lecture 2_2 later approaches to urban design_update oct 2009

8/8/2019 Lecture 2_2 Later Approaches to Urban Design_update Oct 2009

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ARCH252

URBAN DESIGN

LECTURE 2 History of cities and the emergence of urban design Part IILATER URBAN PLANNING THEORIES AND PRACTICES

Naciye Doratl

ebnem Hokara


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The theoretical literature of westernarchitecture and search for a theoretical

understanding of urban design starts withVitruvious, the Augustan architect, and histreatise De Architectura.

More important for urban design however,are the works of the Renaissance scholars,Leone Battista Alberti, Antonio Averlino

Filarete, Serlio and Andrea Palladio.


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Alberti presented a great work called De ReAedificatoria to Pope Nicholas V in 1452 inwhich he established architecture as a

learned discipline based upon principlesarticulated and structured by reason. In histext Alberti dealt also with elements of city

design, streets, roads, and piazza.


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Filaretes book Libro Architettonico, inwhich he wrote a treatise on architecture in amodern language for the first time, a capital

city, Sforzinda and a port city Plousiapolis isdescribed in terms of planning, design andconstruction of the city as well as its

institutional organisation.


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It was, however with Palladio, who wrote themost influential architectural treatise of the16th century. His book covers the general

principles of architectural design, theClassical orders, the design of palaves, villas,etc. Like Alberti, he also dealt with the

design of streets and piazzas.


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These names are of urban designers interest

for the development urban form and the

origins of urban design until the 19thcentury.


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In the development of the urban form fromearly times to the 19th century, the urbanstructure had in common the fact that the

shape of towns and cities was very muchdetermined by people who had the social,political and economic power to put their

theories into practice.


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Also, topography, climate, constructionmaterials and need for defense were theother urban form and planning determinants.


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However, modern urban structures - and somodern urban design - are different thanthe previous examples because the

organization of the society is fundamentallydifferent.


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In rest of the lecture, the most popular urbandesign theories (together with the basicprinciples and ideas behind) of the 19th and

20th centuries will be studied in achronological order.


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Age of Reason - Public Health Acts

In the 18th century Europe, there were two significant developments inthe society:

(i) expansion of trade leading to growth of a new middle-class,

(ii) development of science.

The new working middle class could not afford to live in the grandhouses and palaces of the old aristocracy and this led to thedevelopment of town houses and grand terraces (e.g. Regents Park,

by John Nash, London).


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The development of science and rationalism influenced thetaste in architecture.

The architectural forms became more simple, refined and

rational. This was so called neo-classic planning.

This also provided basis for industrial revolution beginning inEngland and changed from handcrafts to mass production infactories - a new building type located in rapidly growing cities.

New urban settlements started to develop around these factories

and this led to overcrowding in cities.


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So the important terms specializing theperiod are INDUSTRIALISATION,OVERCROWDING and URBANISATION.


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Garnier La Cite Industrille 1901


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Frenc architect Tony Garniers industrial city plan was basedon rigorous zoning. By sitting housing area way from theindustrial area and city center, it removed much of the

richness of traditional city life along with some of its squalor.Personal transport is still a necessity.


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Existing towns were transformed veryquickly. Industry required new buildingtypes - factories, offices, railways andtransportation systems, housing,government administrative buildings,prisons, museums, theatres, etc. to serve

the new society.


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Boulevard Planning

Industrial revolution had a similar process inFrance but led to different results.

In England the concern was with health andgood living conditions (Public Health Acts); in

France and especially in Paris the concernwas with preventing another revolution.Thus, after the Revolution in 1848 in France,Napoleon wanted Paris to be redeveloped insuch a way that no barricades would be ableto be built in the streets.


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Baron Haussmann brought a straight,pragmatic solution to a highly practicalproblem by destroying many existing

buildings and building up wide boulevardswith the intention of focusing visually andfunctionally on the great monuments of Pariswhich were connected to one another bythese boulevards.


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The new railway stations of Paris were also

connected to assure more efficient transportbetween them and the city centers. Theseboulevards were by no means designed for anykind of intrinsic beauty.

They gave long perspective views towards themajor monuments, and also afforded the longestfeasible sight lines for Napoleons troops.

Besides, with their round-points in front of oraround they also speeded up the flow of traffic.

The trees, which seemed to humanize theboulevards, together with the great width of theboulevards themselves, made barricade-buildingdifficult too.


