Eudaemonia No. 1 – Constructing Happiness
2019. 06
Series on Central City Expansions AA H&U
The Construction of Eudaemonia ARCHITECTURAL ASSOCIATION SCHOOL OF ARCHITECTURE GRADUATE PROGRAMME Housing and Urbanism 2018-2019 Tutors: Lawrence Barth + Anna Shapiro Published in London 2019
Design Workshop Group
We are witnessing today a dramatic return to the centre of the city as a place to live, a place to collaborate, and a platform for building robust social networks. Central city living is based upon a rich set of values which drive ambitions for new residential and work environments: people want access to culture and entertainment, to services, to sports and recreational facilities, but most of all, people want access to their social, civic, and professional networks. This is a big part of the reason for the expansion of central city living – we value the accessibility it offers. Mobility becomes key, but so does the diversification of services of all kinds. We wish to build more homes, more workplaces, and more facilities – we increase densities. We want to improve the speed and convenience of access and circulation, and we hope to build new synergies among our partnerships and networks – we increase the complexity of our built environment. These trends make the role of the architect increasingly important, not only in responding to developmental pressures, but also to help envision alternative scenarios and reveal conflicts. Architecture supports reasoned debate about the future of our central city environments both through vision and an
understanding of precedent. Previous studios have looked at the diversification of residential and retail environments (Mongrel Town, 2016) the introduction of high-density housing and employment opportunities on challenging sites sequestered near rail lines (Uptown, 2017) and the role of services, shared living, and employment mix – all linked through the growing culinary economy – in driving long-term value-creation (Cooks’ Camden, 2018.) This studio follows in the broad theme of central city transformations but raises more explicitly the challenge of today’s heightened emphasis upon health and well-being. The health industry is growing tremendously in Central London, providing new opportunities for urban growth and employment. In addition, services linked to wellbeing are proliferating at a tremendous rate, generating new opportunities for personal choice in our approach to life. But these trends bring the politics of life to our attention in complex ways, putting huge pressure on our national health system, bringing new actors into the conversation, and demanding increasing sophistication from citizens and institutions in envisioning tomorrow’s approaches to wellbeing. In “The Construction of Eudemonia,” we have drawn attention to one of the oldest foundations of the politics of collective life: the notion that health and happiness should stand as core
values in our debates about the good city. We believe architects should study and reveal options, challenges, precedents, and opportunities that may help decision-makers in their efforts to govern urban transformation. Ten students have each studied aspects of a potential transformation of the area surrounding and extending from the site of the currently redeveloping St. Pancras Hospital. Some have focused on mobility and integration, some on the crossovers between healthcare and housing, others on the expansion of biomedical research. In all cases, the students have investigated the way that an architecture of complexity allows us to open a discussion of novel partnerships among actors. There has been no attempt to foreclose the politics of these emerging opportunities, but to see them in a fresh light, as deserving of exploration. Taken together, the ideas expressed reveal possible approaches toward a highly focused strategy for this area on the part of the London Borough of Camden – a strategy that extends the growing importance of the NHS as an urban actor, that builds on crossovers between health service delivery and research, that acknowledges the potentials of research environments to the future of Camden/St. Pancras – while retaining a clear emphasis upon the integrity of the urban area and its role in the expansion of central city living.
Publisher Lawrance Barth, Anna Shapiro
LAWRENCE BARTH
SUNGEUN JUN
NACHAMON POOLSRUP
STAMATINA THARROUNIATI
STEFAN S. WEBER
PAOLA ROCA
AISANA BAIMAKHANOVA
MARINA SAMVELYAN
SZUMIN TSENG
BIYING WANG
HAO LI
ANNA SHAPIRO
HOUSING & URBANISM EUDAEMONIA TEAM
the construction of Eudaemonia
Global Trends In Urban Bio-Political Systems
In recent years we have evidenced significant shifts in the way we understand the relationship between health, wellbeing and urban area. Both society and politics aim to integrate health and wellbeing more closely into our everyday life, trying to avoid hospitalization in first place. These shifts are closely associated with global bio-political trends leading to new types of hospitals and health facilities adopting a new understanding of cure which is closer to one of care. This new approach generates advanced needs for innovation, and in recent years, led to a propelling growth of the life sciences sector in production, research (such as genetic health, bioengineering and computational biology), systems of care and in education. In consequence, the industry becomes connected to a very rich field of economic expansion. The new partnerships demand a different kind of knowledge and expertise, both interdisciplinary and specialised to become part of the business model. The present competition for excellence creates challenges to the way in which those industries must operate, where they locate themselves and how they should be organised in order to keep being competitive and thrive. Big commercial headquarter buildings, for instance, which are often located in peripheral areas, or in specialised bio-medial clusters, are starting to recognise the need to move in closer to central city areas, in the race for
the recruitment and retainment of talent, the growing need to be in proximity to hospitals as fertile partners for research and trail, as well as improving local, regional and global connections. In the endless seeking for competitive advantages and excellence of conduct, health industries are beginning to support cross-collaborations between private companies, governmental bodies, as well as educational institutions, both locally and globally. Moreover, some research facilities are even opening their gates to the wider public, accommodating temporary art exhibitions, events and workshops. The emergence of new patterns of collaboration, as well as an interest in enhancing public involvement becomes evident. Among others, the Welcome Trust, shows the rising interest of the public in these topics, and is illustrative of the ways in which industry can instrumentalise it to get more approachable, transmit key messages to a wider audience more directly and recruit the future generation of experts. Education then, both on a school and universitarian level, seems to take part in the evolution as well. Private-public partnerships are gaining importance and profit from the new proximities, which come with the move of the industries into city centres. While the educational facilities benefit from financial support and possibilities to better understand economic realities first-hand, the enterprises can access innovative
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research more directly and get free access to future talents. In consequence, knowledge hubs, formerly thought of enclosed entities become integrated in a lively and diverse urban ecosystem. At the same time, a shift of perception within the care system is also emerging. Care is becoming more and more associated with domesticity and residential life, rather than being part of hospitals, proliferating through different independent care organisations on the neighbourhood’s scale. Moreover, if in the past, many older people admitted themselves to a fostering homes for care and companionship, current policy supports older people to stay at home for as long as possible. As a result, we may want to think about new ways of delivering housing, which offers an supported living within a more traditional residential environment. Consequently, the existing care homes must be upgraded in order to be capable to deal with people being very frail with multiple co-morbidities at the point they enter foster homes. This creates new challenges for the system of care, that is now demanding greater range of education and professional skills, side by side to mobility, social responsibility and involvement of the local community. All those trends generate a vast range of possibilities for new projects, becoming key drivers of urban transformation in their respective areas, proposing answers to a new set of questions we are currently confronting with.
the construction of Eudaemonia
the construction of Eudaemonia
Between King’s Cross and Camden Town
The area between King’s Cross and Camden Town can be understood as transitional both temporally and spatially. However, this area is also known for its high developmental pressure, and rapid pace of transformation, following the past decade’s trend in the growth of life sciences sector and technology. The proliferation of diverse health, research and institutional environments in the area, driven by multiple actors, is dramatically redefining it as a world-class, central-city knowledge district. Located just ‘behind’ Euston Road (formerly New Road), the area once marked London’s boundary to the north and still delimits what is perceived as central London or TfL’s Zone 1.
The road has from the very beginning been intended to absorb some of the increasingly troubling traffic. When city council declared, that no railway should cross its line, it set the basis for Euston Road to become the transit hub it is today, linking the tube with national and international rail services. Its former city border location can still be traced in the morphology of the area, which extends some of the most important traffic arteries reaching north from the regular grid structure to be found in the southern boroughs. Before reaching Camden Town, the grid converges in order to then disperse radially in all directions. In consequence, the area is excellently connected to both the outskirts and the
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inner city and we can see how industries dependent on good traffic connections established logistical infrastructures here. Nowadays though, this characteristic is perceived completely differently. With King’s Cross having moved from being peripheral to central, the low density of both logistical infrastructure and terraced housing does no longer seem adequate. Simultaneously, globalization of economy and excellence lead to a reinterpretation of the value of good traffic connection. Today, industries in digital technologies and life sciences, with much higher economical power then the logistical industry, rely on well connected locations and are eager to enter such attractive areas with their office spaces in order to attract the best experts from all over the world. Google, building its new European headquarter just to the north of the St. Pancreas and King’s Cross stations, can be seen as proof and indicator of this development in the area. However, the vast release of developmental potential around King’s Cross and the Coal Drops, as well as the border characteristics of the railway embankments to the east, and the smaller grain to be found towards Camden town, inhibited such large scale developments and led to proliferating urban developments on a smaller scale. The creative industry entered a former furniture depository (The Centro Building), a builders retailer took up the ground floor of a student accommodation, which links to other residential developments starting
to increase density especially around the canal, crossing the neighbourhood and offering attractive pedestrian connectivity all the way from Regents Park over Camden Market and King’s Cross to Hackney. In this respect one of the current local actors, the NHS, is beginning to be interested to be involved in the urban transformation. After all it is in its own interest to contribute directly to healthier living environments. The NHS has some great possibilities to do so as it is currently updating hospitals, research
facilities and health services. By doing so it often discovers underutilised assets, no longer fit for purpose structures that can be refurbished to the profit of a greater audience. These assets also exist in the area, with the site of the largely 19thcentury St. Pancras Hospital, between Camley Street and St. Pancras Way, which is no longer able to address the changing needs of healthcare. Overall, the area between King’s Cross and Camden town is characterized by a collage of building types (from terraced rows to modernist slabs), different
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functions (from local high street to international offices) and the attractive location (linking to Paris via Eurostar and Hackney along a Waterway). At the same time this very properties are the causing the challenges it faces such as the missing connection and integration of the eastern parts and difficulty in introducing developments at a scale which can truly transform. A strategy which enables the area to take account of its potential economical value is needed and it will have to incorporate the trends and shifts we observe.
