URSI 110--The City
City Design
Key Ideas (Based on Edmund Bacon, Design of Cities, pp. 13-65):
- The city as an act of will: The future is what we make it.
- Elements of architectures
- Mass & space
- Form & space: “By defining the point of juncture between mass and space, the architect is making a statement about the interrelationship of man and his universe.”
- Defining city space: Define volumes of space that are in scale with the needs of the present time.
- Articulating space: Influence of buildings radiates outward, giving shape (“articulating”) to the whole fabric.
- Form
- Texture
- Materials
- Light & shade
- Color
- Space & time: No single part can be considered except in relation to what immediately precedes or follows it.
- Space & movement
- Definition of architecture: “Architecture is the articulation of space so as to produce in the participator a definite space experience in relation to previous and anticipated space experiences.”
- Involvement in Design: “The designer’s problem is not to create facades or architectural mass but to create an all-encompassing experience, to engender involvement.”
- Meeting the sky
- Meeting the ground
- Points in space
- Recession in planes
- Depth
- Ascent & descent
- Concavity & convexity
- Human scale
- Participation in Design—need to understand the actual effect of a design on the people who use it
- Apprehension
- Representation
- Realization
- Nature of Design
- Simultaneous movement systems
- Relationship of mass & space
- Continuity of experience
- Simultaneous continuities
- Relationship to nature
- Strength of a plan lies not in authority, but in ability to influence growth
- Points of connections between systems should be places of special emphasis and design enrichment
- Rhythms/Time
- Ways of Perceiving
- Outgoing/ingrown
- Point of view
- Endotopic/intermediate/exotopic
- Sense of space:
- Inward (Ptolemaic)
- Outreach (Galilean)
- Outgoing (Newtonian)
- Involvement (Postmodern)
- Psychology of space
- Forbidding/facilitating environments
- “Much of city design is concerned with the establishment of firm limits within which there can be free movement, and extending these limits outward as the radius of significant relations expands.”
- Involvement
- Bodily response as a built-in ingredient of the design process
- Think in terms of linkages rather than discrete elements
- “I believe that anyone intending to practice architecture or planning should be able to run up three flights of stairs without noticeable loss of breath and take joy in doing it.”
- A form with minimum exposure (square) also has least environmental involvement
- Shape and nature of edge are both important because of the way they communicate to the neighbors
- Length of a line bounding an entity can be extended indefinitely while maintaining same area (Mandelbrot sets)
- Involvement tends to dissolve the distinction between inner and outer
- Color as a dimension of progression through space
- Perspective vs. simultaneity
- Perspective fixes time at a single point
- Simultaneity presents multiple points in time
© 2006 A.J.Filipovitch
Revised 23 August 06