World Envionment Day

Reducing our ecological footprint is the beginning of repairing our relationship with the Earth. The Ecological Footprint is the metric that allows us how to calculate human pressure on the planet and come up with facts, such as: If everyone lived the lifestyle of the average Australian we would need 4 planets. Humanity needs what nature provides, but how do we know how much we’re using and how much we have to use? The Ecological Footprint provides us with an answer by measuring our demand on our Earths resources.

Today humanity uses the equivalent of 1.5 planets to provide the resources we use and absorb our waste. This means it now takes the Earth one year and six months to regenerate what we use in a year.

Australia has one of the world's largest ecological footprints per capita, requiring 6.6 global hectares per person. Over 50% of Australia's footprint is due to greenhouse gas emissions, with the average household emitting around 14 tonnes of greenhouse gases each year.

If the world’s population used resources at the same rate as Sydneysiders, we would require 3 to 4 planets of resources each year to sustain our lifestyle into the future.

Randwick, Waverley and Woollhara Councils and their communities are working together to help reduce the community-wide Ecological Footprint of residents living in Sydney’s Eastern Suburbs.

More info at http://www.thinkeatsave.org/

Avalon Design Studio Obseravtion

The current Design studio I am undertaking for my Masters in Architecture is the redevelopment of Avalon Beach Surf lifesaving Club. Through the various readings undertaken in Urban Development and Design course, as well as techniques learnt from observational analysis have led me to further my understanding of the site.

Avalon Beach on the northern fringes of Sydney is a quintessential Australian coastal suburb/town where life revolves around the local school, the shops and the beach. The surf lifesaving club is the hub of community activity for residents in their leisure time. Part of a distinctly Australian tradition, surf lifesaving has been around ever since bathing in the sea became legal 100 years ago. Nearly every habitable beach in Australia has some form of surf lifesaving club.

Various mapping through observational site analysis are seen below:

 

Below are some of the preliminary aims and principles that have come about from observational behavioural and research analysis:

Ø  Create architecture that is  mindful and innovative of the  extreme weather 

Ø  Conceptual link towards the sensitiveness to nature in Avalon Present and Past

Ø  Respond to specific place and culture + appeal to its emotions and mind

-          Sensuous connection with the place –  beauty of nature, touch of the sand, smell and taste of the sea, the sound of the waves

Ø  ‘Iconic and harmonious’ coastal pavilion in a suburban setting

-          Resolve structure in dealing with the geotechnical issues

-          Arrangement and form must advocate a strong presence  

-          Must blend into + be sensitive to natures surrounds

Ø  Cater to the club, the activities + equipment. Unify club members and community that it serves

Ø  Connect Avalon village to the beach + SLSC

-          Relate to the community creating a community focussed hub that relates and reflects the Australian + Avalonian culture

-          Encourage sense of community and ownership among locals

-          Activities + community focussed events. Create a gathering point

-          Create landscape that provides backdrop for public life + enhances + enriches daily life + simple presence of the beach

-          Cater more to pedestrians and cyclists

-          Poor access/ division between village + beach

-          Develop foot path from Barranjoey road to improve access and create connection

-          Existing entrance is along vehicular access way

-          Car park Blocks potential visibility for SLSC entrance – so looses prominence

-          Remove/ re-landscape car park to create place with a central focus on community 

Below is a link to a time-lapse video of Avalon that my group did, to aid us in our observational analysis:

 

Urban Design and Development Seminar Ten

Ø  Patrick Geddes. Biologist that turned his thinking towards cities. Evolution of cities

Ø  Major problem – ignorance of planning with modern planning – Lewis Mumford on Patrick Geddes

Ø  Sustainability and liveability:

Ø  Liveability

- Security and safety

- Cost of living (affordable housing)

- Key factor of urban planning

Ø  Sustainability

- Low energy use

- High production of renewable energy

- Recycling

- Provision for future growth through infrastructure (i.e. Barcelona)

- Long term durability

Ø  Values of a city e.g. Sydney to have café/restaurant society. However, it is more sustainable to cook at home that to go out.

Ø  Liveability while can be measured, quantified, is SUBJECTIVE to interpretation

Ø  Sustainability when you look at it as a process – there are real limits – one could make an argument that it is OBJECTIVE

Ø  Limits governed by physical and evolutionary aspects

Ø  Quality of life

Ø  CONFLICTS between sustainability and liveability are at the root of the problem in urban design. Resolving these conflicts is the job of planners, designers etc.