MAKE MOBILITY GREAT AGAIN
Sungeun Jun
INFRASTRUCTURE AN INTEGRATOR OF URBAN TERRITORIES King's Cross and Camden town are organised along main roads with some cul-de-sac, restricting car-traffic in each block with pedestrianisation. On the other hand, the area with the intersection of railway has a characterised by stacking of huge infrastructure such as canals and railways, side by side to old and new urban fabrics. And this has a characteristic of transitional area, which converting urban grid from North to South.
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Transportation infrastructure, the revolutionary modern invention that has contributed to make our society and cities exist, is now moving beyond its function of connection and speed into a new phase. The infrastructure of the city, may be considered a space between building, has striking possibilities and opportunities to improve quality of life and social relationships.
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Furthermore, contemporary mobility continues to diversify and simultaneously needs solutions related to urban density. Undoubtedly, an increasing density in a limited space can be improved by increasing the capacity of space. The process occur within urban territories, which are characterised by distinctive grid pattern, structural dimensions, materials, etc. In that context, why don’t we rethink the urban organisation from current infrastructure with differentiated mobility system?
make mobility great again!
make mobility great again!
Integrated territory with Infrastructure The transitional area might be seen as a series of fractured territories, while also as a large infrastructural field. each of the divided territories shows indigenous complexity and form in terms of its size and scale. In this regard, we can imagine the way in which a re-organisation of the mobility patterns, speeds and urban fabrics, would be able to create a new integrated territory on this bundling urban fields. At the same time, various kind of strategies, which can be generated on multiple scales and sizes across the fracture, might also arise. The relationship of differences contains potential to secure contemporary biopolitical period. In the period, diversified society emerge with various urban communities, stakeholders, and actors. On the other hand, we can manage our well-being in the current society through human scale in terms of details of architecture and outdoor spaces. Therefore, speed and mobility system should be considered to build appropriate urban environment for current shifting period. In such a way, through spatial designing with intimacy mobility systems, the urban area is able to be transformed into where people can stroll and travel and, ultimately, a combination of the user's domain. By designing the integration of territories as a shared place, various kind of stakeholders can occur, not just in pursuit of pedestrianisation. Here, we begin to explore for distinguished mobility strategies from the vacant urban spaces. Furthermore, one strong gesture between two striking urban fields act as a way to enhance the capacity of space itself to accommodate rising density beyond the existing extension that the city has been working on.
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make mobility great again!
Two roads and Opportunities
Absorbing the Density
The transitional character the area is apparent in the urban grid patterns. Specifically, the northern part has a radial pattern around Camden Road Station, but under the southern Euston Road, we can see the neat gridiron pattern extends from the central area. With these two grid patterns are mixed in the middle. In spite of its strong presence, the Regent Canal, which connects the River Thames along the outskirts of the city, fails to play a distinctive role as well as losing its former commercial distribution function. However, in this ambiguous area, we can discover various axes and accessibilities through the Regent Canal, which penetrates urban parcels, creating potentials for integration of the East and West territories by opening the barrier through huge infrastructure.
The basis for expanding the capacity of this area, which had been reduced by canal and railway, is now ready. The Crowndale Road connects to the west area of Regent's Park through the Eversholt , while the Copenhagen Street, in the east, leads to Islington area. Meanwhile, the ongoing Camden Highline project is able to provide other opportunities by forming a new edge of the transitional area. Urban density, emanating from the multi-scalar gateways, King's Cross and St. Pancras railway stations, have absorbed and expanded through the recently developed Pancras Square and King's Cross Central. Therefore, this area of exploration area is situated at an optimised location, which has the capacity to densify by organising various urban quarters and penetrating traffic-axes.
Camden Road Station
Copenhagen Street
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Euston Road
Regent Park
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make mobility great again!
CASE STUDY
The vacant space will not only absorb the density of the city, but also be able to perform as an integrator. the absorbed density in the area should be controlled through internal micro mobility. However, the transportation function of the existing micro mobility does not have the capacity to handle further increasing density. Therefore, a new mobility mode, emphasising the role of place might be needed. In other words, not only architecture but also outdoor spaces between buildings are securing the role of absorbability and permeability. In order to augment the density and assign a sense of place, high-speed mobility systems, such as vehicles and trains, could be divided or excluded. Whereas, some places could be planned to slow people down or stay.
The following cases illustrate the ways in which architecture can improve and diversify the quality of mobility, from a single building to an urban area. Urban grid, existing infrastructure, and topographical environment are crucial to evolution of public realm. For instance, some combine landscape with buildings and infrastructure, others create new terrain in a vertically extended form or design new place where urban quarters are shared on a linear park. This designed mobility infrastructure is no longer focused on high speed, but rather on low speed of the user to allow them to stroll the place. Moreover, they created new landscape in existing city through vertical or horizontal visual axes and improved capacity of mobility by blurring or linking boundaries between architecture and outdoor spaces. the precedents, which expand the urban quarter into external space, indicate that a new mobility system can serve as place where unpredictable events can occur.
National Library of France
Jamsil Regeneration Proposal
Yokohama Port
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Jamsil Regeneration Proposal
Evolution of mobility
New York High Line
Olympic Sculpture Park
"Micro mobility as a place"
Sungeun Jun
GOVERNING CHANGE : MECHANISMS OF URBAN TRANSFORMATION CLUSTERING, ARMATURE, DISPERSAL 16
The King's Cross and Camden town areas are rapidly transforming, whereas each of territories shows differentiated characteristics along the historical events or current trends. As a result, there is an intriguing peculiarity about the area. Simultaneously, mobility culture is transforming due to technological development and influencing contemporary culture.
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To be specific, the area is characterised by urban strips which are flowing from the Regent park to Eastern King's Cross Recreational district along the Regent Canal. Each urban strip from greenery to the recently transformed area of King’s Cross, has different responses to their immediate areas. Within the specialised urban situations, the area could be separated into three strips which are cluster, armature, and dispersal pattern in terms of the mobility system and biopolitical trend.
governing change
governing change
Differentiated strategies First of all, the gridiron area, which is comprised of an integrated neighbourhood, has only single layer of mobility distinguished by its block size. Within this rigid but well-connected fabric, the dispersed blocks with courtyards, which are able to offer distinctive identity, are organised according to the main roads of city from West and North. Secondly, between the canal and railway infrastructure at the North area, a cluster, which accepts the surrounding urban, could be easily imagined.
Creating multiple layers of mobility in the cluster will lead to a more complex and interlinked system of movement. In such a way, the cluster would be able to act as an integrator, which is working not only on ground level, but on expanded levels with interdisciplinary activities through buildings and open spaces. In addition, it is able to react with Pancras Square as another urban cluster near railway stations. Finally, the urban flow from the Regent park reaches the gate of city infrastructure 18
and regenerated district. In this strip, at the same time, a mobility armature with huge vacant spaces links the urban territories including the transportation infrastructure. Based on two urban clusters, to the North and South, a strong mobility armature spreads infinite accessibility while creating various urban situations. Consequently, the compressed strip with untrammelled fabrics plays a role as transitional stem, which integrates mobility into a three-dimensional realm.
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governing change
governing change
“In the molecular biopolitics of our present, many aspects of our human vitality have already become technical, opened up to manipulation and modification in the operating theater, the clinic, the school room, the military, and in everyday life.” (2007, Nikolas Rose)
Shifting in multi-scale Along the distinctive mobility strategies on the fractured strips, we will explore several schemes in various scales and detail. The biopolitical period requires molecularised detail of buildings and outdoor spaces, while optimising not only for its density but also for its quality. An urban cluster could occur even between intelligent environment and civic realm. Based on permeable ground floor
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public spaces, professional sectors extend to civic facilities such as symposium or dual functional library. Simultaneously, the movement from the surrounding area into the cluster is continuous and its speed is diversified. Eventually, the area is able to augment the capacity that is dealing with three-dimensional nature of mobility system (page 22 for further work) The article ‘Community in Question’ on
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the other hand, challenges the current understanding of collective living in the conflict between the need for intimacy and the search for social relations. Density, the article suggests, might against the association of tightness it implies, create the necessary spaces to resolve this conflict. (page 50 for further work)
Nachamon Poolsrup
BEAUTIFUL GROUND: INTELLIGENT ENVIRONMENTS FOR BIO-MEDICAL INDUSTRIES
What will our future of healthcare service and Bio-future city be like? Healthcare service and contemporary biomedical industry at the present has shifted itself in various ways. It is no longer just about delivering the number of healthcare services for the public anymore, but also pay more
attention to the question of stakeholders relations, the economic reasoning, the size and location of the system. The responsibility of only curing illness seems to be blurred. We can say, the shift of contemporary biomedical industries leads us to rethink about, how our bio-future city could look like? 22
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beautiful ground
The Hierarchy of Relationships Between Biomedical System and Civic Facilities The contemporary biomedical industry has shifted itself in various ways at the present. The intelligent environment of life science and research industry start to transform its spatial organisation and location.
beautiful ground
If one can imagine the bio-industry to be urbanised and located in central city, how will the spatial organisation be changed? The challenge is, not only we have to concern carefully about the complexity of the central city, the existing mobility system and infrastructures, the geographic differences, the level of density and also the diverse activities on the ground, but also have to retain the quality of intelligence environment and the sense of ownership at the same
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time. We can see, this new type of space consists of the complex association between public outreach and biomedical system. In this topic, knowledge facilities can be one imaginable way using as a tool to understand this shift and to find the new balance between civic sector and biomedical industry sector. In this near future, we can imagine, somehow the bioculture to be planted beautifully among our urban realm.
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beautiful ground
Biomedical industry works as a network of stakeholders The growth of Biomedical science and its industry in this near future tend to be expanded without boundaries as well as the complexity of the bio-network will increase. As the way in which the system gradually gathers more stakeholder and partnership, these could maximise the advantage for both external and internal organisation. Furthermore, the growth of biomedical industry will bring together the intelligent worker in a particular field from all around the world in to the pool of system. These high range of citizen transference will not only has a direct impact just for the internal organisation, but also will change the density and diversity to the wider urban aspect especially in central city.
