A. Camiz, New perspectives on the meaning of urban form (original) (raw)
Introduction: Semiotic Approaches to Urban Space
Semiotic Approaches to Urban Space: Signs and Cities, 2024
This book considers a certain strand of contemporary debates on a topic that has inspired post-war semioticians almost as much as language: the space of the city. The early, fundamental insights on topological semiotics by Algirdas J. Greimas, as well as Juri Lotman’s conceptualisation of space as a secondary modelling system, established the city as a concrete language in itself. This language of the urban makes political hierarchies and cultural values legible and comprehensible, so that the formation of material space at first sight becomes inscribed with its more complex and stratified meaning.
Understanding the city through its semiotic spatialities
The city is a complex sociocultural phenomenon where space and time are simultaneously parts of itself and parts of its conceptualisation. In the paper I draw out three general perspectives where the city is characterised by different spatialities and temporalities. The urban space can thus be a space of rhythms and practices, an objectified dimension of the settlement, and a symbolic form in interpretations and creations of cities. The city can be understood as a semiotic whole by considering varying semiotic natures of the urban space.
The Cyclicality of the Anthropic Space in Urban Morphology: an architectural perspective
Proceedings 24th ISUF 2017 - City and Territory in the Globalization Age, 2017
The "Network city" and its crisis Over the last decade we have been witnessing the effect over the territory of the worldwide propellant of the globalization processes. As an immediate consequence, one can remind the progressive weakening of the "Network city" (Marzot, 2006 i). This urban model was intended, since its inception, development and forerunning application, to take over the role of Planning in the management of the territorial transformation and to supersede it with urban and territorial marketing multimodal infrastructure to group existing cities into clusters, considered coherent to down strategy. This overarching process was developed at the expenses of national and local interests, almost completely disregarding the effects produced onto the already established communities. Therefore, if the "Network City" was apparently unfolding an unlimited capacity to multiply opportunities, by increasing movements of people, goods, information and resources, it was pursuing its goals by being very selective and exclusive with respect to the existing framework. As a side effect of this overarching strategy, the dominant urban model Abstract. Over the last decade, we have been witnessing the progressive weakening of the so-called "Network City", indented as the sheer embodiment of the globalization driving forces. This phenomenon mostly occurred because urban model. It progressively delivered an increasing amount of waiting lands and building vacancies over the territory. Emptiness suddenly appeared as the "culture of congestion". Recycling seems to be the immediate reaction to the building standstill and it is nowadays widely accepted as the most promising strategy to face the crisis of the city, especially within Europe. This statement respect it becomes fundamental to reconsider the forerunning contribution of Urban Morphology and Building Typology. In fact this discipline, since the second half of the '50 of the XX century, because of the necessity to reconstruct Europe after the Second World War, was pioneering the necessity to read the Form of the city beyond any ideological prejudice, superseding the Modern approach. As a consequence of this attitude, the city was even more intended as a "manufact" constantly transformed through the different historical promising future for our cities.
The querelle between modern and traditional urban design has alimented in the past decades diverging phenomena such as the new urbanism, the so-called vernacular architecture and the landscape urbanism on one hand, and the extreme radical neo or ultra-modernist approaches on the other side, each establishing clearly a different and diverging position within the international debate. The urban morphology approach, as developed in time by the Italian school of Saverio Muratori and Gianfranco Caniggia and their followers, has developed a methodology for architectural and urban design, which is neither the radical reproposal of the ultra-modernist style, nor the nostalgic reference to vernacular forms. The Italian school of Urban Morphology proposes a methodology for urban and architectural design based on the reconstruction of the formation process of the built organism, the types, the aggregates, and the territorial cycles. Upon the full understanding of these multi scalar processes, it is then possible to develop the project as the last phase of an ongoing process. A last phase, conceived as contemporary on one hand, but not opposing itself to history on the other, deriving its vitality from the understanding of the formation process of building types and urban tissues so to be the continuation of the past into the future. The paper illustrates briefly the formation process of palaces and public squares through some well-known examples, and proposes a project that applied the same methodology in the design.
