URBAN DESIGN & HOUSING THEORY

Redefining and reinventing the urban quarter

1. The aim of the course is to train young architects in urban design: an urban design that is considered an autonomous discipline, but tightly connected with architecture. Its theoretical, social, political, technical and economical implications will be considered, but urban design will be treated, finally, as the art of creating good spaces for urban human beings. Housing will be regarded as the main mass at disposal for the creation for such spaces and at the same time a specific discipline within the discipline of architecture, based on a long and rich tradition. Only out of this tradition an appropriate modern housing can be developed. The young architects shall be confronted with this tradition and stimulated to their own critical interpretation.

2. In order to achieve these aims, a substantial amount of historical and theoretical information will be given. Subsequently, this information will serve as a basis for a concrete project that will be a critical synthesis, but also a lackmus test of the theoretical and historical premises. The division between theory, history, and design will be clear, but the maximum of synergy will be the aspiration. Every important theoretical assumption shall be verified in a design, and every major move in the design justified by theory and history.

3. Subject of this exercise will be the urban quarter or neighbourhood. The modern city is the addition, sometimes even the collage of very different urban parts: its quarters or neighbourhoods. They belong to the city organism as a whole, but have their own character and a partial functional and social autonomy. The quality of the city depends almost exclusively on the quality of its quarters. 

Until the middle of the 19^th century, cities have grown through the addition of new quarters to the old ones. Economical and cultural globalization and new, problematic urban models like the Siedlung or Levittown have blurred this process and led to amorphous urban extensions. Today, while suburbia is spreading around our cities and one estate after the other is built, we seem to have lost the capability of creating new urban quarters with an own character.

Precisely this will be the theme of the course. We will ask ourselves, what an urban quarter is made of, and produce some exemplary answers: as theories, but also and above all as projects. 

4. Concretely, the participants will have to produce a small paper with their own definition (and explanation) of an urban quarter (versus amorphous city extension or estate). At the same time, they will have to produce an exemplary design of a new urban quarter (their new urban quarter) on a real lot of approximately 20 ha in the outskirts of Madrid. The design can be schematic, but specific parts must be detailed to the scale of at least 1:200: a square or a street and two typical residential building units. Particular attention should be devoted to the connection of the urban spaces to the buildings and types, and of the buildings and types to the urban spaces.

5. There is hardly a consensus, in contemporary architectural culture, about what urban design and modern housing is; there is certainly no consensus about what an urban quarter is. Consequently, the course will be a teaching dispositive, but also a piece of research. Not only the students, also the teachers do not know what will come out of it. This makes it, at least in our view, an important, interesting and hopefully also entertaining cultural adventure. 

PARTICIPANTS’ ASSIGNMENTS AND DEADLINES

1. Practical work. Submission: 30^th June 2017, 16.00h (Final jury)

Exemplary design of a new urban quarter (your new urban quarter) on a real lot of approximately 20 ha in the outskirts of Madrid. The design can be schematic, but specific parts must be detailed to the scale of at least 1:200: a square or a street and two typical residential building units. Particular attention should be devoted to the connection of the urban spaces to the buildings and types, and of the buildings and types to the urban spaces. It will be developed in groups of 2 to 3 people.

Documents to be submitted:

1. 1:2000. Schematic plan.
2. 1:500. Particular zone plan.
3. 1:200. Sections, façades, housing types. Ground floor and regular floor plan will be included.
4. 1:20. Details. To define qualities of the urban space.

To obtain further information about the plot, you can visit the following website:

http://www.madrid.org/cartografia/planea/index.htm

2. Submission 13^th March 2017, 9.00h

A small paper with your own definition (and explanation) of an urban quarter (versus amorphous city extension or estate).

3. Landscape exercise. 15^th June 2017, 16.00h (Landscape jury)

This exercise aims to offer a platform for debating contemporary landscape architecture. It is structured around three overlapping lines which explore the definition and scope of this discipline, construct a critical discourse around it and speculate about its future and the future of cities. We will examine their theories and practices, adopting a broad rather than exclusively internal vision of the discipline.

