URBAN NETWORKS

SUSTAINABILITY: URBAN SCALE INTEGRATED SYSTEMS

With this post we start talking about sustainability.

The concept we propose with our research is son of the sense of responsibility that our knowledge of architects oblige us towards the society and the planet we all live in:

"Sustainable development, far from being a final state of harmony, it is rather the process of change such that the exploitation of resources, the direction of investments, the orientation of technological development and institutional change are made ​​consistent with future needs as well that with the current "

In this sense, thinking about sustainability at all scales of project and being now at urban scale, we have identified the systems that are modified or damaged by an edification  and then assumed a series of measures delegated to mitigate the impact on such systems.

briefly:

Through this research we are now able to think about the integration of these systems with the urban fabric as far as they are not only mere technical facilities arbitrarily located on the territory, but a set of social opportunities, economic and employment to offer the community.

FOUR URBAN PROJECTS

What was described in the previous posts regards some rigid settling typologies, which maintain some features that are easily identifiable and  replicable.  However these typologies of isolates and of planned fabrics result alienating in their being serial.

What would happen if there were proposed some architectures that could mix the features of different typologies?   What kind of spaces could be obtained? With which peculiarity?

Because of these matters were selected four (until now) urban projects where the typological rigidity was overcome. Every one of them could be recognized as the sum of simpler characteristics previously analyzed. Therefore there came out new architectures with new qualities but also with new critical aspects.

Last line is interested by our intentions: once that we have scientifically analyzed many projects from different points of view, we extrapolated those  good features we are especially interested in and therefore will involve our project.

BUILDING TYPES AND PLANNED URBAN FABRIC'S ANALYSIS

Once introduced briefly the macro fabric possibilities that are possible to discover today in our cities and once considered that the stratified city owns some intrinsic features that always allowed and still allow to have a good human-scale living, here in this post will be deepen the shape of the planned city.

What we found especially interesting is the relationship formed by the infinite repentance of some rigid building types, creating therefore urban fabric. We selected six rigid housing scheme with this criterion: if you have to displace the same amount of people in the same area, which are the most common building types that have been used in the last decades? What kind of qualities can you obtain? What if you repeat this area with its constructions to let a fabric form?

The relationship between solids and voids, the proximity relation and the presence of services and spaces of socialization are the characteristics that make the quality of a place: a comparison with the result obtained in portions of existing planned city will lead to conclusions that facilitate e will direct our future project decisions.

 The research has been lead looking at some cases of planning where was not utilized a rigid scheme of typology but the plan was configured with a certain grade of conformity with the part already existent.

The urban sewing result to be a fusion among different building typologies, in which has been tried to reproduce and amplify the positive aspects and to delete or mitigate the negative ones.

The main project in Almere’s (NL) masterplan by OMA, is “de Citadel” by the French architect Christian de Portzamparc. This represents a breakthrough about the rapprochement to the stratified city: by integrating different functions and services on different floors, this huge isolate is cut by two irregular pedestrian streets that generate human-scale social spaces, free of vehicular traffic that passes separated on a layer beneath. The displacement of residential spaces permits to reach an optimal density and in the meanwhile to take benefits of the public green, integrated with the roof of the commercial, services and activity’s spaces. The underground parking space permits to save precious urban space.

HOUSING TYPES: REALITIES AROUND THE S.D.O. CASILINO

INTRODUCTORY REMARKS ON URBAN FABRIC

How do you draw a city? 
How do you set up a quality urban environment that fosters trade and social relations enriching people's lives?


The answer to these questions, considering the scale of the urbanization project of the former SDO Casilino (something more than a hundred hectares) requires analysis and therefore reflections that have to start from the study of existing tissues, trying to catch in them the strengths and turn away weaknesses.

The development of urban centers around the world has followed for hundreds of years the criteria of randomness and arbitrariness, and without considering the oldest examples of planned development (Roman net and Pienza to name two well-known), this phenomenon has led to the configuration of urban fabric that we usually identify with the historical centers of cities: this type of tissue is called "stratified city".

                      STRATIFIED CITY: THE HISTORIC CENTRE OF LECCE

                      STRATIFIED CITY: THE HISTORIC CENTRE OF ROME

Starting instead from the second industrial revolution, in which the call of the factories and work has brought the inhabitants of rural areas to concentrate in cities, the criterion of stratification has reached and exceeded its limits with the appearance, at a later time, of the car: from this moment in history has been evident the need to anticipate and address urban sprawl, resulting in the "planned city".

                     PLANNED CITY: SUBURBS OF SEOUL

                     PLANNED CITY: THE EIXAMPLE OF BARCELONA

Having identified in a rather simplistic way the planned and stratified tissue types, deriving from their observation come some easy considerations, with the aim to frame its salient features.