2011
This urban thesis represents a body of work which spans eight years. Presented within its pages is a ‘PhD-Thesis-Atlas’ related to the questions of how to read the urban structure for the contemporary urban landscape. It embodies first and foremost the academic explorations of what specific questions, problems and issues present themselves within the debate of urban morphology and, specifically, typomorphology which centres its activity around the study of the physical [building] and spatial [open] forms of the cities. The Thesis-Atlas simultaneously traces the effects of the typomorphological debate through the visual and empirical explorations of urban form and structure. Documented here, is a theoretical underpinning for the debate, as well as a proposal on how to empirically reflect on urban form and place formations. The document is divided into 4 parts. Parts 1 to 3 contain the core text and theoretical elaborations within the debate, and explore the possible methods of how to examine the city empirically. A total of 10 chapters, each with a specific focus and questions, complete part 1 to 3. Each chapter has visual markers to indicate which images relate to specific issues mentioned in the text. Part 4 represents the visual narrative of the thesis. It contains all graphic material, either sourced or original, in photographic, mapped and diagrammatic formats. It is hoped that the 500 images shown in this thesis will help guide the reader through the periods and types of development which has not only been instrumental in the historical development of the debate surrounding city structure, but also to act as a stimulus for future work.
The urban form as ‘variation of identity’ in a city
Bari ISUFitaly 2018 - Proceedings , 2018
The city is an "organism in the making", an entity in constant transformation, not a complex of immutable elements. The city represents the entire human experiential field of the world, considered as expression of a "fundamental movement of existence" in its completeness and historicity, expressed by the formative structure of tissues and building types, by the urban hierarchies, by the relations with the territory, by the social relations, and by the values and criticalities. The conference's aim is to propose a dialectical comparison between scholars of Architecture, Urban Planning, Urban History, Restoration, Geography, on the theme of urban morphology with an interpretative perspective based on the concept of "operating history". Search for a multidisciplinary syncretism that eludes single analyzing techniques and aims to the complete reconstruction of the urban phenomenology in its totality and concrete essence, through the study of the changing and inflexible condition of 'fluidity' hinged on the world's events. An integrated thought based on the critical concept of 'making' that constitutes, phase by phase, the signifying element of each present, explained through the relationship between the before and the after: that is the research perspective of 'being' that announces the notion of transformational process. Therefore, the projection in the future of the urban form is the central theme of the conference that proposes to stimulate the reflection on the issues as: recovery (not only of the historical city), re-use of existing urban spaces, regeneration, ex novo design in peripheral and peri-urban areas and natural spaces. All that, without neglecting the issue of sustainability, not considered with the strabismus of those who surrender to the "technique" pre-domain.
Practising the Science of Urban Form
Narvaez, L. (2017) Practising the Science of Urban Form (Viewpoints). Urban Morphology, 21(1), 81-83., 2017
In relation to urban morphology and its application in relevant professions, three interrelated needs are especially evident: first, to respond to the challenge of bringing together research and practice to achieve their mutual development; secondly, to advance understanding of what urban morphology means as an interdisciplinary practice; and thirdly, to address the need for theoretical-practical coherence.
The best way to conceive semiotical spaces that are not identical to single buildings, such as a cityscape, is to define the place in terms of the activities occurring there. This conception originated in the proxemics of E. T. Hall and was later generalized in the spatial semiotics of Manar Hammad. It can be given a more secure grounding in terms of time geography, which is involved with trajectories in space and time. We add to this a qualitative dimension which is properly semiotic, and which derives from the notion of border, itself a result of the primary semiotic operation of segmentation. Borders, in this sense, are more or less permeable to different kinds of activities, such as gaze, touch, and movement, where the latter are often not physically defined, but characterized in terms of norms. Norms must be understood along the lines of the Prague school, which delineates as scale going from laws in the legal sense to simple rules of thumb. Such considerations have permitted us to define a number of semio-spatial objects as, most notably, the boulevard, considered as an intermediate level of public space, located between the village square and the coffee house presiding over what Habermas called the public sphere. Urbanity originates as a scene on which the gaze, well before the word, mediates between the sexes, the classes, the cultures, and other avatars of otherness. However, this scenario is seriously upset but the emergence of the cell phone and other technical devices, as well as by the movement of populations.
