The Resilient City Jinal Gandhi
Table Of Contents: • Reflection • What is The City? • What is Time? • Mining the City • Change Over Time • Variations • Diurnal or 24-Hour Peak • Urban Rules • Elasticity - 10,20,30 Years • Dotted lines The Temporal City
• Mid-Sem Proposition • Final Proposition • Return Brief 1. Closed Spaces 2. Colour 3. Streets 4. Open Spaces 5. Voids • Spatial Exploration
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The Temporal City RMIT University – Master of Architectural Design Architectural Design Studio 7 Studio Leader – Ian Nazareth & David Schwarzman The Temporal City, a design studio that clearly tested my ability to understand and work with diverse range of tool sets. It was entirely a new experience to explore on the idea of a future city and its working. Since this is my first studio at RMIT, it has been a very different experience from past studios exploring beyond the realm of the city I have been in and understanding the depth of the city through different lenses. The studio is focused on spatial exploration of spaces, focusing on capturing few moments of the city in different light/ perspective. It helped me broaden my ideas to work in those aspects more minutely. It helped me to understand my ability to work with completely new set of ideas and software, which will be very useful for my future studios and works. Extracting city data and experimenting with these different tools helped my design to progress with ease, initially it was a failure to comply with all these new ways and thinking but eventually everything made sense and my interest buried deeper into this idea of the studio.
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This studio also focused on the different rule sets, environmental input data, physical, economical, social, political factors impacting the growth of a city helped me to understand how architecture is part of this as a whole. I tried to focus my design based on the environmental input data and social factors which impacts physical spaces when one perceives it. The studio midterm crits and final crits in all helped me develop my idea on broader perspective and expand my boundaries, it helped me to do better and reflect back on my design. To conclude, the temporal city is a studio which focuses on the idea of how the change, differences and time accelerates and the nature of the city changes, which is not static. This portfolio shows the process of testing different data sets, exploring different aspects of the city as a whole, progress and development of ideas at different points and finally focusing on how the spaces respond to the change in time and it’s resilience.
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What is the City?
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What is the city? It’s Reading City is a combination of different layers of programs and how the programs workout in response to change in time. Today’s cities are filled with an immeasurable volume of physical and visual clutter and its proliferation is partially responsible for altering how we interact with the urban environment. So overwhelmed are we becoming by the volume of sensory information that many of us are tuning out; searching for the simplest way to interpret and move through our territories. Navigating through this immense change throughout the city, people move in respond to the growing urbanization. Different types of urban spaces are associated with the specific activities of different social groups. Public space unexploited and unused by people and space without social destination often reflects its physical form. Unorganized transportation, parking and other physical barriers reduce its usability and attractiveness. The relationship between people and space can be defined by the phrase: People creates and co-creates space while at the same time the quality of the space influences the character of people. At its roots, architecture exists to create the physical environment in which people live, but architecture is more than just the built environment, it’s also a part of our culture.
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It stands as a representation of how we see ourselves, as well as how we see the world. How one perceives the city with their own experience through the spaces. What if the City we are associated with starts to change based on user’s demand? More people connected to each other and spaces they consume.
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What is time?
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What is Time? Changing realities of city is all in response to time and it’s variation, one cannot control time. Density of the city changes overtime, along with different programatic divisions, new constructions, population growth, transportation, etc. These changes builds a story of a city throughout the timeline. Buildings age overtime and turn obsolete, it is the story that embed keeps them alive. Time erodes the existence of the space, city, people, etc. It’s not intentional but that doesn’t change the reality. So how today’s architecture can remain in the minds of people in a long span of forseeable future. In order to understand how the city will respond to the change in time (years and hours), different conflations and amplifications are experimented on the city. How the rules will extend to make the city workable in the future. How the spaces will respond to time and how the city will respond to that change. Time is immeasurable and it’s change is what makes city interesting and introducing factors which will hightly react to the future city makes it more dynamic.
