//project three - Bundner Kunsthaus (Grisons Art Museum, Chur)

reflection...our final project for DAB530 was to complete an analysis on a piece of architecture and its relationship to its context, from the city we had already studied. I chose The Grisons Art Museum in Chur to study and analyse for project 03. At first it was hard to get my head around what the assignment was all about, as i found it a bit confusing the fact that we had to create our own criteria sheet for marking.

When i started getting into the assignment the next hurdle that i came across was the issue of being unable to find significant information on the building that i had chosen in Chur. Further, unfortunately google maps and google earth did not have street view for this city and only had a few relevant still images that were useful. I suppose in a way this was kind of a good thing as it made me analyse the building in a more creative way which i wouldn't have done if i had more immediate research and information available to me.

//below is my final board for project 03

//week thirteen

reflection...to sum up the semester, i believe it is important to be able to read a city in order to design for a city. For example in renaissance style planning the cities are symmetrically planned cities with perfect symmetrical geometry which makes it easy to design symmetrical architecture for as you can read the city through its form. Today we are trying to change the way we look at and others look at urban design. The ideal future city are those of eco cities which are sustainable and highly proficient in the use of resources. These are the cities which we are trying to ultimately achieve.

Below are some questions which were posed to us at the beginning of semester which i will answer now after finishing this unit:

what is architecture? architecture to me is sleepless nights, and more importantly the act of designing buildings which are site specific and connect with there surrounding context


what is good architecture? a good architect will design buildings which complement and connect with there surroundings


what is a city? although in past times geographically walls once determined a city, today a city tends to have no physical boundaries and is usually a large developed area of commercial, economical and residential merit.


what does it mean to be a good architect? it means being cleaver about design and architecture, understanding the context and site of the project and being respectful and compliant to already existing urban environment.

my comment on the images from first week, revisited....

image one:

building dominates context

image two:

blocks views to significant mountains

image three:

scale is out of proportion

I found it interesting to note how different my opinion and comments were on these images. I remember in week one when i first looked at these images and i struggled to find anything to say about them. Now when i look at them i see this huge building that takes over the whole landscape and dominates the context of the place. The buildings architectural form also differs from the rest of the surrounding buildings strengthening the fact that this building has little relationship with its context.   

//week twelve

LECTURE ON SUSTAINABILITY...



reflection... the lecture today was held by three guest speakers including; Elise Robertson, Magna Kowalk and Susan Loh, who all gave talks on their own perspectives and interests in eco cities.
The first speaker, Elise Robertson, spoke about three types of Eco-cities:
these included:  the garden city
                         historic green centres
                         and utopian green cities
//below is the model for Ebenezer Howard's Garden City for Tomorrow..

The Garden City that Howard Talks about refers to slumless smokeless cities. This idea about cities came about in the early 20th century and was very innovative for its time, it posed emphasis on creating planned cities that exhibited abundance of parks and gardens. I think that this type of utopian city be quite effective in terms of creating a beautiful sanctuary for people to live, although increasing large public areas within the city in abundance could possibly create the opposite to what is intended. It could create a dangerous city if these public spaces were not used appropriately. 

Overall i enjoyed listening to Elise's discusion and found it interesting to know that these kind of theories of utopian eco cities are not recent thoughts and ideas and infact are original theories of famous 20th century architects and urban planners. 

Magna Kowalk the next speaker stated: "All we can have are responses not solutions"

This statement got me thinking about my future profession in architecture and how it is important to think holistically about sustainability and the outcomes of certain designs. I think it is also important to note that we are commencing a change in the urban environment where we have to change the way we and others look at design. 

Susan Loh talked about eco cities through the perspective of other well known founders and urban planners. For example; Ebenezer Howard - the garden city, Frank Lloyd Wright - the living city, and William Mcdonough - Hannover Principle. Mcdonough's theory explains how humanity and nature need to co-exit in order to achieve utopia. 

Before this lecture i initially thought that the notion of eco cities was a relatively new idea, that has come about in response to the diminishing resources around the world. That is why i was surprised to find out that some of our early 20th century urban planners where already thinking about sustainable design and quality living standards. 

