scholarly journals Design Strategies for Reorganizing the Public Realm of a Neighbourhood Unit: The Case of the Modern Housing Complex, Manimajra, Chandigarh

2015 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 133-158
Author(s):  
KANIKA BANSAL
2015 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 157-182
Author(s):  
Kanika Bansal

The Public Realm, an interface between the public and the private, is a vital aspect of the built environment that helps to give a city its identity. Despite being a highly significant contributor towards shaping the urban life and the quality of urban spaces, the fact remains that the concept and idea of meaningful public realm remains largely ignored, especially within neighbourhoods with their series of unmaintained and misused public spaces. Such is the case of the Modern Housing Complex at Manimajra, Chandigarh, where the planned open spaces and parks have been increasingly converted into parking lots, garbage yards with uncontrolled vegetation, or spaces that promote antisocial activities, all of which together affect the livability and attractiveness of the ‘model’ colony.’ This paper is based on a study of Manimajra’s Modern Housing Complex, that was undertaken in 2012-13. The objective was to focus on the public realm and to devise design strategies for a livable neighbourhood through a community-based vision for an improved, high quality Public Realm making the neighbourhood more vibrant, safe and a truly liveable place. The study was based on an understanding of how the physical pattern and organization of a neighborhood influences perception and understanding of public places, multiple forms in which public places are manifested, different ways in which public places are understood, and various manners in which public places are used. The study reinforced the notion that the design, condition and quality of the neighbourhood streets and spaces have a major impact on the quality of its inhabitants’ life, and their careful designing and quality development can help to create successful public places.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Paige Boyd

<p>When a large public building is constructed within any landscape it is often found to create adverse affects on the public life surrounding it. This investigation focuses on Te Papa in Wellington, New Zealand. It employs design strategies that emerge from site observation, analysis and exploration of design and behaviour literature. Site observations are undertaken at various scales to determine the behaviours that occur in and around the site, and analysis of this provides an understanding of why such actions can happen and why others cannot. Exploration of the literature is employed to understand past approaches to this design problem and to inform the analysis process. Design testing allows ideas to be played out in hypothetical scenarios and the outcomes of which will be compared to past approaches.  There is a strong focus on pedestrian movement as a catalyst of public life, in relation to the movement itself and the interactions people have with the surrounding environment when influenced by the movement flow. The overall goal of this thesis is to observe and analyse a large building in the public realm that, although is surrounded by movement, limits engagement in ways that results in a decrease of public life. The research leads to the exploration of how flows can be coordinated to generate eddies of interaction and pause and ways to activate and open up particular edges of this building in order to create new opportunities for the public to engage with the landscape. It finally attempts to find ways to not only create new public life, but also intensify the public life in this challenging situation.</p>


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Paige Boyd

<p>When a large public building is constructed within any landscape it is often found to create adverse affects on the public life surrounding it. This investigation focuses on Te Papa in Wellington, New Zealand. It employs design strategies that emerge from site observation, analysis and exploration of design and behaviour literature. Site observations are undertaken at various scales to determine the behaviours that occur in and around the site, and analysis of this provides an understanding of why such actions can happen and why others cannot. Exploration of the literature is employed to understand past approaches to this design problem and to inform the analysis process. Design testing allows ideas to be played out in hypothetical scenarios and the outcomes of which will be compared to past approaches.  There is a strong focus on pedestrian movement as a catalyst of public life, in relation to the movement itself and the interactions people have with the surrounding environment when influenced by the movement flow. The overall goal of this thesis is to observe and analyse a large building in the public realm that, although is surrounded by movement, limits engagement in ways that results in a decrease of public life. The research leads to the exploration of how flows can be coordinated to generate eddies of interaction and pause and ways to activate and open up particular edges of this building in order to create new opportunities for the public to engage with the landscape. It finally attempts to find ways to not only create new public life, but also intensify the public life in this challenging situation.</p>


Resonance ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 1 (3) ◽  
pp. 298-327
Author(s):  
Shuhei Hosokawa

Drawing on Karin Bijsterveld’s triple definition of noise as ownership, political responsibility, and causal responsibility, this article traces how modern Japan problematized noise, and how noise represented both the aspirational discourse of Western civilization and the experiential nuisance accompanying rapid changes in living conditions in 1920s Japan. Primarily based on newspaper archives, the analysis will approach the problematic of noise as it was manifested in different ways in the public and private realms. In the public realm, the mid-1920s marked a turning point due to the reconstruction work after the Great Kantô Earthquake (1923) and the spread of the use of radios, phonographs, and loudspeakers. Within a few years, public opinion against noise had been formed by a coalition of journalists, police, the judiciary, engineers, academics, and municipal officials. This section will also address the legal regulation of noise and its failure; because public opinion was “owned” by middle-class (sub)urbanites, factory noises in downtown areas were hardly included in noise abatement discourse. Around 1930, the sounds of radios became a social problem, but the police and the courts hesitated to intervene in a “private” conflict, partly because they valued radio as a tool for encouraging nationalist mobilization and transmitting announcements from above. In sum, this article investigates the diverse contexts in which noise was perceived and interpreted as such, as noise became an integral part of modern life in early 20th-century Japan.