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Mining the City
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DATA ANALYSIS ON THE CITY SCALE: Data: Understanding city programs in CBD 1. Relationship between other Facilities and Housing group 2. It’s Network 3. Block usage by each program 4. Understanding Proximity and Growing density 5. Pedestrian counts. This data is obtained to understand relation of the programs accessed by the different housing groups and its proximity.
Facilities in Relation to Townhouses
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Facilities in Relation to Residential Apartments
Facilities in Relation to Commercial Apartments
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Data: Understanding the distance and proximity of offices to different housing groups and the relationship of people and the place they are accessing. It aims at exploring co-relation between the accommodation and residential to offices, speculating each block’s proximity to the office for the office goers and understand the distance they need to cover to reach their destination. Townhouses Residential Apartments Commercial Apartments
Offices Network to Townhouses
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Offices Network to Residential Apartments
Offices Network to Commercial Apartments
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Data: Study of programmatic distribution in the CBD in order to understand the static nature of the spaces used during the day and night cycle. Existing programmatic division is static, accommodating maximum space to offices, unable to adapt to the change leaving space unused after office hours. Accomodation Offices Commercial Use Hospital & Clinic Retails Entertainment Commercial Parking Covered Private Parking Covered
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Data: Studying and analyzing how the residential and offices has the continuous growing density of network which responds to the various input data extracted above – the relationship between the offices and different housing groups, program distribution on city scale and the proximity of residentials to the facilities one accesses. One has to travel those distances to reach their desired location.
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Data: Study of pedestrian data 24 hours, exploring the movement of the people and extracting peak hours. Comparing Data from 2018 and 2020 the pedestrian movement in both the years at certain hours are highest than other hours of the day. Exploring on the idea how these peak hours can form the basis of the programs to show some of its temporal nature.
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DATA ANALYSIS AND ITS WORKING: In co-relation with all the data extracted – it is to understand how the programs, its network and proximity reacts to the peak hours during the day. Understanding & co-relating these different environmental Input data (City growth, programs, networks,etc.) of the city through which spaces can morph and encourage temporal nature of city. Exploring on the idea whether the programs are easily accessible and does that serves people’s demand during those hours where the movement maximizes? Are those distances and static programs enough to serve the needs when needed? Are spaces optimized well to serve those purposes?
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To understand these points, blocks 73 & 83 were selected, the blocks are dominated by offices while other programs are distributed within themselves occupying rest of the space. In this scenario the static nature of the block maximizes, leaving maximum space unused after working hours unable to optimize it better. Hence, people accessing other programs have to travel longer distance to reach their desired destination during those peak hours.
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Conflation, Interpretati
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ion & Amplification
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AMPLIFICATION:
Amplifying the network between office and residential to understand how the network between residential and other facilities keeps expanding. Passing through this dense nework of work and home hence resulting in the disconnect between other spaces and people accessing it.
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INTERPRETATION:
There is a steady rise in the pedestrian movement of the people in 10 years of span, particularly demanding the space in the city which can cater the demands of the growing density and make shifts based on the need of a program.
2010
2012
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2014
2016
2018
2020
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Change over Time
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WHAT IF?
Switching the current scenario allowing public activity programs on the ground surface, raising commercial spaces above, education, offices and residential on the top arranged the gaps are formed between each function forming a transitional space. Those gaps can be filled by library, civic services and green open spaces. Allowing the shifts to happen between them. While leaving more space on the ground for human mobility. Forming these different combinations in the block and forming its relation throughout the city.
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Variations Regenerating the CBD
Diurnal or the 24-Hou
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D
ur Peak
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The 24-hour peak study shows how the programs can be rearranged in a way that it creates programmatic voids and spaces between them so as those voids can react to the change in time and movements. Accommodating the temporality of spaces between them. The Temporal City
In 1st iteration the block can further be divided to create short distance between two programs and creating roads more pedestrian street then vehicular. Programs are distributed equally in every building and interlocking of spaces on the external circulation system. Filling the spaces and voids in between.
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2nd iteration it will provide through and through movement of the people in and around the site. Allowing the programs to encourage spaces and voids between them and allowing shared programs to break the static nature of the block.
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Third iteration acts similar to that of first iteration but the programs are arranged that serves more static nature than the 1st iteration. The programs are stacked more compactly and are bridged with the external circulation system.
