Epoch in life

<p>Death is an inevitable part of life. The impact this moment can have on you is different for everyone. Grief is an individualise process that is resolved differently by many people, some attend support groups and have a solid community of friends and family to help them. However some people don’t have that support network and may prefer to go through this event by themselves. This thesis explores the opportunity to use architecture and the environment as a means to relieve personal grief. By creating a place dedicated to helping people deal with grief, whether they take this journey on their own or with another. Considering grief as an individualise process, the design intervention will give users the opportunity to determine how they want to use the space to meet their needs. The design is going to highlight important aspects in the journey of grief in order for them to heal and move on.</p>

Epoch in life

<p>Death is an inevitable part of life. The impact this moment can have on you is different for everyone. Grief is an individualise process that is resolved differently by many people, some attend support groups and have a solid community of friends and family to help them. However some people don’t have that support network and may prefer to go through this event by themselves. This thesis explores the opportunity to use architecture and the environment as a means to relieve personal grief. By creating a place dedicated to helping people deal with grief, whether they take this journey on their own or with another. Considering grief as an individualise process, the design intervention will give users the opportunity to determine how they want to use the space to meet their needs. The design is going to highlight important aspects in the journey of grief in order for them to heal and move on.</p>

Designing for an Active Community Focus

<p>This research dissertation set out to determine what form the design and integration of a suburban community centre as a catalyst for moving towards a sustainable built environment might take. The literature of theoretical arguments and built precedents were investigated to identify potential design parameters. A viable site for the project was also investigated. As a result, the Sustainability Drop-in Centre was created in the heart of Karori. Its design was based on international case studies that emphasized green urbanism and TOD design initiatives, whilst also looking at Calthorpe's arguments for TOD design and Lynch's concept of place legibility as a set of inhabitable paths, edges, districts, nodes and landmarks. The integration of these crucial design parameters required a design intervention at multiple scales, from a new traffic design for the suburb to a detailed ramp design aimed at achieving energy efficient building design, thus limiting the need for lifts and escalators. As a result the final chapter illustrates the new design proposal in the form of representational renders of the pedestrian experience. These renditions, informed by the construction drawings referred to throughout the study, determine that the integration of a community centre as a catalyst for moving towards a sustainable built environment would create many improved quality of life opportunities, including, but not limited to, chances for social interaction, spaces and occasions for local bartering, and an opportunity for education in regard to sustainable practices. The design intervention has generated a stronger walkable suburb that gives importance to public sustainable forms of transportation and the needs of pedestrians, resulting in a suburb that will function well into a post-oil future.</p>

Designing for an Active Community Focus

<p>This research dissertation set out to determine what form the design and integration of a suburban community centre as a catalyst for moving towards a sustainable built environment might take. The literature of theoretical arguments and built precedents were investigated to identify potential design parameters. A viable site for the project was also investigated. As a result, the Sustainability Drop-in Centre was created in the heart of Karori. Its design was based on international case studies that emphasized green urbanism and TOD design initiatives, whilst also looking at Calthorpe's arguments for TOD design and Lynch's concept of place legibility as a set of inhabitable paths, edges, districts, nodes and landmarks. The integration of these crucial design parameters required a design intervention at multiple scales, from a new traffic design for the suburb to a detailed ramp design aimed at achieving energy efficient building design, thus limiting the need for lifts and escalators. As a result the final chapter illustrates the new design proposal in the form of representational renders of the pedestrian experience. These renditions, informed by the construction drawings referred to throughout the study, determine that the integration of a community centre as a catalyst for moving towards a sustainable built environment would create many improved quality of life opportunities, including, but not limited to, chances for social interaction, spaces and occasions for local bartering, and an opportunity for education in regard to sustainable practices. The design intervention has generated a stronger walkable suburb that gives importance to public sustainable forms of transportation and the needs of pedestrians, resulting in a suburb that will function well into a post-oil future.</p>

Form-Based Regulations to Prevent the Loss of Urbanity of Historic Small Towns: Replicability of the Monte Carasso Case

Small towns are a significant component of the landscape in Europe and a key element of its cultural heritage. Currently, they face socio-economic crisis and spatial disintegration. Against this background, the spatial transformation of the Swiss town of Monte Carasso is of particular interest. It was initiated in the 1970s as a design intervention made by the architect Luigi Snozzi and eventually constituted a local spatial policy with a scope to maintain or even restore town urbanity and identity. This paper describes the case through its decomposition into primal elements such as context, main procedure elements, supplementary action, and obtained results. The results were measured by calculating urban parameters and observations compared with the adjacent town of Sementina, whereby they proved that the policy is effective. In the next step, a synthetic diagram was proposed that describes the interrelation between specific elements of the procedure. It was then modified to serve as a model for other possible contexts. Finally, its main potentials and limitations were described. It was concluded that the construction of the Monte Carasso urban regulatory mechanism has the potential to be replicated elsewhere. However, some of its features need to be rethought—mainly the role of an individual architect, which was highly exposed in the original case.

Prioritising Storage Practices: A New Approach to Housing Design Thinking

Inhabitants of UK housing have more possessions than ever, whilst space for living in standardised houses is at a premium. The acquisition of material possessions, and how it affects both space and inhabitants’ wellbeing, has not previously been considered in architectural practice or housing policy research fields. This paper addresses this gap, by exploring how practising architects design for the storage of material possessions in housing. For the first time, it places storage practices at the centre of housing design thinking, by engaging practising architects in a design intervention to explore original design solutions that support inhabitants’ lives and lifestyles, and therefore their wellbeing. The study uses a new storage-focused conceptual design framework to seek design knowledge, to better understand how storage practices could be considered when designing. The findings have implications for design practice research, providing an account of how architects consider storage in housing design, drawing on novel design intervention methods.

Thickening of the city : a city is a living organism with a complex tissue of events

The industrial revolution and modernism brought dramatic changes to our cities and had a negative effect on people's social lives. This thesis considers cities as living organisms and develops systems thinking in city design with the aim of providing a vision that includes a healthier social life. The purpose of this thesis is to investigate how an architecture that views cities as social and natural systems can mitigate the negative effects of the industrialized era on our cities and bring social life into our neighbourhoods. Since the primary emphasis of this thesis is on the design process and the logic behind the application of some new scientific fields, an abstract architectural formal language is employed to illustrate the design development. The result is an iterative design process that has been repeated in a variety of mediums. The process uses Five Topics from different disciplines. At each stage of the research, some of the data collected supports a distinct approach to design intervention. However, in order for the Five Topics to work at the same time, the design intervention proposes a three dimensional solution for the city instead of a two dimensional traditional plan. Consequently, the thesis design provides an abstract model for the thickening of the city. This model applies some well-studied social principles to the existing pattern of the city.