Geospatial Analysis and Living Urban Geometry

2020

In our days, the foremost scene of human life is the city. The history of the last two centuries is also the history of modern cities. At the age of Napoleon, 20% of the population lived in cities, today this ratio is above 50%. Every second human on Earth lives in a city. Possibly, the most significant transformation of the 21th Century is related to the growth of cities. "A city is a world that man builds for himself"-wrote Wolf Schneider in 1973, in his book 1 , which is about a historical journey with imaginary wanderings in the cities of past ages. The question presents itself: what does modern man build in its cities? Where do they feel good? What do they use their present spaces for? And what do they do with the artificial environment of the previous system/systems, with these modern urban "scars"?

The querelle between modern and traditional urban design has alimented in the past decades diverging phenomena such as the new urbanism, the so-called vernacular architecture and the landscape urbanism on one hand, and the extreme radical neo or ultra-modernist approaches on the other side, each establishing clearly a different and diverging position within the international debate. The urban morphology approach, as developed in time by the Italian school of Saverio Muratori and Gianfranco Caniggia and their followers, has developed a methodology for architectural and urban design, which is neither the radical reproposal of the ultra-modernist style, nor the nostalgic reference to vernacular forms. The Italian school of Urban Morphology proposes a methodology for urban and architectural design based on the reconstruction of the formation process of the built organism, the types, the aggregates, and the territorial cycles. Upon the full understanding of these multi scalar processes, it is then possible to develop the project as the last phase of an ongoing process. A last phase, conceived as contemporary on one hand, but not opposing itself to history on the other, deriving its vitality from the understanding of the formation process of building types and urban tissues so to be the continuation of the past into the future. The paper illustrates briefly the formation process of palaces and public squares through some well-known examples, and proposes a project that applied the same methodology in the design.

«Architettura della città» written by Aldo Rossi (1966) is a classic in urban morphology, but we must look at this book in its original form, a field research report (1964), in order to understand how much urban morphology is important in the city planning design process. Analysing the report we can point out the main references on which Rossi bases his new urban science theory, also we can trace the basis concepts that Rossi will develop in the book written two years later. Reading the report within its original wider contest, the Ilses scientific program – a program shared by politicians, administrators, technicians and academicians – means contextualize the Rossi's thought in the Italian Sixties debate, a reformism season where territorial management could not regardless reasoning about city, its form and its content. In this sense, the Rossi's theory goes back to being part of the urban planning debate in line with one of the two new territorial imagines discussed.

2007

In this paper, we propose the study of alternatives for resolving complex situations such as the expansion of the cities, areas which are exempt from the general order (hybrids) and connections between urban fragments. We start from the idea of presuming a reference to the existing design as a binding factor and, at the same time, we develop possibilities of transformation in the urban layout by means of geometrical criteria used in diverse situations resolution, seeking the potential of alternatives variability. The geometrical layouts proposed, seek to provide an answer to some of the objectives of contemporary town planning: to those which propose to generate partial structures for decentralising and identifying places in the continuity of a design. Proposal of a master layout system, for the expansion or growth of the cities The interdisciplinary mathematical-design approach is based, on recognising those complex problems, which require an overview of the specific incumbencies of those disciplines. We propose the study of alternatives to solve complex situations such as the perimetral expansion of the cities, interstitial areas which are exempt from the general order and connections between fragments. Mathematical models are a useful instrument for finding a new systematic variability, for transformations conceived as continuous process.

The Urbanism Reader: Design, Technology, Culture and the Future of Cities, 2025

Evolutionary, Computational, and Parametric Urbanism F or millennia, most cities developed organically, shaped by the cumulative decisions of countless residents, builders, and leaders over many generations. This led to a rich tapestry of spatial variety, unguided by the singular authority of designers or planners. This incremental process contrasted with the advent of Modernism in the early 20th century, which often emphasized centralized control, standardization and efficiency. However, since the late 20th century, many architects and urban designers aimed to create controlled, designed environments while maintaining the spatial diversity inherent in pre-modernist cities. With new computational design tools becoming available in the 1990s, urban designers began to experiment with new ways to generate spatial diversity. This chapter delves into "computational urbanism"-the integration of computational methods, algorithms, and data analytics into urban design. By marrying computer science with urban design, this approach facilitates the modeling, simulation, and visualization of temporal urban dynamics. Jane and Mark Burry, in their book The New Mathematics of Architecture (2010), demonstrate how advanced mathematics has become crucial to modern architectural design due to technological advances. They explore how mathematical concepts allow architects to create innovative structures previously deemed unattainable. This synergy between mathematics and design, they suggest, is pivotal for the future of architecture. In addition, this allows designers to "engage with the city from the bottom-up, from the discrete granular forces from which it unfolds, rather than top-down. " 1 Modern urban design benefits from innovations such as 3D modeling, generative algorithmic coding, parametric design, and artificial intelligence. These computational techniques empower designers to interpret city data, simulate scenarios, and produce adaptive algorithmic designs. This chapter further discusses the various facets of computational design, its proponents and critics, and its technical potential. Delving into cybernetic theories, Gordon Pask's groundbreaking insights open the chapter. Other notable contributors include John and Julia Frazer, Tom Verebes, Patrik Schumacher, and Benjamin H. Bratton, each exploring different aspects of computational architecture and urbanism. Gordon Pask was a British cybernetician and psychologist known for his pioneering work in the field of cybernetics-the study of systems, control, and communication in both animals and machines. Pask's work largely revolved around the concepts of learning systems and processes, particularly human-machine interaction and adaptive systems. One of his most notable contributions was "Conversation Theory, " which elucidated the ways in which interactions (or "conversations") 39289.indb 163 17/09/24 4:15 pm

