Urban Morphology Analysis East Avenue, Cowley Alasdair Sherry – 10024751 For the Attention of Regina Lim
Contents
1. Introduction 2. Street Layout 3. Street Views 4. Block Analysis 5. Plot Analysis 6. Building Analysis 7. Conclusions
Figure 1: Looking South West Down East Avenue towards Cowley Road
Alasdair Sherry
Urban Morphology Analysis
Introduction Throughout this report, I aim to decode the various morphological layers associated with an area of East Oxford, namely East Avenue. East Avenue is a road that connects the busy, industrious Cowley Road with the leafy, commuter route of Morrell Avenue. East Avenue is very typical of its time, a through road lined mainly with similar, 2 storey terraced dwellings. Fig. 2 shows East Avenue circa 1936, with the main streetscape already in place.
Figure 2: Map of Oxford from c1936, showing East Avenue
Figure 3: How East Avenue looks nowadays, taken from Digimap.
I will be looking at how East Avenue has evolved to become the street it is, and how changes within the morphological layers has caused this evolution. By picking East Avenue apart, starting with the street layout, and then moving on to block patterns, then the plot layouts, and finally what the actual buildings contribute to the area, I hope to derive a way of being able to replicate East Avenue elsewhere.
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Analysing an area in terms of its morphology is a way of stripping it down to the bare bones, and this can be done by taking measurements, say of the street widths or building heights. But to give another area the same sense of place, other things must be achieved, such as the same block sizes, and building uses. By investigating what East Avenue does to give a sense of place, I hope to understand more about how these various layers add up to give a sense of feeling and legibility.
Figure 4: East Avenue as seen from Cowley Road
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Alasdair Sherry
Urban Morphology Analysis
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Street Layout Fig. 5 is a Space Syntax of the roads surrounding East Avenue. The area is framed by Morrell Avenue to the north and the busy Cowley Road to the south. As such, East Avenue itself receives a lot of traffic from pedestrians and cyclists moving between the two main
roads. Cars also use East Avenue, but more towards the North end, where there are more parking opportunities, and fewer obstructions, as shown in Fig.6.
Figure 6: measure in place to prevent cars accessing Cowley Road from East Avenue
Morrell Avenue Ablett Close Tescos Collins Street Avenue Lane East Avenue Cosin Close Hospital
Key: Red = Busy, high traffic routes Orange = Less busy Yellow =Quiet, Low traffic Areas
Amenities such as Tescos and the Hospital do a great deal in terms of generating a flow of people, whereas other areas can become quite quiet at certain times. Collins Street and Avenue Lane are particularly quiet at certain times of the day, and this could be to do with the lack of Active edges around those areas. Cosin Close does a good job bringing people round behind the middle part of East Avenue, an all of the small estates mean plenty of people are moving about here a lot of the time.
Figure 5: Space Syntax of area surrounding East Avenue
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Alasdair Sherry
Urban Morphology Analysis
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Street Views Figure 8: Very inactive Front that makes this area down Collins street feel very unwelcoming at certain times of day.
Figure 9: Open, leafy junction onto Morrell Avenue. Morrell Avenue is much wider in comparison to East Avenue, giving it a different feel entirely.
Figure 7: Map showing Active fronts in Green, and not so Active Fronts in Red Figure 11: Cowley Road, Like Morrell Avenue, Is much wider than East Avenue. Cowley is Much busier than Morrell however, due to the mixed use of residential and commercial buildings, all in different styles, providing permeability and vitality.
The Active fronts lining East Avenue from both sides all the way down make it feel safe and secure, even if a few of the side routes are slightly more daunting. The use for the blocks also helps compose the feeling of a place, and a good mix of build type as well as tenure makes a place more interesting.
Figure 10: chicanes provide traffic calming measures, but also provide room for greenery and vitality along what would otherwise be a plain street.
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Alasdair Sherry
Urban Morphology Analysis
10024751
Block Analysis Figure 14: Block 2, towards the top of East Avenue Figure 11: Block 1, Towards the South West of East Street
The street network has effectively divided the East Avenue area up into several blocks. I chose to compare to blocks that have been affected differently by the way the streets were laid out. This is Block 1, shown in Fig. 11 towards the south west of East Avenue. It is framed by the predominantly busy East Avenue, but also the less well used Avenue Lane and Collins Street.
Further up East Avenue is Block 2 (Fig.14), which is a larger block, with a good active front looking over East Avenue. A good road network, complete with footpath also surrounds the rear of the block, providing decent traffic and surveillance all around.