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4th iteration scope is that it makes a good example of proximity to different public programs on ground and its relationship. Programs are stacked allowing central circulation system between them. Each program reacting to each other during those movements from one program to another.
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5th iteration block can be used in a way that it provides large public recreational activities for all the people living nearby to that block, this will build more stronger bonds between the people and the built environment around them. Programs are equally distributed with connecting bridge at different levels.
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6th iteration creates a pixel blocks above it to incorporate more functions, but it won’t disrupt the flow of people. The program distribution focuses more space to entertainment and commercial activities allowing more temporality between spaces by creating voids and spaces by forming and deforming.
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7th iteration is similar to the 5th iteration, it has a scope of building more programs but in a more compact way. The program distribution focuses more space to entertainment and commercial activities allowing more temporality between spaces by creating voids and spaces by forming and deforming. The programs are connected with the external circulation system where it connects themselves at different levels.
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8th iteration will allow the movement of people in unrestricted way and will avoid the disruption of their Mobility. The program distribution focuses on physically seperating the programs on the site by creating an axis in between divided into two sectionsMore static functions: Residential, Office & Education. Having shifts: Entertainment & Commercial The programs are connected with the external circulation system where it connects themselves at different levels.
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Setting these iteration in a city and forming a new CBD which will be more pedestrian than vehicular. While one can also walk through the next block without being restricted by rigid geometry.
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Urban Rules
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1.
Multifunctional streets- A street that serves variety of primary functions.
2.
Short blocks- block length must be short.
3.
Pedestrian Streets- Streets used principally be pedestrians are classified as Class I, Class II and Green streets. Adjacent buildings that contribute to enhancing the quality of such streets may thereby earn utilization bonuses. Requirements vary according to the streets classification.
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4.
Robustness- streets are more robust, that is permanent to building lots and building lots are more robust than buildings. This robustness determines the hierarchy of the individual elements. Infrastructural networking; each parcel is linked to a street. The total length of a given street should be as short as possible.
5.
Use Groups- Uses are categorised, defined geographically and subdivided into zones to form districts. The basic sub-division consists of residential, commercial and industrial uses.
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Elasticity - 10, 20, 20 y
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year plan
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Iteration 1:
In 1st iteration I tried to break the geometry, creating public space at the center. Consisting of different functions all together, residential, commercial and industrial. An attempt to create multifunctional streets as the ground structure can be used for programs such as retails, cafes, theaters while the above floors can consist of offices and residential. In the coming years the block can further be divided to create short distance between two programs and creating roads more pedestrian street then vehicular.
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Iteration 2:
2nd iteration provides more organic movement of people and surrendering maximum ground coverage to create a programmatic proximity and relationship. While the vacant land below can adapt according to the movement of the people and change in time. In coming years it will provide through and through movement of the people in and around the site. And will encourage short blocks Within a block.
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Iteration 3:
Third iteration acts similar to that of first iteration but in coming years more development can happen, a street will serve a variety primary functions, it will adapt to short blocks system and it currently provides public functions according to change in different hours.
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Iteration 4:
4th iteration Is more rigid than other forms, it allows the movement of people which divides a block into four parts not really allowing the movement in an organic way but maintaining the grid. Scope is that it will rather make a good example of proximity to different programs on ground and it’s relationship.
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Iteration 5:
5th iteration allows to create more public space around the structure and making the programs in a more compact manner. Such blocks can be used in a way that it provides large public recreational activities for all the people living nearby to that block, this will built more stronger bonds between the people and the built environment around them.
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Iteration 6:
6th iteration focuses on the movement of people passing through different programs all at once, it acts like a maze. It will create a pixel blocks above it to incorporate more functions in the future but it won’t disrupt the flow of people. Rather we can say it will adapt according to the need of people. It will serve more to the multifunctional streets and pedestrian streets.
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Iteration 7:
7th iteration is similar to the 5th iteration, it has a scope of building more programs but in a more compact way.