//week eleven

reflection....when analysing architecture within its context one can be and should be quite critical of how well it is suited to its environment and surrounding urbanism. It is one thing for an architect to focus on the design of the building, but without having any focus on the surrounding urban landscape the architecture can only function on its own rather than being part of urbanity. Today in the lecture Peter Richards brought up the issue of architecture + architecture does not always = urbanism, this is due to the reasons mentioned above about how architecture needs to consider the surroundings for it to function within an urban context. I think that the Villa Savouy is a perfect example of designing without taking into consideration the context of which it is designed in and the client it was designed for.

Form follows function? or does function follow form??
Peter posed the above questions to us today in the lecture in terms of how the exterior of the building functions within its surroundings. He elaborated on the notion of form follows function and made us think more broadly interms of the urban environment and how the architecture functions within its context. He talked a lot about access points of buildings and how they relate to adjacent buildings and town services. In particular we saw examples of cities that lacked in efficient urban design, where parts of the community  backed onto public facilities and shops although they were completely blocked off from these necessities, as access points to these parts had been completely disregarded. I think that this kind of lack of consideration to the function of these large impacting shopping centres and the surrounding mobility of the city creates chaos and demotes urbanity. All the aspect that help create an urban environment such as; walkability, diversity, proximity, connectivity, accessibility and legibility all contribute to creating a functional community.

When planning has not been considered and architecture is just randomly placed within a site this kind of approach function follows form approach. In this approach the functional aspects such as mobility and street scape of a city seem to get lost and rarely work coherently. Although, one can argue the pro's and con's of planned form follows function cities, for example they can create abundance of open space where possible danger of buildings being placed anywhere without consideration of its surrounding context can occur. Although these highly planned cities, on the oposite spectrum, can also be high evolved and have thoroughly considered the mobility and the accessibility of its architecture and urban form.

//week ten

Reflection… today in the tutorial we received feedback for our final boards from project two that we submitted in week nine. We also talked about what architectural element from our city from project two that we would like to analyse for project three.  I have chosen to analyse the Bundner Kunstmuseum in the center of Chur.  The fine arts museum was built in 1874 and was intended to be a private residences, it wasn’t until 1919 when it began being accessed by the public.  The building, today, has an extension on the back of it; this space is used as part of the exhibition space.

In the lecture Mirko talked about the importance of heritage with in a city and how it is an important aspect in order to understand the city. This made me think about the city Dubai which is a very newly developed city with little heritage to help visitors and residents identify themselves with in the city. It is a city which exhibits a total disregard to human scale. When heritage buildings are demolished and cities are rejuvenated this lack of identity can occur even if it had once presented a close interaction between the people and the architecture. Today i learnt that it is important to have a combination of old and new which compliment each other in order to achieve a presence of connection to the city.

//final submitted board

final board

...above is the result of our board after the exhibition and feedback we received from the tutors and Mirko. aspects that we changed:

- enlarged the scale of the nolie map to 1:2000 and added floor plans of important building

- included a few sketches of important aspects of the city

- enlarge the mobility map

//week eight - exhibition

city board // CHUR, Switzerland

reflection... The lead up to the day of the exhibition morning had been quite stressful. Many late nights and early morning were experienced to complete the project on time. When analysing the processes our group went through to complete certain tasks the main problem that was apparent was the amount of time that it took to complete them. It seemed to take twice as long to get anything done, although i suppose that is what happens in group assignments as there is more than one opinion in everything that is done. This is definitely not a bad thing, as end result will often work out more resolved and of higher quality. Another reason it took longer to get everything completed was due to deadlines being set and then the work not being achieved by the deadlines, this made it difficult to proceed past certain stages of the project when we wanted to. One thing I have learnt from this time management issue is in group assignments always allow for more time and be serious about achieving deadlines. 

Another aspect that our group didn't do very well was split up sections of the project to each group member evenly. I think every time we tried to split up any sections we would do it without any planning, this would result in doubling up in results due to the same part done by two different group members. I think in future more planning and preparation should be done prior to breaking off and completing individual sections, our group was just a little to eger to complete there own sections and finish the assignment. 