Strategy for UK Life Sciences According to the Strategy for UK Life Sciences Publish by Department for Business Innovation & Skill (BIS) “There are profound changes taking place in the discovery, development and adoption pathways of medical innovation. New models of working between universities, hospitals and businesses need to be developed to place the UK at the forefront of medical research now and in the future. In order to ensure that researchers, clinicians, businesses and investors see the UK as the location of choice for life sciences, we must build a fully integrated life sciences ecosystem from our world-class research and clinical infrastructure. We will achieve this by making it easier for researchers to commercialise academic research; placing clinical research at the heart of the NHS; and by empowering patients to participate in research. These actions will encourage adoption and diffusion of innovation in the NHS.�
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beautiful ground
To urbanise the biomedical system
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From the past until now , the model for creating intelligent environment always base on the idea of supporting high technology, research and innovation such as science park. But on the other hand, it could bring into the question that what if biomedical infrastructure buildings are actually could situated among central city and could work well with existing context as a part of urban life? Everything can comes closer cooperating together at some balance level. And at the same time still flexible and stable enough to manage itself as an individual system. Rather than single
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building itself, but considering at wider relationships between the clustering of architecture and the complexity of existing permeable urban ground. To urbanise the biomedical industry as Civic Centralities could be one of possible way to pushing the potential of the biomedical industry by encouragement of public out reach and also planting the knowledge-based society by bio-culture.
beautiful ground
beautiful ground
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beautiful ground
beautiful ground
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THE CONSTRUCTION OF EUDAIMONIA
BEAUTIFUL GROUND INTELLIGENT ENVIRONMENTS FOR BIOMEDICAL INDUSTRIES NACHAMON POOLSRUP
0001 S-01 10.06.2019
HOUSING & URBANISM
ψβψωβω
ORDĬNA ET IMPĔRA
Stamatina Tharrouniati
"In each case, flows instead of places and forces instead of forms, are the leitmotifs of the project, which propose dynamic strategies as opposes to static ones." Bernard Tschumi, 'Event cities 2'
Large Scale Infrastructure | An Armature for Transformation 2
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ORDINA ET IMPERA
ORDINA ET IMPERA
Conceptualization of Void
conceptualization pf void as a discontinuity of urban grid
different conditions in the E-W and N-S axis
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Different and at times even contradicting conditions in the axes E-W and N-S, in terms of typologies, blocks, grids and size, are merging right into the heart of the area. It might seem that this range of conditions create challenges for establishing hierarchy or contributing to the wider urban grain. So, what if we imagine the N-S corridor, which can now be conceived as an inefficient threshold, becoming an urban void that acts as an integrated, dynamic and connecting piece of land? This would entail new collaborations between formal and informal actors, disciplines and administration that see the continually changing landscape of voids as an active part of the city, generating greater benefit for both residents and commuters. An abstract conceptualization of urban void, will suggest that it can be defined by its distinctiveness within the urban fabric and its legibility because of its nature and extent, covering a gradation of density and intensity. It is in no case identical to emptiness. The conditions around it define the nature and the urban role of the void for the wider area which can be organizing, decongesting, congesting, generating and
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provoking change. So, it becomes evident that rather than the void itself as an autonomous ‘object’ or ‘entity, it is the relation of the void with the surroundings that matters. Meaning, that a fundamental discontinuity in the urban fabric is necessary for the effective function of the contemporary or future city. Euralille in Lille and Gleisdreieck Park in Berlin, are two very different cases of urban interventions, imposed in different conditions and cultures. Assuming that both are alternative faces of the void, they will be read as such. The former, as a populated void and the latter, as an empty void, in an attempt to reach a definition of Kings Cross area as a void that operates somewhere in between. In addition, both cases share the role of a major integrator based on their distinctiveness.
CASE STUDY
CASE STUDY
Gleisdreieck Park
OMA, @Lille | France
Atelier LOIDl, @ Berlin | Germany
Rem Koolhaas, in his design of Euralille, has created a totally new interpretation of towns and cities giving new meaning to the urban plan regarding its functional and rational aspects, in an unprecedented approach. Relationships become multilayered introducing new qualities, different types of speed, different intensities and superpositions in order to achieve hierarchy, legibility, containment and sense of ownership, in a totally new system. In this case, void is defined by its distinctiveness from the existing and not by cause of its emptiness. The new slice of the city does not really have any references to the adjacent areas, as it aims to relate to the bigger scale beyond not only the city but even the country. Maybe the feature of Eurallile that likens it to a laboratory and probably justify this kind of dense void is that it constitutes the construction of a project within a city that doesn’t really belong to the city, but instead is part of a highly spread system that links up international nodes. From the beginning the ambition of the development is summarized in the phrase ‘a metropolitan under construction’, mainly due to its strategic position at the crossroads of Northern Europe and the implementation of an efficient transportation network. However, the old and the new exist side by side, without encroaching upon each other’s territory. The void in this case pulls out forces instead of absorbing them. The otherness is so different that you can start thinking what is in the periphery of that or what it should be in the future. It basically pushes intensity to the edges for the following stages of change and transformation according to the European ambitious model, and in relation to the character of the populated ‘void’.
Parks or extensive unbuilt areas are maybe the most frequent and obvious perception of urban voids, which can become instrumental for the transformation and function of the city. In the case of Gleisdreieck Park, the broader urban image is composed by obviously separated conditions that are linked by a central void, creating one totality. As there was everything already in place, different built environments that are under construction, moving, changing and conflicting, the answer is ‘less is more and flexible’. One can agree that the existing situation cannot support another otherness in between in order to connect, but nothing is enough to act as a device to merge different conditions and let them communicate somewhere in the epicentre of the void. In other words, the void here starts pulling extremely different things together. It absorbs differences. By being empty it allows those things to present themselves and develop their identity towards the centre. The void provides a frontage for them to be understood, the space to be transformed and the potential to become compatible with the adjacent conditions.
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‘fuck context syndrome, what we’re interest in is the development of new urban models.. we should now be focusing on the discovery of a new type of urbanism which opposes the concept of the city as an ordered series of objects'.
Gleisdreieck Park @ Berlin, Germany - atelier LOIDl
EURALILLE @ Lille, France - OMA
Euralille
Rem Koolhaas
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explorations of new geometry
ORDINA ET IMPERA
ORDINA ET IMPERA
"This area will be a third interpretation of ‘void’ as a trajectory of explorations between Euralille and Gleisdreieck Park." However, one cannot conceive this armature neither as a neutral framework, that eases the existing to become an entity as in the case of Gleisdreieck Park ,nor as a new slice of the city that with no references to the adjacent areas as Euralille. On the contrary, it is a kind of ‘collage city’ , based on the juxtaposition of old and new, by introducing a totally new geometry that embraces however the existing spatial repertoire and morphology. In other words, it is about a new infrastructure that applies the concept of an artificial landscape that multiplies the ground, creates intensities and incorporates existing elements and areas. In fact, this armature could pull very different speeds and status together, such as a train station, an extensive green space, a tower, a low rise building and many more, in a way that complement each other even if they are much closer than they used to be.
Another void Kings cross area will be a third interpretation of ‘void’ as a trajectory of explorations between the two cases mentioned before. In this case, what if we approach the void as an armature/instrument that structures the transformation of a fragmented area in multiple scales? The armature can become a means of organising the distribution of elements in a way that is neither just a piece of surface in a streetbased organization, nor a cluster in terms of a campus. It is about an alternative way of thinking that establishes a sequence of possible groupings or dispersals along the way. It might offer legibility and accessibility to the area, which delivers the
structure of a knowledge economy around health and well- being by facilitating the different stakeholders to reach each other. By clustering and grouping the area in flexible zones with distinct character, the armature allows a number of generic interventions which can be implemented independently by multiple developers, stakeholders etc. The whole intervention, as a set, addresses the bigger scale of a regional or even international territory while the existence of borders within this set address the human scale. Moreover, the border of any region determines, to a large extent, how that region is experienced, hence the utility of any design depends strongly upon its border. 44
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ORDINA ET IMPERA
ORDINA ET IMPERA
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THE CONSTRUCTION OF EUDAIMONIA
ORDĬNA ET IMPĔRA LARGE SCALE INFRASTRUCTURE - AN ARMATURE FOR TRANSFORMATION
HOUSING & URBANISM
STAMATINA THARROUNIATI
0002 P-01 10.06.2019
ORDINA ET IMPERA
ORDINA ET IMPERA
So, in spite of the fact that most of these urban ingredients have already existed in the area, the armature seems like a strategy which is able to proliferate some and make all of them work as a set, generate qualities, new types of speeds and movements, protecting moments of quiet, low pace, contemplation and civic assembly. This proximity of different ingredients arises the question of vertical adjustments, sectional decisions, openness and the im-
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position of borders in a three- dimensional grid. Overall, the ambition of creating a Bio-polis, which implies the anticipated research institutions, opportunities for business development and new patterns of housing, combined with the protection of the notion of the neighbourhood, but also the concept of a metropolitan transportation node rises the questions of accumulation and dispersal, new spatial organiza-
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tion and an urban approach to health and well-being, which are attempted through the exploration of this armature. In other words, it is about a spatial ecology that bridges the gap between the metropolitan scale of a central transportation station, the economic nature of living in a bio-hub and building a community within a neighbourhood.
Stefan S. Weber
COMMUNITY IN QUESTION: COLLECTIVE VALUES AND DENSITY IN HOUSING An essay and a drawn design research com togerher to elaborate on the question how density and shared living environments affect life quality and hence wellbeing of its tenants. The elaboration is ment to raise new questions on the value of collective housing schemes and shared facilities in the wake of current urban challenges.
