Revisiting the Urban Grid-II
GSD 9206UPD02, Independent Research Study, Fall 2008

Summary:
Revisiting the Urban Grid as Organizational Device for the Design of the City.

Framework:
This research seminar focuses on the investigation of urbanistic projects which use the grid and its multiple variations as their main structural device for the construction of the city. The ultimate objective of the course is to develop new understanding of the organizational possibilities that emerge from grid / regular systems in city design

1. The historic evolution of the city can be tied to regularized systems that have allowed for rational forms of development. Diverse cultures have provided varied interpretations of grid systems that serve as an active underlay for multiple urban domains; street network, private parcels, public spaces, diversity of grain, etc. A first Seminar done along 2007 establishes some categories and vocabulary for the current step.
2. In the last few decades, urban interventions have reached an unprecedented level of complexity and ambition, increasing the complexity level of design operations, yet the value and metrics of the grid are more operative than ever, and in more inventive ways than in the past.
3. New spatial demands require more flexible and open ended systems. These new forms of urbanism favor loose yet efficient organizational systems that can accommodate diversity and change throughout extensive city densification and expansion.

Research Topics:

The research seminar focuses specifically on the following topics:

1. Reviewing conceptual framework and terminology throughout XX century: grid / block / mesh / matrix, etc
2. Dimensional systems and layouts associated with the block and the grid.
3. Research on seminal cities which use the grid as its underlying structure; some of these examples are Edinburg, Barcelona, Savannah, Chicago, Beijing, etc
4. Research on seminal projects (city fragments) that have used the grid in order to introduce inventive organizational devices at the scale of the city
5. Comparative studies between the various investigations in order to establish both individual research tracts and a collective agenda for the research group.

Even though a few introductory readings are handed out at the beginning of the course, the seminar explore the topics primarily through the construction of analytical and operative drawings.

The seminar is open to all students in GSD. Note that a high level of graphic skills is required.

The seminar meets regularly both as a group and in individual meetings with the instructor.

Students work individually and in groups of 2. Number of students is limited to 12.

Resurfacing (Revisiting) the Grid as an Organizational Device for the Design of the City
GSD 9206UPD, Fall 2007, with Felipe Correa

This upper level research seminar focuses on the investigation and evaluation of urbanistic projects which use the grid and its multiple variations as their main organizational and structural device. The ultimate objective of the course is to spawn new understanding of the organizational possibilities that emerge from grid / regular systems in city design. Furthermore, the course aims at capitalizing on the potential transformations of laced structures into inventive urban assembly models.

1. The historic evolution of the city can be tied to regularized systems that have allowed for rational forms of development. Diverse cultures have provided varied interpretations of grid systems that serve as an active underlay for multiple urban domains; street network, private parcels, public spaces, diversity of grain, etc.
2. In the last 25 years, urban interventions have reached an unprecedented level of complexity and ambition, increasing the complexity level of design operations, yet the value and metrics of the grid are more operative than ever, and in more inventive ways than in the past.
3. New spatial demands require more flexible and open ended systems that can accommodate urban growth of diverse speeds. These new forms of urbanism favor loose yet efficient organizational systems that can accommodate diversity and change throughout extensive city densification and expansion.

Research Topics and Phases:

The research seminar focuses specifically on the following topics:

1. Topic definition and conceptual framework: grid / block / mesh / matrix etc
2. Research on seminal cities which use the grid as its underlying structure; some of these examples are Edinburg, Berlin, Savannah, Chicago, etc.
3. Research on seminal projects (city fragments) that have used the grid in order to introduce inventive organizational devices at the scale of the material fragment
4. Research on recent urbanistic projects that have engaged the grid
5. Comparative studies between the various investigations in order to establish both individual research tracts and a collective agenda that will hint towards a diversity of models that could generate well tempered urban systems; configurations that can effectively operate at multiple scales and engage diverse urban scenarios

Even though a few introductory readings are handed out at the beginning of the course, the seminar explores the topics primarily through the construction of analytical and operative drawings.