Aspects of the projects that really worked well was the presence of diversity in the group members abilities, each group member had something different that they were good at which seemed to compliment each other nicely. Such examples included having half the group fairly good at writing and the other half of the group being good at graphic layout and hand on aspects of the project. Although after mentioning the diversity present in the group, we only realised this close to the finishing of the projects and didn't utilise this advantage as much as we could have. 

Overall this project was probably the biggest group project i have ever completed, also the most time and effort any of us had ever put into a group project. I will be able to apply lessons learnt such as; time management and making extensive plans, towards other future projects at university and in the real world. I have enjoyed analysing the cities and find there evolution very interesting.

During the actual exhibition it was very interesting seeing other groups final projects, considering the amount of time that you spend looking at your own projects, it was nice seeing other interpretations on the assignment. Giving analytical feed back on other groups projects and also receiving feedback was a really important learning experience, which gave our group different perspectives on the work we had done. 

Feedback from Tutors

// nolle map is in fact a figure-ground map - need to find floor plans of major buildings to put into the map, also change the scale from 1:6500 to 1:2000 in order to see this detail.

// put north point on page and scale on all maps

// possibly merge some of the maps as some are unnecessary as they don't show much 

// add more diagrams - as they are interesting features of the project

// they really liked the section which show a transformation from old to new

(this feedback needs to be corrected by the due date of online submission in two week)

Images of model...perspex indicates major landmarks monuments and churches within the city..

//week seven

reflection...until the lecture today presented by the first Chris, I had never heard of the term surrealist architecture, I thought it was an art movement of which artists such as Salvador Dali and Max Ernst pioneered and followed. Although the further I researched into this type of architecture I found out that many well known architects have incorporated surrealism into there design concepts.

http://artobserved.com/artists/salvador-dali/

In the lecture Chris expressed his interest in Fujimori's surrealist architecture, which i also found very interesting. Fujimori connects his architecture with traditions of his Japanese culture by using raw materials of great significance. His concepts are very much ideas of fantasy like the Too High Tea House, below, which is on located in Japan on his own private property. 

http://designcrack.com/v2/2007/06/27/the-too-high-tea-house-by-terunobu-fujimori/

I like the concepts and buildings that are produced via influences of surrealist art, although i do not think that they are appropriate concepts for all locations. The Too High Tea House by Fujimori is definitely an instance where it completely fits in with its surroundings and cultural influences. I also found it interesting that in Chris's talk he chose to steer clear of Frank Gehry's architecture as he didn't think that  he was a surrealist architect. Rather he thought of Gehry as a architectural sculptor, I disagree with this thought after seeing the information presented and i believe that his architecture is surrealist. His style is very different from Fujimori's, as i don't believe that it displays much cultural influences, although it is very surreal in the unusual materials and forms that are exhibited in his architecture.

I found the tutorial today quite difficult as we realised we had a few issues with the report that we had written for the city project. We realised that we had all written very similar things on our city, Chur. This occurred as it proved to be very difficult to break up the text into four parts for each group member to write a section, as all of the discoveries and things we wanted to talk about intertwined with each other. We resolved this issue by writing a structured plan for the report with topic sentences, as a group, then individually writing parts of the essay under the appropriate headings and topic sentences. 

//week six - history analysis of Chur & mobility map

Chur is one of the oldest cities in Switzerland and sits on the southeast edge of the Rhine river.  A stream called Plessur breaks away from the Rhine and runs directly through the bottom half of the city, where the old town is situated. It appears that as the town is so closely located to the stream that it may have been the main access point to the city before the train lines and other transportation were introduced.

The addition of a major train line in 1858 allowed for easier access and transfer of goods to and from the city of Chur (n.a. 2010). It runs directly through the city from the bottom southwest corner to the top northeast corner.  As seen in the diagram, Chur is a centre point for linking cities nationally and internationally via train.  It also serves as a transfer point for travellers wishing to visit some of famous ski resorts in Switzerland. It is clear from the mobility map that the bold train line holds significance to the city.  The directness of the line through the city could bring one to the conclusion that Chur is a town that not many people visit with the intention of staying, rather they are there in transit while on their way further north or south.