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Community in Question
Thinking about Eudaimonia or the conduction of happiness we cannot spare to think about the place where we seek refuge, recharge energy for the daily duties and socialize in privacy with our closest friends: home. If we do not feel comfortable at home where else should we seek wellbeing? Necessities in sustainability, affordability of housing and economy demand for denser solutions in residential architecture. Within this task we have to continue to ask the question how to still grant quality within density. A lot of proposals in the field seek the solutions in reducing the private area and expanding the shared func-
tions. We can find the origin of such an approach in Karel Teige’s minimal dwelling diagram representing the complementarity between ‘centralised and collectivised facilities and [...] the individual living cell’. (Aureli et al., 2019) These solutions grant intimate privacy for single or couple tenants. Most functions though, are shifted into collectively used spaces such as community kitchens, shared dining and living rooms. The private is reduced to a ‘cell’ in its most literal meaning. A considerable part of life quality, however, depends on being able to share privacy with friends in one’s own four walls, in a private environment. Shared spaces
"If we do not feel comfortable at home, where else should we seek wellbeing?"
Below - Personal and foreign dishes and utensils mix in this collectively used kitchen in which one of the inhabitants seems to like order. (Spreefeld, Berlin, Germany)
https://www.vitra.com/en-ch/magazine/details/better-together (7.6.19, 10:56)
Stadterle Bucher Bruendler, Basel The housing development was built on a tight budget as it is typical for collectively built projects. In consequence the architects came up with a very efficent scheme utilizing the galleries both as access corridors as well as exterior space for the appartments which led it to be a diverse space where neighbors meet and kids play in a secure environment.
Dialogweg 6 Duplex Architects, Zurich
Dialogweg 6 within the widely published 'Mehr als Wohnen' development is based on clustered appartments. The shared kitchen and living spaces open up into the daylight stairwell through large glazed partitions, leading to an even more collective character of the areas and linking the units in the whole building together to create a community.
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Community in Question
Community in Question
A tilt in orientation of units within a gallery typology creates a series of differently connoted spaces. A threshold space between the collectively used access gallery and the private dwelling acts as a buffer - similarly to a front yard. The unit itself is separated into a front and back area of different privacy, which leads to a balcony protected from the neighbouring flat through its partition wall.
Developments based on slab buildings can profit from residential towers to create quantum. The wider floorplate enables greater variation of dwelling units and characters, offering studios as well as family appartments with private balconies. A high degree of double or even triple aspect dwellings is achieved by a means of shearing.
The scheme creates a more exposed unit adjacent to the circulation core, ideal for shared uses.
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Community in Question
Community in Question Privacy can be found in the most unlikely places and is not dependent of seclution but much rather of finding an undisturbed and quiet location. (Moryiama House, Tokyo, Japan)
(even if they can be reserved for private events) cannot provide the same intimacy and will not transmit the same personality in the same way as the own private environment, where personal objects with individual stories surround you and your guests. Nevertheless, the value of collective spaces should not be underestimated. Especially in the anonymous context of today’s cities ‘single parents, young and elderly singles [...] are looking for alternative ways to satisfy their need to “belong”’(Ruby Press, 2017). Shared environments with attractive programs enable for neighbours to get to know each other on a casual basis and these spaces have thus the power to create a sense of com-
munitarian belonging which can add upon the general wellbeing and happiness of tenants. Your neighbours move from being ‘known strangers’ like the guy you see on the tube every morning to being part of a defined and approachable community. Where do we find the balance between the private and the collective? Thinking about it, we realise that density can be a valuable tool.
"Finding the balance between the private and the Collective"
https://afasiaarchzine.com/2017/04/ryue-nishizawa-16/ryue-nishizawa-moriyama-house-tokyo-11/ (07.06.19, 18:49)
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INTIMACY A successful housing scheme should not force collectiveness onto its tenants and respect the different individual social zones of comfort. There are different perceptions on the adequate distance to be kept physically when talking to acquaintances, friends or partners. This individual distance varies all in dependence of the person in question, its current mood, the respective counterpart and the social occasion. Equally, there are personal differences in the amount of intimacy one is happy to share. This individual distance varies all in dependence of the person in question, the current mood, the respective counterpart and the social occasion.
Kalkbreite Mueller Siegrist, Zurich Kalkbreite is a huge perimeter block building with XXXsqm of floor area and YYY units. Its volume witholds a huge variaty of facilities and spaces shared by all the inhabitants. These areas are linked together by a kind of 'rue interieure'. However there are multiple circulation cores which act as short tracks leading directly onto street level.
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Community in Question
We all know the disquieting feeling when another person is standing within ones ‘personal intimacy zone’. We could project this understanding onto residential architecture and transfer it to the of the amount of privacy or intimacy we are prepared to share. This subjective sensibility fluctuates as does the range of the ‘personal intimacy zone’. Anyone who has lived in a shared apartment or household will know the feeling of coming home hoping not to encounter anyone on the way to one’s private space within the dwelling. The ‘living cell’, as proposed by Teige, by its dimension and restricted fittings, forces a certain lifestyle upon its tenant. They do not allow for spatial and temporal flexibility in adapting to personal needs
Community in Question
of privacy, limiting the possibilities of the individual within his or her own personal capsule which e.g. remains inadequate to host a dinner for friends in a more intimate setting. Housing schemes largely relying on shared facilities, such as clustered appartments, often do not take these thought in consideration. Their capability to offer a soothing home environment for a larger audience is therefore limited.
COLLECTIVNESS Large, densely populated cities can create the paradox situation of perceived loneliness. Especially the modern nomadic
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"Neighbours shift from being known strangers to being a part of your community"
lifestyle creates a situation, where one can find him or herself in a city with no other social contact than the one at work or the occasional small talk at the tube. Modern urban settings rarely create situations where it is possible to make someone’s acquaintance in an informal yet natural manner. Shared facilities have the ability to provide such occasions. Laundry rooms, as they are often to be found in Switzerland, or rooftop gardens which became trendy in these recent years are great exemples for spaces with such qualities and facilitate to get to know one’s neighbours without exposing ones need to socialize. Elevators are quite underestimated too on this behalf. They can be understood as a collective mode of transport, and thereby
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create a natural daily meating spot. Herein lies one of the greatest potentials of collective services which are separated from the housing units. They create spaces for social interaction, which we are free to enter. Apart from the mentioned realms within residential architecture we can think of a vast set of other such places, starting from community kitchens or libraries, over to gyms, pools, saunas or even small event spaces. All of them ease the creation of a shared identity a community and sense of belonging. A quality which, for the modern pace of life, takes too long to build up in traditional housing schemes. In order to avoid compromises between privacy and collectivity it is crucial to find ways to separate the different areas
Copyright: BKK-3 Architektur, Wien,
Community in Question
without detaching them from each other. What might sound paradox at first glance can be easily achieved, by allowing each of the tenants to reach their private space crossing the least possible collective zones, while keeping the shared facilities easily accessible. Furthermore one should try to create ‘automated’ situations of encounter. Mailboxes and laundry rooms are excellent examples which provide those occasions, as demonstrated in the Kalkbreite project.
"Residential Spaces AS Environments granting freedom of choice"
Above - Density allows to free up spaces, generating additional values. The indoor spa at Badehaus (Vienna)
DENSITY Collective and shared living models have often been understood as a way to reduce the floorspace utilized per person and therefore as a way to build higher densities. What if this relationship were to be exactly the opposite? What if we understand collectiveness in a way that it takes advantage of density instead of just being a means of creating it? What does that involve? Architects all around the world have come up with a vast range of schemes creating high densities. Some developments succeeded to create high quality dwelling units within those, others less, but all of them could dedicate some of the built space to collectively used facilities. While it would hardly affect the achieved densities or the desired levels of space and privacy whithin the units, we create shared benefits for all the inhabitants, foster a sense of community and belonging and therefore mental health and wellbeing by avoiding isolation.
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Right - While the upper floors are filled with efficiently organises housing units focussed on providing privacy, the ground floor takes up a connective role, providing daily services for both the inhabitants of the complex and the neighbourhood surrounding it. As such the podium provides the necessary floorspace and flexibility for e.g. a gym, a pool, supermarket, cinema or other offerings adressing a wider target group.
If a scheme takes this understanding as its starting point, as for example ‘Kalkbreite’ or ‘Stadterle’ did, the advantages can be exploited to an even greater extent. Let us start thinking of shared spaces as an addition to the private unit, instead of compromising the latter for something which forces community to happen. This way we can create environments granting freedom of choice, promoting community instead of claiming it and may thereby lead to be a place truly conducting happiness.
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THE CONSTRUCTION OF EUDAIMONIA
COLLECTIVE VALUES AND DENSITY IN HOUSING
COMMUNITY IN QUESTION
STEFAN S. WEBER
HOUSING & URBANISM
0003 P-02 10.06.2019
Community in Question
Community in Question Left - Study on the distribution and clustering of slabs and point blocks under the aspect of hierarchy and diversity of the open spaces and their linkage with the surrounding neighbourhood.
Bibliography Aureli, Pier Vittorio, Martino Tattara, and Dogma (Architectural office). Loveless: The Minimum Dwelling and Its Discontents , 2019. Ruby Press, ed. Together! The New Architecture of the Collective . Weil am Rhein: Vitra Design Museum, 2017.
East Park Side Allison Brooks, London
The facades of the four volumes are slightly rotated towards the park in order to grant better views and reduce the sense of proximity within high built density.
Riverlight RSH-P, London
The triangular, inwards positioned balconies, create protected exterior spaces for each housing unit as well as redirecting the focus away from the neighbouring slab towards river themes alongside the facade.
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Paola Roca
CARE-SCAPES CAMPUS - A MEDIUM FOR INTEGRATED LIVING Care is a surprisingly short word, considering the whole cosmos of professions, sciences and demographics that are included in a holistic understanding of it. Not even mentioning the relations between those different aspects and the range of possibilities one could imagine emerging from an environment bringing them closer together. How could such an approach materialize
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in architecture, considering the radically different special and functional requirements of each of these functions? How to combine a safe care environment for the elderly with, lively childcare facilities or delicate research facilities with public educational environment? Could Horizontal and vertically interconnected spaces emerge creating a landscape of care?