Journal of Design for Resilience in Architecture and Planning, 2021

Over a half-century, space syntax has proven resilient as a theory and method for describing and analyzing the built environment from dwellings and complex buildings to cities. The paper briefly discusses resilience as a concept in the built environment and the foundations of space syntax itself. We summarize the body of the theoretical thinking in space syntax -laws of the urban object, generic function, principles of centrality and linearity, the design method of spatio-formal processes, and laws of spatial emergence-convergence -before offering a new hypothesis about laws of spatial conservation and spatial optimization at work in the built environment. The latter builds on Conroy-Dalton's (2001) ideas about angularity and the conservation of linearity in movement. Both could provide an essential bridge with Carvalho and Penn's ( ) concept of self-similarity in settlements, which relates to Batty and Longley's (1994) notions of fractal cities. We argue the hypothesis of conservationoptimization defines the conceptual framework for the progressive and regressive practice of urban planning in settlements. We illustrate this theoretical discussion by demonstrating the resilience or replication of previous space syntax findings, and by drawing on new research about the history, spatial structure, and neighborhood logic of Metropolitan Doha.

2009

This paper is set to unveil several particulars about the logic embedded in the diachronic model of city growth and the rules which govern the emergence of urban spaces. The paper outlines an attempt to detect and define the generative rules of a growing urban structure by means of evaluation techniques. The initial approach in this regards will be to study the evolution of existing urban regions or cities which in our case are Manhattan and Barcelona and investigate the rules and causes of their emergence and growth. The paper will concentrate on the spatial aspect of the generative rules and investigate their behaviour and dimensionality. Several Space Syntax evaluation methods will be implemented to capture the change of spatial configurations within the growing urban structures. In addition, certain spatial elements will be isolated and tested aiming to illustrate their influence on the main spatial structures. Both urban regions were found to be emergent products of a bottom up...

New Urban Configurations, Roberto Cavallo, Susanne Komossa, Nicola Marzot, Meta Berghauser Pont, Joran Kuijper (eds.) , 2014

The papers considers, with a comparative approach, the architecture of vertical connections and city edges. We hypothesize that the city edge, when its elevation overwhelms the surrounding urban fabric, cannot be redesigned within a basic typological repertoire. This research considers the transformations of the edge in historical towns, taking into consideration the architectural models used and investigating the contextual deformations impressed. The design of vertical connections between different city levels redefines the image of the city from its meaningful points of view, changing the collectively recognized city image. A repertoire of models, divided into typologies according to the morphology of the site, is the base for a new theory outlining which parameters (i.e. measure, elevation, slope, and major urban nodes) to use to deform models in each context. The study cases range throughout the history of architecture, focusing on some pre-modern examples such as Laurana's Torricini façade in the Palazzo Ducale of Urbino.

U+D urbanform and design, 2018

G. Strappa editoriale, Durata del temporaneo G. Strappa, Substrata. Morfologia dell' Antico oltre le rovine C. D. Coelho, Sedimentaçao e Metamorfose. Projecto de recuperaçao e reintegraçao de traçados e estruturas construfdas romanas em Bobadela, Portugal C. Sammarco, Processualità del tessuto derivato dall' edilizia speciale antica. Dal consumo del sostrato alla sintesi della forma P. Carlotti, On continuity and discontinuity. Interview with Alexander Schwarz N. Scardigno, Il paesaggio come paradigma cognitivo trans-storico. La Mongolia come caso studio G. F. Rociola, Villaggi oasiani dell' Erg. Thala Timimoun e l' organismo acqueo-insediativo S. Clemente, Lo spazio moderno per lo spettacolo come processo di formazione dal tessuto urbano N. Panzini, Theodor Fischer e Monaco Fritz Schumacher e Amburgo. Il "blocco edilizio" e la corte, corpi murari e spazi collettivi C. A. Manzo, Il progetto di architettura come prodotto scientifico -lo Samuels, Reflections of an Italophile urban morphologist Year: 2019 Publisher: L'ERMA di BRETSCHNEIDER Journal: U+D urbanform and design, 9-10 ISBN: 978-88-913-1828-2 Binding: Paperback Pages: 112, 132 ill. B/W, 32 ill. Col. Size: 21 x 28 cm

Proceedings 24th ISUF 2017 - City and Territory in the Globalization Age, 2017