To the southeast corner of Chur is the old town that exhibits narrow streets and very thin alleyways (as seen in the Nolie map). Before cars, this part of the city would have functioned well travelling by foot. In the old town today, as the streets are too narrow for cars, pedestrians are the only form of traffic.

Contrary to conclusions made above about Chur being a transit city, it is obvious that the city has slowly started to become a place where people visit. The addition of new roads, bus lines and the movement of the city centre to a new location allowed for cars and other transport to travel with greater freedom.  The extensive bus line that allows you to travel intercity and links you to and from the train stations, is an integral part of how the city functions. Although the city is still largely used as a connecting point for other destinations due to the major train line it exhibits, Chur is also largely visited for is cemented history and ancient architecture. 

//week six - more history talk and assessment breakdown

Topics to analyse:

mobility - pedestrian/cars/trains
urban history - organic roman style which lacks in grid form - churches
nodes - schools, centres, landmarks

Assessment break down:
Prue - urban history (organic form), history map
Amy - mobility history of chur, mobility map
Conor - mobility today, section
Guro - landmarks and documenting a city, nolie map

reflection... today in the tutorial we got into our groups and worked on the assignment more. The process of breaking down the assignment help get our heads around the work load ahead of us. As one of my larger tasks i was given the job extremely tedious of tracing the city (or at least a large enough portion of the city). By tracing the city we would have a base plan map to form the basis for the rest of the maps, also more importantly to form the lines for the lazer cutter in order to complete our model. After the tutorial today i am feeling quite overwhelmed with the workload to complete but also a little more at ease as i have somewhere to start. 

Lynch and Cuthbert both talk about the public and private domains of cities as if they dictate the urban form of a city. This may very well be the case in most cities, although what i would like to talk about is how the emphasis on public spaces within the last couple of decades has largely contributed to constructing this interesting urban form. The emphasis on safe cities and large open spaces seems to be main criteria of the idealistic new city. It is evident in the image of Chur below that the older parts of the city exhibit a very different layout to those of the new urban surroundings. Streets in the old city are narrow and the lack of public spaces is evident.  When you move away from the walls of this part of the old city you can see how the public spaces present increase, and the houses become separated on their own blocks.

I think urban design which includes sufficient public space is much more appealing if it is done in the right way, as there are many examples of barren wasted public spaces.

Jacob, J. Lynch, K. Castells, M and Mitchell, W. (2003). pp.114-118, 424-428, 475-485, 497-503 in LeGates, R. T and Stout, F (eds), The City Reader, London; New York: Routledge

Cuthbert, A. R. (2003). Designing cities : critical readings in urban design. Malden, MA,
Oxford : Blackwell Pub

//week five - assignment breakdown and research

Group members:
Conor Todd
Guro Aanestad
Prue Dabelstein

City - Chur, Switzerland

Chur, Switzerland

From doing a quick search of maps we found out that Chur in Switzerland is the oldest city in switzerland, it is surrounded by mountains that you can ski on, it has a large railway that goes through the city up to the mountains (alpine city), there are many churches and the streets are very narrow.

things to include in our research panel:
- maps (nolie, history and mobility)
- written component
- model of city

Facts about Rhine River:
- means to flow
- route for goods and trades inland to switzerland 
- boarders Switzerland and Germany
- suffered from pollution in germany in the past

 Section of Chur my group is focusing on where old meets new

reflection... in the tutorial i really enjoyed searching for maps and doing research for our chosen city of Chur. From images we could find the city is very beautiful and one of the oldest in Switzerland. The city has a very interesting aerial view which gave us some information on how the city may have formed. By looking at the main roads and shapes from an aerial view our group gathered that Chur was an organically formed city with not many straight roads. As you can see from the map at the top of this post which shows the whole of Chur you can see a main train lines that go right through the center of the city, possibly suggesting that it is a city in which you pass through to get to the alps or something of the like. One of the most interesting part of the city which my group is going to focus on is the southeast corner of the city below the main train lines. Just above is an image of this section. Our group found this section of the city particularly interesting due to the very obvious separation of areas, where an old city meets a newer part of the city (the southeast corner being the old city).