If we focus on care facilities, normally the tendency would incline for these being secluded and placed in the outskirts of the city in order to provide “calmer environments�. However, contemporary projects begin to evidence shifts in the way in which these are conceived and carried out, proposing these in urban areas with greater diversity and variation by managing juxtapositions with other genres enabling a system of mutual benefits and interrelations. Moreover, it is clear that there is a shift in lifestyle and an evidently increasing interest in sharing and collectiveness, thus it connotes healthier and
more efficient environments. When thinking about future developments of care environments, we might want to consider organizations that allow different healthcare entities to coexist and benefit from its proximity. Developing crossovers between genres not only optimizes facilities but enables greater diversity and opportunity to relate to others. A care hub that intends to include different genres that provide assistance and juxtaposes workspace, learning space and residence, enables a healthier environment for both patients and care providers.
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Care-Scapes
Generally, health care buildings tend to concentrate on providing the proper environment for care receivers, families or even visitors but in no case these focus on a good setting for care providers -even though they use the space for longer periods of time. So, when thinking about a healthier care hub, it is inevitable to begin to consider proposing better environments not only for care receivers but eventually changing the environment for those providing care, enabling more interaction and opportunity for diversifying the experience through the day. By including work and learning space we might enable further opportunities, ensuring variation in daily routine and looking differently at
Care-Scapes
career advancement. The assumption is that what should drive spatial organization is considering to achieve healthier spaces for both. What if this care hub were to crossover not only with assisted environments and workspace but with other actors that could benefit from the proximity such as medical researchers, permanent residence or even student accommodation? Having these richer interrelations might influence not only the environment of the building and the people that live, work and visit it, but the broader neighbourhood by introducing new services that extend and enhance its vocation.
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CASE STUDY
Residential Care Home Andritz Dieter Wissouning, Graz
Geriatric Centre Donaustadt Vienna Delugan Meissl Associated Architects, Austria
organization diagram
Padre Rubinos
Exploring healthcare environments, one can notice that their organisation varies according to the different levels of assistance as they engage with the different users. Similar typologies are implemented according to the degree of assistance these cater, unrelated to functions and users. Consequently, opportunities for new partnerships and synergies emerge. Likewise, similarities in porgram could be optimized spatially and improve
Elsa Urquijo Arquitectos, Spain
these shared facilities. Nurseries, child care facilities and mental health disabilities require the highest level of assistance, thus, these spaces need to be more controlled. However, the level of assistance does not necessarilly follow the level of control. Particularlly, physical disabilities or housing for elderly, may require some assistance but yet provide independence, resulting more flexible and open environments. Contemporary healthcare institu-
tions like Padre Rubinos, are researching further into relationship between healthcare and communities by enabling crossovers between genres (elderly residence, mental health facility, nursery, church, homeless shelter, residence for nuns) that generate valuable lessons. Similarly, this care hub begins to explore crossovers through architecture.
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Care-Scapes
Care-Scapes
sectional explorations of a module
sectional explorations of a cluster
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An approach that facilitates juxtapositions could be building campus set within a pluralistic landscape of different functions. This organization enables connectivity and interrelations yet allow them to remain independent. The diagrams present the conditions of a building in a landscape. This approach does not define the perimeter of the area, in the contrary, it sits in centre and maximizes the interface between the building and its surroundings. Assuming that connectivity of the building with the landscape is a precondition for a care hub, because it contributes to wellbeing, we could begin to consider a building with this set of organization as an alternative.
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Care-Scapes
Care-Scapes
This proposition, is looking at a series of clusters with similar characteristics that are brought together around the idea of shared services, and learning areas and public realm. Accommodations and residences are always placed on the outskirts of the building, to allow them to work both independently and within a cluster, as well as ensure ventilation and natural lighting. Besides natural qualities, open box organization allows a variation of openness and degrees of control within the building as well gradation of private, semiprivate and public environments. This structure allows not serviced, serviced or fully serviced spaces to coexist in the same building.
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Care-Scapes
Care-Scapes
diagram on site
One way to look at the territory, is to devide it into consistent parcels and propose a corridor of services in the centre. This structure could accomodate different genres, densities, intesities and other qualities . The overall startegy proposes buffers between the canal and the building by improving the orientation and forming an intensively used waterfront. Zooming out, the area is defined by existing barriers such as railway and canal that enable a privileged environment within the consistent urban fabric. Thus, we can start considering new models of care environments in the heart of the city.
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THE CONSTRUCTION OF EUDAIMONIA
CARE-SCAPES CAMPUS - A MEDIUM FOR INTEGRATED LIVING PAOLA ROCA CONTRERAS
0004 S-02 10.06.2019
HOUSING & URBANISM
Aisana Baimakhanova
FRAME WORKS !
THE FLEXIBILITY OF THE GRID
AISANA BAIMAKHANOVA
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Frame Works ! analytical map of the excisting area
The urban environment has an ample effect on health and wellbeing, affecting aspects such as mental-physical health, lifestyle and learning. The notion of wellbeing is based on the quality life rather than the quantity of goods in possession. In order to achieve a healthy balance, we should also think about our surroundings on a bigger scale. New logics of better travelling, energy and time saving, control of pollution and social interaction should be carefully thought out. Therefore, the historical urban model no longer fits its purpose. So a multilayered and mixed environment design approach is to be considered. The model of ‘health city’ should reflect
typological and morphological diversity,
mixed-use genres, attention to the social inclusion and the relationship between public and private space. A vision that enables the change of the city and the territory into special places for actions of widespread implementation of wellness and quality of life, through an unavoidable culture of responsibility, healthcare and knowledge. Moreover, promotion of new forms of public-private partnerships and organisation of decision-making processes, application of innovative organisational models oriented to rational management of resources, the definition of appropriate strategies of procedural, economic-financial and operational feasibility are the principal elements of urban transformation based on quality and durability. That one might imagine the
on the sustainability of the development,
new flexible grid that
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would converge all the introduced and existing qualities and diversities within the urban area. Since King’s Cross presents the convergence of communities, various patterns of urban fabric and scales, the concept is to establish a permeability and connectivity between all the separated units. This idea has led to a study of different typologies and morphologies of housing, workspace, institutional and commercial spaces with a view to understand how to arrange them into groups, which relationships to establish towards the open gardens and pathways, and finally how to integrate them into the new wellbeing lifestyle and urban area.
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Frame Works !
Frame Works ! sequence of voids
sequence of variation and gradation
Reconsideration of the mobility by giving a privilege to pedestrians, reestablishing an existing grid in a new way gives a clear structure to the area, both as a whole and in its different parts. The sequence of private and privileged spaces, as well as public gardens is a patchwork of mixed uses placed within different building types. This architectural exploration of the healthy environment focuses on the aspect of the integrated neighbourhood, which is not only a street or a space with public facilities but is an urban space, volume and events place. The open space will play a role of the
connection within both the project and the urban area. Nevertheless, healthcare organisations, residential, workspace and commercial spaces would be mixed to have a richer and more diverse environment. However, spaces in between the buildings would have an attentive study and design without being leftover as an emptiness. The spatial organisation, atmosphere, accessibility, enhanced mobility systems, diversity of users and uses will create a healthier environment due to the qualitative design approach. Consequently, the healthy environment with the public space as a core will
diagram of mobility system and public open spaces
sequence of voids
sequence of variation and gradation
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generate an urban renovation, become a catalyst of knowledge, innovation and cultural district. Finally, such transformation project with the various actors and authorities involved will be a long-term development which requires a flexible and strategic path that allows a phased implementation. Therefore, parts of the transformation should be perceived as precise and adaptable. For example, open public spaces that structure the urban space as definite, and other parts, such as buildings and private gardens, as more flexible units, where the changes can occur later.
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CASE STUDY
CASE STUDY
Various Architects, Lyon, France
The area of La Confluence occupies 150 ha of land of which half was dedicated for manufacturing and logistics, and the other half was purely a residential area. The new masterplanning project reorganised the exciting block and mobility structure by introducing the diversity of functions and facilities. The improvement of services and public realm was one of the key drivers of reshaping the area. Likewise, the redevelopment project of that scale was divided into several phases. The participation of national, local authorities and various other stakeholders created the qualitative and diverse environment within the area. The masterplanning was led by architectural studios. Although the parcels and even the buildings were generated by the partnerships of different architects and actors.
Eltheto Housing & Healthcare Complex
Perspective plan and section
Masterplan. Reorganisation of block structure and mobility
La Confluence
2by4-architects, Netherlands
‘Eltheto’, the healthcare and housing complex, was designed for elderly people. The housing program functions like a particular housing program that one would find in a suburb. They are open and social housing blocks where the main focus is on the quality of life and staying part of the social environment. For the less independent inhabitants the housing program is adjusted according to their needs, but still the focus on quality of life remains. The architecture of different housing blocks reflects if they are for the more independent elderly, the socially-oriented elderly or elderly in need of health care. Although this results in different volumes, all the blocks are clearly part of the same family that together with the public space form an integrated social place to live for the next generation of the elderly. The focus of the design comes from a life style research that looks at the different needs and characteristics of elderly.
Photo of the realised project
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CASE STUDY
CASE STUDY
Le Monolithe Various Architects, La Confluence
ground floor plan
‘Le Monolithe’ is an energy efficient mixed-use urban block located in the development area Confluence. The structure with a total surface of 32.500 m2 combines social housing, rental property, a residence for disabled people, offices and retail. The block is composed of five sections, each one designed by a different architect, following the principal masterplan. The block is characterised by a large interior court with a raised
transversal section
partnerships diagram
transversal section
public space overlooking the city, the new marina and a park. Apartments inside Le Monolithe offer a great diversity in order to attract different groups of inhabitants making the block a reflection of Lyon’s population. Offices are divided into separate units of min. 500 square meters which are accessed by three vertical circulation cores, providing individual access. Each unit allows for a flexible fit out, depending on the tenants’ needs and requirements. All spaces are naturally lit and ventilated.
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Frame Works !
