FIRST COLLOQUIA URBAN CRISIS & RESISTANCE CARDIFF UNIVERSITY & TU DELFT
AUGMENTING URBANITY IN THE MODERN SUBURBIA DESIGN STRATEGIES IN LOW-DENSE AREAS
Authors: Dr. Cristian Suau, Lecturer in Architecture, WSA, suauc@cardiff.ac.uk Stephanie Tunka, Architect and independent researcher, stetun@yahoo.com
FIRST COLLOQUIA URBAN CRISIS & RESISTANCE CARDIFF UNIVERSITY & TU DELFT
PREMISES
PROPHECY
INSTABILITY
The Battleship Potemkin by Sergei Mikhailovich Eisenstein (1925)
ILLUSION
The Society of the Spectacle by Guy Debord (1977)
NEW ORDER
Streetscape life of a slum
FATAL ERROR
COMPACTNESS
Animals by Pink Floyd (1977)
OBSOLESCENCE
Pieter Bruegel, The Tower of Babel (1563)
MYTH
Eboy view of London
SATURATION
FIRST COLLOQUIA URBAN CRISIS & RESISTANCE CARDIFF UNIVERSITY & TU DELFT
SUBURBAN SURVEY
Sprawl is the most significant and urgent issue in Europe. Suburban sprawl’s public transportation is a need in many places. Yet most Europeans persist in their desire to live further and further away from urban centers, moving to exurbs made up almost entirely of single-family residential houses and stand-alone retail zones.
This proposal analyses the phenomenon of urbanity in suburban spaces and specific suburban patterns. It is focused on the reflection of urbanity (or anti-urbanity) in sprawl areas, based on the case study of two awarded proposals carried out at Europan 8 and 9.
The comparative cases shows new techniques of sustainable urban design in sprawls; which stimulate the debate on sustainable urban systems and new models of transformation of dysfunctional spaces by formulating new suburban configurations and types.
City Configurations
Inverted Suburbia
Classical Suburbia
The Center becomes Suburbia
Cities surrounded by Suburbia
Idealization of Suburban Life Patching Densities / Variable Densities
Rapid Declining of Sprawl Boom
Blocking connectivity
no Fuel, no Suburbia
Typologies
Suburban Housing Configurations
Detached Dwellings (single-unit housing)
Movable Dwellings
Attached Dwellings (multi-unit housing)
Additional Suburban Programming
Roadways
Office Parks
Retail
PLOT STUDIES
TESTS
OUTCOME
FIRST COLLOQUIA URBAN CRISIS & RESISTANCE CARDIFF UNIVERSITY & TU DELFT
SUBURBAN GAMES
THE SUBURBAN DREAM?
Learning from Yona Friedman, Richard Long & Others
Strategy for detached Dwellings
Typical Street
Strategy for detached Dwellings
Lifted Units
Strategy for detached Dwellings
Intensifying = Super Suburbia
Suburban Urbanity
DESIGN HYPOTHESES From the industralisation until our present time, new typologies have emerged, expressly in the periphery of cities. Nevertheless, what new spaces might represent and trigger the notion of “public life” in the European suburbia? How can designers and planners inject new urbanity in obsolete suburban tissues? This presentation refers to the notion of urban versus suburban congestion in relation to the occupancy of public spaces and its urbanity. These are the main assumptions: 1. The notion of ‘Culture of Congestion’ by superimposing of different densities and land-uses allows more urban negotiations and requalification of public domain. 2. The insertion of temporary uses rather than recreational ones in public spaces increases the sense of appropriation. Then suburbites become cultural consumers of their own public spaces.
A. Local Design. It deals with producing options of new suburban forms and travel networks at scales of neighborhood. B. Suburban Patterns. It refers to the developing of various suburban forms and social networks and their interrelationship, at both urban and local scales. C. Strategic Design. It deals with producing combinations of urban forms and social clusters for testing its application on site. It shows how the existing suburban frames are affecting sustainability of new urban forms across the different scales. D. Social Accessibility. It refers to undertaking empirical investigations on-site to examine the behaviour of outer city residents in accessing local facilities, their propensity to gather and circulate, and the identification of communities that use the public spaces. E. Suburban Structure. It investigates the application of generative social systems to urban design layouts, by exploring Europan awarded cases.
FIRST COLLOQUIA URBAN CRISIS & RESISTANCE CARDIFF UNIVERSITY & TU DELFT
SUBURBAN BOARD GAMES
Stoke-on trent UK Tunka, Stephanie
+ High Density Hybrid of Detached Dwellings + Attached Dwellings
Terraced Houses
Industry
Site
Concept Intensified Structure
Hamar Norway Suau,C + Markuerkiaga, N + Zappulla, C
Movable Dwellings
Concept Link Rich Mixture of Functions
REFLECTIONS Open spaces within suburbs and landscape amenities related to low-density urban development have significant influence on residential location choice. Therefore, dense and compact suburban forms seem to constrain strongly the living quality of households, while they have not proven ability to reduce car-dependence or, more generally, to be less demanding in energy use. The location choice of a household depends on its ability to pay for neighborhood qualities (local amenities and accessibility) and whether the household is dependent on public transport for city-orientated travel. The chosen cases of mobile suburbia in Hamar in Norway and the hybrid configuration in Stoke-on-Trent in the UK are emerging labs for suburban design investigation.
FINALE EUROPAN contributes to the implementation of new methods for urban design in suburban scenarios that could be put into practice. Each urban structure offers its own story of heroism and failures. New models in favor of public spaces can be found by intensifying temporary occupation. These are places where a multitude of urban life can interplay and overlap together. It produces different variation of uses within free spaces. Therefore, the abandonment and degradation of suburban public spaces in European cities is not merely a design factor, but ethical one. It derives from a lack of vision between density factors, intensity of uses and social diversity to create more compact, mixed-use communities.