MAIN ROUNDABOUT FROM OLD TO NEW CHUR

http://www.travelpod.ca

PROTECTED BY MOUNTAINS

http://mystoryabroad.com/johnhuston/

OLD CITY

http://members.virtualtourist.com/m/29312/a9035/

Cuthbert explains that 'urban design is either 'architecture writ large' or 'urban planing writ small' (2003). I found this analogy of urban design interesting as it places the profession smack bang in the middle of urban planing and architecture. Yet Cuthbert writes that it is not recognized for either. I believe that urban planners, as they already deal with similar scales to urban designers, should merge professions so that planners who are not recognized for design will become proficient in both. Urban design and urban planning have many overlapping sections which is why in my opinion makes it hard to distinguish and individualize the two professions. If i was to define urban design i would say that it is almost the same as urban planning although urban design deals more with the city in a three dimensional aspect as well as designing spaces appropriate for the people. Even after trying to define urban design as its own entity i still think that merging urban planning and design would be the simple solution, although i could be a little naive of the situation.  

Cuthbert, A. R. (2003). Designing cities : critical readings in urban design. Malden, MA,
Oxford : Blackwell Pub.

//week four - Urban Analysis

exercise one A - Brisbane timeline

 exercise one B - Brisbane timeline

Mapping Brisbane's timeline was very interesting. In particular I would have thought that the main part of the city would be the oldest part of Brisbane and then expansion out from there would have occurred. Although this is not the case, in fact from completing the history mapping exercise it is obvious that the first hub of development occurred in the Fortitude Valley are of Brisbane and it wasn't until 1874 when the city center was developed.

 exercise two - mobility analysis

In the mobility analysis map above shows the transport routes of the city cat, cross river ferry, trains and main bus ways.

 exercise three - functional analysis

 exercise four - urban morphology

reflection... when completing these maps I began to think about the planning of Brisbane city in more depth and how a map of a city can show so many thing about the city depending on how you manipulate the map.

Urban morphology is analysis of a city which helps reveal human settlement patterns (Steiner, F. R. 2008). As we experienced in the tutorial whilst completing the urban morphology map, it is evident that the human settlement patterns can be seen in plan by colour coding the heights of the built environment. By completing this exercise you begin to form a map which shows a bit of the city's history. Whitehand mentions the notion of an urban fringe which constitutes to a major part of the urban area (Whitehand, J. W. R. 1987). I found this quite interesting that there is a space just outside of the town or city that is almost like a buffer zone between the urban and rural environments. I had a little look at some city maps where this is clearly evident.

 

As you can see in the map above of Chur, Switzerland, that the urban fringe (buffer zone) is coloured in white with the rural area in green and the urban city in gray.

      -Whitehand, J. W. R. (1987). The Changing Face of the City. Oxford: Institute of British Geographers.
      -Steiner, F. R. (2008). The Living Landscape: an ecological approach to landscape planning. America: Island Press

//week three - Describing the city

This week we had our second workshop on describing the city. this was predominately carried out by experimenting with different types of mapping techniques and gathering information to create urban sections.

ex1: CONCEPTRAL REPRESENTATION

ex2: CITY PATTERN

ex3: FIGURE GROUND MAP

ex4: NOLIE MAP

ex5: URBAN SECTION

ex6: STREET SECTION

reflection... Throughout the mapping process the most interesting maps for me were the nolli and the figure ground maps which clearly show you the public spaces in white. I found these maps very interesting because i never realised before how much public space there is throughout the city and fortitude valley. although the city pattern map took the longest to finish because of how detailed it was, I definitely think it is the map that clearly exhibits the structure of the city (and surrounding suburbs) as you can see where the city starts to morph into a more residential spaces.  It is also evident in  all of these maps the large impact the river has a on the layout of the city.

'The only legitimacy of the street is as public space. With out it, there is no city.' (Kostof, 1992). This quote by Kostof is an interesting thought and quite evident in the maps that distinguish between public and private spaces. Above the maps of Brisbane show more that 50 percent of the spaces in the city is devoted to public spaces. 

