scholarly journals The Contributions of Competitions to Cities and Urban Design

2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-11
Author(s):  
Baris Ergen

Competitions are a significant means of focusing on specific spaces in cities and forming public opinion. Competitions result in many professionals such as architectures, urban planners, urban designers, landscape architects, civil engineers, etc. proposing lots of designs for the same space, and thereby submitting various solution offers for it. Therefore, competitions are important not only for their results, but also for increasing knowledge about the occupational groups of design and the shaping of urban open spaces and built environments, in other words, cities. This study analyzes competitions’ contributions to urban design based on the experience of Merzifon Municipality’s Business and Life Center Architectural Project Competition. The discipline of urban design, which plays an important role in forming the urban open spaces and built environments, is enriched by competitions. The approaches developed in the projects that compete for the urban spaces focused on the competitions play an important role in shaping cities.

2021 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Amir Shojai ◽  
Kaveh Fattahi

AbstractThis article addresses an urban design issue at a micro-urban design level; the spaces between buildings on neighboring blocks or the side yards, how such spaces they are used, and their social impact on residents. A socio-psychological approach was taken into studying arrangements of these open spaces in contemporary residential zones in—side setback spaces in Japan, and backyards and light shafts in Iran in terms of their similarities and differences. The research involves development policies and interviews with residents in buildings where such conditions prevail, in two different contexts—Shiraz, Iran and Sapporo, Japan, two cities comparative in their size and densities for their cultural differences might have on their social responses. Seventy-two respondents in Shiraz District 6 were recruited by Shiraz University architecture students and in Japan, 75 responses were collected in Central Ward, Sapporo, from various groups of residents. Majority of the windows to side setbacks in Sapporo had matte glasses; therefore, privacy concerns were not among residents. Lack of maintenance in inner courtyards was a major concern for Iranians and they see side setbacks as a challenge to their and safety, however providing opportunities for neighborly atmosphere, if the windows have matte glasses and provided with guards. It argues that contacts are not controlled are perceived the same in two different cultures; however, the arrangement of open spaces play a role in light reception and ventilation in Japanese example.


Author(s):  
Anette Stenslund

In recent decades, research has paid attention to the atmospheric ways computer-generated imagery (CGI) marks the experience of future urban design. What has been addressed in the generic abbreviation CGI has, however, exclusively concerned visualisations that communicate with stakeholders beyond designers and architects. Based on fieldwork within an urban design lab, the paper differentiates among the range of CGI used by urban designers. Focusing on collage, which forms one kind of CGI that has received scant attention in scholarly literature, I demonstrate its key function as an epistemological in-house work-in-progress tool that helps designers to refine their vision and to identify the atmosphere of future urban spaces. Based on New Aesthetics, collaging atmosphere is characterised by a physiognomic approach to urban space that selectively addresses aesthetic characteristics. Hence, the paper tackles a discussion that points towards cautious handling of the communicative scope of collages that can be well complemented by other types of CGI before entering a constructive dialogue with clients.


Energies ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (15) ◽  
pp. 4630
Author(s):  
Eduardo Bassolino ◽  
Maria Cerreta

In a scenario in which the climate changes subject urban centres and large cities to high levels of environmental vulnerability and criticality underway, it is evident the need to define operational and straightforward decision-making tools capable of prefiguring and verifying the effectiveness of urban transformation climate-adaptive regeneration processes. The Climate Adaptive Design Index for the Built Environment (CADI-BE) tool has been developed to assess the adaptive capacity and level of performance of open urban spaces to the stresses due to the increase in global average temperatures. The repercussions of these phenomena cause the occurrence of heatwaves and the urban heat island effect (UHI), bringing out the inability of cities to cope with changes in the climate, making urban open spaces unlivable and no longer the ideal habitat for everyday life and social interactions.


2021 ◽  
pp. xx-xx

Several scholars have focused on the different approaches in designing convivial urban spaces, but literary evidence shows that the essence of aesthetic design in public urban spaces, by referring to the main dimensions involved in the shaping of urban vitality, has not been adequately researched. In this regard, this study, by hypothesizing that the quality of urban design leads to a vital urban environment, focuses on urban vitality from the aesthetic point of view. Thus, in using qualitative grounded theory as a main methodological tool and using a systematic review of the related literature as the main induction approach for collecting qualitative data, five main dimensions of urban vitality, which are necessary to attain a correlation with the aesthetic quality of urban design, were conceptualized. The study concludes that the aesthetic design of an urban setting has a direct effect on the active involvement of its users and that this, therefore, has a direct consequence on the level of public urban vitality, manifested. Integrating the complexity theory with the five main dimensions used for assessing urban vitality was suggested as a viable area for further research.