Ø  “Secrets of Terra Preta” – BBC documentary

Ø  Compact city is a PLEONASM

Ø  Most of the data is ambiguous when looking at the compact city

Ø  Underlying essential components

Ø   The rate of change – whether it is accelerating or decelerating e.g. population increase, poverty, energy use etc.

Ø  Any system (animal or city) has a capacity to adapt to change

Ø  RESILIENCE is the ability to absorb change/impact and still maintain or resume its normal healthy functionality

Ø  If the rate of change is faster than any process of adaption then the system loses it ability of resilience and suffers. E.g. genetic mutations – organisms that cannot adapt to rapid change or get a susceptibility to viruses etc.

Ø  This happens when any system exceeds its ability to adapt to it e.g. 5 million more people come into the city in 10 years. The infrastructure of the city is not sufficient; therefore it creates its own, such as slums, favelas etc.

Ø  This is related to resilience and rate of change

Ø  Main part of sustainability is PROCESS

Ø  Process is more critical than form. In fact it leads to form

Ø  Form follows function

Form follows FLOW

Ø  Compact city characteristics:

1. High residential and employment densities

2. Mixture of land uses

3. Fine grain of land uses (proximity of varied uses and small

relative size of land parcels)

4. Increased social and economic interactions

5. Contiguous development (some parcels or structures may be

vacant or abandoned or surface parking)

6. Contained urban development, demarcated by legible limits

7. Urban infrastructure, especially sewerage and water mains

8. Multimodal transportation

9. High degrees of accessibility: local/regional

10. High degrees of street connectivity (internal/external),

including sidewalks and bicycle lanes

11. High degree of impervious surface coverage

12. Low open-space ratio

13. Unitary control of planning of land development or closely

coordinated control

14. Sufficient government fiscal capacity to finance urban facilities and infrastructure

 

Ø  Accessibility of cities – sign of a healthy city. An analogy would be any healthy organism has a free flow of nutrients, circulation etc. through its body.

Ø  The flow of cities – information and materials – accessible of flow that provides for growth

Ø  The list above could apply to any city

Ø  Missing from the list is homogeneity

Ø  Compact city paradox. The inverse relationship between liveable and sustainable.

Ø  The more liveable the less sustainable

Ø  The more sustainable, the less liveable e.g. slums

Ø  This paradox cannot be slowed if we restrict our thinking to urban form only – have to think of urban flows. Deep seeded focus on form is the problem.

Ø  Sustainability is normative – how we should/ought to live is prescriptive – value based and driven

Ø  Five different intellectual traditions:

1. CAPACITY to support human life and activities – place and time specific e.g. carbon/energy footprint relates to activity in time or place

2. FITNESS – appropriate fit of an activity to a city. Interactions of the species of that place. A local trait that stems from urban processes that adapt to fit that place.

3. RESILIENCE – responds to limitations of theories in thinking about fitness. Looks at the place and how to absorb the impacts and the activities of that place.
Fitness and resilience are a process of adaption on time. They are two sides to a coin.

4. DIVERSITY – refers to positive pre-disposition of the diverse members of the community. Refers also to the variety – co-inhabit a place

5. BALANCE – not static not dynamic. An adjustment process to establish balance - It implies equilibrium. But is a city ever equilibrium? There are cycles – ‘punctured equilibrium’. Dynamic system in equilibrium maintains all the traditions noted above – natural disasters but also human caprice

Ø  How do we manage that change? Guiding urban change to improve it in the future?

Ø  By living in ways that are unsustainable are taking us away from equilibrium, such as climate change

Ø  New challenge is maintaining urban change through a sustainable lens

Ø  What are the common themes of sustainability?

1. How we are/ought to be living – sustain an ongoing process

2. Health – maintaining life – important focus in urban living

3. Place specific conditions – all the traditions relates to this, whether it is the local climate etc.

4. Interrelationship among system components e.g. assess ability

Ø  What does this mean for sustainability in the compact city?