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Haussmanns Boulevard planning became very influential inmany cities in the world like Vienna, Barcelona, Ankara, etc.; itbecome the norm towards which most great European citieswere developed or redeveloped in 1870s.


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Sittes Artistic Planning

Camillo Sitte, a Viennese architect and the originatorof modern city planning, reacted againstHaussmanns formal and monumental planning, justas some others.

Abstract principles for the design of plazas, streetsand public squares from the analysis of historicexamples, with particular reference to the medievalItalian city.


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In his book Der Stadbaupublished in 1889 andtranslated into English in 1965under the name of CityPlanning According toArtistic Principles, heexamines the public andaesthetic nature of old

European cities that have livedfrom the pre-industrial agewithout being damaged.

He was concerned with cityplanning which he considered

an art rather than a scientificobject. He restricted hisattention and concern to publicsquares wherein, he believed,lies the character of a city.


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He appreciated the informalirregularity of the oldsquares, their being naturaland having picturesquequality.


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The City Beautiful

The next distinguishable movement in cityplanning - the American City Beautiful wasopposite in principle to Sittes artistic

planning. It was rather based on Haussmanns

Boulevard Planning and first seen at Chicago

World Fair (Worlds Colombian Exposition) in1893.


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Chicago had been developing through the 19th century as agreat commercial center; and after the disastrous fire of 1871,the architects were concerned with the development of fire-resisting structures for the office and warehouses, such as steel-framed high buildings, skyscrapers with elevators, etc. (1883 byLe Baron Jenney).

However, steel-frame and elevators solved the technicalproblems but not the architectural ones: the whole city wasdesigned for the Exposition by a group of architects yet thedesign looked like reproduction of Baroque.


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They also wanted Chicago to be known, not only as thecommercial center of America, but also as its cultural capital.

To achieve this aim, they wanted to create a uniform andceremonious style - a style evolved from the highest civilizationin history - i.e. the Classical examples, rather than the current

medieval or any other form of romantic or picturesque art.


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The influences of the City BeautifulMovement can be observed in England,especially in the City Hall and Law Courts at

Cardiff, the Civic Center in Southampton, andthe Civic Offices in Portsmouth.


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The Garden City

The next great set of planning conventions, those of the GardenCity movement were intended to free the pressures on suchcities by decanting population to new and much smaller towns,built well outside the city in virgin countryside.

The chief exponent of this approach was Ebenezer Howard

whose main concern was to stem the drift of population-limited to32.000 people-from rural to urban areas presenting thealternatives as town and country magnets, each of which has itsattractions and corresponding disadvantages inegration of townand country.


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He characterizes the town as closing out nature andcatalogues many disadvantages such as theisolation of crowds, distances from work, highrents and prices, excessive hours of work, etc.

He then balances these with some advantages,such as social opportunity, places ofamusement, high wages, fresh air, low rents, etc.


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Howards notional plans, which were firstpublished in Tomorrow: A Peaceful Path toReal Reform (1898), and were republished

as Garden Cities of Tomorrow, are basedvery firmly on the idea of a centralpark/garden of some five acres aboutwhich all of the citys main functions are

grouped concentrically. Indeed, majorcomponents would all be segregated.


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The first ring around the central garden consisted of public buildings:the town hall, concert and lecture halls, library, museum, art gallery andhospital.

These were surrounded by a ring of parkland, cut through radically bythe six principal boulevards and surrounded by the Crystal Palace - awide glass arcade which, in wet weather, is one of the favorite resortsof the people.

The next ring was a broad ring of houses each standing in its owngarden. The houses were greatly varied in character, some havingcommon gardens.


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The main ring of housing was surrounded by a Grand Avenue forminga belt of green, an annual park dividing the main part of the town intotwo concentric belts.

The Avenue itself is divided into six radial boulevards occupied bypublic schools, their surrounding play-grounds and gardens.

The outer regions of the town would be occupied by factories,warehouses, markets, coal yards, etc. all with access to circularrailway lines which surrounding the town enabling goods to be loadedat various points.

Beyond this there would be a full range of uses for agriculturalpurposes.


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Howards Garden City can be seen as the

beginning of regional planning anddecentralization.


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Neighborhood Planning

Clarence Perry developed the idea of the neighborhood unit byanalyzing the things he found good - including gardening andcommunity participation - about living in a Long Island suburb namedForest Hills Gardens.

The neighborhood unit was focused on a community centre, a place fordebate and discussion.