Urban Morphology, 2006
Urban morphology is a thriving field of enquiry involving researchers from a wide diversity of disciplinary, linguistic and cultural backgrounds. While this diversity has helped advance our understanding of the complexity of urban form, confusion and controversy has also arisen over the various theoretical formulations forwarded by researchers from different philosophical and epistemological backgrounds. With the aim of improving intelligibility in the field, this paper proposes a straightforward scheme to identify, classify and interpret, or 'map', individual contributions to the study of urban form according to their respective theoretical or epistemological perspectives. Drawing upon epistemological discussions familiar to the readers of this journal, the authors first distinguish between cognitive and normative studies. A second distinction is made between internalist studies that consider urban form as a relatively independent system, and externalist studies in which urban form stands as a passive product of various external determinants. Using these basic criteria, it is possible to interpret and synthesize a multitude of contributions and map them using a simple Cartesian grid. The paper highlights how contributions from seemingly different theoretical approaches to urban morphology are intrinsically similar in their treatment of urban form as an object of enquiry.
UTILIZATION OF SEMIOTICS IN URBAN PLANNING
UTILIZATION OF SEMIOTICS IN URBAN PLANNING, 2008
Semiotics is an innovative science that has latterly entered the field of contemporary research. This knowledge application has become more or less common in urban planning, although gradually and not directly. Various urban phenomena tend to be hidden based on their characteristics, and only their effects can be studied in the city, so semiotics can be an efficient and accurate mechanism to generate qualitative data from cities. This article consists of three sections; First, with an initial review of the fundamental concepts and definitions of semiotics, the SIGN is defined and then based on the theoretical foundations of Saussure's concepts, semiotics indicators are categorized. Next, the prototypes of semiotics from the point of view of Umberto Eco, which is one of the most famous categorizations done in this regard, will be studied. Subsequently, the following classifications will be considered in this article: - Biological semiotics - Ecological semiotics - Computer Semiotics - Social semiotics - Cultural semiotics - Visual semiotics - Visual semiotics In the last section, for each of the seven types of semiotics explained, first, a definition and second Saussure's concepts of it will be analyzed and finally the interpretation of that class of semiotics in urban planning, or in other words, the application of each type of semiotics in urban planning will be discussed. Keyword: Semiotics, Ferdinand de Saussure, Umberto Eco, Urban Planning
A comparative study of urban form
Urban Morphology, 2015
This paper compares four different approaches to urban morphology: historico-geographical, process typological, space syntax, and spatial analytical. It explores in particular the use of four fundamental concepts proposed in these approaches: morphological region, typological process, spatial configuration, and cell. The four concepts are applied in a traditional gateway area of the city of Porto, Portugal. The area includes considerable variety of urban form. The main purpose is to understand how to combine and co-ordinate these approaches so as to improve the description, explanation and prescription of urban form.
The diversity and complexity of human settlements is reflected in the range of ways we try to understand them. The richness of subject matter presented by cities has given rise to an equal richness in methods of investigation. Even within a single field such as urban morphology, there are different approaches with different terms of reference. The challenge raised by the diversity is not how to select between the different views but how to combine and co-ordinate them. The purpose of this paper is to undertake an initial critical analysis of different approaches to urban morphology in an effort to meet that challenge. The first aim is to identify the range of different phenomena taken as the object of urban morphological enquiry. The second is to identify an aspect that is common to all the approaches and that can be used as a reference key to co-ordinate different views in a rigorous way. The ultimate goal is a composite view in which the different approaches support each other to provide a better understanding of human settlements.
