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Notes Urban Models
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In this document you can find my notes from the course urban models. With my notes there are also pictures from the lessons.
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Urban design ModelsWeek 1
Part 1:
The different processes and developments which influence urban development are so much complex
that they have to be conceived in the form of a model.
Different models lead to different spatial strategies which lead to different forms of urbanism, from
blueprint to the spontenaous city.
The way these different models can be used is the core theme of this module.
You can’t understand the city → it is to big.
Urbanism is about many things.
Dark shops: you don’t go there, it is not appealing. An example are the shops like Flink, a lot of
advertising on the windows.
Why Models:
Koolhaas exhibition content: different models and
techniques. It is a wall with a timeline with
projects and importent events. You can see the
Koolhaas exhibition content here.
How do all these events invluence our designs?
Cuture is part of how we work.
If you want to be good at designing then you need to be good in a lot of things. You need to know
something of economy, sociology and a lot more.. Everything is interconnected.
Reality simply is TOO complex. In order to understand anything we have to use a model.
,London Underground was a map with how the lines really go
through the city. At some point you couldn’t see where you
where and how you need to go further. In the map here to
the right of this you see the old map. And under this map you
see the new one. The lines are straight with angels of 45
degrees. It is easier to see where you want to go and how you
get there.
A model is NOT a genuine representation of reality
The modern subway-map works because it DIFFERS from reality.
Abstraction is not only SIMPLIFICATION but also TRANSFORMATION.
A model adds information but also takes information away.
Albert Plesman: the inventor or discoverer of the Randstad. He became famous for it.
Everywhere in the world places where expanding, sometimes to much. The consequence is that
people almost never leave the city anymore.
According to Albert you need to be within 20 minutes outside the city.
In the Randstad you can do that, no one ever realised it. It are cities
with an empty space in between. There are different solutions:
- Snozzi: he said that the Randstad wasn’t finished because it
was not a circle. In the map you can see where the circle is. He
wanted to complete that there is a ring of cities.
- Circle in town: a rotation of traffic.
- Themes for different cities, there is a city for students, for
offices, for culture. For every city there was a different theme.
- OMA
This are all models.
The danger of using models: To conceive the model AS reality.
A Ivory-tower-urbanist → simplified the world → perfect plan! But it didn’t work because the world
was complicated.
We need models to comprehend the world.
The current position is not good.
Everyone has another image of a place or city. If someone likes a city it doesn’t mean everyone likes
that city.
Identity as a postcard → typical photo’s
, In Europe every city had a identity, in America not. Every city there has a Wallmart and some other
stores, but in Europe every city is different.
Greece is the place where urbanism is invented.
After communism they want to get rid of the grey flats. But that was not possible. In Tirana they
pained the buildings so it wasn’t grey anymore but colourful.
Part two:
Models are tools. Everyone has tools.
Urbanism is not one method.
What is it? → different answers
Sjoerd Soetsers in Zaandam → green houses.
Urbanism is a underlayer for infrastructure and many more, that’s it.
Urbanism is culture, it evolves with fraction.
There is no right way to do it → different models.
SMLXL: Rem Koolhaas
Two ways of thinking about the urban condition → two essays
1. The generic city
2. What ever happened to urbanism?
1 generic city = the ordinary city.
A description about the current situation of cities and the discipline of urbanism.
Like a airport → everywhere the same → same phenomena.
When you come outside a airport, everything is different.
The generic city is like a fractal, an endless repitition of the same simple module.
Pieces of urbanism are put together as ‘tapestries’ → no hierarchy. Urban centers don’t function as a
centre, at most as a theme park or a museum.
What is a centre?
They need to thematize the city → a Dutch town, a French town.
Normally they grow organic.
A Dutch town is orange, has windmills. A german town has a Bierfest, Lederhozen, the buildings has
German looks on the first floor.
The generic city is a city freed from being held hostage by the centre, the straight jacket if identity:
the city is nothing more than a reflection of the current needs and capacities. If she gets too old, she
grows. If she gets to old, she tears itself down. She is everywhere just as exiting or boring.
The biggest invention of the generic city is to simply give up what doesn’t work. No history:
everything new. No ideology, pure pragmatism.
The generic city means the definitive death of planning. Not because the generic city is not planned –
there is a gigantic universe of designers, planners, bureaucrats at work, but it makes no difference.
“The city is dead, we may leave the theater”
What ever happened to urbanism?
The battle of quantity
Urbanism failed in finding an answer to the unbelievable increase in quantity.
Apocalyptic demography
At this moment more people live in the city then on the countryside.
Urbanism is everywhere. Urbanism has a discipline = fragmented → doesn’t give an answer, has
withdrawn itself in thousands of small projects.
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