Urban Design
PORTFOLIO
Keerthana Jayaseelan PUD20171
Content
1. 2. 3.
Studio Brief
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What is Your City Talking About
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St. Stephens Steps, Mumbai
Elements of Urban Design a) Building Types b) Streets and Open Spaces c) Urban Blocks d) Synthesis of Urban Blocks
4.
Public Place Design
5.
Conclusion
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Integrating Commerce Six Metro Station, Ahmedabad
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1.
Studio Brief
The studio is structured as introduction to urban design representation and how it is used as a means of design thinking. The premise is that urban design is best understood and expressed through study and representation of the built urban environment. Hence the studio will focus on the study and representation of the key urban elements in cities and will be structured in multiple modules running through the semester, each culminating with an exhibition of the outcome. These modules will significantly focus on effectively capturing and communicating the spatial qualities of the urban built environment. Module 1 will involve perceiving and representation of the key elements of urban design. The premise is that building types, urban blocks, streets and public open spaces form the key elements that come together to make any functional urban space. The exercises in this module will enable student with methods to study each element and how they contribute to the scale, form, character and their relationship with the larger urban context. Module 2 will be the final exercise which will involve design of public places The learning outcome of the studio are: to prepare design drawings to graphically communicate the key spatial characteristics of an existing urban built environment with focus on its elements and prepare a design for a given urban area in the form of a framework plan, design analysis and 3-dimentional illustration to represent the design.
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2.
What is Your City Talking About
St. Stephens Steps, Mumbai
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In this exercise we had research about the current urban issues that our cities are focused or concerned about. On identifying such a topic we then had to see how the city authorities, the citizens and media have responded to any interventions taken up to resolve them. This was to be culminated in form of a poster.
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Project Duration : 2 years Project Area: 1800 m2 Designer: Abraham John Architects
Project POSTER
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3.
Elements of Urban Design 3a) Building Types
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This exercise was designed to develop methods of effectively capturing various attributes of building types such as form and its relationship with ground. The exercise required us to identify, categorise and represent the prevailing building types in our cities and develop our skills to draw building footprint and its three-dimensional form that abstract the architectural language along with its relationship to the ground.
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Elements of Urban Design 3b) Streets and Open Spaces
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This exercise is designed to develop understanding of various attributes of streets and open spaces. To analyze the parameters that shapes their physical form and their relationship with the surrounding context. Finaly we explored various techniques to represent their character.
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Police Bazaar Street Shillong, India Edge Type
In an Indian context, a provision for spaces for informal vending and hawkers are important
Commercial edges attract pedestrian footfall, hence they are an element by themselves for pedestrian streets. Porousity in this street varies, the porous edges is due to the narrow streets branching from the main street.
Distribution of Public Right of Way
This street is completely pedestrianised. The width of the road varies from 12- 9m. The commercial edges have irregular plinths as a result of the slopping terrain, and is occupied by informal venders.
Ground Floor Building Use Sense of direction, anchored by spatial elements like a Round about. In this case it marks the start of visitors path
This street being at the center of the city draws a lot of commercial activity. It is also a major tourist attraction, which attracts informal commercial activity, and creates a vibrant enclosure. 0 6
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12
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m
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Rua Augusta Street Lisbon, Portugal
Arco da Rua Augusta
Edge Type
A sense of continuity is established through the uniform building hieghts, material and similar elevation.
The porousity of the street is contributed by colonnaded shopfronts.
Distribution of Public Right of Way
Although this pedestrian street is segmented, a sense of continuity is maintained by the flooring .
The street is pedestrianised, and has vehicular roads cuting it perpendicularly. The street is completely paved with black and white tiles destinct to Lisbon.
Ground Floor Building Use
The street is enclosed with large number of cafes and restaurants among other retail buildings. This street used to be a merchant street as it used to directly lead to the port of Lisbon. 0 6
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Functional pause points such as tents provide shade and spillover seating for restaurants. This is an important element for the visitor who are walking along 600m street absent of any trees.
The Arco da Rua Augusta, gives tourists a sense of orientation, as they begin the path from the The Rossio, a public square on the other end of the street.
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Rabin Square
Homogeneous pavement with a unique pattern along Rabin Square.
