DOMESTICATING MODERNIST TOWERS: REMAKING SPACE FOR A MULTIPLICITY OF EVERYDAY USES. UNIVERSITY COLLEGE LONDON
Julie Plichon
FACULTY OF THE BUILT ENVIRONMENT
MSc Urban Design and City Planning
BARTLETT SCHOOL OF PLANNING
Supervisor: Dr. Elanor Warwick
LSVT
Spatial and social fragmentation
Defensible space
Right to Buy
1981-1997
1997-now
Public ownership
Diffused nature of tenancy and privatisation
Fragmented open spaces
Public/private ownership
Governance and different scales of privatisation over social housing in the UK
Lack of attachment
Community spaces
Delineate and integrate
2.
Hybrid: orchard
up
Diversity of demands and of uses of the space
More Private
Domestic
Domestic buffer zone
Approach More Public
Community
Hybrid
Orchard
Domestic yard
Community market
3.
Typology
Spaces that are poorly used and reflect fragmented communities. Negative territoriality
Domestic spaces
i
dges e c
Community buffer zone
Market
Community yard
March
Activities Open ended use Small gardens Semi fixed features
Open front gardens
Poor sense of responsibility
Litter
Gardening Compost Cook
Bike racks, social interaction, third places Help the building land softly
General neglect
Seating, watch, play, interact
April
Different paving and materials, well delineated Small surface, open
Nodes: open spaces
Everyday uses
Urban form: towers
Small yard (<0.3, >0.5ha) enclosed with an edge which contributes to the public realm (plants)
Large yard (<0.8 ha)
Residents, quiet
Mainly residents, outsiders through regulated access
85% enclosed
June
Small units or space, open (> 0.3 ha) Small interaction places, porous boundaries
Large yard with porous boundaries
Residents
Residents, outsiders welcome
July August September
Residents, interaction
How to mediate the towers and the public open spaces to sustain a multiplicity of everyday uses?
DY
DB
O
Project focus
M
CY
CB
Based and re-interpretated from Minoura’s work (2016)
Listen to the residents: attend community meetings
“Cities that were dense, compact and continuous have become diffuse, loose and discontinuous, (...) with autonomous and atomized elements which do not relate to each other. This shift has been accompanied by a significant change in scale.” (Levy, 1999: 81)
From residual to social and public space
Moderating factors Mixed use
Lack of sense of community
Nature
Confusion between back and fronts
Landing softly
Lack of enclosure
New edges
Enclosed
Leighton Chase, Crawford, Kaliski, 2008
Open
Porous boundaries
This typology is composed of elements that get assembled and interlock with each other. Hence, as buffer zones link the buildings to the yard, the typology has to be understood as an assemblage of spaces that complement each other.
CASE STUDIES
Cotton Gardens Estate, Lambeth
Evelyn Court, Hackney
Carmona, 2015: 392
Passive participation
Work on banal locations
Active participation
Green infrastructure
Gehl, 2011
CY
Buffer zones
Extracted from Carmona, 2014
Buffer zones
Semi fixed features
Soft and hard controls
Inclusive
Extracted from Carmona, 2014
Same levels
Community spaces
Buffer zones
Yards
Small size, relationship to buildings
Inviting furniture
Inform and discuss
4m 24m
Bike racks
48m
Balance between exposure and enclosure
Signage
Drinking water
Nature
Play
Hybrid: orchard
Informal surveillance (eyes on the street, without a street) Cook
Garden
Community spaces
Buffer zones
Improve the entrances
Plot based urbanism
Reconcile vertical and horizontal with small units
Shelter
Yards
Slopes and steps
Porous boundaries
Hybrid: orchard Consider for all:
Compost
Marking the entrances: legibility
2. Dynamic edges
Community & work space
Interactional territories
Need to create a more complex typology of open spaces mixing domestic and community qualities for a multiplicity of uses along a gradient of publicness
Third places to animate during the day, closed at night
Face to face orientation and invitation Small gardens
Good enclosure (80%) with secondary boundaries (see through)
Third places and mixed use
Leave the design of the space unfinished Unbound points of creativity and resistance (Deleuze, 1996)
More enclosed than other places and quiet than other places
Different textures and soft transitions
1. A gradient of publicness
Seating
Yards
Must allow freedom and quiet for the residents. Sense of ownership.
ty ni
Home territories
Domestic spaces
Yards
Open front gardens
Community space
Shelter
DY
CB
Invitation
ame
Enclosure
Sense of safety
Domestic spaces
A form of becoming at home in the world (Dovey, 2010)
Adaptable
DY
CY
f trust
Domestic qualities
Safety
CB
3. Scaling up: market and social dimension
eo
comfort
Sense of arrival
6 TOOLKIT
sen s
Domestic space
Animation
Legibility
Koch and Latham, 2012
Security: can be closed at night
Well delinated
OBJECTIVES FOR A MULTIPLICITY OF EVERYDAY USES
Domesticating space
Comfort
Test different layouts and be flexible to follow different demands
5 REFLECTION AND ASSESSMENT OF CASE STUDIES Walk through
Relaxation
Invite: leafleting and providing space for free on the market
Buffer: relation to the buildings Yard: relation to the residents
Everyday urbanism
“residual spaces are an opportunity to think differently about public spaces”
Lack of street life
KEY
3 LITERATURE REVIEW
Issues linked to the typology
3 Saturday markets
Users
Research question:
Understanding a typology: towers
Weekly meetings on the estate
May
Form Vicious circle of neglect described by Madanipour, 2008
CH
Post WW2-1981
Social mix
f p u b li c n o t e
Scaling up: the social dimension
SEA R
So cial mix
1.