Ø  The focus on form in urban design does not deal with the themes of sustainability

Ø  Looking at form alone (which most previous generations have) missed the boat. It is the structure that comes from and shapes process. Leads us to a compact city fallacy – which is  neither a necessary or sufficient condition to be sustainable

Ø  Nature works in distributed networks

Ø  By continuing along this path we will continue

-  To have unsustainable cities

- Cheaper infrastructure in the short term but the long-term/life cycle would be insufficient

Ø  Space and time simultaneously to be sustainable (flow)

Ø  Time is process

Urban Renewal and Urban Consolidation

Major impacts of urban growth

Urbanisation has created many issues in Australian environments. While more people may translate to economic benefits, ever-expanding populations have brought with them a range of problems for both the physical and built environments. As our big cities have grown away from the centre to accommodate people's settlement needs, suburbs have mushroomed outwards, producing what is referred to as 'urban sprawl'.

This process means that the natural environment suffers as more space is required for the construction of houses and the development of industry. As more ecosystems are disrupted and habitats are destroyed, urban growth leads to an even greater reduction in the biodiversity of areas surrounding cities. The problems of pollution and sewage disposal are also made worse by increases in population size.

In terms of the pressures it places on the built environment, urban sprawl increases the monetary and environmental costs associated with infrastructure, waste disposal, the use of natural resources and energy consumption. It also has the potential to negatively affect the social cohesion of cities, as it often results in a lack of equity amongst urban residents, particularly in terms of access to infrastructure and other essential services provided by the city. Another impact is that, as fewer people live in the city centre, the quality of the original urban areas falls into decay. The process of cities expanding outward and then starting to deteriorate is known as 'urban growth and decline'.

Major challenges presented by urbanisation

Intense urbanisation has presented Australia with many environmental challenges which governments have tried to respond to with policies aimed at achieving 'urban consolidation' or 'urban renewal'.

The need for 'urban renewal' and 'urban consolidation'

To counteract the many challenges created by urban decline, governments have started to introduce housing and planning policies aimed at achieving 'urban renewal or 'urban consolidation'. These terms describe how planners have begun trying to halt the spread of populations outward into fringe suburbs, by focusing on rejuvenating buildings, roads and public spaces that have gone into decline closer to the city centre. This planning strategy can decrease some of the infrastructure and equity problems, by allowing more people to access the services provided in the city.

What is Lost Space?

What is Lost Space? This is a very interesting reading as it focusses on an important factor of urban design. Below are my thoughts on the reading.

 

1. This chapter is primarily focused on the American decline of the urban environment in various cities across the state that has caused the emergence of ‘lost space’ and the reasons as to why this has occurred.  It is the approach to the process of urban development that has deteriorated and caused buildings to be treated as remote objects in an environmental landscape that has real connection to the space around it and the people in which it is being built for. This is described by the chapter as ‘unshaped antispace’.

2. This ‘antispace’ differs from constructive space in that it provides no positive contribution to society and the people that live within it. These spaces can be found in most major cities in America; they include parking lots, edges of freeways, abandoned water fronts and industrial complexes. All of these undesirable spaces deter people from interacting with each other and the city. This is due to the spaces being unformulated and failing to connect in a strategic way. Therefore, essentially becoming isolated and detached.

3. I agree with the author’s view that that there is still huge potential for urban designers to rectify past mistakes with urban redevelopment ‘so that it attracts people down town and counteracts sprawl and urbanisation.’ This reform of the city urban centre will create positive spaces with creative infill and reclamation of mixed use areas.

4. These past mistakes have been categorised by the author into five contributing factors. The first is the independence of the automobile. Modern technology brings a new way of life to contemporary society. While the automobile has been a successful achievement in modern technology, society’s dependence on it has led to a change of traditional urban communication and mobility of public space, resulting in a loss of ‘cultural meaning and human purpose’. This is evident through surface parking lots and highways which cause buildings to be separated and therefore encompassed by vast unstructured open with no connection to social or cultural function. These highways were meant to connect all the major cities of America. However, it had the reverse effect by forcing vast amounts of people from there homes causing ‘social disorientation’.

5. The Modern Movement that was prevalent in the 1930’s completely ignored the traditional principles of urbanism and the importance of street space, urban squares such as the Piazza Navona District in Rome where the streets are carved from the building itself creating a human dimension and connectivity of outdoor spaces.  Instead, as described by the author, ‘buildings became more utilitarian in their organisation; the notion of function was gradually displaced from the external space to the organisation of internal space.’ Thus, becoming a mere entity that is isolated from its context and environment.  This is evident in the unsuccessful meeting place of Broadway, New York, where urban space has been replaced by sunken plazas and enclosed malls.