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Iteration 8:
8th iteration will categorize programs according to the level of usability in terms of hours and provide more public functions on one side while programs like office and residential on the other. Dividing a block into more smaller blocks, though providing shortest distance between these different entities and in future allowing the movement of people in unrestricted way and will avoid the disruption of their mobility.
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Dotted Lines
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Iteration 1: Studying 24 hour cycle and extracting peak hours 6 am, 9am, 12 pm, 3pm & 6pm
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Iteration 3:
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Iteration 5:
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Iteration 8:
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Mid-Term Proposition
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The idea is to integrate separate blocks and people’s movement in a way that it complements each other and exists in a harmonious way. People will move in a more organic way and access different functions in their proximity. Pedestrian movement will work as a catalyst to determine functions, programs and form of the city. Setting out these different iterations in a way that out of 4 blocks 2 blocks will show such a distinct change in time and that would form CBD. While 2 blocks will articulate their space according to the change in time the other 2 will form connection to these blocks forming a complexity across different blocks and offering a multilayered network.
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Iteration 6:
Iteration 8: Iteration 6 & 8 responds to the 5 set of rules which includes short block, mltifunctional street, pedestrian street, robustness & use groups. Responding to the 24 hour peak diagram these iterations creates voids and spaces in between encouraging shared spaces - closed and open
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Growth in the span of 10, 20, 30 years - occuring outwards connecting different blocks forming and deforming shared spaces within and between two different blocks. Leaving more ground space for through and through connectivity and allowing movement of people in more organic way.
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Final Proposition
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Space Shifts: Preliminary Idea
In respond to mid-term proposition, the idea focuses on dividing functions which works 24 hours, creating heirarchy where residential, civic service and education are more static – condition in which it will spillover to other functions but will not retract. Offices will have shifts which will accommodate educational or retail activities at different space of time. While other functions will have more temporality based on time. Idea is to understand how spaces will react to time and informality between different programs are created through shared space use. Programs will not be confined between the allocated space but will differ timely. The site will work in the combination of different programs reacting at different intervals of time. The site will create more shared and informal spaces than the static programs.
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Space Exploration:
Usually spaces show drastic change in functionality as space forms and deforms due to the specific orientation of objects. Changing the orientation the space might encourage the nature of more shared spaces.
Office Space
Retail Space
Educational Space
Entertainment Space
Civic Space
Community Use Space
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Revised Block Study
The site chosen was block 34, 35, 44 & 45 closer to the Elizabeth and Swanston Street to observe how the programs will function around these busy streets and throughout different city blocks if iterations are placed in different combinations. - Elizabeth Street Pedestrians outnumber all other street users on Elizabeth Street but have the least amount of space. - Swanston Street have recorded the heighest number of pedestrian movement.
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Block 34: - Entertainment 3% - Retail 3% - Unoccupied Unused 4% - Private parking 6% - Commercial Accomodation 6% - Common Area 23% - Office 48%
Block 35: - Residential 4% - Retail 16% - Hospital 8% - Private parking 6% - Commercial Accomodation 6% - Common Area 23% - Office 10% - Storage 3% - Education 3% - Entertainment 3% The Temporal City
Block 44: - Retail 4% - Unoccupied 22% - Residential 4% - Common Area 19% - Office 34%
Block 45: - Residential 3% - Retail 34% - Common Area 17% - Office 8% - Storage 7% - Unoccupied & Unused 19% - Entertainment 5% Existing programmatic division is static, accommodating maximum space to offices, unable to adapt to the change leaving space unsed after working hours
Preliminary Components
Residential
Office
Education
Retail
Entertainment
Civic
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Revised Rules
Multifunctional streets- A street that serves variety of primary functions. 1.
Short blocks- block length must be short. 2.
Use Groups- Uses are categorised, defined geographically and subdivided into zones to form districts.
3.
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The basic sub-division consists of residential, commercial and industrial uses.
4.
(Revised) Façade transparency- At least 60% of ground-level façades must be transparent for class 1 pedestrian street and for class 2 pedestrian street transparency must be 30%.