2020 ◽  
Vol 65 (Special Issue) ◽  
pp. 87-103
Author(s):  
Noémi Bíró

"Feminist Interpretations of Action and the Public in Hannah Arendt’s Theory. Arendt’s typology of human activity and her arguments on the precondition of politics allow for a variety in interpretations for contemporary political thought. The feminist reception of Arendt’s work ranges from critical to conciliatory readings that attempt to find the points in which Arendt’s theory might inspire a feminist political project. In this paper I explore the ways in which feminist thought has responded to Arendt’s definition of action, freedom and politics, and whether her theoretical framework can be useful in a feminist rethinking of politics, power and the public realm. Keywords: Hannah Arendt, political action, the Public, the Social, feminism "


Religions ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (4) ◽  
pp. 235
Author(s):  
Krisztina Frauhammer

This article presents the Hungarian manifestations of a written devotional practice that emerged in the second half of the 20th century worldwide: the rite of writing prayers in guestbooks or visitors’ books and spontaneously leaving prayer slips in shrines. Guestbooks or visitors’ books, a practice well known in museums and exhibitions, have appeared in Hungarian shrines for pilgrims to record requests, prayers, and declarations of gratitude. This is an unusual use of guestbooks, as, unlike regular guestbook entries, they contain personal prayers, which are surprisingly honest and self-reflective. Another curiosity of the books and slips is that anybody can see and read them, because they are on display in the shrines, mostly close to the statue of Virgin Mary. They allow the researcher to observe a special communication situation, the written representation of an informal, non-formalised, personal prayer. Of course, this is not unknown in the practice of prayer; what is new here is that it takes place in the public realm of a shrine, in written form. This paper seeks answers to the question of what genre antecedents, what patterns of behaviour, and which religious practices have led to the development of this recent practice of devotion in the examined period in Hungarian Catholic shrines. In connection with this issue, this paper would like to draw attention to the combined effect of the following three factors: the continuity of traditions, the emergence of innovative elements and the role of the church as an institution. Their parallel interactions help us to understand the guestbooks of the shrines.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (8) ◽  
pp. 4577
Author(s):  
Carmela Cucuzzella ◽  
Morteza Hazbei ◽  
Sherif Goubran

This paper explores how design in the public realm can integrate city data to help disseminate the information embedded within it and provide urban opportunities for knowledge exchange. The hypothesis is that such art and design practices in public spaces, as places of knowledge exchange, may enable more sustainable communities and cities through the visualization of data. To achieve this, we developed a methodology to compare various design approaches for integrating three main elements in public-space design projects: city data, specific issues of sustainability, and varying methods for activating the data. To test this methodology, we applied it to a pedogeological project where students were required to render city data visible. We analyze the proposals presented by the young designers to understand their approaches to design, data, and education. We study how they “educate” and “dialogue” with the community about sustainable issues. Specifically, the research attempts to answer the following questions: (1) How can we use data in the design of public spaces as a means for sustainability knowledge exchange in the city? (2) How can community-based design contribute to innovative data collection and dissemination for advancing sustainability in the city? (3) What are the overlaps between the projects’ intended impacts and the 17 United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)? Our findings suggest that there is a need for such creative practices, as they make information available to the community, using unconventional methods. Furthermore, more research is needed to better understand the short- and long-term outcomes of these works in the public realm.


2021 ◽  
pp. 001458582098651
Author(s):  
Giulia Po DeLisle

Clara Sereni’s writing journey began in 1974 with Sigma Epsilon and went on to flourish through the years with the publication of numerous inspiring and thought-provoking literary works. Many of her autobiographical and fictional texts delve into the years between 1968 and 1977, a crucial decade that changed Italy and forever impacted the author’s life and political thinking. In Via Ripetta 155, Sereni found a renewed desire to bear witness to those politically revolutionary times by revisiting the experiences of her private self and her interaction with the public realm. This study engages with the analysis of this last piece of the complex puzzle that encompasses the written story of her life, and argues that the text represents a final self-empowering act in which the apartment of Via Ripetta becomes the stage for a dialectical discourse between personal achievements and socio-political changes, personal conflicts and public turmoil.


Urban Studies ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 51 (2) ◽  
pp. 355-370 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Walters ◽  
Rod McCrea
Keyword(s):  

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