User:Hollie
From CollabLandWiki
Hollie Woodhouse
Victoria University of Wellington
Design Intent
Design position
- Our physical public spaces have long been one of the most vital components that make up city life. They are the centre for gathering, communication, and, above all, activities.
- Technology has not only changed the way we use public space, it has also brought about its virtual expansion. Through technological innovations like the Internet, mobile communication, text messaging, intranet and GPS, we can freely share information and develop a community life virtually. Some of the idealistic concepts of what public space should be are being realised in virtual public space.
- Virtual spaces defy geographic limitations and are able to provide many new possibilities. How can physical public space still acts as the carrier of physical public space, while simultaneously acting at a virtual scale?
- Can new technology improve the quality of virtual and physical public space?
- How can the tourist use technology to capture the essence of Cathedral Square?
- Does the Geographic Centre of the City equate to the Cultural Centre of the City?
Has the onset of new technologies and communication mediums (digital) made a centralised city form unneccesary? How has the impact of technology altered city form/geography.
- Historically centrality has largely been focused on the Central City. The central city today is now one form of Centrality as we know it, with emerging spaces from transnational networks, economic systems and technologies that all contribute to the geographic dispersal of a centre at a regional, national and global scale.
- What numbers of buisiness around the square now rely on technology as a form of communication, instead of a physical form of communication? Has the need to communicate in a specific area been taken away but the rapid rise of technology? How can technology in the form of design bring back the need to inhabit a space in the central city. Can technology be used to entice poeple back into the square, on both an informal and formal level?
Issues to investigate
- The issue isn't with the Square itself, but with the streets and lanes that lead into the Square.
- Does the centrality of a city necessarily have to be a visual space, or merely a space made up of intense communication?
- Has the role of economic globalisation and new technologies altered the role of centrality?
- Through both electronic space and the geography of the built environment, it has resulted in the repositioning of the central urban area.
- Distinguishing spaces that inhabit the Square e.g. mulitnational businesses that are located in heritage buildings surrounding the Square.
- Space as a sense of Place
- Social qualities of a Space and what draws people to the Place
Preliminary site analysis
Obvious Site Issues
- Activating the edges through retail, souviners, Hotels, Restaurants
- No orientation into the square, or around the City - High street, Victoria street
- Drawing people into the square
- Lanes leading into the square are dead
- Increase of attractions to malls - Convenience
- Expansion of City - Urban Sprawl
- Bus exchange system moved out of Square
- Police Kiosk - intrusive to space
- Major cultural significance - Memorials and Cathedral to both Maori and Pakeha
- Symbolic Nature of Cathedral
- Definition of boundaries - both Cathedral land and Council land
- Public has strong ownership and opinions towards the Square
- Conflicting demographically - students vs senior citizens
- Eclectic mix of architectural styles used on perimeter facades - Classical, Gothic
- Tension with pedestrian vs vehicular within the Square
- Issue of Grid - Colonial
For an in-depth analysis see Cathedral Square, Christchurch
The linking page is a collaborative effort by:
- Hollie Woodhouse
- Jen Fowler
- Remi Bint
- James Stephenson
Literature Review
The Impact of the new Technologies and Globalization on Cities, Saskia Sassen: Cities in Transition, Arie Graafland
This essay addresses the issue of how economic globalisation and new technologies alter the role of centrality in the city, thus questioning what do we classify as the centre of our city?
Melbourne: Back from the Edge, Rob Adams:
This article uses the city of Melbourne, Australia, to identify major issues that occur in a failing Central City, and what has been done to rectify the city back into an active working Central area.
Transitory Image Space: Urbanism, Brett Steele: Transurbanism, 2001
This article questions an Architects attempt to explain their work in relation to the City infrastructure. Given the aggressive reconfiguration of global cities into media empires, tourist escape domains and corporate marketing extensions, these have all changed the global design culture into animated advertising surfaces of our global cities.
Landscape/Infrastructure, Chrus Sawyer: The Mesh Book
For Landscape Architects to successfully negotiate the link between landscape and infrastructure it requires a historical, geographic and economic awareness in the way we construct our landscape, and how our cities and country have been economically and culturally exploited through the strategies of landscape and territory. This requires an understanding that infrastructure is more a procedure than a form, influencing a number of different constraints. It addresses the issues of Territory, Landscape, Scale and Intensity, Contested Spaces, Observation and Weak Boundaries, and how these realte back to the same issues in relation to Cathedral Square and the wider community of Christchurch.
On Politics and Urban Space, Kim Dovey: Debating the City,
In response to technological change, globalisation and privatisation, traditional kinds of urban space are being lost or transformed and new kinds of models are being created. This asks what are the implications for democracy in the creation of spaces combining both public access with private control.
Related readings still to analysed: the Architecture of the Visible; technology and urban visual culture, Graham Macphee: Continuum, 2002
Precedent Study
Millennium Park, Chicago
- 2004
- Key designers include Frank Gehry, Anish Kapoor, Jaume Plensa, and Gustafson Guthrie Nichol
- An active area through specific progamming
- A Relationship between the space and the people who occupy the space
- The Jay Pritzker Pavilion is a place for people to experience live free concerts
- The Crown Fountain allows the residence to actively participate with the Screens
- The Exelon Pavilions are an active method of providing energy through solar panels to the rest of the Park
- The Lurie Garden which refers to Chicago's transformation from its flat and marshy origins to a bold and powerful city provides a space within the park to enjoy without being set a specific programme in which to enjoy the space.