Frame Works ! atmospherical view
The drawings analyse the area where the new masterplan could have a lasting influence. It structures, reorders and improves the mobility system. The introduced diversity of uses, improved services and facilities would better integrate the “new” and “old” within the area which would benefit the existing local communities and incoming ones. The strategy of integration is a sensible approach to the urban area which respects the existing by allowing new structures, functions, people and mixes to come and collaborate freely. The grid would intensify and densify
the area that lacks the bigger scale to accommodate the contemporary needs of people and shifts that happen in the city. This already started to emerge around the King’s Cross area and enabled the scaling up and bringing in the new mixes. Despite the rigidity and rationality of the grid it would enable flexibility, consistency and coherency of the area. The introduced gradation and diversity would improve the spatial organisation which would further positively advance the mental and physical health. The apparent orthogonal spatial logics would enable better navigation
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and legibility within the area. In spite of the seeming simplicity overall, it would generate the new complex clusters, form the diversity of users and uses, and accumulate better services within the area. The studies of the morphology of the area would integrate the “new” into the “old” as well as generate the new typologies, functions and partnerships that would benefit the whole area.
THE CONSTRUCTION OF EUDAIMONIA
THE FLEXIBILITY OF THE GRID
FRAME WORKS!
AISANA BAIMAKHANOVA
HOUSING & URBANISM
0005 P-03 10.06.2019
Marina Samvelyan
S,M,L,XL
BUILDING NEW COMPLEXITIES
The emergence of a new kind of bigness in architecture is closely related to the rise of new modes of partnerships, indicative of the changing nature of contemporary living and working. These new synergies across living and various fields of working generate architectural and spatial complexities, which are almost inevitably related to the way that we conceive largeness.
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“Only Bigness instigates the regime of complexity that mobilizes the full intelligence of architecture and its related fields’’ - Rem Koolhaas
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EMERGING PARTNERSHIPS Recent trends in contemporary working and living have evolved out of new modes of emerging partnerships. On the one hand, collaboration and team-based work, ongoing professional development, as well as the need to recruit and retain talent, and the need to generate cross-fertilisation of ideas, becomes a commonplace in most of today’s cutting edge workspaces. On the other hand, the nature of living becomes more and more based on added collective values, sharing and complementary services. Therefore,
S,M,L,XL
one cannot help but wonder what should be the nature of an architectural project that can accommodate these new changes. In that mindset, why don’t we treat healthcare systems and bio-medical research, as well the provision of care, similarly to other work environments? Let’s look, for example, on the case of care homes. As hospitals become more specialised, the provision of different levels of care is gradually being outsourced, leading to a dramatic shift in the role of care giving within the healthcare system and local communities.
Care home staff, which usually gets only a basic health training, is now demanding advanced knowledge and skills to oversee their patients in order to provide them with better life quality. Moreover, an argument can be made that the opportunities to gain new professional skills within the framework of care homes seems almost non-existent, resulting in a high turnover of care home staff. What if we imagine the care system taking the lead in this collaborative effort, ensuring future education, recruitment, and training of its own staff? Links with local institutions could encourage staff to
undertake formal training, from vocational to postgraduate research qualifications. Additionally, current research opportunities within care homes are minimal compared to other industries, although several UK universities (for instance, Newcastle University and The University of Edinburgh) are already starting to pioneer research in close collaboration with care environments. In such a way, medical and social work students, doctors and allied health professionals, rarely get any exposure to the care system, let alone practical experience. Imagine a care environment working side by side with local training
institutions and universities, evolving into places of excellence for knowledge and professional development, while driving the research and learning agenda in close collaboration with residents and their families, as well as the staff. This change, is not beyond the horizon. New partnerships in research facilities and educational institutions, which are shifting away from being dedicated solely to their immediate purpose, towards an emerging emphasis on multidisciplinary collaboration and public engagement can already be seen. The Welcome Trust in London, for example, is supporting various
biomedical research initiatives in more than seventy countries, as well as innovators, educators and artists. Additionally, it aims to enhance public understanding of medical science and history. Its building contains gallery spaces, conference facilities, space for debates, drama and workshops, as well as a library. This enables a wider set of partnerships to emerge within and beyond their physical boundaries.
Sectional Exploration - Exploring hierarchy, autonomy and fragmentation
Sectional Exploration, based on the Monolithe block
Le Monolithe
Exploring the possible relations between different types of spaces, hierarchy, autonomy, oppenness, enclosure and fragmentation in a big building.
MVRDV, France Mixed-use urban block containing social and rental housing and offices, characterised by a large interior court with a raised public space. The building begins to establish new relationships between it and its area.
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S,M,L,XL
S,M,L,XL Elevational Exploration - Exploring hierarchy, autonomy, sequences and fragmentation
"Where architecture reveals, Bigness perplexes; Bigness transforms the city from a summation of certainties into an accumulation of mysteries. What you see-is no longer what you get" - Rem Koolhaas
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Similarly to those, care could be associated with a highly differentiated environment, prioritising the contribution of knowledge and research to life and care quality for both patients and staff. Care environments could provide and co-ordinate a rich and widely available learning environment for professionals across local and even regional scale, emphasising opportunities for multi-disciplinary sharing.
LARGENESS AND COMPLEXITY What are the architectural implications of a complex system of partnerships and synergies between care, research and institutional frameworks? Let’s think about it in terms of largeness. The largeness, as a basic operational requirement of many healthcare and research buildings, can play a major role in the formation of new models of associational practice, based on diverse types and numbers of tenants. Moreover, the emerging collaborative nature would require even bigger buildings; Hence, the question of size as a major factor for re-shaping healthcare and institutional environments, is becoming part of an urban strategy.
“Instead of enforcing coexistence’ Bigness depends on regimes of freedoms, the assembly of maximum difference”
accumulating differences. It is the speculative nature of new types of partnerships, which requires high levels of independence for possible tenants. Therefore, the complexity within the large building has to do with various possibilities of groupings and fragmentation. Surely, designing a big building in a way that will allow each vocation to have independent spaces is crucial to measure its success or failure. Research or education facilities, for example, will require different levels of openness or enclosure, autonomy and sharing or even basic needs of security. In contrast, care environments, largely consisting of dwellings and medical treatment or therapy rooms, will require completely different levels of sharing, privacy and intimacy. The interdependency between those distinctive environments without limiting their identity, creates even a greater challenge. This Interdependency might be reflected through a variety shared spaces, such as classrooms and workshops, kitchens, event spaces and vanues, connective atriums, spaces for public engagements, open spaces and many more. It is the moment in which bigness starts to suggest even higher architectural complexity, allowing collaborations between the fields to operate without interference, building environments of excellence.
- Rem Koolhaas But, can a building take advantage of a large size to provide an infrastructure that is able accommodate variety of different settings and actors, yet allowing hierarchy and variation? It seems that the answer might be closely related to the ideas of freedom and independency. Large buildings enable the construction of a complex and layered system of hierarchies and autonomies, facilitating the freedom of
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LocHAal Library , CIVIC architects, Tilburg (NL) | Photo: Stijn Bollaert, Ossip Architectuurfotografie
S,M,L,XL
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THE CONSTRUCTION OF EUDAIMONIA
S,M,L,XL BUILDING NEW COMPLEXITIES MARINA SAMVELYAN
0006 S-03 10.06.2019
HOUSING & URBANISM
SCIENCE AND THE CITY
RESIDENTIAL_LIFE_SCIENCES Szumin Tseng
Medical treatment has changed tremendously since the last century. This is both in terms of procedure infect overtime and a revolution of healthcare, which is still undergoing. Today, we are assisting the differentiation in the number of actors that create the health care industry.
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The actors in medical system are pharmaceutical companies, biotechnology companies and hospital. All of them have physical impact consequences ain our cities and those physical consequences tend to cluster together. In this medical system, the knowledge is growing larger and increasing the identity in urban areas. What are the main reasons for bringing this trend? There are three reasons to explain it. The first one is the progress of biomedical science and the advance of technologies. Secondly, the changing of population shows the improvement
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of health care service, which reflects on longer lifespan. Therefore, the number of elderly increases more than the past. Finally, the dimension of biomedical companies also changed that they are no longer keep as a large pharmaceutical and industry as before. Many actors such as universities, private companies and government, cooperate together in common healthcare purpose in order to deliver a better quality of health care and medical service.
Science and the City
Science and the City
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CASE STUDY
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1.Sainsbury Laboratory. 2.Britstol Life Sciences Building 3.CRO (Contract Research Organization)office 4.Wellcome Trust 5.Radboud University Dental Sciences building 6.UCSF Gentech Hall 7.CRO office 8.Hospital
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CASE STUDY
Science and the City
subtitlesssssss font: Devanagari Sangam MN size: 8
This project situates on the orange block where is one of the blocks where the previous topic “The Flexibility of the Grid� has mentioned.The orange block is the place that suitable to built life science building. .
In the medical system, there are pharmaceutical companies, biotechnology companies, local hospitals, general hospitals, CRO (the institution which is professional on a clinical trial) and government involved in. While in the clinical trial, pharmaceutical company and biotechnology companies provide new medicine to CRO. CRO contacts a research hospital where they are interested in the new medicine or they have the techniques to test the medicine suitable for patients. CRO has to make sure that both pharmaceutical companies and research hospitals are clear about all the information then doing the clinical trial. After the first stage of the clinical trial, research hospital will do the second stage of the clinical trial in a local hospital, where can provide the amount of the results. If the medicine has been tried
on many patients then in the near future this medicine can be sold in the market. In the data collecting process, the local hospital has an amount of the database can help the pharmaceutical companies and biotechnology companies to analyze the market need. In this article we use many projects to develop our research. They are Wellcome Trust, UCSF, UCLH, Bristol Life Science building, New Science Building, Radboud University Dental Sciences Building, Sainsbury Laboratory, and etc. Here, Bristol Life Science building and Radboud University Dental Sciences Building will be the two main projects to be developed to the design steps.