Tel Aviv, Israel Edge Type
Access to Street Access to Building
Baring the north edge, there is high porosity is due the absence of boundary walls and gates. Legend
Visually
Physically
Opaque Partially Porous
Porous 90%
The street levels of these buildingsform a continuous arcade that bustles day and night with people in shops, restaurants, and cafes.
Opaque 10%
Porous
Total Building Edge = 500m Total no. of Entrances = 60 No. of Entrances/100m= 12 0 25 50
100
200
m
Ground Floor Building Use Residential Commercial C1 Retail C2 Hotels/ Restaurants Office Religious Institutional Open Space
The square is surrounded by an active commercial edge, which is set in within colonnades. The Town hall building sits at the north edge distinctly among the surrounding six storey commercial buildings. Institutional C1 50% C2 45%
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100
200
m
Peak Hr Activity Graph
COUNT
X axis - DAYS Y axis -COUNT
MON
TUE
WED
THU
FRI
SAT
SUN
The highest activity is seen at 7pm throughout of the week, accept for Friday, where it 12pm. This is on accounts of the start of Sabbath (sundown on Friday to sunset on Saturday), which is a day for worship and requires people to abstain from physical work, hence encouraging people to gather in public places like Rabin Square.
The City Hall facade is illuminated on national and international occasions and becomes part of the square.
The Holocaust Memorial, draws most of the crowd during normal days. Tree lined lane establishes continutity to the boulevard circuit of the city.
MON Time is Constant
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Elements of Urban Design 3c) Urban Blocks
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This exercise is designed to develop strategic understanding of various attributes regarding urban blocks and its components – Building Types, Streets and Spaces between buildings. The exercise required us to identify and represent the prevailing urban blocks in our cities and develop our skills to draw these blocks and its three-dimensional form that abstracts the character of the blocks.
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Bandra Kurla Complex Mumbai, India
Even with provisions for footpaths, the wide roads, large block sizes are used to reduce pedestrian movement in exclusive precincts like CBDs.
This block has unique building forms and footprints, housing major commercial institutions. This has resulted in the creation of landmark buildings, and the block’s identity is held by this.
The open space being situated in a CBD, is influenced by the surrounding built use. It is used to host events such as concerts, award fuctions, pop-up markets etc. Hence has a more semi-public commercial nature than a open public space.
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Lincoln Road District
This block has unique building forms and footprints, housing major commercial institutions. This has resulted in the creation of landmark buildings, and the block’s identity is held by this.
Miami, USA
Since this district is anchored by an exclusively pedestrian street, there are multiple public parking structures in close proximity for visitors to drop their vehicles.
This block has buildings of diverse built uses. But since most of these building are low rise and have retained their Art Deco style, there is a sence of harmony in the block.
The Lincoln Road is a 1km long stretch of pedestrian path running across multiple blocks. The entire street has small pocket parks, water features, sculptures, cafe spillover seating organised in a manner that creates a unique experience for the visitor
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Elements of Urban Design 3d) Synthesis of Urban Blocks
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This group exercise was aimed to synthesize various attributes such as open spaces, building footprints, building heights and streets of the various Indian and international examples the students have documented in the previous excercises. There were three groups, and ours focused on the urban blocks of the collected samples. As a group we studied the availability of open spaces and devised a method of calculating permeability, as an aspect to understand theses open spaces (streets and public grounds).
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Analysis of Open Spaces
Understanding Permeability
66 urban blocks of 500 x 500 sqm are arranged according to the arrangment of their streets and blocks into: grid iron, mixed, non-linear and radial. Within each of these classification, blocks are then arranged in decreasing order of their open spaces.
Here we define permeability as the ease of a person to travel within a 500 x 500sqm block. This ease is can be calculated using a factor called permeability ratio.
Steps for calculating the Permeability Ratio:
1.
Transit node in the urban block is identified
2. distance of 400m from the
Grid Iron
4-5
destinations
of
a
transit node are travelled. (Since the block is 500x500sqm, the distance of 400m is considered)
3. each
Effective displacement for of these points are plotted and averaged to get the value of X.
Mix
(Effective displacement is the direct linear path from transit node to destination)
Permeability = X Ratio Y
4. displacement of 400m. Y
represents
the
direct
Non-Linear
(Direct displacement represents all points on a circle with a radius of 400m from the transit node)
5. at
Permeability ratio is arrived by dividing effective displacement of 400m with the direct displacement of 400m.
