Final Reflection

Final Reflection

This semester has provided me with better understanding of how a city works and how a city is even formed.  By understanding the context of a city, it helps us to better ourselves as architects, understanding the purposes of certain aspects in a city. The subject helps contribute to our learning of urban design and planning, how we can use these urban environments to our advantage. The development of cities was an exciting topic, how a city becomes a city, or how a space becomes a place, How a city can be designed differently depending on the context of both the landscape and users. These theories and concepts help me further my development as a student and can help me in the future.

By learning how to describe the city, it comes prominent that depending on the point of view you see the city, it can be different to everyone how they interpret it. Drawing up the maps and outlining different aspects of the city from a birds eye point of view gives you a different perspective on how a city works. By learning how to read the city, we can to terms on how the perspective of the user greatly influences how one views a city. I was doing the city walk with a few friends, and they were looking at different areas to what i was interested in. By reading the city, we can analyse aspects of the city and come up with similar theories on the urban context because of Lynch's theory of: path, district, nodes, landmarks edges. Learning to analyse the city was the most important aspect of this subject, as we based most of our assessment on the resources we analysed using those techniques.

The assessment pieces allowed me to utilise the knowledge that I had learnt in the subject to my maximum potential. However, given the city we were given, it was hard to provide in-depth analysis of the city as the information was hard to find. Given the circumstances, we came up with sufficient amount of material and even found a 3D representation of our city which greatly benefited our cause. The group worked together as a team and produced an extensive amount of material to present.

The final project was much more challenging to me, as it was an individual assignment. I went with the same city, so as i have previously mentioned, getting the information about the city was difficult. Once I determined the topic of interest (due to the lecture), I found interesting information and it became much easier to produce a project with decent material. By understanding the urban context of the city through the analysis from the previous project, it became much easier for me to provide insight on the type of city that luzhou was and has become.

Overall both the projects were a success. The learning process that was required to produce these projects allowed me to understand the city in an urban context much better. The lecture content also provided extensive resources to use and help us understand our cities more.

Project 3 Final

Project 3

Final Poster

The project theme was about the urbanisation of luzhou and how it affected it's way of constructing. The poster is well structured with an even amount of graphics and text. The project could be further improved with increased about of detail to the graphics, by adding maybe legends or arrows to help point out where each paragraph corresponds. However, all in all, the project was a success. 

The project helped me better understand urbanisation and how it is slowly effecting developing countries such as china. I could compare the differences in developing countries to countries such as our own, Australia. However, by researching about luzhou, I found that not all cities in china have begun developing as fast as Luzhou, and this gave me a better understanding of the world. 

Project 3 Development

Project 3 Development

I began my project by researching about Luzhou and how urbanism has had an impact on the city. I also learnt about how they tried to increase their country efficiency by introducing an economic reform. All this research lead me to develop my project based on urbanisation which has a close link to the increase in economic efficiency.

I drew up a sketch up model of the area of focus that i decided to analyse to help explain the effects it has had on the architecture and development of the city. The garden square in luzhou, near the area we did our project 2 was a prime example of the different typologies of buildings luzhou has used. By analysing these buildings we can see how Luzhou has urbanised the city.

3D Representation - image sourced from: luzhou.edushi.com

Sketch Up Model

Sketch Up Perspective Shot

Week 12: Big Buildings and Urbanism

Big Buildings and Urbanism

Peter Richard came back to provide us with insight on landscape and architecture. He began by mentioning the projects of the Bjarke Ingels firm, BIG. This firm has a special blend of landscape and architecture, which is hard for it to be built into physical form, however is it provocative.

Bjarke Ingel Projects - Image sourced from: http://big.dk

The two things pulling away from urbanism are: landscape and sustainability. The interesting thing is that sustainability is having a negative effect instead of a positive on urbanism. The most positive effect on urban design is orientation. By angling the buildings properly, placing the windows in correct places in the buildings, allow for the most efficient use of urban designs. Creating a building that both integrates landscape and urbansim will be difficult, as landscape has many constraints attach to it. When you throw sustainability into the equation as well, it becomes impossible to design a urbanised city, as the city is designed for the user efficient use.

Week 11: Architecture and Urbanism

Architecture and Urbanism

A lecture presented by Peter Richards on the relations between architecture and urbanism. Urbanisation is the growth in population in certain areas, usually is the result of small towns combining or rural migration. Urbanisation is the transformation of human society where rural culture is replaced slowly by urban culture.

Urbanisation - image sourced from: http://oneplanetsustainability.files.wordpress.com

When looking at urbanisation we have to consider the following: Walkability, diversity, proximity, connectivity, accessibility, legibility, community. The picture above provides a perfect example of urbanisation; a constant increase in population and buildings at a central point. 

Urbanisation has a significant correlation to my current project which intrigued me to develop my project 3. Urban design focuses on the city as a whole, instead of like architecture, focusing on each individual building. Which contrasts architecture and urbanism. So how do they link? All buildings require some sort of design, except in the case of urban design, it is on a much larger scale. 

Week 10: Eco Cities

Eco-Cities

Eco-cities are a way for humans and the environment to co-exist as one. It all begins with the founding of Urban Ecology that was founded in 1975 by architects who believed that cities and environment should be able to co-exist. The evolution of Urban ecology since then has provided solutions for better urban planning of cities, transport, and ways to create a more efficient city. In the lecture, Susan explored some of these concepts and how we struggle to turn them into reality. Eco-cities are a major change in design, compared to designing with respects to power or users. These cities provide many perks for the world and it's users:  it stimulates economic growth, provides an environment that reduces poverty, it organizes the cities in a way that increases efficiency and due to the merging with environment, it reduces chemical gas releases which improves health.

 Eco-city - Image sourced from: http://www.kepcorp.com

Eco-city - Image sourced from: http://hqinfo.blogspot.com.au

Week 9: Cities and Memory

Cities and Memory

For a space for become a place, John A. Agnew mentions that certain requirements need to be met: 

1. You need to be able to answer the question of 'Where?' Where is the location?
2. The locale of the space needs to be determined, what sort of characteristics the space has
3. A personal and emotional attachment people have to the space 

It is important that people have memories of a place, this gives the space a purpose, a meaning. This is how architecture thrives, through the users providing an emotional attachment to the place. Memories of a place can be created in various different settings and become physical form through various types of architecture. These could be squares or parks that relate to the urban environment of the city. On a more personal point of view, these could be schools, old street or house. However, it all comes back to having a memory of the space, without the memories then it is just your normal school or square. 

Cites and Architecture correlate to history and memories. Everyone has some sort of connection to places, and these places are usually linked to a history. The history of the place begins with the peoples emotional attachment to the space, which then in turn develops into architecture. 

Empire State Building - Image sourced from: http://photography.nationalgeographic.com

Eiffel Tower - Image sourced from: http://www.fanpop.com

More popular places usually are a place for people to create memories, as it becomes the memory of more and more people, it continues to become more significant to the people around the world.