        -Kostof,S. (1992). The City Assembled. London: Thames and Hudson

After mapping in plan it is interesting to see the relationship between the built environment and the natural landscape in the urban section above. It shows a whole new perspective on the idea of public and private spaces in relation to heights above ground of which private spaces occupy. The private spaces when considering elevation possibly out way the public spaces within Brisbane city.

Overall I found the mapping experience quite informative as I was able to further understand planning  techniques in Brisbane city and how the Brisbane river and typography of the city has had a large impact on the urban planning.

//week two - Urban Reading

This week we had to allocate ourselves to a walkshop tutorial to take us to the Story Bridge. All of the walkshop tutorials were different from each other in terms of there modes of transport, i chose the walking group. Below are sketches i produce while i was on the walkshop.

Government House - landmark

Mangroves Boardwalk - path

 Goodwill Bridge - node

 Kangaroo Point Cliffs - edge/path

Story Bridge from Riverside - landmark/node

Story Bridge from below

Story Bridge elevation

walking up to Story Bridge

under Story Bridge

Story Bridge entrance

By using a combination of Kevin Lynch's approach ('The Image of the City') and Gordon Cullen's approach ('The Concise Townscape'), i have traced my way through the city with a series of sketches. Throughout the walk i gathered from my surroundings elements such as paths, nodes, landmarks and edges and documented each of them. Cullen sketched exactly what he saw although as if he were "to walk from one end of the plan to the other" (Cullen, 1996, p.17), this is what i have attempted to do in my sketches.

     -Cullen, G. (1996) The Concise Townscape. Burlington, MA: Architectural Press.

reflection...this week in the walkshop, apart from getting fairly burnt, i very much enjoyed walking to the story bridge via the back river side of QUT. by choosing the walking walkshop i believe we were at an advantage because we were actually able to walk the whole way which allowed you to stop and really experience all elements of the city. i believe Cullen's picturesque way of documenting urban design allows for a concise interpretation of the city and the important elements within the city. although the plans are as important as picturesque images in urban design, the images do tend to appeal more to and are understood by the wider general public.

i think it is important to be able to understand city's and the components with in them before you design architecture for them.

//week one

'order and transgression' - over stepping boundaries and growth

week one activity//write the first couple of words that come to mind next to the images below...

plan view of all images

image one

water front town.

image two

city versus mountains.

image three

floating city.

reflection...this week uni commenced and we had the first lecture for architecture and the city. I think I am really going to enjoy this subject because I will be learning about city's all over the world and in particular city's in Germany (which is where I am going on exchange this year).

When looking at the images above, at first I didn't realise that all the images where just different photos of the same city. The first image looks like a city that has been built right on the ocean front The second image shows a bit more context and explains the settings a little further letting you know that the water is probably a large lake or river in the middle of the city rather than ocean. and the third image looks like the city is floating at the foot of these large cliffs.

In the first chapter of 'Cities and Cultures' a reading by Miles, he poses the question "but what makes a city?". I think this is an interesting thought that could possible require a complex answer or could be as simple as saying that a "city is a place where things happen to influence history"(Miles, 2007, pg.9). Although saying this about a city portrays the city as shallow and lifeless with no purpose which is completely inaccurate. Cities today are densely populated and full of action and life, they are places of interest to outsiders and homes of others. I agree with Miles when he states that Utopianism is a key factor in the development of modern cities today, as it suggests that developers and urban planners strive to make idealistic cities. Take Dubai for example, it is a fairly new Utopian city with little history. The strive for this city to be a utopias has cause many social and environmental issues, greatly lacking in comfortable public spaces. It is fair enough to plan idealistic cities although thought has to go into the people who use the city not just the buildings that are put in it.

It is also interesting to think of how and why cities get established where they are, for the images above it would seem obvious that this city/village was established on the water front for convenience of exports and importing goods, also the fact that the terrain is to step to develop further back.

Miles, M. (2007). Cities and cultures. Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, New York: Routledge.