5. Robustness- streets are more robust, that is permanent to building lots and building lots are more robust than buildings. This robustness determines the hierarchy of the individual elements. Infrastructural networking; each parcel is linked to a street. The total length of a given street should be as short as possible.
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In Block 1 programs major space is dedicated to residential and retail, in morning 5am functions start to show its temporal nature. Residential starts expanding towards retail forming a community space in between them to incorporate different outdoor activity for the residents. By 8 retail forms back and starts spreading towards entertainment till 10 the retail becomes the dominant program. Gradually it starts shrinking back to its original form and by evening 4 its movement becomes static. After 5 entertainment and community spaces takes over the site till late evening. Block 2 consists of formal programs which changes throughout the day between education, office and retail. Forming and deforming of breathing spaces in between and informal shared spaces between these programs. At the late evening the community space takes over the retail and office offering more space for outdoor and informal activities to the students. The site works in the combination of different programs reacting at different intervals of time. The site creates more shared and informal spaces than the static programs. The combination of this iteration placed throughout the city will create a place which is more in response to the changing nature of time and not highly impacted by growth.
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Block 1.
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Block 2.
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Space Transition
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Return Brief
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RESILIENT CITY: Final Idea Each program is divided into hierarchy and the system is confined within shelves; this shelving will restrict unwanted expansion of structures but will allow temporary spaces between them when demanded. Some units are static just allowing open shared spaces between them, while few units have some expandable capacity in them so as the spaces are differentiated and used as programs demand. This system creates variables between two programs, it forms and deforms those spaces in itself, creates shared spaces as well as has an ability to go back to its normal state. The density is distributed within itself and is able to sustain different programs at different times. In long term the system will update itself where it will rotate spaces within its shelf until it reaches its peak and starts overshadowing the programs. At that point it will start growing outward and repeat the process of forming and deforming again. City will no longer have static nature but evolve highly based on the environmental input data, where she responds to the programmatic needs and create spaces which allows free movement. By this new system we can observe our city in different light even while we travel regularly as before. Experiencing the transition and temporality of spaces throughout 24 hours. The city will become more resilient and ongoing monotonous system will cease to exist. The Temporal City
CLOSED SPACES: Closed spaces usually responds to the time and forms temporal spaces in between, sometimes those spaces acts as a shared space use between two similar entities increasing the formal bonds between two different systems. COLOUR: Color can show a certain volume or constructive detail, or visually mimic certain aspects of space. It can also provide a set of emotions or visual effects. It enhances the spatial characteristics of the space in use. STREETS: Streets are the lifelines of any city. If someone wants to explore the culture of any city, the streets are the best place to wander all day long. Streets are one of the crucial city elements that signify the public life of the place. Hence, streetscaping becomes the determining criteria for the success of the city. OPEN SPACES: Open spaces have significant importance in the life of the settlements. The areas with high green-coverage rate have ecological and environmental importance. These green spaces can improve the urban climate. VOIDS: Voids becomes one of the special element in designing spaces that creates informal open shared spaces in the midst of static nature of the functions which do not respond in the context of time.
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Programmatic Components
Residential
Civic
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Education
Office
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Retail
Community Use The Temporal City
Entertainment Each program is divided into heirarchy and the system is confined within these shelves; this shelving will restrict unwanted expansion of structures but will allow temporary spaces between them when demanded.
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Adaptability & Flexibility:
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Some units are static just allowing open shared spaces between them, while few units have some expandable capacity in them so as the spaces are differentiated and used as programs demand.
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Current City
10 Years
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20 Years
30 Years
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20 Years
30 Years
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Dotted Line 10,20, 30 Years
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Dotted Line 10,20, 30 Years
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Spatial Exploration
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Education allows spaces to grow within themselves but do not extend to the other shelves, limited to its own space.
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Offices and retails will allow more shifts within themselves and between each other to form shared spaces if needed.
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Residential are more static condition in which it will allow other programmatic blocks to fill the voids between and allows open shared spaces within themselves.
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Entertainment and community space work 24 hours allowing functions to grow within them as demanded and fill spaces between other programs after working hours.
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The Temporal City Ian Nazareth | David Schwarzman RMIT Architecture Semester 2 2021