The seminar is open to all students in GSD. Yet please note that a high level of graphic skills is required.

The seminar meets regularly both as a group and in individual meetings with the instructors. Students work individually and in groups of 2

Lissome Urbanisms
GSD-9206UPD, Fall 2006

Framework

The seminar departs from the assumption that new urban pressures are taking place in highly decentralized regions and open territories. Traditional urban models structured around existing nuclei are being superseded by activities diluted within a much broader terrain. The conventional distinction between urban/rural (dense/sparse) settlement structures is slowly fading away, and settlement intensities are constantly being re-shuffled in response to a wide variety of variables, key among these are changes in transportation infrastructure, new ways of marketing lightly populated land, development of new hard/soft industries, and the development of new tourism and recreational infrastructure outside of the traditional city. Given this framework, the role of the Urbanist, which traditionally has been bound to the ideals of the compact city must be reconsidered or enriched, and new operative procedures must be explored in order to engage effectively a reality that operates under very diverse procedures distant from traditional attitudes of land colonization.

Pedagogic Aim

This seminar, temporarily suspends the traditional boundaries of the realm of the Urbanist, in order to explore alternate forms of occupation that can effectively proffer new ways of inhabiting and exploiting highly diffused regions. The course dis-encourages pre-established patterns of growth, and favors mechanisms that allow for the calibration of dynamic entities within a given territory. Furthermore, the seminar searches for settlement models that can effectively deploy skim and lissome entities at multiple scales. The seminar seeks territorial developments that are less subject to prescribed form and participate more from an open process of formation where morphologies are highly mutable and interchangeable.

Structure.

The seminar focuses on 4 interrelated terrains:

Open Territories and Extended Fields; Abstract proposals that can hint towards organizational models that allow for the loose development of settlements within a vast extension of land.

Spines and Tracts; Organizational Strategies that focuses on the structuring of a particular region that operates in regards to one specific geography or condition.

Networks and Units; Organizational models that can operate both as a self sufficient entity and also be part of a larger network of settlements that make up a greater infrastructural "system."

Points and Nodes; Fragments that are of a much bigger physical magnitude and with a highly significant cultural, economic, and/or social presence. The relevance of their operations go beyond their dimension and act as an operative and rather autonomous node within a much broader regional context.

For the first half of the semester students focus on researching significant precedents and referents for each of the terrains in questions. For the second portion of the semester, students use the preliminary research to speculate on new settlement models that can effectively engage the four terrains in question. Ultimately, each student has to make a class presentation that bridges and establishes connections between precedent and speculation. In addition, a brief yet comprehensive reader is given to each student. The reader should act as a primary source that can foster more extensive investigation.

Four lectures presented by the instructors at the beginning of the semester frame the terrains in question and serve as a departure point for each of the explorations.

Grading

The main objective of the seminar is to foster discussion and the advancement of ideas. Grades are an outcome of the overall performance weighing in the final paper, the class presentation and class participation.

Restructuring From Within: A Flatbed Site in Quito As an Agent for New Centrality 
GSD 9206UPD, Faculty Research Seminar, Fall 2005

This Faculty Research Seminar, sponsored by the Corporacion de Salud Ambiental de Quito, aims to investigate a fundamental issue in the transformation of the contemporary city, explored through a specific urbanistic project.

It looks at the inherent potential of terrain vague as redefinable space that can drive major urban transformations and endow a specific territory with a new and significant centrality. Using the city of Quito and its current airport as a primary object of inquiry, students rethink the potential role of derelict land within the city. Furthermore, students explore tentative models in which the city can restructure this territory into an active asset for the northern portion of the city and for the metropolitan region at large.

The seminar focuses in three crucial issues:

1. The Airfield in the City: The Latent Potential of the Flatbed Site
   Inner city airfields traditionally have been zoned far away from the city, as undesirable programs that would never attract adjacent development. Today, in a retroactive manner, airports have been grandfathered as key entities in the development of urban growth, and are being considered as emerging sites. This portion of the seminar investigates the notion of a “built-in expiration date” in early twentieth-century airports, and explores the dynamic processes in which the adjacencies they generate end up choking their own operation.
    