Millenium Park Link [1]
Body Movies, Rafael Lozano-Hemmer
- These screens are designed to work through human interaction
- People are enticed to the space they occupy for the interaction with the screens, not specifically for the spcae itself
Square of Adelaide
- A square that doesn't work as it has been programmed to
- Designed around a central square, with supposedly less important smaller squares around the outside
- Activated streets that surround the Squares
- Set in a colonial grid, with the Square designed to act as the Centre of the City
- Edges fragmented
- Intersected by strong axial roads through the Square
Place des Terraux, Christian Drevet
- Lyon Plaza, France, 1994
- Activated edges
- Designed to have interaction with the passerby. How do they navigate the space when the water is active?
- One dimensional site that turns into a two-dimensional site when the water is activated.
- Surrounding buildings have Cultural Heritage to the site, as well as the rest of the city
- Can be viewed from ground level, as well as viewd from the windows of the surrounding buildings
- A significant monument is located within the boundaries of the site
- A vast site that is dominated by a solid sufarce, with water added as another element
- With road passing through square the pedestrian vs vehicular element exists
See 'Changing Everything, Touching Nothing'
www.christiandrevet.net
Louis Jeantet Foundation, Domino Architects
- Geneva, 1995
- A Private space that could appear as a public space to the passerby
- Designed as a transition space into the Louis Jeantet Foundation of Medicine, as well as an outside space for this Building.
- An issue of scale has been addressed between the old Neo-Renaissance building that surrounds it as well as the small space that the space occupies.
- Its a small space that is mainly designed to be viewed from above, as well as having to function as a transition space
- A small space in comparison to Cathedral Square, Christchurch
- A varied combination of materials - Water, Concrete, Stone, Vegetation, Lights, Wrought Iron
- It is situated below ground level, so viewing can only been seen close up.
- A combination of both vertical and horizontal elements add to the spaces feeling
- Edges are only active as spaces to enter or emerge
For more related Precedents, see Theory, Cathedral Square Christchurch
Schedule of programme
Week 1:
- Site Analysis
- Analysing theory and precedents that help back up initial Design intent
Week 2:
- Stage 1 submission
- Continuing theory and research to help get a clearer understanding of Design Intent
Week 3:
- Presentation of broad scale agendas
- Continued research
Week 4:
- Identify two major design investigations
- Finish conclusions from site and progammatic analysis
- Have developed a clear articulation of design position, shaped by theoretical agenda and cultural and technical considerations
Week 5:
- Presentation Stage 2
- Further develop conceptual ideas
Week 6:
- Further develop conceptual ideas
- Meet with group in regards to people to see and questions to ask for next weeks field trip.
Week 7:
- Mid trimester break begins
- Christchurch Field Trip
Week 8:
- Analyse feedback gained from second field trip
- Possbly organise to meet with Jillian to discuss issues arising from disscussions held from the second field trip
- Further develop conceptual ideas
- relating design to new agendas from site visit
Week 9:
- Further develop conceptual ideas
- an edited representation of design processes and investigations
- a spatial model
- digital perspective images
- Scale plans, sections
Week 10:
- Complete resolved design drawings and models
- Stage 3 Submission
Week 11:
- Further develop conceptual ideas
- working on a new technology/construction detail
Week 12:
- Further develop conceptual ideas
- working on a new technology/construction detail
Week 13:
- Further develop conceptual ideas
- a new technology relevant to the design
- an innovative construction detail
Week 14:
- Stage 4 Submission
Week 15:
- Further develop conceptual ideas
- Spatial model
- Composite drawings
- Design booklet
Week 16:
- Presentation Stage 3
Contacts and Mentors
Lincoln University
Dr Jacky Bowring Associate Professor – Lincoln University 03 325 3804 or 03 325 2811 ext. 8439 bowringj@kea.lincoln.ac.nz
Earthwork
Wendy Hoffmott – Former Student - wendy@earthwork.co.nz
Shephard & Rout – Landscape Architect – 03 366 1562
David Shephad - dsheppard@sheprout.com
Rob Watson - rtwatson@xtra.co.nz Jasper – (works with david Sheppard)
Christchurch City Council
Ross Herrit – Cathedral Square Project Manager 03 941 8863 Ross.Herrett@ccc.govt.nz
Dave Hinman – Senior City Planner 03 941 8804
Maurice Roers – Senior City Planner 03 941 8960 maurice.roers@ccc.govt.nz
Amanda Fiddes – Events development coordinator 03 941 8163 027 2495873 amanda.fiddes@ccc.govt.nz
Peter Rough Landscape Architects Limited
Peter Rough, St Elmo Courts, 47 Hereford St, PO Box 3764, Christchurch, NEW ZEALAND - peter.rough@prla.co.nz
Jan Woodhouse
Landscape Architect 32 Kingsley Street Auckland 1022 Ph: 09 378 4154 Fax: 09 376 6099 E: j.woodhouse@clear.net.nz