Radial
Selected blocks for comparing permeability ratios
Public Open Spaces Urban Blocks
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100
200
500m
In the observed cases, when there are designated open spaces and wide roads in the urban blocks the open spaces ranges from 25%-80%, and in cases where there are only roads as open spaces in the urban blocks it ranges from 10-20% 32
value closer to 1 indicates 6. Ahigher permeability. In
other words the closer the circumferences of effective and direct displacement of 400m, the more permeable are the blocks.
Transit Node Destination Travelled Path Effective Displacement Average Effective Displacement 400m radius from Transit Node
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Comparing Permeability
LEGEND Transit Node
Effective Displacement
Destination
Average Effective Displacement
Travelled Path
400m radius from Transit Node
Average Block Perimeter
Link-node Ratio
Permeability Ratio
Grid Iron
1.5
0.80
347m
2.3
0.80
390m
2.2
0.76
177m
1.8
0.81
330m
1.8
0.69
530m
1.9
0.67
180m
1.4
0.72
350m
1.5
0.83
450m
1.8
0.66
418m
1.5
0.76
425m
1.8
0.78
615m
1.8
0.76
Mix
Radial
300m
*Average Block Perimeter is the average perimeter of all blocks within a study area. *Link-Node Ratio is an index of connectivity equal to the number of links divided by the number of nodes within in a study area. Links are defined as roadway or pathway segments between two nodes. Nodes are intersections or the end of a cul-de-sac. A perfect grid has a ratio of 2.5.
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The block perimeter and link node ratio generalizes the accessibility and connectivity of the block, but does not consider the ground realities. Whereas the permeability ratio which is specific to the location of the primary transit node and the commonly travelled paths into the inner blocks, portrays a better understanding of the user’s convenience
Non-Linear
The permeability ratios for three cases in each block pattern are calculated in the manner explained in the previous page. Along with this, the average block perimeter* and the link-node ratio* is also noted. The aim here is to check for any relation between the average block perimeters, link-node ratio and the permeability ratio
Observations:
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100
250m
1) The permeability ratio is independent of the link-node ratio. 2) The permeability ratio decreases with the increase in the block perimeters. 3) Highest permeability is observed in grid-iron and non-linear patterns. 35
4.
Public Place Design Integrating Commerce Six Metro Station, Ahmedabad
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The focus of the design exercise was to reimagine existing scenarios in the city with a fresh perspective on the opportunities in the public domain. The selected public place should spark the idea of how the place would look like after design intervention. Here we were expected to convey our vision through the stratergies and representations explored in the previous excercises.
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100m
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1) New Junction 1
2) New Junction 2 Designated on street Parking areas.
Extended junction edges for shorter crossing and controlling traffic flow.
All side are connected, and activities are integrated
Meeting spaces and spaces for venders are defined along the junction.
Easily accessible cycle stand near the junction
Smaller traffic island to regulate vehicular movement.
Provisinsion vending.
for
mobile
Wide junction edges for gathering or street installations
Defined main access path connecting station with institutes.
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3) Public Plaza Extending from the Footpath
4) Below the Metro Station Shorter crossings
Bus Stand for commuters
Waiting and meeting spaces, with natural shade
Rickshaw stand at metro entry points
Defined footpaths for large commuter footfalls
The existing chabootra is retained , and function an urban marker for the vicinity.
A plaza is developed around the chabootra (bird feeder), which can accomodate temporary seating.
Dedicated space for mobile venders. Street elements like bollards for pedestrian security.
Pedestrian path can accomodate more temporary stalls during peak hours.
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Visualisation of the Integration
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5.
Conclusion
From The first exercise the various opportunities that can be realised in an urban context can be realised. A major learning from this exercise is that the stakeholders in any design intervention play a key role in design development. The elements of urban design exercises introduced us to how an urban designer should prepare illustrated drawing to graphically convey urban design elements. Along with this the various international and Indian cases brings out the unique context in any urban design element. The final module allowed us to test our gathered knowledge from the various urban design elements. The main aim for creating public any public place is to ensure a harmonious integration between all urban elements.
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Spring 2021 CEPT University, Ahmedabad, Gujarat.