The Urban Matrix. Towards a Theory on the Parameters of Urban Form and their Interrelation
2009
The present employment seeks to approximate the city as a specific anthropogenic transformation of the biosphere as well as a distinct reflexive human design approach towards the environment – ultimately as "culture and geography's largest artifact, the product of a very complex play of greatly varied forces" (Vance Jr 1990: 4). In short, this statement not only points out the object of research to be covered but also enfolds its quandary: What makes us characterize so diverse entities, such as Rothenburg, Ur and Mexico City, which originated in topographically completely unlike settings at a time difference of well more than 3000 years, with the same term – city (Jansen)? And what allows us to draw one transition line from our contemporary urban forms back to the Bronze Age, in which – to common knowledge – the city has its origins? Exactly for its variety and constant transformation the 'artifact' city is hard to grasp, why most researchers abide by functional aspects for a general understanding and focus formal aspects only in a historical perspective. Still, in addition to the variety of functional assessments there also persists the notion of a formal urban continuum, which appears to be only partly explained by the diverse functional definitions. This present thesis thus shall add to the according manifold functional examinations and ratiocinations, an approach to the city by means of considering the significance of its continuing form and investigating the general factors that determine this form. To this end factors and systemic relations will be elaborated that generally determine urban form, beyond their factual existence and diversity in time and space, an thereby allow for a consistent formal term. The starting point for this contribution to basic urbanistic research constitute two considerations, which both however do not belong to this discipline: The first comprises a phenomenological reasoning, that suggests a differentiation and yet intrinsic relation between factual cities and a theoretical concept that serves as an ideal perception of how a city should be. This ratiocination, which was well established by the art historian Giulio Argan in his "Storia dell'arte come storia della città", forms the basis for the suggested perception of an abstractum urban form that consequently allows for an examination of its constitution and characteristics. The second involves a systemic understanding, that implies a distinct interrelation of various factors that yet erratically afford cities. This ratiocination goes back to the sociologist Niklas Luhmann, and allows explaining the variety as well as the unpredictability of factual urban forms in course of the diversity of opinions and interests involved, while he concurrently insinuates the investigation for conditioning and contingency formulas that determine the process of interrelation. These considerations together constitute as a thought model the Urban Matrix, a dissipative, that is an open dynamic system, in which time and space independent parameters by interrelation cause the origination and development of time and space dependent urban forms. Thence the system itself remains abstract, yet determines the concrete motivations of those participating in the design process and ultimately the very factual formal result 'city'. These thoughts imply that the suggested approach is primarily a theoretical-normative occupation, dealing with abstract concepts rather than the actually built environment. Thus, the reader will be confronted with a search for preferably simple and yet copious wordings that shall explain the features of the different conditioning parameters as well as their interrelation within the Urban Matrix. Still, for the purpose of unambiguousness, this endeavor effects a demonstration of complex circumstances, from which sometimes suffers a convenient readability, as well as familiar expressions have to be put in another context and, where necessary and appropriate, neologisms have to be introduced. Likewise, the argumentation at times has to revert to other disciplines that obviously feature their own language use, which might at first appear to be alien to an urbanistic approach. Of special interest are here the Formal Concept Analysis by Bernhard Ganter und Rudolf Wille, as well as the consierations on Semantics by Gottlob Frege. The key hypothesis for the suggested approach is the differentiation between Quality and Quantity, which in formal concept analysis is expressed by the correlation of Attributes and Objects, and in semantics by the dichotomy of Intension and