Month: October 2015

Auroville / İndia

Is an experimental town in India founded 1968 and as stated on their own web side “The purpose of Auroville is to realize human unity.”

The city is planned out in 6 regions. İncluding the peace area, the industrial zone mainly used by green industry, the residential zone which is the biggest zone in the city, the international zone including national and cultural pavilions grouped by continents, the cultural zone a area for applied research and education and the green belt on the outskirts of the city.

All electricity in the town comes from solar energy and not more than 50l of water is used by one person per day. The aim is to live in harmony with nature and practice human community to be free from political, economic and hierarchical barriers.

The Matrimandir

Located in the center of the village it has become the symbol of the city. İt is designed to give the residences of the city the opportunity to rest and meditate there and in the sorunding parks. Also from this building 4 of the city districts are easily accessed.

Sangamam-cost-efficient-habitat

” The age-old rammed earth building technique is introduced in a more sophisticated form with cement stabilization to achieve better standard of finish, more strength and water-resistance, and enabling a quicker modular method of building. Five per cent of cement is added in the sieved earth to make the mass water-resistant, thereby significantly adding to the wet compressive strength of the material. A team of four laborers can produce a 23cm monolithic wall of 2.2m length per day.

Roofs are constructed using terracotta filler slabs, bricks as jack arches, and conical hollow vault elements designed specifically to achieve an affordable solution with low environmental impact that is beneficial to generate local employment.

The low cost housing scheme is provided with eco-friendly building infrastructure for rain water harvesting and waste water treatments systems in a single water tank with 3 separate spaces.”

links:

http://www.anupamakundoo.com/sangamam-cost-efficient-habitat/

http://archive.auroville.org/

http://www.auroville.org/contents/95

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TrlYo75fSXU

http://www.archdaily.com/tag/architectural-photography/page/3

Things about the “High Line”

How “Friends Of The High Line” was created

Joshua David a author and Robert Hammond a artist met and discovered, their same concern to preserve the unused railroad structure which was  sentenced to be demolished after usage stopped 1980, at a community meeting 1999 (Pogrebin, 2009, para. 5)

On a community meeting discussing the destruction of the high line Joshua David and Robert Hammond got to know each other and to prevent this destruction Friends of the high line was created by them. (Harvey, 2012, para. 6)

 

How the “High Line” is chaning the neigboorhood.

                -how they are improving the neigborhood:

İn the area desining and building of about 30 developments is going on (Pogrebin, 2009, para. 9)

The Whitney Museum of American Art was conviced to construct a museum in the area of the newly created high line which chaged the souroundings to make it a significant hotspot. (TAYLOR, 2010, para 8)

                -how they have become examples for others:

Hoping to get new perspective planers from Hong Kong and Rotterdam came. Jerusalem othorities are looking forvard to come. Companies from singapoor visited the landscaped ways going from Gansevoort Street to West 20th Street. (TAYLOR, 2010, para. 7)

İn Philadelphia the reading viaduct is planed to be converted into an elevated park which is a very similar project to the high line. Before the highline opened the project had littel perspective as Ms. McEneaney explained,but the highline created a spark and helped to make convincing the city autority easier. (TAYLOR, 2010, para. 9-13)

 

Links:

http://www.nyc-architecture.com/CHE/CHE029-TheHighLine.htm

http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/06/08/first-phase-of-high-line-is-ready-for-strolling/?_r=0

http://web.archive.org/web/20120205120403/http://www.thehighline.org/blog/2012/02/01/an-elevated-park-%C3%A0-la-fran%C3%A7aise

http://www.thehighline.org/

Issues of the cities in the movie “Urbanized”

Issues of the cities in the movie “Urbanized”

 

Negative effects of Grand Scheming, building cities which don’t care about humans. Example of New York City.

First major issue I watched in the movie and would like to point out is the city planning priority and how it can affect the city’s outcome. As stated in the movie priority must be given to the people, making distances viable to be walked on feet rather than cars, since they can create quite a disastrous outcome in terms of both traffic and effectiveness of the city’s movements, thus city’s denizens happiness of leaving in city. This point was given through the example of New York City as well as Brasilia, and how it was planned not as seen from the ground level but rather as seen from far above, which lead into the currently problematic form the cities has taken.

800px-Robert_Moses_with_Battery_Bridge_model

Focusing in New York, we saw the effects of the ambitious plans of Robert Moses on creating a huge city, with enormous highways and Grand Bridges that connected great distances, unable to be walked on foot. Although he is the one responsible for a big part of the growth in New York after the Great Depression with the massive construction of expressways and while he is considered even today, a model to aspire for young engineers and architects, his fall came from the same reason that made him successful at first place, which was the huge investments and grand plans. Through activists like Jane Jacobs, who was a freelance writer that wrote a book called “Death and Life of Great American Cities” which played a big role on Moses’s downfall, he met quite an opposition on creating the Mid-Manhattan Expressway, which required the destruction of many local areas that were working already as communities, leading their denizens to protest against the plan and eventually cancel it. Today, he is considered an important figure in the current city plan, although he is also referred negatively by people living in the suburbs he designed ( like Long Island ) since the distances they have to cover to get to the center requires way too much time.

 

http://untappedcities.com/2013/12/18/5-things-in-nyc-we-can-blame-on-robert-moses

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Moses

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jane_Jacobs

 

 

Easier Transportation inside the city / The Transmilenio project in Bogota, Colombia
800px-TransMilenio_01
Second major issue I noticed through the movie is the traffic problem, and what’s the best way to help people move inside cities. A great example to watch the right ways of transportation is the Transmilenio which is a bus transportation system in Bogota, capital city of Colombia. The Transmilenio project started as a cheaper and more city friendly way to replace the shortage of a metro railway system that Bogota had, while also to average the same usage a metro would have. For its construction, an extra road line was created that would be used only by the project’s buses and for that reason this line is secluded from the rest road through a fence or a concrete obstacle. The entrance to the buses is similar to most metro systems. You enter a closed bus station, where you pay your ticket in the station entrance through smart card, and wait inside for the bust to arrive. Because of the secluded roads, the Transmilenio buses arrive without delays on their destination, so it is a safe and fast way of transportation inside the city. In order to promote more activities, links have been made in Transmilenio stations, where someone can come from a bicycle road, and leave his bicycle there, in a try to support healthier kinds of transportation inside the city. Finally, it’s worthy to say that in every system there will always be problems to faced, but the thing is the achieved result to be next to what people were aiming for to begin with. With the Transmilenio project, people of Colombia got another way to move inside the city but more importantly, got a way to standardize their time spent on transportation. That gives them the belief that city is caring for them and because of that they are going to also care for the city.

800px-TransMilenio_Bogota_Map

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TransMilenio

 

Georgiou Fotios