Tactical urbanism Plot based urbanism
A diversity of every day uses
TIO N R E
Councils
Right to Buy and housing stock transfers
Conceptual framework
n
How?
AC
Housing associations
What for?
Domestic spaces Community spaces
Pavilions in landscape : just a bit of grass around the buildings
Right to buy policy and social mix
GLC
What space?
Literature review
ss
2 PROBLEMATIC
Domesticating space
le
The disused open spaces around the council estates are seen in as a resource to capitalize on for the residents. However these have been fragmented and overly defined by defensible space approaches, while the Right to Buy policy seem to have diffused the nature of ownership in council estates through privatisation. This project focuses on the process of remaking places in the context of modernist high rise towers. The tower blocks floating like “objects in space”, seem to define and interact poorly with open spaces around them which remain abandoned and impersonal, or seen as a setting for anti-social behaviour.
Extraction of design principles
Sca
In the current context of austerity and lack of public funding, estate regeneration often goes with displacement and demolition of council estates, both of which hinder social sustainability. On the other hand the context of high rise social housing does not necessarily create the sense of trust and community necessary to the formation of common interests.
4 METHODOLOGY AND TYPOLOGY
am
Dyn
Most high rise housing estates are here to stay for the decades to come (Kearns, Whitley, Mason, Bond, 2010:227).
A gra di e
1
INTRODUCTION
Memorialise the place Get all the ingredients
Actor network Inform and discuss
Small and modular units
Mixed use for stewarship and a maintainance model
Plot based urbanism: small units Temporary interventions
DOMESTICATING MODERNIST TOWERS: REMAKING SPACE FOR A MULTIPLICITY OF EVERYDAY USES. UNIVERSITY COLLEGE LONDON
Julie Plichon
FACULTY OF THE BUILT ENVIRONMENT
MSc Urban Design and City Planning
BARTLETT SCHOOL OF PLANNING
Supervisor: Dr. Elanor Warwick
7 THE SITE: ST GEORGE’S ESTATE, SHADWELL
N
Cable Street
N 0
5
10
15
20
25
30
35
40
45
50 m
0
Scale: 1/1750 20
40
60
80
100
120
140
160
180
200m
Defensible space applied through a regeneration in the 2000, resulting in the lack of appropriation of the open spaces
8 INTERVENTIONS: APPLYING THE OPEN SPACES TYPOLOGY AND SCALING UP WITH THE COMMUNITY MARKET New masterplan
CB
1
DY
CB
5
6
4
DB
2
7
O
11 4
DB
CY
8
9
7
DB
6
3
M
3
2
1
8
5 9
CB
11
CB
10 O
M
10
0
Evolving market layout: stalls and seating put close to facilitate interaction and passive participation. In 3 weeks the residents gradually took part in the market and ended up running their own stalls: second hand objects, food, bookshop...
5
10
15
20
25
30
35
40
45
50 m
The masterplan is accompanied by the visualisations seen previously. On the map, the M caption indicates where the market is happening. The O caption with the associated new work units is an example for a second possible orchard.
Sections Before
Before Building
Ramp
Podium
In between space
Private garden
Building
Undefined grren
Podium
Flower beds
Private garden Confused Flower beds
e street Park 10.5
7
1.5
2.5
2
17.5
23
15.5
3.5
Building Podium Flower beds Domestic buffer zone Domestic yard Community buffer zone Community yard
After
Reduced car parking space
Scale: 1/300
to create a domestic yard
0
5m
10m
9 ASSESSMENT: OBJECTIVES x TYPOLOGY Legibility
DB DY O CY M
Sense of safety
Sense of arrival
15m
20m
10 CONCLUSION: FOCUSING ON THE GENERATIVE ASPECT OF SPACE Animation
Green infrastructure
The typology of open spaces is theoretical enough to allow transferability to other estates or housing developments. It participates to the debate that revolves around defining publicness and domesticity in cities, by seeing beyond the common ‘semi public, semi private’ blurred distinction. The assemblage thinking that proposes the typology, where the different open spaces interlock to one another, is a another key element of the work.
As Gehl argues, the process of remaking places is highly challenging.
“First life, then spaces, then buildings, the other way around never works” (Jan Gehl, 2010:70)
When the buildings are already in place and that demolition threatens social sustainability, analysing on site where the activities already happen highlight where they could be developed. Spaces as ce sa generators sm uil b edia the tors b etween the life and
a Sp
CB
Invitation
The orchard is not crossed by the section lines.
di ng s
After
However, in this project we have argued that space generates activities and uses as it mediates interaction and privacy. When that space is remodelled in an incremental way, life can emerge, even when buildings are already in place. This approach stresses out the generative role of space in the first place.