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.