Crucial to Perrys concept was the idea of day-to-day facilities: shops,schools, playgrounds, etc. should be within walking distance of everyhouse. This in itself the overall size of a neighborhood, while heavytraffic was kept out, confined to arterial roads which skirted around theneighborhood.

Perry estimated the optimum size for a neighborhood to be around5000 people; large enough to provide for most peoples day-to-dayneeds, yet small enough for a sense of community to develop.


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The general characteristics of the neighborhood unit were basedon the idea of:

- the super block - instead of the narrow, rectangular block

- the specialized roads planned and built - each for one use insteadof for all uses

- complete separation of pedestrians and vehicles

- houses turned around; living and sleeping rooms facing towardsgardens and parks, service rooms towards access road

- park as backbone of the neighborhood.

In addition to the points above, cul-de-sacs/dead-end streets

were used for vehicular access to the fronts of the houses


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The Modern Movement

The modern movement in architecture duringthe early part of this century has had a stronginfluence on contemporary architects,

planners and urban designers. The urban design proposals of Le Corbusier

and Frank Lloyd Wright represent the polar

attitudes toward urbanization and urbandesign.


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Le Corbusier: Ville Radieuse

Le Corbusier, being very critical oftraditional cities, attempted to convert thecity into park within which the actualbuildings would occupy only some %5 ofthe land. He developed a contemporarycity Ville Radieuse(Radiant City)for 3 million inhabitants; this city was to

be a city in a garden instead of being acity with gardens. The fundamentalprinciples he put forward were:

- freeing the city from traffic congestion,- enhancing the overall densities,- enhancing the means of circulation,- augmenting the area of planting.


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The second work, Plan Voisin for rebuilding Paris designed inthe 1920s but never constructed, illustrates the contrastbetween traditional urbna density and the urban design of

Modernism.


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His design for a city is linear and nodal on a large scale grid,proposing two kinds of housing immediately around the citycentre: terraces and apartment blocks.

He also considered the traffic in the design of a city. According

to him, new forms of street must be designed so that the trafficcan flow freely at optimum speed.


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There were 3 important principles behindCorbusiers influence on modern urban space:

1. The linear and nodal building as a large scaleurban element a principle applied physically to

define districts or social units2. The vertical seperation of movement systems an

outcome of Le Corbusiers fascination withhighways and the city of the future

3. The opening up of urban space to allow for freeinglandscape, sun and light.


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Le Corbusiers plans and perspectivescaptured the imagination of architects, urbandesigners and planners worldwide.

In the 1960s particularly, a remarkablenumber of them were enabled to make theirown cities look remarkably like Le Corbusiersperspectives with their motorways slashing

between their skyscrapers.


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Frank Lloyd Wright:

Broadacre City As its name emphasizes the proposal of Wright was for a low-

density development of detached buildings. He envisioned a cityof small farms or garden home-steads. His scheme eliminated roadsas much as possible and attempted to bring the country into the cityrather than create parks.


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Frank Lloyd Wrights Broadacre City plan gave an acre of land toevery household, but the inhabitants still depended forcommunications on a motorway grid and a helicopter for everyfamily.


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Both of these architects have had a greatinfluence on the architectural profession andthe general public. In a sense, the both

expected and influenced two major kinds ofurban form existing todayespecially inAmerican cities: the high-density urbancore and the low density suburb.


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Then the principles by which architects andplanners were to deal with the problems ofthe 20th century were codified by CIAM(Congres Internationaux dArchitectureModerne).

Accordingly the city was divided into fourmain functions: housing, work, recreation,

transport. Radical solutions were proposedfor each area.


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RECENT URBAN PLANNINGTHEORIES AND PRACTICES

RECENT APPROACHES TO

URBAN DESIGN


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Two major themes were found in the Post-modern reaction to the hegemony associated with

modern architecture:

New Rationalism - Neo-Rationalismconcern forpublic open space over a preoccupation with individual buildings and incorporatesstrongly defined geometric spaces as ordering devices

ALDO ROSSI (ITALY) LEON & ROB KRIER (LUXEMBOURG) RICARDO BOFILL (SPAIN)

New Empiricism Neo-EmpiricismPERCEPTUALAND SPATIAL QUALITIES OF THE URBAN ENVIRONMENT

KEVIN LYNCH

ROBERT VENTURI

GORDON CULLEN

lecture 2_2 later approaches to urban design_update oct 2009

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