2. Quito and Its Airport: A Flatbed Site 10,000 Feet Above Sea Level
   Quito, Ecuador, an Andean city, 10,000 feet above sea level, exists and operates within the constraints and pressures of a most robust topographic condition. Originally traced under the Law of the Indies, today the city has grown to be a major Latin American metropolis with a population of more than 1,700,000 in its Metropolitan District. Its primary airfield, Aeropuerto Internacional Mariscal Sucre, sits in the central portion of the northern part of the city and is still widely active, receiving all international and domestic air traffic for the city. By January 2008, the new airport in Yaruqui, 25 miles away from Quito, will be operative. Shortly thereafter the grounds currently occupied by the city airport will be returned to the municipality and will be subject to a wide array of development pressures. Research on Quito will be framed from the perspective of the City–Valley.
    
3. Urban Model: Restructuring Strategies for City’s Old Airport
   The research provides an overall framework and leads the development of a concept for the future restructuring of the territory in question. Drawing from the two previous portions, students develop a series of well tempered models for Quito’s airport grounds.

Seminar Structure

The seminar meets once a week for a three-hour session. During the first portion of the semester (1/3) students focus on the first two issues (the airfield in the city, and the city of Quito), and during the second portion of the semester (2/3) students work on the development of the different strategies.

Logistics and Travel

A trip to Quito, Ecuador, is scheduled for September 2005. The trip is fully sponsored and all airfare costs and accommodations are covered.

The seminar is part of a much broader research project, directed by Joan Busquets and Felipe Correa, on terrain vague and its inherent potential as an agent for development.

A major exhibit in Quito and a comprehensive publication on the subject is scheduled for July 2006.

Approaches to City Design in the 21st Century
GSD 9206UPD, Faculty Research Seminar, Spring 2004

The condition of the calendar at a turn of century is an invitation to reconsider scientific and disciplinary fields. Yet in the case of Urbanism and Urban Architecture, this act of revaluation seems particularly necessary, in view of the contradictory situations surrounding them: first, we get the feeling that the paradigms which directed the actions and plans of the XXth century are no longer relevant or have been played out, and second, the city and the projects based on it have a much higher-profile presence than ever before.

In as much as a theoretical discussion of Urbanism and the city is wide-ranging and confused, it is difficult to start classifying definitions and ambits, and it is perhaps more effective to describe the lines of work which focus on a project based discussion of the city, realizing that they also fit into the vast scope of the urbanistic debate, taking a more academic approach.

Our concern here, then, is to emphasize the condition of the “project” in Urbanism, be it on the scale of an urban fragment of a given dimension or of the city as a whole.

A description of the situation of urbanism at this turn of century, precisely at a time of recognition of this intellectual and professional activity, when it has become socially accepted, seems to be an opportune moment to present these “approaches” which, to us, seem most outstanding, with a view to insisting on the project based approach to urbanism, one that has become lost in bureaucratic and administrative problems.

This approach does not mean that urbanism as a whole is moving along these lines, though there do seem to be certain urbanistic project lines of methodological and instrumental specificity, which lead us to presume that their influence on the production of the city could be more interesting than it has been in recent decades. This affirmation contains the hope that this field of work will advance and become a vehicle for the improvement of the living conditions of the majority of citizens.

Let’s take a look at the taxonomy of “approaches” in the form of ten project lines.

1. KEY BUILDINGS FOR STRATEGIC PROJECTS
2. BIG URBAN ARTEFACTS
3. MINIMALIST PROJECT
4. URBAN SPACE. LANDSCAPE WITHIN THE CITY
5. URBAN PROJECT
6. REVIVAL APPROACH
7. LARGE-SCALE LANDSCAPE PROJECTS. DECENTRALISATION
8. URBAN REVITALISATION
9. URBAN MASTERPLAN
10. EXPERIMENTAL PROJECT