Urban rooms: Approaching the new urbanism

Publications

Urban Rooms: Approaching the new urbanism, Inglezaki K., Micha A., archetype.gr, April 2019 https://www.archetype.gr/blog/arthro/domatia-tispolis-proseggizontas-ti-nea-astikotita

Bachelor’s research thesis for the Master’s (integrated)/ Diploma Architectural Engineering (MArch, Dipl. Arch. Eng.)

Institution

Department of Architectural Engineering, Democritus University of Thrace, Greece (DUTH)

Academic year

2018-2019

Supervisors

V.Ghikapeppas a-g@otenet.gr

G.Papagiannopoulos gpapagno@arch.duth.gr exchange of opinions is being conducted in the cyber space of social media, and so, people no longer feel the need to resort to the exterior space of the city square to express themselves and coexist with others. Moreover, the bond with a site and the attribution of meanings to it, is hard to achieve in a globalised urban environment that’s lost its identity.

With this in mind, contemporary urban interventions have to respond to multiple tasks and deal with multiple challenges and questions. The answer to these issues is searched out through the link of architectural design to the present time, highlighting the depth of the pre-existing, but also through a participatory future, pursuing the activation of the citizens in public spaces, retrieving the city’s qualities as an experiential spatial experience.

The square, the most significant urban public space, from its birth as a primary city void, constitutes a space extremely charged with multiple meanings; social, political, cultural, economic, all charged emotionally.

Level of enclosure and square scale

This research thesis is focused on the space of a city square as a space of relations, as an important active city void and not as simply the remains of the built environment. The square signals the city, reflecting its particularity, ready to welcome people at any moment. It constitutes a “life container” with an anthropocentric character, as a place of presence, contemplation and engagement.

The contemporary urban space is changing according to modern societies (globalization of the economy, image domination, new means of communication, new technologies) and therefore there’s been a change in people’s perception of public space. Nowadays the need for communication and

The issue of scale is one of decisive importance for the tension of the spatial characteristics of a structure regarding its dimensions. For example, when certain dimensions grow over a certain degree in plan and in section, then the “structure” might collapse. Squares that are massive in space, with massive buildings, with massive –in size and in tension, meaning in visual tension- billboards and increased vehicle traffic are no longer squares. Such a square state is not a square by definition, it isn’t a related condition to the relevant structure of space.

Regarding the issue of scale, Rudolf Arnheim’s reasoning is worth a mention. The street is visually often more than a path on the ground, which shapes a three dimensional tube, whose edges fold and continue to the other direction This thought can be implemented not only for the street, but also for other urban spaces. In this way, the square can be seen as a three dimensional void, a solid that is shaped from the buildings and the ground. In a way, a building’s elevations don’t even end on the square’s surface, but look like they fold under 90 degrees and continue along the terrain and elevate again towards the other side, like a cube’s net- the square is an undivided container. The horizontal level is the field of human action whereas the primary dimension of vision is the perpendicular.

The impression of a solid is influenced by the height of the buildings that shape it. But height depends on the width and the width also contributes to a great extent to the square’s character. Architecture needs space to breathe. If the square is too narrow, the buildings that stand opposing will look as if they step on their opposite’s foot, compressing unpleasantly the in-between space. But the square shouldn’t be too wide either. When the square’s width extends beyond the visual fields that are created from the building, a “sense of void” is created, meaning a site lacking structure. Unless the central zone of the square gets highlighted with adjuvant shapes, like flower beds or trees, so that this lack is counterbalanced, the visitor will experience a sense of abandonment, he will be not be given a clear guidance towards the direction that he needs to follow, nor will he be able to measure correctly his distance from the buildings. What upsets us in a overly wide square is that even though visual limits exist, a person cannot benefit from the help that appears appealingly just outside the boundaries that he can reach. This makes him feel not only alone, but also abandoned.

Urban rooms

“What we call interior space is not defined by the negative relationship or the logical inversion of “exterior space”, but by its genetic “innerness”, its origin and its characterization of the space itself.” Moving from an interior to an exterior space implies in fact the transition from one interior space to another, from a room of a space to an “urban room”, or in other words, an urban void.

Sculpting the void should be a concern for the architects so as to shape spaces surrounding the built forms, to try to understand the form of the void. Urban space is considered rather often as an absence of space. Spaces between buildings get filled randomly with questionable pieces of art and urban furniture. Public space ought to be considered as an entity and most importantly, as a chance for presence. Architecture can become the background, a place when different groups can be the foreground and create their own ideas.