6. In the 1950’s and 60’s there was further movement away from the principles in the zoning and urban renewal projects. There aim was to was to segregate the land uses and replace high rise buildings with low rise to providing clearing and sanitizing the ground. Thus, promoting sanitation and human welfare. However, as well intentioned as the idea was, it did not achieve the intended outcome. Instead, the zoning legislation separated functions that had already been integrated, such as the development of the Prudential centre in Massachusetts whose connection between two neighbourhoods was destroyed due to a new physical structure being developed between them.  These projects led to the loss of valuable urban space and and vernacular and pedestrian walkways becoming disorientated.

7. Individualism is a prominent feature of the ‘American Dream’. However, when fuelled by the privation of public space the city becomes transformed from a ‘city of collective places into a city of private icons.’ The buildings have become icons of personal achievement to the expense of the public urban environment. Where parks and outdoor spaces used to be connected and integrated with buildings, they are now stand alone objects that disrupt the continuities of the streets and possess pretentious facades and materials. In addition, the funding for maintaining the public space and general interest in the upkeep is minimal which only aggravates the problem of lost space within the public realm.

8. Finally the last major cause of the loss of space in cites across America is the pervasive change of land use. This includes the relocation of industry; obsolete transportation facilities, abandoned military properties, as well as vacated commercial and residential spaces have created wasted spaces that are not used to their full potential. These spaces offer so much for mixed use areas such as, an outdated shipping site offers a wonderful water front space. Vacant land can be used for gardens or children’s playground, if only for temporary use.

9. The government must institute stern policies for urban design if change is going to take place, the community must take an interest and be apart of the decision making in shaping public surroundings, and designers of all fields must thoroughly understand the principles and policies of successful urban space. Individual buildings need to be integrated with exterior space so that the physical space of a city is not separated by the issues of zoning and a dictatorial circulation system. The solution to this problem is to look closely at the traditional city, creating successful connections between spaces. Essentially we need to return to the theories and models of the past that have been successful and go back to the thinking that ‘history and environment are the two faces of architecture, which no building stands alone’.

10.  To conclude, a successful outcome in urban design can only be developed by

-          The studying of past precedents and they way in which modern space has evolved.

-          Developing and understanding in urban design theories and policies.

-          Finally, developing skills in synthesizing and applying these in the design procedure.

 

Urban Walk of Alexandria

Notes on Alexandria observational urban walk

 

 

Ø  Botany Road is too narrow for its function – this slows down its function

Ø  No bicycle lane

Ø  Footpaths too narrow

Ø  The façade is very uniform of the buildings built up to the boundary line

Ø  Ten years ago it was only industrial, nowadays it is mixed use residential and commercial

Ø  Parking acts as a buffer along the road to pedestrians walking on the footpaths

Ø  Short blocks are good as it reduces pedestrian activity if it is too long

Ø  The café ‘Coffee Roasters’ acts as an alleyway – a throughway to the parallel street behind

Ø  1970’s designed buildings along the road

Ø  These cater to cars mostly with perpendicular parking

Ø  No opportunity for window shopping

Ø  Has an identity – but has to have a character that is recognisable – spatially. i.e. books – left to right needs to be legible – know what district you are in

Ø  Mix spatial pattern and building types. Different heights and setbacks – a jungle of mix use

Ø   New hybrid – how liveable? How sustainable?

Ø  Before zoning worldwide there was more uniformity in building

Ø  The difference between place and space – space does not have a character/quality but a place does

Ø  How do you feel about the place? (Chinatown, Sydney – canopy of trees to soften it)

Ø  Level of noise is important in the quality of the place

Ø  The 5 senses

Ø  Importance of the human visual aspect

Ø  Need to feel safe and secure – viewpoints or access to visual points

Ø  Openness is very important – windows on facades – people are drawn to this rather than a black blocky façade

Ø  Laneway is functional – to relieve main activity from the main street

Ø  Melbourne re-vitalisation of laneways project

Ø  1970’s not a lot of forward thinking

Ø  Potential benefit for the future in having wide footpaths

Ø  Footpath for disabled access. Important to note if it discriminates?