Figure 15: Diagram showing cross section of East Av., including road width and setback. Street width is found by adding Setback, Pavement width and Road width.
Figure 12: Diagram showing width of Avenue Lane Figure 13: Photo of Avenue Lane, with the corner of Block one on the right.
As shown in Figs. 12 and 13, Avenue Lane is a real inactive edge and discourages movement around Block 1.
As shown in Figures 15 and 16, Block 2 has a completely different feel, and I believe it’s because of the wider roads and pavement space combined with the shorter, terraced houses.
Figure 16: View of Block 2
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Alasdair Sherry
Urban Morphology Analysis
10024751
Plot Analysis
Figure 17: Plot Diagram for Block 1
Figure 19: Plot Diagram for Block 2
The First thing I noticed about the Block one consists of 4 plots, each plots in block 2 was how much with a residential building on it. The Figure 18: Map showing where Blocks are in Relation to more consistent the plot size and each other and East Avenue buildings and plots are of varying shape was. The Plots are all size, and one has an outhouse of uniformly lined up, with the buildings all joined in one some description. The buildings are located to the front terrace. This makes these plots much denser, i.e. there of the plots, that is to say, near the edge set along East will be more dwellings per hectare in this Block than Avenue. This creates an active front along East Avenue, Block 1. The factors for this Block are shown in the table and leaves space behind for garden etc. Some key below, for easy comparison. factors about the plots in this block are shown below. Key Factors Building Height Setback Plot Length Plot Width Dwellings per hectare
8m-10m 2-4m 10m-16m 6m-7m 39.5
Key Factors Building Height Setback Plot Length Plot Width Dwellings per hectare
8m 2 30m 6m 76
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Alasdair Sherry
Urban Morphology Analysis
10024751
Building Analysis Figure 20: A property typical of Block 1
Figure 21: Property Typical of Block 2 Figure 22: Another house situated on East Avenue, which has an effective active edge that covers the whole corner
Looking now at the buildings situated within the plots I have chosen three different examples from the East Avenue area. This 1930s, late Victorian residential property is 2/3 storeys high, between about 8 or 9 metres. It is by no means the original type of property on the avenue, but I would say it had thematic features, such as the bay windows. It is semi-detached and is located in Block 1, towards the South West of East Avenue. It is one of the tallest properties down East Avenue, and its height definitely provides some legibility and vitality.
All The properties in Block 2 are residential, like this Victorian terraced house. It is 2 storeys, and make for very dense housing. Keeping with the thematic of the area, this house has the bay windows, and is made out of the same material as most of the houses on the street. They are all terraced and finished to the same standard. The low profile combined with the relatively wide streets are what I believe gives this area a wide open feeling, and the odd tree placed down the streets makes for more vitality.
This is an interesting property on the end of a row of the usual terraced houses. I feel it has been changed at some stage, as it doesn’t seem to share many thematic values with the rest of the street, besides the height and roof style/pitch. However, I feel the property has been cleverly designed to offer great passive surveillance, which is often tricky to do for properties located on corners. It has 3 storeys, and is also set further back from the street than the other terraced properties. It is also rendered in a different way to the others. 6
Alasdair Sherry
Urban Morphology Analysis
10024751
Conclusions After analytically studying the East Avenue area, I think I can safely sum up the main points from each morphological layer that help to explain how this area has become a place. My points are summarised in the table below. It also important to note that the building type and design that is used on the plots is very important when making a place, And I believe the essence of The East Avenue area still lies within the terraced, early Victorian dwellings that line the street. Streets
Streets of widths ranging from 4m to 14m wide were used to divide the area up into several versatile blocks Blocks These blocks then used the surrounding street network in place to create active perimeter blocks Plots Plot sizes ranging from thin and long Victorian style to larger 1930 style plots, able to accommodate a variety of buildings were distributed on the blocks Buildings The buildings erected on the plots are from a few different eras, granting the area much needed permeability and vitality. For me, the most successfully consistent build type was the terraced early Victorian dwellings, harking back to when Cowley was an industrious area.
Key factors
In order to achieve this sense of place, dense dwellings of around 8m tall, terraced, set 2m back from the road and situated around a 14m wide street (6m wide road) seems to be the key characteristics of the area.
Figure 23: Traditional housing characteristics for East Avenue
In summary, I feel I have learnt a great deal about how important it is to go through the morphological layers when considering any development. By building up from the streets and access, you can build on the rest in a paced manner that lets you achieve any design actions you have laid out. 7