We will explore contemporary architecture and landscape but will also relate these fields to others traditionally associated with civil engineering, geography, sociology, culture and history. This will not be done exhaustively, as the module will focus on a limited number of themes, without losing its general approach and nevertheless aiming to provide students with the most open and broadest possible overview of landscapes and to equip them with the key instruments for developing a critical outlook on urban reality.

Four lectures about landscape  will create a repertoire of references and help students to understand the basic issues, to ask themselves critical questions and to establish links with the topics discussed in other workshops of the Master in Collective Housing. The structure will be broken down into four journeys. The sessions will be based on reading assignments and the discussions sparked by them as well as on the proposal exercise students will be required to produce as part of the course.

Operational Structure. Landscape architecture design workshop

In keeping with contemporary urban patterns, ecological demands and urban infrastructures, this workshop will examine the most important writings from a selection of key critics and discuss methods, models and systems for gaining an insight into the landscape theories of the 21st century. Meanwhile, a practical project exercise will demonstrate the specific application of these theories.

The practical exercise consists of the project, designed by the students, of an alternative proposal on the same 20 Ha territory on which they will be working at that time.

This alternative will result from adding certain geographical, topographical and hydrographical conditions into the area of the project. It is a quick exercise that takes place on the project the students are currently developing and it involves adding another layer of complexity to the urban development they are working on and which will oblige the students to reflect about some issues that are raised in the readings and lessons.

The purpose of the course is to help students to identify and interpret elements of urban landscape practice.

Reading assignments, discussions and strategic proposals will provide students with a basic introduction to landscape design.

By the end of the course participants should be able to articulate their own experience and intellectual preoccupations and propose imaginative alternatives to contemporary practice by establishing a nexus between landscape and urban design and all the other disciplines studied in the Master in Collective Housing.

Documents to be prepared for the first landscape review (June 12th, 13th 2017)

A. Small critic essay about the 4 readings provided as bibliography. One single pdf file, min 1.500 words. It must be a personal critical analysis (individual work).

What must be taken in account when designing a landscape project? 

B. Definition of the landscape project. One single pdf file, A3 format, min 15 pages to a max of 30 pages, to be developed in teams. This file must include:

1. One siteplan, scale 1:2'000 / 1:3'000
2. One section and one project plan, scale 1:1'000
3. One graphic statement: Most important issues considered in the project
4. At least 5 diagrams, for instance: vegetation, topography, connections with the fabric, views, sites for events,...
5. One photomontage/collage/axonometry
6. One section and a plan of a specific place of the project, scale 1:500

SPECIALTY SCHEDULE & CONTENTS

* INTERPRETATIVE CARTOGRAPHIES.  This item includes a research experience that will mark a turning point in the question of what and how should be the domestic space of the XXI century.

This second stage focuses on the location, analysis and processing of ideas and concepts of contemporary collective housing scattered in specialized European publications that forms the theoretical operational framework of the current residential architecture. The aim is to produce what in the field of research have termed Interpretative Cartographies, a network of conceptual connections linked to outbreaks of specific theoretical production of European geography that is obtained from the analysis of built projects and published texts.

The aim, ultimately, is to locate and define those key terms that begin to form the distinctive design vocabulary of collective housing in the new century. This is achieved by deducting theory from built cases, with the endorsement of the ideas that architects explicit and critics bring in publications to try to recognize procedures of project renewal, experimental initiatives and new ideas characteristics of collective housing of our time.

Items                                       Thinkers

Critical Environment                 Toyo Ito

Formal Management                Florian Beigel

Form of Social Change            Sou Fujimoto

Public Dimension                     Adolf Loos

Domestic Topology                   Nicolás Bourriaud

Affective Experience                Serge Daney

Tectonics Expression               Marcel Duchamp

Oversize and Landscape         Guy Debord

Ecological Argument                Gilles Deleuze

Active Preexistence                  Roland Barthes

Media Strategy                         Bernard Tschumi

                                                 Alan Colquhoun

                                                 Joseph Fenton

                                                 Doina Petrescu

                                                 Yves Lion

                                                 Monique Eleb

                                                 Peter Sloterdijk