Theories and policies in postmodern cities

Organisation of the course

A: Crucial issues in urban design since 1960. A critical view.

Since 1960, a wide range of opinions has been expressed in the discussions concerning urban design. The fact that the visions of modernism haven’t materialized, has brought about a series of new questions. How can a new and an old city coexist? How can the local and the international co-exist? How can new needs be incorporated and shape cities? How is society organized within the urban web which it somehow shapes? And most importantly in what way does urban design deal with these issues?

Within this framework, we will examine the following:

Density, mixing land use and multiplicity of models of movement (Jacobs, Alexander, Schumacher)
Return to locality (Sitte, Krier, Sennett, Frampton, Rowe and Koetter, Rossi)
Escaping from urban space (Banham, Venturi, Koolhaas, New Urbanists)
The illusion of a non-spatial society (Mitchell, Virilio)

B: The perception of urban space as cultural resource. The role and control of the planning of a city.

Understanding the function of planning in a city goes beyond the reason for planning, through the development of descriptive systems (spatial tools) which can help control planning.

Topology or geometry? The syntactic theory of urban space (Hillier, Peponis, Penn)

Basic tools (visibility, accessibility, movement, encounter, locality, centrality) (Benedikt, Hillier etc)

Methodologies for the representation of urban systems (Batty, Turner)

C: Identity crisis and multiculturalism in metropolitan centres. Urban planning as a mechanism of symbiosis or crisis.

In the course of the past decades, the gentrification of metropolitan centres has greatly relied on urban planning. At the same time, the metropolitan centres have increasingly functioned as reception areas for different social and cultural groups. How can the syntactic theory contribute to the understanding of the spatial expressions of these tendencies and to the control of design?

Within this framework, we will analyse the centres of the following cities:

Athens (Greece)
Nicosia (Cyprus)
Jeddah (S. Arabia)
Atlanta (USA)

Instructors:

Course coordinator: V. Trova, assistant Professor University of Thessaly

Participants:
G.Peponis, professor, Georgia Institute of Technology,USA
N. Charalampous, lecturer, University of Cyprus
M. Mavridou, architect, MSc, doctoral candidate University College London

Indicative Bibliography

Anderson, S. (ed) (1978), On streets, Cambridge, Mass., MIT Press)
Alexander, C. (1965), The Pattern Language,
Hillier, B. (1996), Space is the machine, Cambridge University Press
Hillier, B. and J. Hanson (1984), The Social Logic of Space, Cambridge University Press
Krier, L. (1978) “The reconstruction of the European city”, in Rational Architecture, London
Krier, R., (1979), Urban Space, London, Academy Editions
Koolhaas, R. (1979), Deririous New York, London, Academy Editions
Noussia, T. and V. Trova,(2002) “Rewriting Memory: The impact of Albanian migrants on vernacular settlements in Greece” in Places of Nostalgia, Vol 52 IASTE Working Paper Series, Berkeley, CA
Peponis, J., Hadjinikolaou, E., Livieratos, C., and D.A. Fatouros (1989) “The spatial core of urban culture”, in Ekistics 334-335
Rossi, A.,Ghirardo D.,Ockman J., Eisenman P. (1984), The architecture of the city ,Opposition Books
Sitte, C. (1964), City planning according to artistic principles, Random House
Trova, V. (2007) “Designing for human encounter. Urban design and the politics of visibility”, στο A. Kubat et al (eds), 6th International space syntax symposium, Istanbul, pp 039.1-039.14
Trova, V (2003) “From the Individual to the multitude. Architecture and the pleasure of encounter” στο M., Theodorou (ed), Hermeneutics, Futura, Athens, pp 23-27
Trova, V., E. Xatzinikolaou, S. Xenopoulos, J. Peponis, (1999) “Housing estates of Athens: The structure of public space in sparsely built areas” in Space Syntax Second International Symposium, Volume II Proceedings, Fundacao de Apoio a Pesquisa do Distrito federal – FAP/DF, Brazilia, p 49-62
Virilio, P. (1984), “The overexposed city” in Zone1/2, Baltimore, The John Hopkins University Press