemporary technology, all it takes is the collective will and a waterfront view is possible most Chicago urbanites the Growing Water Proposal creates a future where cities have a positive impact on the environment, please check it out. Click to see the History Channel Competition and the other winning proposals from LA and New York City.

Growing Water