The layered city is thought and lived on a human scale, in that the mobility system is generally composed of streets of small size, then resulting in large areas of socialization (squares); inherent in this type of urban fabric is the articulation of space resulting from the stratification: the roads are often winding and sizes different from each other, the buildings are not aligned up on the street frontage and their dimensions and colors are also variables.

The result is an articulated small-scale spatial system, with a well defined relationship between full and empty spaces: small voids (streets) and large blocks (buildings).This type of fabric is perfect for relatively low-density housing and to be enjoyed moving by feet, but denotes serious deficiencies (health and public order i.e.) with high population densities and when is lived mainly moving by private means (lack of parking , high noise and environmental pollution).

The planned city has been created to compensate for these shortcomings, it would also be designed to be lived on a human scale, but his vocation has been shown to be lived on a car scale.

In this sense, the streets are wide, linear, there is not the articulation of the spaces of the stratified city: the relationship between blocks and voids is substantially changed and sees large voids and large, linear blocks.

In this way, there is the presumption to make all public spaces spots of socialization,ignoring or distorting the suggestions that come from hundreds of years of history of tissue stratification, that sees only few setted places (the squares) as spots of socialization. 

The goal that we set is to identify the laws by which the cities are stratified, studying them drawing development models and repropose them in a contemporary key in the urban planning process of the SDO Casilino

EXPERIMENTAL URBAN EVOLUTION FOR THE IMPROVEMENT OF THE EX S.D.O. CASILINO AREA IN ROME

Dear readers,

first of all welcome in this adventure.This blog has been created with the intention of sharing with you the entire course of thesis of two young students of architecture. The wish of sharing builds its bases both in showing all the analysis necessary for the development of project ideas and in having a direct relationship with our readers, to talk and to enrich our last academic training. Now follows the report which was attached to the submission of the thesis, which contains the main objectives that we considered choosing a neighborhood that will be at the cutting edge from every point of view.

For your information we are followed by these professors:

Prof. A. Giancotti (urban planning and architectural)

Prof. L. De Santoli (technical systems, smart grids)

Prof. E. Arbizzani (architectural technology)

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Experimental evolution model for the urban redevelopment of ex “SDO Casilino” area in Rome

Integrated design of an area, nowadays abandoned and unrestrained, as an urban sewing in a densely populated area of ​​the city of Rome. Because of this aim we are searching for a new urban system in which through the harmonic arrangement of architectural signs and through the integration of rational networks,  functions of Social Housing and urban services, you can encourage social relationships and cooperation between people. In this operation will be integrated, at every scale of the project and within all systems, the use of sustainable building and energy technology.

The thesis puts further four main objectives:

• Apply the principles of sustainability at all scales of design
• Continue and redevelop the principles of Co-Housing and Public-Housing following the wake of the experiments in northern Europe
• Demonstrate the competitiveness of responsible planning at different scales
• Configure the urbanization as a power plant, through the use of a smart grid that connects all the units producing energy from renewable sources, and pour the unused proportion of produced energy in the network

In pursuing these objectives will be to address several issues:

• How to fit to local scale various examples of sustainable architecture? How to place them within an urban setting with centuries of history behind it? Designin a urban void will take the meaning of responsible and socially advanced urbanization, with the aim to mitigate the deficiencies found in the surrounding areas: ease traffic, absorb pollution and produce it as little as possible, provide basic services for the area project and  those missing in the surrounding areas.
• Reorganize substantially the relationship between nature and the built-up to privilege both the environment and the human being. The urban greenery will become a great planned work, which will be developed in tandem with the built-up in order to obtain multiple effects: improvement of the urban microclimate and energy balance, filtration and air purification from dust and pollutants, noise mitigation, street furniture and road improvements, better urban usability.
• Promoting social integration through the shape and spatial arrangement of functions within the same building manufacturing. Taking control of established concepts such as mixité and co-housing and public-housing’s living concepts and discuss them again to meet the social changes brought by the frenetic development of the twenty-first century.
• The design approach comes from the integration of cutting edge energy technologies, passive bioclimatic systems and natural materials in order to achieve maximum comfort, indoor health and sustainability.
• Last but not least, the goal is to design low housing prices, or at least in line with European standards, which are usually much lower than the Italian ones. The problem at this point lies in the desire to obtain a hi-tech building even if new technologies often lead to higher costs. For this reason, the bet will be to reorganize the building process, reducing the constructing periods. Infact, these becomes too many times responsible to define the square meter price to the final user. One way to achieve this target will be the use of automatic solutions, pre-fabricated components and dry assembly methods.

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