SESSION 10 – PLACE, SPACE & COMMUNITY DESIGN

Copyright 2011 Phil Heywood

Lecture Summary

1. Relations between People, Activities & Places 2. The roles of “place” in different design paradigms3. Public Private & Community Spaces 4. Central Place Hierarchies & Networks 5. Densities-Balancing Convenience & Congestion 6. Buzz Pairs: Great Spaces; Bad Spaces

7. Places & Place Making –The Nature of Order. 8. Scale : balancing the Human & the Corporate 9. Ownership, Control & Safety10. Diversity in unity: designed spaces as microcosms

1. Relations between People, Activities & Places

1. People make the cities, but the cities then make the people, through the influence of environment on behaviour and opportunities for survival

2. Public places are very important to the quality and success of societies because of the spaces they provide for community and public life, politics, trade of goods, ideas, values and negotiation –as both Geyl and Habermas argue

3. Private places are equally important because of their role in personal fulfilment and the development and transmission of values and skills –as argued by Hugh Stretton and Patrick Troy for Australia

Design Paradigms: Modernism

Modernist urban design like Le Corbusier’s City of Tomorrow (on right), Brisbane’s Roma Street Transit Centre & Cultural Centre and “cookie cutter” residential suburbs are often not well connected, and may seem to have been dropped on their surroundings from above.

Their tendency to segregate activities into separate zones diminishes contact & flows which generate innovation.

Seoul: High density, high rise, inner city housing

Postmodernist Design

• Postmodernist urban designs (such as Las Vegas, Disneyland and this recent construction on London’s Southbank) ignore and often defy context, are highly elaborate and may substitute image for the realities of function and activity.

• They may ignore external relations & links to the communities in which they are embedded.

Postmodern Confusion: Brisbane’s King George Square: Undergoing Destruction

The Urban Desert:King George’s Square: Effectively Destroyed

Integrated Urban Design

Integrated design aims to link different activities, each with their own centres and edges , and each composed of sets of their own sub centres.

This can constitute a , a “Pattern Language” based on a “Timeless Way of Building” with sets of principles to create order and sustainability.

This shown in this view of the thriving Tuscan city of Siena, combining administration, open space, culture, dining, tourism, commerce residence and traditional viticulture beyond the city walls.

Mix of public space, tourism & dining in Siena’s Campo

Brisbane’s Post Office Square:A focus on functions, styles, scales & epochs mixing activities

Lunch time in Post Office Square:Layers of scale & age linking the high rise to the human

Michelangelo's David looks out over good dining in Florence’s Piazza Signoria

Public space combining education, shopping & culture in Paris’ vibrant Left Bank

The main square in Assisi, focusing culture, shopping, art, traffic & administration

A Place that Entices – Assisi again!