Extension. In this context urbanistic quantities are bound in time and space, whereas urbanistic qualities allow for an induction of general aspects. These are examined against the background of an idealized urban foundation and eventually summarized to parameters of urban form. Thus, usually only a safe and healthy place is attractive for the establishment of a city; thence safety and health become criteria for the whole urban development, and ultimately refer to a parameter attractiveness'. The key conclusion of the thesis however points to the existence of a conditioning system, which factors can be scientifically determined, when yet it offers no injective, surjective, or bijective relations (Eineindeutigkeit), nor any other mathematical formula that insinuates a calculatory approach towards urban form. With this system a retrospective explanation is possible, a prospective predictability still impossible, comparable with Heinz von Foerster's 'Non trivial machine' (Foerster 1985: 62 ff.). Accordingly, the attractiveness of a city can be explained by its safe and healthy location, but not all attractive cities need to locate at especially healthy and safe places, nor give such places a warranty for future attractiveness and prosperous development. Altogether the thesis consists of four main parts: 1. An introductory Western Reflection of Western Urbanism since the industrialization, which with the development of urbanism as an academic discipline forms the starting point and the scope of an urbanistic basic research – whereas for the lack of a concise field of research this reflection does not represent a classical introduction, but a summarizing intellectual and receptional history followed by the suggestion of another approach and its hermeneutic predicament; 2. The explication of a thought model, which conceptually describes the Causes of Urban Development with its phenomenological and systemic principles and consequently a derivation of abstract factors, whereas this procedure builds the basis for the induction of qualitative parameters of urban form; 3. A Commonsensical Catalogue, which defines the qualitative parameters and their criteria – as well as considerations regarding the establishment of secondary factors within this parametral frameworks; and 4. An Outlook onto the Urban Matrix as an integrating system, which conditions the origination and the development of urban form – whereas firstly the parameters are calibrated with those concepts introduced earlier, secondly the interrelation amongst the different parameters are discussed, and ultimately some rough ideas on possible practical applications are presented. As stated in the subtitle of this elaboration, the suggested thought model does not represent a concluded theory despite its aimed conceptual conclusiveness; on the contrary shall the discussed phenomenological and systemic considerations initiate further theoretical employments in an urbanistic basic research – last not east, to eventually produce a common perception of the city as very own field of research and work, despite the ongoing acceleration of urbanistic processes that aggravates this task (Seifert 2003: 11). Many of those topics discussed in this thesis derive from the author's experiences during his employment at the Department History of Urbanization (RWTH Aachen University); and many impulses stem from discussions with Michael Jansen, which altogether dealt with the in its substance irresolvable question 'What is a city?' Argan, Giulio C.: Storia dell'arte come storia della città, Riuniti, Roma, 1983 (1989, Kunstgeschichte als Stadtgeschichte, Fink, München). Foerster, Heinz v.: Entdecken oder Erfinden. Wie läßt sich das Verstehen verstehen? In: Gumin, Heinz & Heinrich Meier (eds.): Einführung in den Konstruktivismus, pg. 41-88, Oldenbourg, München, 1985 (1992, Piper, München). Frege, Gottlob: Über Sinn und Bedeutung. In: Zeitschrift für Philosophie und philosophische Kritik, vol 100, pg. 25-50, 1892 (Patzig, Günther: Gottlob Frege. Funktion, Begriff, Bedeutung, Fünf logische Studien, pg. 40-65, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen, 1962/75; Frege, Gottlob: Sense and Reference. In: The Philosophical Review, vol. 57, pg. 207-230, 1948). Ganter, Bernhard & Rudolf Wille: Formale Begriffsanalyse. Mathematische Grundlagen, Springer, Berlin (1999, Formal Concept Analysis. Mathematical Foundations, Springer, Berlin / New York) Luhmann, Niklas: Einführung in die Systemtheorie, Carl-Auer, Heidelberg, 1992. Seifert, Jörg: Urban Research: Biopsy and Density, VDG, Weimar, 2003. Vance Jr, James E.: The Continuing City. Urban Morphology in Western Civilization, John Hopkins, Baltimore, 1990.
