Metropolitan hybrids (original) (raw)
Related papers
Architectural Programming for Balanced Local Urban Centers
WIT Transactions on Ecology and the Environment, 2019
Both architectural and urban design are deeply rooted in programming or construing programmatic frameworks which are then transposed into physical structures. This programmatic aspect contributes to the nature of the city, but quite often is either masked under multiple layers of architectural or urban design related manifestations or is blurred due to extensively complicated structure. In the latter example, urban structure appears to be too developed to grasp the sophisticated role programming plays in building the balanced, sustainable city. There are, however, rare cases in which the program appears to determine the validity of the entire project because the structure is to become a local urban center. Its scale is sufficiently comprehensible, certainly not too big, and at the same time autonomous enough that it is possible to expose the significance of urban program and its compilation as a separate, important step within the process of urban design. The paper focuses on case studies-two autonomous estates, one of which is central for the community, the other one is peripheral. Both cases display the approach to programming using similar methods in order to distinguish similarities and differences affecting the strategy, the approach to a particular task, and the tailoring of the design process in this early stage. This work will present selected sustainability attributes, namely availability, accessibility, and connectivity, as drivers for programming balanced functions and balanced areas.
VOCACIONES. From an urban vision to architectural projects.
In Mexico, as in many other countries, the galloping urban growth has turned a major issue for the authorities, because of their incapability to have responsive urban planning to provide of proper infrastructure and services to the whole population. The results are very uneven cities in terms of both physical and social realms. A couple of questions come to our mind as urban designers: how uneven are the cities in both realms? And, what can we do to overcome those differences? In order to answer these questions, we decided to focus on San Miguel de Allende –SMA- in Central Mexico. This small town of almost 72 thousand inhabitants (in the urban area) has been growing in a very accelerated but unplanned way relying its economy mostly in tourism (because its downtown is part of UNESCO’s World Heritage sites) as well as being considered as an option to live for retired foreigners. Looking at the official data, we realized that almost the whole county’s economy depends on just an area that represents 2% of the territory, where 80% of its GDP is produced but only 16% of the population are directly benefited (mostly foreigners, investors and entrepreneurs). Hence, we decided to intervene the city to generate a more balanced economy (beyond tourism) distributed more evenly in the territory. The interventions would increase the income of the population and create a strong middle-class (actually almost absent). According to the actual socio-economic conditions, the urban strategy then was to create four districts attending general deficiencies that can provide vitality and a good quality of life to the neighbours. For each district different possible projects (and their potential sites) were identified according to their particular conditions and finally, eleven architectural pieces were designed taking care they attend to those needs.
towards a gentrified architecture.pdf
We live in the very middle of Brave New World imagined by Aldous Huxley 75 years ago. The words "community, identity, stability" are spoken out loudly much more often than ever before. The compilation here includes some examples out of 300 posters. MAin themes are interiors, state, genetics, dwellings, society, sports, monuments, public spaces and Eskişehir.
2012
The aim of this paper is to define an approach to a methodological assessment of existing urban patterns that allows us to verify, from an analytical, comparative and critical scope, the return to the consolidated city as a necessary way of developing new urban fabric. After reconsidering the history of large-scale urban projects in Madrid, the design of the obsolete collective housing in the consolidated city has revealed the existing residential areas as an infrastructure potentially capable of absorbing the complexity of the unpredictable future. The solution does not fall on the design of a specific project for each building, but in defining a general project for the city that we inherited and for the city that we will bequeath. This approach is supported by an original methodology developed by GIVCO (Research Group in Collective Housing-Polytechnic University of Madrid). The research process goes from the typological to the urban scale, digging into the impact of expansion areas and reconstructing the urban process as a continuum, predicting its main layouts for the near future.
The Architecture of Mixed Uses
Narvaez, L. and Penn, A. (2016), ‘The Architecture of Mixed Uses’. In Journal of Space Syntax, Vol. 7 (1), p.107-136.
Space syntax theory has extensively examined the role of socio-economic processes in cities, whereas in spatial economics, location and distribution of land uses are modelled to understand urban processes. It is suggested that neither field has been robustly based on a more fully conceived level of local city design, and often overlooking the morphological conditions in which space and economics intermix. This article explores the relationship between architecture and economy, and questions the extent to which they work together. In particular, the paper focuses on the concept of mixed use by considering urban and architec- tural conditions that relate to spatial and economic functions, namely in terms of location, use and form. It is found that these three interrelated factors indicate varying typologies of mixed uses depending on their urban location and, in turn, defining different forms of spatial adaptability when commercial and residential use are combined. The paper reflects on the implications of mixing uses and suggests the need for urban design and economic theories to consider the bottom-up processes of socio-economic conditions through architecture and in the overall urban configuration of the city.