Research: Urban Expansion.

Just some thoughts and images of projects that interest me…

Cedric Price – what will the next egg be…?

Edgar Chambless – Road Town, 1910. 

A linear city built above a railway. What comes first? Does a city expand when the infrastructure allows easy access farther away, or does the infrastructure expand when the city expands?

Edgar Chambless – Road Town, 1920. Railway below, public promenade above!

Frank Lloyd Wright – Broadacre City Plan, 1934-35

Each american family would have one acre of land. The majority of transport would be done by automobile.

Frank Lloyd Wright – Broadacre City Plan, 1934-35

Yona Friedman – Spatial City, 1958-62.

A megastructure that sits above the existing merges the urban and rural areas together.

Yona Friedman

Yona Friedman – Spatial City, 1960. A megastructure that sits above the existing merges the urban and rural areas together.

Constant’s New Babylon, 1956-69.

A hovering transformable city. Constant’s social goals were self-fulfillment and self-satisfaction.

New Babylon, Paris.

New Babylon

James Wines – Highrise of Homes, 1981.

A vertical stacking solution for homes that allow individual expressions of buildings.

James Wines, Highrise of Homes.

James Wines – Highrise for Homes.

Le Corbusier – Plan Voisin, 1925.

A vertical city.

Le Corbusier – Plan Voisin.

Plan Voisin.

MVRDV – Jakarta, 2012.

Described as a mixed use “vertical city.”

MVRDV – Jakarta, 2012.

Patrick Abercrombie – Green Belt, London.

A protected green area hugs inner London to avoid further expansion of the city. It is a fixed boundary precaution made to prevent growth.

Patrick Abercrombie – Green Belt, London.

The video shows how development is occuring away from the city, however the city could be more dense… and there is a really awkward cut to a goat at 1:57!!

 

Nail Houses [added Dec 2012]

Unlike the Green Belt that is government initiated, Nail Houses are houses that remain in their location as the occupants do not want to move to allow development to occur. They become antiques in a newly developed environment. They maintain their architectural expression and then look alien to their new context, even though the new context is alien compared to the past!

nail house, china

 

 

Urban Sprawl [the board game].

A board game based on growing towns, urban sprawl style!

Urban Sprawl – The Game.

Don’t judge a game by it’s cover…

These are all references at the moment that I find interesting for different reasons. The game in particular where normal people can become real town planners to make money. There are examples of a linear urban expansion – based on untilising infrastructure or bridging between the rural and the urban, which raises the question why?  There are examples of stacked schemes, all of which are static examples.

I will continue to add to this post as more references pop up! Feel free to give me more!

Density: the big squeeze.

How dense can it be before it is too dense? How many programs can we squeeze into one container? Can we create a completely flexible/adaptable space that maintains its values within the hierarchy? Using a similar approach to the cross section through the Orchestrated City, can this be applied to a building? Can we treat a building like a small city, and the city like a big building?

Corbusier’s Unite: statically stacked programmes including a pool, running track and school on the roof and interior shopping streets within the residential block.

This is a very crude proposal touching on the subject.

close-up: church tower merged with tele coms tower

The telecoms tower is in use all the time. It is tall, not to be iconic, but purely out of function. The church tower is tall to be iconic, but also allows the sound of the bell to travel farther. The two towers can be merged, creating a dual program within one container.

the church, the priest’s house, the telecommunications tower.

The space within the bell/telecommunications tower can be inhabited by the priest. The living room can have a dual purpose as the altar also. The space of the church is unfolded when services need to take place. The building grows to meet the demands at a specific moment in time. This is ‘a House for a Priest.’ But even the name has been given a hierarchy relative to its program! I refuse to call it a ‘Telecommunications Tower’ or ‘a Church.’ However, the fact that a priest inhabits this and lives here makes this three way program ‘a House for a Priest.’