Michael Conzen's keynote address at last year's ISUF conference in Delft triggered a vibrant discussion on what urban morphology is about. The trigger was the definition of urban morphology that Conzen gave in his address: 'urban morphology is the study of the built form of cities, and it seeks to explain the layout and spatial composition of urban structures and open spaces, their material character and symbolic meaning, in light of the forces that have created, expanded, diversified, and transformed them' (Conzen, 2012). That urban morphology deals with the built form of cities is probably an acceptable starting point for most purposes within the discipline, but such a statement should not be misunderstood as circumscribing the proper scientific object of urban morphology. What urban morphology strives to disclose is not the built form of cities as such, but the 'genesis' or 'engendering process' of this form. Yet there is a puzzle in the claim that urban morphology is concerned with 'morphogenetic processes' when the built form of cities is generally considered to be the result of human agency. This is the crux of the matter. Does the shaping process of cities include both human agency and a kind of causal (or structural) determinism, which remains to be explained? If so, urban design could no longer be considered as an expression of 'free will' but should be explored as a transaction with a range of 'natural laws' of which at present we fail to be fully aware. If it is the business of some more general study such as urban history or urban geography to understand the whole interaction of human agency and morphogenetic processes, we suggest that it is the task of urban morphology to specialize in the analysis of morphogenetic processes. In so doing, urban morphology would assume the role of an auxiliary discipline to urban history or geography. It would not tell us the whole story about the ways in which cities became what they are, but it would shed very specific light on some structural conditions for the creation and transformation of built forms.
City Architecture as the Production of Urban Culture: Semiotics Review for Cultural Studies
Humaniora Vol 30, No 3, 2018
This article aims to describe the correlation between city's architecture as urban culture and cultural studies, specifically in semiotics. This article starts with Chris Barker's statement about city and urban as text in his phenomenal book, Cultural Studies, Theory and Practice. The city as a complex subject has been transformed into the representation of urban culture. In the post-modernism view, urban culture as cultural space and cultural studies' sites have significantly pointed to became communications discourse and also part of the identity of Semiology. This article uses semiotics of Saussure for the research methods. Surabaya and Jakarta have been chosen for the objects of this article. The result of this article is describing the significant view of architecture science helps the semiotics in cultural studies. In another way, city's architecture becomes the strong identity of urban culture in Jakarta and Surabaya. Architecture approaches the cultural studies to view urban culture, especially in symbol and identity in the post-modernism era.
Iconarp International J. of Architecture and Planning
This paper provides a comprehensive review of the research field of urban morphology: the study of urban form. Urban morphology is a growing field of cross-disciplinary research, attracting worldwide interest among scholars in architecture, geography and planning. It aims to decipher the physical form, the urban landscape or townscape of complex contemporary cities. This paper discusses the evolution of urban morphology, from its conceptual foundations in research on the physical form of urban areas. Interestingly, the roots of urban morphology can be traced back to different disciplines in different countries. This discussion will cast light on various research perspectives of urban morphology, as well as discussing similarities and differences between the geographical and the architectural approaches to urban form studies. This is followed by a closer look at the theories developed by Gianfranco Caniggia and MRG Conzen. Their work has been an inspiration for many practitioners and researchers, including Whitehand, Maffei, and Moudon to name a few. Finally, a schematic diagram is presented, which reflects the heightened activity of research on physical form that is currently occurring in several disciplines simultaneously, and showing the relationships between research traditions and authors. As the formation and development of the urban landscape becomes ever more diverse, it is necessary to revisit and use
Lived Urban Form. Using Urban Morphology to Explore Social Dimensions of Space
Journal of Public Space, 2023
The urban form is a political and social arena. It is produced as a composite of sediments of various ways of living, of complex flow of history, of relationships and subjectivities through which people build and exercise their agency to negotiate and change contingent urban realities. Studies of urban form have so far confronted the challenge of grasping this complexity by scrutinizing a city's physical features. However, this paper puts forward a proposition that urban morphological approaches can also be resourceful tools for conceptualizing and scrutinizing dynamic relations between plural urban realities and transformations of the physical urban fabric. By drawing on the experiences from the Erasmus+ project Emerging Perspectives on Urban Morphologies (EPUM), this paper suggests a multidisciplinary, open educational framework combining various urban morphological approaches as a productive means of developing an understanding of multifaceted spatializations of lived space within urban form, as well as materializations of urban form within lived space. Such an endeavour can extend the study of urban form beyond the focus on an object, to embrace the processes, practices and agents of the production of the built environment, including multiple tensions between changing scales and material manifestations of political, economic and social relations.