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THE CONSTRUCTION OF EUDAIMONIA
SCIENCE AND THE CITY RESIDENTIAL_LIFE_SCIENCES SZU-MIN TSENG
0007 S-04 10.06.2019
HOUSING & URBANISM
CASE STUDY
Bristol Life Sciences Building Sheppard Robson, United Kingdom
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CASE STUDY
Bristol Life Sciences building shows an H type of construction. One of the sides of Life Sciences Building, which facing housing, is designed non-laboratory spaces, such as offices and seminar rooms. This elevation requires less floor-to-floor space than the opposite elevation so the elevation, which facing housing, can be reduced in height, responding to the scale of the neighbouring conservation area. Another side is mainly laboratory space. The two elements of the building are linked by a full height atrium space, which forms the social heart of the building. This atrium space can be described as an interstice space, which is a social hub to develop the communication between researchers, staff, students and visitors. The value of the collocating space in here will be developing new ideas.
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CASE STUDY
CASE STUDY
Radboud University Dental Sciences building Inbo, Netherlands
Radboud University Dental Sciences Building is designed for different users, employees, students and patients. In the interior, central atrium is making a sustainability transition aimed at energy saving, increasing in comfort, flexible use and a contemporary look. For this reason, separation and connections between users, between practice spaces and teach and instruction rooms become more flexible to use. The design has improved the connection to the
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campus that the building and surroundings mark the entrance to the campus. Also, The zoning within the workplaces stimulates informal consultation, meeting and relaxing. This project mixes clinic and research together, if this building is built in a place where surrounds by different neighbourhoods, this design shows the potential to bring residents into the building that the residents will become a part of the research but can also keep
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the treatment in the building. The value of this kind of construction in here will be increasing communication between patients and researchers
CASE STUDY
CASE STUDY
By compering two projects, the construction of the Britstol Life Sciences Building is developed as vertical way, which is advantage for researchers but lack of the connection to neighborhood, whereas Radboud University Dental Sciences building is constructed in an opposite way, developing the horizontal direction but non-existence of vertical direction.
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Servicing Science
Office
Lab
Lab
Lab
Meeting Room
Office
Reading Area Lab PrivateReading Space Meeting Room
Meeting Room
Open Space Symposium
Lobby
Clinics
Cafe
Private Library
Waiting Area
Archive Room
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subtitlesssssss font: Devanagari Sangam MN size: 8
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By using the typology of life science buildings, examining how to connect the two buildings but keep privacy in the residential area. During the research of the influence of the vertical interstice shows the possibility of emerging creative works by communicating with patients and researchers. The horizontal interstice shows the connection between labs, developing new ideas easily when researchers talk together.
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EDUCATION IN TRANSITION
discourse on health and wellbeing to downplay the medical, scientific and technological aspects of the economy.
" Wellness industry has another side that encompasses technology, knowledge, and knowhow intensive high value-added activities. "
In previous decades, wellness may not have looked like a particularly viable option for local politicians, public managers, or developers, when compared with high-tech, advanced business services, or creative industries. This is rooted in a misperception that. Wellness as a low-paid and low-skill sector, but it is biased in some respects. In short, business boosted by the rising global lifestyle and wellbeing trends is expanding and diversifying, and it seems that the time is ripe for integrating it into the local economic development agenda. A wellness cluster as a geographic concentration of interconnected companies and institutions that contribute to business might have indirect impact on the overall atmosphere, image, and vitality of a city. It generally has a much stronger connection with locality than many other industries. However, it is important to keep in mind that the wellness industry has another aspect that encompasses technology, knowledge, and know-how intensive high value-added activities. For a particular paradigm reason, the
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A particular interest here is the uniquely integrative nature of special need wellness and leading research program as a wellness shed. Taking the development of modern education systems under consideration, there is a trending that home schooling is coming back to the general education mode. The current education mode is more and more standardized and information is transferring so fast by Internet, through which parents can have a degree of control over kids learning. Homeschooling as a common educational method allows parents to participate in the teaching process. If we think about a notion of combing education and research, especially within an area like king cross, which is the center of distributing information over UK and Europe, considering one of the topics being researched is actually being delivered in the school. One can begin to imagine teachers and stuff collaborating with researchers to gain a better understanding of academic provision. Education reforms, as well as the increased participation of both parent’s and research role within the education sector might improve/increase business opportunities at at various points of the ‘health education continuum’.
Biying Wang
FOUR WALLS AND ... Synergies in Occupational Proliferation
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Four Walls and ...
Four Walls and ...
Comparing to a neighbourhood size special need care and education facility, the program locates within such a valuable area like King’s cross, centre of accessibility for worldwide population, the program is a far more large scale facility as it is central located and the user could cover entire London and potentially international. The program suggests a crossover relationship between a special need school as a centre of excellence and a special need school as a research environment, working as a wider centre of excellence.
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Thinking about a shed organisation, a comparison size institution within the area is what Central Saint Martin can be made, which works as a part-time community cluster. However, in contrast to CSM, Special need school would not be able to accommodate the same social responsibility. Eccentricity becomes an integrative tool in the existing urban morphology. An open space complimentary to the building provide a buffer of distribution while in the same time protect the area from over-crowding. If we read the urban area as a system of capillary, the school is introduced as a primary element based on size and service wise. The way of block structure distribution is not based on existing infrastructure but urban morphology. Then everything become less outstanding and more integrated. The idea of synergy between university and schools is widely discussed. But what if we imagine a large building, containing multiple schools, within the existing urban morphology. Under the current circumstance of high-density development policy, service elements like are keep required in general. Indeed, rather than continuing build schools on different empty site without making any profit, combining several intuitions into one with the right spatial principle seems workable in the future development.
CASE STUDY
Four Walls and ... the collage as the largest building within the area
City of Westminster College Schmidt Hammer Lassen Architects, London
Take City of Westminster as precedent, the way it built up the spatial principle become a good diagram to be applied. Although the school is already the largest institution in its surrounding area, the size is still only a quarter of the ideal program. One can imagine four of it forming one and still working within the diagram and elevation.
the spatial diagram keep consistent when floors and function shifts.
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THE CONSTRUCTION OF EUDAIMONIA
FOUR WALLS AND ... SYNERGIES IN OCCUPATIONAL PROLIFERATION BIYING WANG
0008 S-05 10.06.2019
HOUSING & URBANISM
Four Walls and ...
Four Walls and ...
Thickness Thickness as spatial strategy could deal with bigness issue of large buildings:
Under the circumstance of school’s core mission has expanded, it is not only a service provider in the same time ties in the research community, the design question comes over: Can a school at this sort still be manageable when it becomes very large and interconnecting with a series of other functions? Normally a large building would easily become layered and have its certain hierarchy. If we start from looking at other intuitions and trying to scale it up, the envelope become the burden of the building, how envelope can continue develop to work with surrounding so that things can actually be breakdown.
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1. Creating hierarchy and differentiation and managing numbers - population of the building create smaller portions and manageable elements within a large form; 2. Helps the performance of the building in an area that doesn’t have matching size and scale. By doing so, starts introducing design scale and articulating much more sympathetic behavior of this building urban area being performing in a way that doesn’t against the character and scale of the building.
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Figure 1: The liberty comes from oders
Hao Li
X WALLS AND Y ROOFS : MARKET STRUCTURE LIBERATING EDUCATION
"Interestingly, while we all think that the school is the last place to chasing liberty, yet it actually can. Similarly, a free market is the last place where we expect to find order, yet it surelly comes from a certain order. This thought might lead us to think about using the market typology for a school and create possibilities to achieve, to some extent, wellbeing within this genre”
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Freedom and wellbeing
Before Amartya Sen's capabilities approach to the theory of wellbeing, there were only three main traditional categories describing wellbeing: Hedonistic theories, Desire satisfaction theories, and a combination of both understanding wellbeing as a source of their evaluative foundations in the utilitarian ethical tradition. However, based on Amartya
Sen, it should head towards a more flexible, pluralist approach to wellbeing. His paper concludes with the suggestion that future wellbeing research in the spirit of Sen’s capabilities approach may benefit from aretaic Aristotelian insights on what might be called the ‘thickness of freedom’ implicated in personal wellbeing. However: Even though we know that the absolute freedom is hard to achieve, not just for architects, we can basically feel it wouldn't work the moment we read about what radical situationism architects wanted. They demanded to give every
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citizen absolute freedom to control the city. Also in the book named " A Question of Qualities", Jeffery Kipnis has taken a chapter to describe how Rem Koolhaas failed in in the chase of freedom. Nevertheless, in chasing more wellness, there might be a chance to deliver the freedom we all seek.
Figure 2: The sequence of urban elevations
Segmentation When the question comes to how to achieve wellbeing within a central area, it becomes a much different problem than founding a whole new well facilitated district in the middle of wildness. The process of change of the existing city is achieved piece by piece, continuously, segmentally. To begin to redevelop an area, it is unavoidable to wait for a series of projects as a trigger of change, and to start with a single project, it is unavoidable when considering the whole area. From the continuous elevations of of the surrounding areas, it becomes clearer that the relationship between the whole and parts can be composed from the volumes, facades, sections and the plans. The visual depth that we can see, the internal and external environment we can feel, as well as all the kinds of contents in within each part, are all linked together and act as ‘glue’ connecting the fragmented area.
Education's Liberty
Figure 4: Part of the section of School+,
Figure 3: Part of the Spetial school's plan.
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For sure, education is an important part in the quest to achieve personal wellbeing. After all, the more capabilities we can learn, the more options we can get. This again bases on Sen’s understanding, that there is a way of “thickening the freedom of individuals”. However, while we implement the education process, in order to chase the efficiency of teaching, we don’t have many options: One are cheap factory schools where dozens of students sit heading a teacher and lern the same thing as the others. Another, but unaffordable for most, are private schools where the childern experience customized education.. Luckily, to some extent, Internet is freeing us: Everyone can easily access lots of teaching materials via Internet, which leads to a booming homeschooling phenomenon. Parents can customize their children’s course themselves in dependence of different individual conditions. But for children, the meaning of a normal school is not just about it being a place to acquire knowledge but also one to experience social education. So we ought to pledge for more capabilities, for more liberties, and architecture can helb to provide this balance.
