Sunday, October 17, 2010
Urban Sites
Urban Site had five concepts of thinking:
-1- Mobile Ground: Urban design actions are best considered in strategic terms focused on framing urban relations and structuring urban processes. It provides a space of progression, slippage, and continual revolution.
-2- Site Reach: For Urban design, the concept of a site is to reach at least a vision for its final point.
-3-Site Construction: The construction of the site and the using of each construction point defies information. (Scale, distance.. etc are some examples of these construction strategies)
-4- Urban Constellation: It consider urban sites as a rational constructs
-5-Defining The Indefinite: It characterizes urban sites as spatially elastic and temporally provisional. And what matters is gaining understanding of the city in the site.
These are the five concept l the Urban Site; they differ between one and another because each one look in a different way towards it.
Defining Urban Sites By Andrea Kahn
urban sites are best defined by studying the Palmanuova plan and the view of Milan by Leonardo Da Vinci which show the Urban Site between simplicity and complexity. Studying the PLamanuova , we can clearly note that somehow the drawer has defined boundaries , everything is clear ; we have impression that the city is a fixed object bounded by walls impenetrable to any new intervention . Based on Da Vinci view of Milan we can see the other definition for Urban Plan in which it's impossible to locate the edge of the city .
Urban Sites are conceptualized in meaningful 5 ways :
-Mobile Ground : sites in interactions and intersections . It's a place for progression , slippage and revaluation .
-Sites Reach : every site should have at least a vision for its final point that should be reached , its limits , boundaries and its surroundings.
-site construction : moving or static , large or small scale , close or distant , each vantage point brings different aspects of a site to light and each way of organizing site information result in a distinct site configuration .
-Urban Constellation : it's about integrating knowledge of place-based urban characteristics with knowledge of larger scale that underly contemporary urbanism in all its form . It's about considering urban design sites as relational constructs.
-Defining the Indefinite : based on challenging the idea of a table site . It defines urban sites as elastic and temporally provisional . Ideas of boundary and scale are received in a slightly different way . It's gaining understanding of the city in the site .
In a word , Urban Sites have many ways to be defined and we cannot generalize it in one conclusion . It depends on who is looking !Complexity or simplicity , stable site or progression , many definition for defining Urban Sites
The Toledo house, bilbao, spain
The texture is the most interesting part of this residence. The bricks used are square and rectangle shapes that are placed differently: some of the, are very close to each other, and others are more distant. This fact creates a sense of discontinuity of the texture that is very uncommon specially in modern architecture(our century) which is based on simplicity and continuity .
This sense of discontinuity is accentuated by difference in the tonality of the color of the bricks. We can notice in fact that the bricks are the same color, but some of them are lighter or darker, and placing them next to eachother creates a feeling of mosaic.
The last point about this discontinuity of the texture is the difference in the form of the bricks. In fact, we can notice a difference in the shape and size of the bricks that are placed next to eachother.
All of these new components are very attractive because of their very special and uncommon architecture and design.
Response on the reading : On site
Response To The Moment Of Complexity by Mohammad khalifeh
The grid is the figure of modernisim, Le corbusier suggests. Also, he suggests that grids and their geometry are so important for modern art and architecture as well as modern life and inorder not to perish, man should work for the production to be possible and to have a line of conduct. However, the laws of experience must be obeyed. What Le Corbusier descrides as the "march towards order" imposes disciplinary practices necessary for the efficient functioning of industrail society. The city of today is dying because it is not constructed geometriclly and the consequences of geometrical plans is repetition and mass production. In order to have a well functioning network there should be equality in the daily performance among both sides, manegment and workmen, because the manegment/labor relation is more like mind/body relationship.
Analysis of Banq, Boston.
On site : Architectural Preoccupations, carol j.burns
At first, the location is an empty space which is measured and designed in a way that prepares it for the work. The location of the site is an entity in itself and the work of architecture is assumed to model this site and assimilate it with the architecture through using mimetic imitation and organic assimilation.
The cleared and contstructed sites are a blend that forms a complex site and both are the result of a formation of architectural involvement on a site. The location may integrate the site of a building and the space of this site were this building is positional or going to be positioned later. The site comes into existence when working on it actually starts like measurment and setting boundaries. The lot presents a local conception of land done by measuring the lot in accordance to a group of conceptual coordinates. The boundaries of the lot shows a situation which protraits the site at a scale. The culture plays an important role in relation to the idea of the land. The natural scene of a landscape reflects the way many architects view the sites which are found in such landscapes.
Location means a specific place and the presence of a plan used in that place. Modern architecture views the importance of the site according to technical use.
Freddy Screen
Summarize Tarek Jaber
The Moment of Complexity
Emerging Network Culture
Throughout history, technological innovation triggers massive social and cultural transformation. We are currently living in a moment where systems and structures are changing at an unprecedented rate. Such rapid changes need to develop new ways of understanding the world. The collapse of the Berlin wall in 1989 signaled a shift from Industrial to an Information society. These walls which seemed secure became walls that allow diverse flows to become global. In the post war years in 1989, modern industrial organization became more obvious. These changes brought new communication technologies. Architects, Mies Van der Rohe, Venturi, and Frank Gehry became possible to trace movement of industrial society through media to network culture. This trajectory suggests that the moment of complexity can be understood in the ways of shift from world structured grids to networks. The contrast between grids and networks clarifies the transition from Cold War System (walls) to Globalization (network culture). In Cold War System, was designed to maintain stability by world in which walls provide security, however walls collapse as webs grow. A new economy displaces the old. A connection proliferates, changes, accelerates, while the wall divides and doesn’t really control. The dynamic of chaos and complexity share certain characteristics and differ in important ways. Chaos theory was developed as a corrective to the linear system of Newtonian physics. In contrast, complexity less concerned with the establishing of the inescapability of determinate chaos than with what John Castri labels the science of surprise. The grid is the figure of modernism. The grid and its geometry are very important for modern architecture. Geometry is the means whereby we perceive the external world and express the world within us. Man walks in a straight line because he has a goal and he knows where he is going. We must build on a clear site; cities are dying because it isn’t constructed geometrically. Hitchcock and Johnson described the new architecture in familiar terms: “absence of ornament”, “functionalism”, “principles of order” and most important “the formal simplification of complexity”. In 1972, Robert Venturi and his colleagues published the book credited with beginning of post modern architecture. In today’s world, grids which might have worked in industrial society are absolute network culture.
C_wall
Response to "The Moment of Complexity"
URGENT- A COUPLE OF REMARKS ON POSTED WORK
Post Post Post
I won't take the work tomorrow in class. It has to be posted on the blog so we can discuss it tomorrow in class.
An Excerpt from "The Moment of Complexity- Emerging Netwrok Culture" by Mark C. Taylor
- be unpredictable
- principle of order
- know your history
- be informed well
- Inform well
- Architecture reflects a society
- Functionalism
- Simplification of complexity