To Build Or Not To Build: Examples Of How The Urban Environment

Why is it important to try and belong to your built environment? Especially today, when we see that lots of efforts are being taken to try and bridge this gap, especially in the cities in India. Where the development has been haphazard, now it’s too late to go backwards and carefully plan, so the relevance in looking at a careful approach from the beginning holds a lot of interest for me. There are different attempts being made in the cities to now bridge the gap but what does it mean to continuously bridge the gap and not do it as an after thought? This is the attempt that I find most prominent in Auroville, and also the most challenging in its development.

All in all the industrial revolution had a positive effect on society, accomplishing things many do not realize and creating a turn of events that would put the USA as the world power. New farming methods meant better diets, which lead to lower death rates. Efficient and useful inventions, as well as machinery, made it easier for people to work, and made more job opportunities, as well as enjoyment in the workplace. More and easier ways of travel became commonplace, such as railroads. In addition, as cities began to grow, streetlights provided safety at night, and our economy grew greatly. While some might argue that Industrialization had primarily negative consequences for society because it caused children to be used as workers and made school

In today’s society the landscape of the city is constantly changing to accommodate for technological innovations, greater populations, and economic opportunity. As the skyline of cities across America are changing at a rate faster than ever seen before, one immense community is being left in the dust. The suburbs of America have refused to change, allowing a great resemblance of what they looked like 50 years ago. The stubbornness of the suburbs to change has led to many issues economically and environmentally. In her essay, “Seventy-Five Percent”, Ellen Dunham-Jones puts forth that 75% of construction in the past decade occurs in the suburban landscape. Yet, in today’s society much of the architectural community contains a strong bias against the suburbs. However, with over half the country’s

There is a movement among architects, city planners, designers and real estate developers that desire to return to a simpler way of living. A way of designing communities that at its essence captures the design traditions of years past while also avoiding some of the pitfalls of modern city development. A desire exists to avoid the prefabricated homes and endless urban sprawl of strip malls that have arisen all over the modern American landscape. Some see this as a return to classical traditions of city design that incorporates the rich architectural planning of traditional, small southern towns. For these people, the

At the turn of the 20th century, a number of American landscape practitioners were implementing increasingly naturalistic designs inspired by the native landscape. The trend coincided with advances in the field of ecology, which revealed the dynamics of plant communities and encouraged a growing appreciation of the natural landscape and its cycles (Grese 1998, 10). Designers such as Jens Jensen and Ossian Cole Simonds incorporated this knowledge into their practice, adopting ecological planting design in their work. Using indigenous plants and naturalistic compositions they created landscapes that were specific to the region and in doing so, effectively brought the natural world into the city (Rogers 2001). The imitation of natural plant communities

This week’s readings focused on urban design and also began student presentations. Sydney’s presentation on Serenbe correlated perfectly with the topic. A wealthy businessman decided to create a new community based on new urbanism. There were 2 (soon to be 3) neighborhoods based around a central farm. The houses were single-family, near amenities to encourage walking. Unfortunately, this is not a sustainable idea in terms of affordability. The average house price in Serenbe is around $700,000, with townhouses not being much cheaper. With prices that high, it is assumed that the home owners would have to commute for a job, which counteracts the idea of promoting walking. The community seemed to be an exclusive country club (with a farm instead of a golf course) rather than a sustainable option for all.

1 Spirn, A. W.(1988b), “The Poetics of City and Nature: Toward a New Aesthetic for Urban Design,” Landscape Journal 7: 108-126.

The urban environment that I live in is my nature. My nature is filled with birds, cats, grass, and flowers. It may not be as abundant with mother nature’s resources compared to most places, but it still provides me with an experience of nature. Nature is not limited to just what we see anymore. However, you must use your senses to truly achieve the full experience of nature. In nature, you must smell the wonderful odors from the flowers, you should use your sight and observe the natural beauty of the ever-changing sky, touch the rough and jagged bark of the trees, and hear the spectacular songs of the birds that fly above you.

In this book Barnow specifically looks at the urban systems and the urban architecture in the antique Greek world and the Roman Empire. The line of thought and the method to understand the two is rather subjective. Barnow emphasizes that to understand a society- the individual, other stakeholders and the state, while it is necessary to read into its culture and tradition, it is first important to identify the simple spatial order of the community. This would then lead to evidence of a surprisingly organized association and the fact that there will be only a limited number of possible space/form combinations that could fulfill the requirements of a given social order.

the work of urban designers and architects share significant concerns; and sci-fi offers poetically rich thought experiments that can help designers understand the nuances of theory.” (Kerkez, M., 2014, June 12).

“ Architecture organizes and structures space for us, and its interiors and the objects enclosing and inhabiting its rooms can facilitate or inhibit our activities by the way they use this language”(Lawson pg.6).

More often than not though, cities do not promote physical activity, but instead promote sitting.

I am an Architect with some handsome professional experience in my field. Running as a thread through different things I realized that “Architecture” is not just designing healthy buildings; it is a connection between the individual buildings to “emotional-infrastructure” like our parks, our roads, public buildings, walkways and many more. From the beginning, I was very much interested in understanding the relationship between urban form and trust. As I believe that the way we design our cities has a strong effect how we behave with other people and it make us generous or mean.

As individuals, we all have multifarious requirements for the buildings we use and the places we live in, work and socialise in needs to mirror this diversity. In other words, to suit whatever purpose we require from the structure and to make sure it functions as the designer envisaged.

(Darling 2009) New and more sustainable materials can replace the traditional brick facade. (Darling 2009)Also, more efficient window configurations might grab into the question the standard exterior design. (Darling 2009) Even simple ideas of shape and size may adjust to the realities of solar panel application, insulation requirements or interior air circulation. (Darling 2009) Space and materials need to be used more efficiently and this could be achieved by building smaller and more densely house designs. (Darling 2009)