‘Infrastructural Landscape for Participatory Development’
- It is about creating an urban architecture that promotes the democratic use of public spaces, allowing users to appropriate through participation that is encouraged by the nature of the urban fabric. This is because spontaneous activities initiated by local communities are the only mechanism which could bring the right balance and quality of life, and achieve truly democratic use of urban spaces.
2014/15 AA Intermediate 6
Unit Trip to Shanghai & Tokyo
Spontaneous activities undertaken by local communities are making cities vibrant and unique, and they are the only mechanism which allows truly democratic use of the urban fabric.
There are specific spatial settings for spontaneous activities to take place. In Southbank, buskers along the river between London Eye and Royal Festival Hall require certain diameters and distances away from each other to perform there successfully.
Categorized community spaces were directly placed onto network pathways according to the conditions, such as along a large flow of people for exhibiting performance, where they could be more public or private by nature according to the path width or connectivity to certain attraction points.
The top layer in blue is connecting buildings only, creating private paths for building users, while the bottom layer is in yellow for office workers and residents for fast track from/to transportation. The main layer is in the middle in pink, which is mainly for visitors to the site.
Based on existing networks of different user groups within the site, network pathways were redrawn. The pathways allow useful separation of circulation for each user type, and integration at certain locations for having shared community spaces.
Network pathways and community spaces are interwoven with the site.
They also extend to the surroundings of the site, such as to the other side of the river for possible future growth.
The buildings are rather in a supporting role to serve the needs of community participants to operate in the community spaces.
The community spaces are sunken at certain location and connected to the bottom layer as shared spaces, so that it gives depth of circulation and opportunities for finding & appropriating the spaces could happen.
Buildings are cut out so that inner side of the rings can still get access to the sun during the daytime.
The overlapping parts of network pathways create opportunity to find unexpected encounter of community activities, such as office workers operating in the upper deck could peak through street dancing in the lower layer, and might be able to join in after work.