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X Walls and Y Roofs Figure 7: Diagram of Schoo+ in plan
Centrral Saint Martin diagram
The order of the school+ There are so many genres that hybridize market typologies. E.g. housing projects like Brunswick Centre, office buildings, like Central Saint Giles or warehouses, like IKEA... However, there are few educational buildings which act this way. Nevertheless, using a market typology could surely create a possibility to break up the institutional educational mode.
80m
Figure 6: Covent Garden's order's diagrame
For most people, when the term "market" is mentioned, they may connect it directly to "freedom". For example, the market economy sounds like more freedom than a planned economy. Also, once you are in a market, it is easy for you to feel comfortable that you can decide what to buy, while casually strolling around - as long as you can afford it. Furthermore, "to go to a market" is a kind of activity in itself. One not needed to be planned or forced. That is also why people love going to a market, even not for shopping, but hanging around together and have a rest 140
0m Figure 8: Diagram of overall management of School+
Covent Garden diagram
Order of a market
from daily work. Why do we associate those feelings happen to a market? Related to Sen's capability approach, we can conceptualize a thickening of the feelings for freedom. A market is a place that can contain lots of different people, from a lot of social backgrounds, with different goals. But almost all can be satisfied in one place. A market has the ability to serve all those individuals at the same time without too many conflicts, that is how most of the people feel free to enjoy that variety of activities together - and that can create happiness. Let us take Covent Garden as an example. We can see how the clear order of its spatial arrangement helps creating such liberties. Now, let us compare Here East London, which is a huge complex building, with Central Saint Martin’s in London, which is a large university building. Firstly, Covent garden, as a market, has almost the same size as those two, yet has a more open attitude towards all directions, always welcoming a large number of people to come and go from every side of the building at any time. Secondly, the internal arrangement is perfectly balanced between the dynamic circulation and several areas to settle down with some drinks of food. Thirdly, the external spatial strategy is leaving a round buffer area for more vitalities to emerge and has pretty efficiently avoided issues of massive footfall by means of distribution. The different kind of selling areas, and the range of different dimensions, provide more options for the both temporary resellers and longtime tenants and helps to increase the variety of the shopping experience.
Figure 5:Here east diagram
Furthermore, not only for the average student: There are 160-240 thousand kids who suffere from Autism or Asperger’s syndrome, and 160-360 thousand kids who suffer from physical disabilities, and 240-800 thousand kids having multiple learning difficulties, yet in London alone. However, most of special need schools are so small that they can only house 3070 students. Also ther are located in rural area. Those childeren are more in need than others to get adequate education and to be exposed in a social environment including their families. It is another challenge to house parents who have to work and earn money within a school. This could enable parents to get together, form a community and update their parenting abilities flexibely. Teachers, professionals and researchers will be more closely involved with eachother leading to and idea of ensuring the holistic educational system. It is becoming more clear, how the education's liberty is achieved, not for a single group of people to improve the capabilities, but also for students who need care and parents who need balance. Teachers gain a higher level of faith that they can achieve more by working with parents and researchers. Complimentarily, researchers who can conveniently observe and do research on live will gain additional insights in their field. We did not even mention visitors and other people who can find other significant inspiration during such a process. The only thing left would be the architecture question, what it can delivered in this all for liberty motion?
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Figure 9: Third floor pan of School+
X Walls and Y Roofs
In terms of architectural brief, a traditional small scale type of rural special need school is not what we want to achieve, but a large scale complex of juxtaposed notions: Special need school for mental and physical disabilities, homeschooling, and an educational research centre for example. The capacity and volume of the single building must significantly enlarge, as thousands of kinds and other groups of people may come and go. Hence, not only the architectural typology related to complex internal management but also the gathering and distribution efficiency became one of our main points of concern. Firstly, adressing the population problem, the porous ground floor enables to easily cross it, and also to easily find a place to stay a rest. By creating several internal streets, continuing the surrounding road system and the building also considersthe light problem within such a deep plan building. That is also related to the special need students, trying to achieve well-being by increasing the number of opportunities within the mass
population to move, communicate and process. This also helps to stay concise with the original question: why to bring a special need school to the central city, like King’s Cross? Secondly, similarly to a market, the actors of this building are plenty. Understanding the need for collaboration we still want to ensure an atmosphere of concentrated labor and study. Although the internal street splits the whole building into eight sub-buildings, the north-east corner part is organised more like an office building, with different floors which can serve different groups of people. E.g. the ground floor is the most open one where everyone who wants a place to deal with their work they can find one. The first and second floor balance the lowest authorized anyone to the highest authorized teachers and stuffs. Parents who want to work while their children are learning inside can use this floor. The higher floors can be leased to private companies, in order to keep the level of value in Kings Cross. The south western part will provide
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a more professional environment for researchers. Then the rest of the building are mainly a teaching, learning, and sharing environments. They are all based on a logic of hierarchy but have crossovers blurring up the borders to leave activities blending together to a certain degree. Thirdly, we should treat the outside and inside as equal, since the internal street has almost made no difference between the common outdoor place and private indoor space--there are even two gallery space that internal streets create when they form an intersection and everyone can use them. They actually do not need to buffer space. However, if we think about the area between the buildings as of a part of the urban area, they can have some squares. We ought to create landscapes with more vitality at the borders, which is why the surrounding still insert some thresholds, as a way to orientate within the area as a whole.
THE CONSTRUCTION OF EUDAIMONIA
X WALLS AND Y ROOFS MARKET STRUCTURE LIBERATING EDUCATION HAO LI
0009 P-03 10.06.2019
HOUSING & URBANISM
Figure 10: Sequece of sections of school+ and surroundings.
X Walls and Y Roofs
Transparency matters The final detail determining the success of this project could achieve is the transparency problem. Reasons are lights, sight and safety. For, as a school, the transparent material should be a key device for all the stakeholders. The teaching and learning activities at such level of freedom school have no need to hide behind a wall in order to keep students' attention on one teacher. The glass boundaries have already managed to keep the inside quiet, allowing for fewer interruptions. The parents working, would maybe even prefer sitting 20 meters away from where there is a working area in order to see through these transparent walls and connecting to their kids which may e.g. have autism causing an emergency situation at any time. After all researchers, teachers and staffs, cannot always keep up to all the students with special needs. However, the building's density has depended such as there are glass walls
everywhere, except for the toilets and fireproof vertical circulation area. The test shows, that under the expected density, you cannot see an object at a distance greater than 22 meters apart. Thus, the different heights of the floors should help. Furthermore, in the transit area, we should be aware that not all the teaching activities can happen in a classroom. The example of universities shows, that we don't even need a settled class for several students. They can choose what to learn and where. So, lots of activities will not even need a transparent wall, but a different ceiling height.
wellbeing. If we could not innovate a new thing, we shall at least not stop others from doing so, by providing a better place for those things to happen.
Conclusion In conclusion, the world is changing continuously. Some ideas, like making school like a market, may have sounded ridiculous in a certain period, due to lots of reality limits. But it could become reality at some point, with the help from other domains. By reviewing all the possible options and thickening the capabilities to gain more liberty, be can achieve
Bibliography Ingrid Robeyns, Wellbeing, Freedom and Social Justice The Capability Approach Re-Examined Bill Ransome, Sen and Aristotle on Wellbeing Jeffery Kipnis, a Question of Qualities Simon Sadler, The Situationist City Colin Rowe, Collage City Figure 13: Eyesight tests.
Transparency matters
Figure 12: arrangement of different distance within same floor.
Figure 11: Visual depth of Covent Garden.
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HAPPINESS IN !
Eudaemonia – the conduction of happiness. How can we live a life following this Aristotelian golden thread? How can we offer a life of happiness to our fellow human beings? We looked for a toolbox mighty enough to influence more than just an individual, but a whole community or even society – and we found it in architecture. We are born and get educated in it, we move on it and entrust ourselves to it once we get older and need care. Hence, nothing seemed more natural than asking ourselves how to construct happiness as a means of helping everyone of us to achieve it. We realised – it is no easy task. While architecture is always determining built facts where walls and ceilings act as
insuperable borders, the very core of happiness is freedom. The freedom to choose a life conduced in the way everyone individually imagines it to be. Looking into a variety of fields, we understood that the juxtaposition of different functions either in neighbouring buildings or even within a single structure can create unexpected synergies, especially in the areas of overlap. The intersections create a new landscape of proliferating spatial definitions reaching beyond the traditional terms such as workspace, residential realm, production site or transportation. This proliferation does not only implement a whole new set of functions, but it is also a way to create new opportunities for working, living or learning environments. Therefore, we call for a new kind of urbanism and a new kind of architecture which constructs eudaemonia by overriding the simple and by building new complexities which have happiness inbuilt in their basic structure. In this sense – Happiness In, Editors Out
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APPENDICES TABLE OF DRAWINGS
the construnction of eudaimonia
0000
0001
0002
0003
MAKE MOBILITY GREAT AGAIN Infrastructure - an Integrator of Urban Territories
BEAUTIFUL GROUND Intelligent Environments for Bio-Medical Industries
"ORDINA ET IMPERA " Large Scale Infrastructure - An Armature for Transformation
COMMUNITY IN QUESTION Collective Values and Density in Housing
SUNGEUN JUN
NACHAMON POOLSRUP
STAMATINA THARROUNIATI
STEFAN S. WEBER
0004
0005
0006
0007
0008
0009
CARE-SCAPES Campus - a Medium for Integrated Living
FRAME WORKS! The Flexibility of the Grid
S,M,L,XL [MS] BUILDING NEW COMPLEXITIES
SCIENCE AND THE CITY Residential_Life_Sciences
FOUR WALLS AND ... Synergies in Occupational Proliferation
X WALLS AND Y ROOFS Market Structure Liberating Education
PAOLA ROCA CONTRERAS
AISANA BAIMAKHANOVA
MARINA SAMVELYAN
SZU-MIN TSENG
BIYING WANG
HAO LI
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