Urban Design

1996

2016

Though urban design is historically rooted in development of cities, urban design, as a contemporary discipline, is relatively new compared to associated disciplines of architecture, urban planning, and landscape architecture. Urban design’s close connection with these allied disciplines has also been the reason for its ambiguous nature, and its muddled definition. Accordingly, it is claimed here that a reexamination of the definition, status, and role of urban design is essential for the future directions of urban design as a discipline and cities as sustainable environments. In line with this, this article provides a critical framework regarding the current understanding of the discipline of urban design which is based on form, policy and efficiency, and highlights the need for place oriented approaches performed in an interdisciplinary working framework. The paper first focuses on the meaning and significance of urban design, and discusses the problems with the manner in which ur...

2010

is a fascinating topic for debate. Unfortunately, such debates happen ard Graduate School of Design, shortly before its landmark conference on 1956. This book includes extracts from the conference before going on to reflect upon them. As Charles Waldheim explainsthe contributors discuss past, present and future directions through a series of essays that offer significant and substantive knowledge. Depending on your point of view, the richness or confusion in urban design flows from it not being a specific discipline. Alex Krieger sets out ten interpretations of urban design and then states that the list is not exhaustive and other activities could be added. Jonathan Barnett reduces the number to three components. One focus is the public realm. There seems to be a persistent fear of designing empty public spaces that are devoid of life. Ever since the first

2017

With this anniversary publication we celebrate 20 years of urban design at Aalborg University. The contributors to the publication are students, graduates, and faculty members, who have generously sharpened their pens and minds for this diverse collection of essays and accompanying illustrations. The resulting collaborative catalogue celebrates urban design teaching and research at AAU, and the urban design practice by graduates from this program. Authors have been invited to contribute with a brief essay, focused on a pertinent urban design issue of their own selection. Together they form a rich collection of subjects, concepts, objects, projects, and questions, which have been-and still are-on our minds in urban design throughout the past 20 years. The richness and variation demonstrated by the catalogue is in keeping with urban design's orientation towards diverse considerations when addressing contemporary urban challenges. The past years of AAU urban design endeavours have demonstrated that urban design is about acting within networks of multiple interests, concerns, stakeholders, and other actors. Urban design is perhaps well conceived of as a sensibility of the 'urban-minded', as Harvard GSD dean José Luis Sert suggested at the world's first Urban Design conference in 1956. This somewhat indefinite inception for urban design still persists, and clarity of definition seems to be defied. Rather, in the engaged attempts to operate with synthesis in the ever-changing complexity of the urban condition, urban design's elusive mandate and purpose remains in debate. If attempting to stir up this hornet's nest of urban design's contemporary raison d'etre and scope, multiple co-existing positions impose themselves. Just some of these include: Koolhaas' radical Fuck Context and push to leave architectural delusions of potency and splendor, next to Gehl's human-friendly 'let's meet between the buildings' agenda, next to Mostafavi's optimistic call for a cross-disciplinary sensibility to respond to the ecological crisis, next to Harvey's sturdy emphasis on power, justice, and the right to the city, next to Jacobs' and Appleyard's manifesto of e.g., livability, community, and public life as normative goals of urban design. This multiplicity suggests that to be an urban designer demands skillful and flexible navigation across complex issues of cities and countrysides. Urban designers must work with many elements with meticulousness and readiness. We must strive to continuously adapt to situations and to even be at the forefront of change. This also applies to urban design teaching and research at AAU, as well as to the practices of graduates. For these reasons, this publication offers its modest space for engaged professionals and students to address the diversity and variation of urban design through what they determine to be pertinent urban design matters. Thus, the contemporary versatility of urban design is reflected in this kaleidoscopic catalogue, addressing such diverse issues as urban design's social ambitions; affective encounters of urban space; the conceptualisation of spaces, landscapes, and buildings; relationships between local sites and global change; ecology; events and culture in the city; urban design's role in a complex field of interests and actors driving urban development and planning; dreams of the future; technologies; continuous urban change; experimental methods; and disputed concepts. We are proud to present these voices, and we invite you to dive into them. Thanks to all the contributors for sharing! Last but not least, thanks to the Spar Nord Foundation for its generous funding of this publication, as well as to the Study Board of Architecture & Design and to the Section of Architecture & Urban Design at the

Since its emergence and rise to significance over the fast 30 years urban design has been loosely defined. In this regard, its definition can be grouped into categories of being cursory, qualitative and prescriptive, historic, proprietary and process oriented. A practical definition, i.e. with regard to its status as a field, sees urban design as being form-giving to built environments as a primary activity involving the professions of architecture, landscape architecture and planning. In addition, 'thresholds of scale' factor into a practical definition whereby interrelationships of building site, neighbourhoods and districts, the city, metro region and 'corridors' are building blocks of design intervention. Quality of life, the public realm and process are significant aspects of the thresholds of scale.

2017

JOURNAL OF ARCHITECTURE AND URBANISM, 2013

Urban and architectural theorist Nikos Salingaros, a professor of mathematics at Texas University, San Antonio is affiliated with departments of urbanism in several countries and has made a significant contribution to the understanding of urban planning on a human scale. His important books on various issues in urban and architectural theory are well-known to all members of the profession and academy, especially those seeking for the application of scientific principles in urbanism. Nikos Salingaros has contributed significantly to the New Athens Charter (2003) – an important yet largely neglected document providing timely guidelines for reshaping present mainstream urbanism that still remains under the spell of urban ideology coined by Le Corbusier, Giedion and legions of their followers. A critic of Corbusian doctrines as well as more recent tendencies of urbanism based on stale legacy of Modernism, Nikos Salingaros offers a different approach to the interpretation of contemporary...

It becomes quite evident from the various discussions and debates about our built form that urban design was always a response to either the constants or the variables of an existing situation/ context. It was always used as a tool to emphasize the permanence/temporality of ideas, these being always a result of changing time and social conditions. It is this debate between that of change vs. continuity that is most vital to Urban design. The topic is of even more importance in the Indian urban context as we have cities which have largely been a result of social production of spaces which are at the crucial juncture wherein the change being brought about is of a contrasting nature. The paper attempts to understand how would then our cities attempt to regulate these aforementioned transformations using varying tools of urban design, thus giving us an ideological framework for newer theories on Indian urbanism.

2017

This is a syllabus of an introduction to the discipline of urban design whose goal is to provide students with the necessary skills to participate effectively in urban design studios and will include site, spatial and public domain analysis, map and plan reading, visual, verbal and written communication techniques, and basic computer-based three-dimensional modelling and numerical analysis. Students will be introduced to the objectives and principles of urban design by analysing a number of public spaces including the spaces between buildings as well as the public domain and urban conditions in Sydney.