2017 ◽  
Vol 16 (6) ◽  
Author(s):  
Filzani Illia Ibrahim ◽  
Dasimah Omar ◽  
Nik Hanita Nik Mohamad

This paper aims to provide valuable insight of the various dimensions of human needs’ towards open spaces. This study employed a mixed method research design involving both quantitative and qualitative methods that were utilised to identify and evaluate the human-human interaction and human-nature interaction in the area of study. Primary data was gathered by using questionnaire survey that was administered to 861 respondents who were visitors to public parks. The finding of this study is intended to show the main domains that reflect human needs’ toward open spaces together with perceived benefits to the open space users.


2018 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 66
Author(s):  
Charalampos Kyriakidis ◽  
Efthimios Bakogiannis

A great deal of researchers elaborated on the importance of the urban spaces and human life. Urban spaces are necessary types of spaces for a city and they have a timeless value. This research is focused on people’s perception about urban spaces in Larisa, Greece, a medium-sized city selected as case study. An electronic questionnaire survey was conducted and conclusions are drawn on how adequate are the urban spaces in Larisa. Moreover, people are asked to propose ideas on how other spaces, function more as urban gaps, can be integrated on the urban grid. In that way, it is easy to study what people believe about the city’s life and how the existing urban spaces function. Some conclusions derived from this research can be also useful in succeeding a combined traffic and urban planning in other Greek, in the context of the implementation of a Sustainable Urban Mobility Plan (SUMP).


2020 ◽  
Vol 14 (3) ◽  
pp. 615-625
Author(s):  
Gul Kacmaz Erk ◽  
Tevfik Balcioglu

PurposeBringing product design and architectural design together, this article looks into the extraordinary use of everyday objects in urban and suburban spaces in The Lost Room mini-television series (2006). The study questions the accepted meanings of products and spaces in relation to their physicality, perception and use. Through multi-layered analysis of the relationship between objects, (architectural and suburban/urban) spaces and their users, the article opens up a discussion about the purpose, meaning and influence of designed products and places.Design/methodology/approachIn this context, this qualitative research makes use of moving images (as representations of products and spaces) to propose a critique of contemporary design via (sub-)urban design practices.FindingsUsing irony and metaphor to question the habit of object possession, accumulation and fetishism, the series challenges blind loyalty to contemporary beliefs. The Lost Room is not concerned with new forms or new designs. Instead, it forces the audience to consider the meaning of both objects and spaces in relation to one another. By transforming our understanding of space, the series also reveals humans' spatial limitations. The Lost Room is a unique small screen “product” in which people's relationship to the designed world is interrogated by having mass-produced objects and the built environment constantly in the foreground.Originality/valueFilm analysis from a design perspective is not new; however, this is the first time The Lost Room is brought to the attention of architects and designers via scholarly work. Film theorists and cinemagoers may also benefit from the unique design perspective outlined in the article.


2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (20) ◽  
pp. 8352
Author(s):  
Chiara Garau ◽  
Alfonso Annunziata

The global process of urbanization, and the modification of social interaction determined by the pandemic crisis, poses the issue of the place of vulnerable users and, in particular, children, within the contemporary city. This research aimed to elaborate a theoretical and methodological framework, based on the concepts of affordance and capability, for analyzing the potential of public spaces to enable and support children’s independent activities. This potential, or meaningful usefulness, is expressed by the Index of Meaningful Usefulness of public Urban Spaces (IUIS). The latter is calculated via the tool ‘Opportunities for Children in Urban Spaces’ (OCUS). This methodology is applied to the analysis of significant public spaces within the historic center of the city of Iglesias in Sardinia, Italy. The results reveal adequate usefulness of the selected spaces, while underlining criticalities related to intrinsic spatial and physical attributes. The application to the case study confirms the validity of the theoretical and methodological framework embodied in the OCUS tool for supporting urban design and planning by orienting place-shaping processes towards the acknowledgement of children’s needs.


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