Team#525_Planned Cities ENTREGA 2

7/29/2019 Team#525_Planned Cities ENTREGA 2

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Leuphana Digital School2

stAssignment Planned Cities

CORNERS AS PARADIGME OF URBAN DIVERSITY

Suellen Costa, Nadia Gonzalez, Maria Alejandra Pucheta

The cities do not explain their past but they contain it,

as hand lines, in their corners

Italo Calvino, Invisivel Cities, 1972

Living public spaces as collective identity

On Assignment 1 we concluded that Collective space is what integrates the cityselements, they belong to the symbolic field, as a cultural product of their

community. And to develop real Collective Spaces it is essential tocreate Collective Identity, to raise the sense of responsibility, communityinvolvement and people's creative potential.

One of the cities analyzed under this Significant Detail was Brasilia, the spatialsegregation of circulations between pedestrians and vehicles, treated under theguise of "city for the automobile". Now we intent to go in depth in this Key Themeby contrasting and analyzing Barcelonas configuration of public spaces andfocusing on the concept of interways.

Urban scale, Human scale

Curiously, one year after Brasilia was founded, Jane Jacobs wrote her renownedcritic about urban planning ideology of ModernismThe Death and Life of GreatAmerican Cities, 1961 - that, in her opinion, the "zoning" and the emphasis in theconstruction of individual buildings would put an end to Urban Space and CityLife; since Modernism put a low priority on quality of public spaces andpedestrianism. Looking to the city today, it is clear what Jacobs said.

In Brasilia corners and intersections are designed to facilitate cars flow; this way

streets and highways divide people and space. Actually Pedestrians don't havean easy task to get to those places (most of the time they have to cross at leastsix lines of traffic, bridges, etc), and almost every four-way intersection is acloverleaf interchange.

In Barcelona corners and intersections are designed altogether with streets andavenues to be livable by people; theres a clear interaction between citizensand public spaces; which generates a dynamic journey through the city.


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The former has a Monumental scale, while the later was conceived with Humanone.

The corner and the city

Across urban form, the way the streets intersect among them is one of thecharacteristic that influences our image of the city.

In Eixample- Barcelona, Cerd has worked extensively with the corners andopening of the blocks as an essential issue, he intented to present them not onlyas geographical, social and economic crossroads, but also the special conditionwith what architecture materialize them; moreover as intersection of construction,flows, movement and energies.

The 20 meters high square blocks with chamfered corners and the streetsbroaden at every intersection, forms a sort octagonal squares. Cerd definesthe inflexion as a simple change in the sense of the street, breaking thesidewalk continuity to get to a re-qualified, well ventilated and sunny open space.This great void, outlined by corners, place mix of uses: commercial, housing,monuments, transport; and so express the nature of the city as places formeeting, exchanges, social expressions, overlap, conflict and diversity.These extended corners increased the value of urban art and architecture,specially on the corners where buildings -such as Gaudis- would be now morevisible and admired, becoming symbolic and giving identity to the neighborhoods.

Diversity of facades and people meet at the corners and cause innovation andencouragement. In this way, the corner constitutes a proposal from diversity.Difference+coincidence could be a a new definition for corner; and also forcity.

Learning from the past

Therefore, according with our key theme, what would be the most importantfactor to be considered? The answer is easy: people. Although, Brasilia and

Barcelona has "redesigned" corners, what really differs one from another is howconsider people in the urban plan.

So, what have we learned from the past? The city of the future should not bedefine by two dimension grids or flatten perspectives. Are new planned citiesconsidering intersections quality and human scale as such important elementfor public spaces and collective identity?


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Leuphana Digital School

2st

Assignment Planned Cities


Bibliography

CALVINO, Italo. Invisible Cities. London: Secker & Warburg. 1972.EATON, Ruth. Ideal Cities. Utopianism and the (Un)Built Environment. London: Thames & Hudson. 2002.JACOBS, Jane. Death and life of great American cities. New York: Random House. 1961.ROSENAU, Helen. The Ideal City. Menthen & Co. Ltd. London and New York, 1980TAFURI, Mamfredo. Architecture and Utopia: Design and Capitalist Development [Paperback]. 1979http://www.escolessas.com/escolessas/laie/recerca/bat/ensanche/ensanche.pdfhttp://scholarworks.umass.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1013&context=john_mullinhttp://digitalcommons.calpoly.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1026&context=crp_fac

"Complementary Material - Table of Comparison Complete"http://www.flickr.com/photos/susucosta/8469302346/sizes/h/in/photostream/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/susucosta/8479723336/sizes/l/in/photostream/http://www.flickr.com/photos/susucosta/8479723336/sizes/l/in/photostream/http://www.escolessas.com/escolessas/laie/recerca/bat/ensanche/ensanche.pdfhttp://www.escolessas.com/escolessas/laie/recerca/bat/ensanche/ensanche.pdfhttp://scholarworks.umass.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1013&context=john_mullinhttp://scholarworks.umass.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1013&context=john_mullinhttp://digitalcommons.calpoly.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1026&context=crp_fachttp://digitalcommons.calpoly.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1026&context=crp_fachttp://www.flickr.com/photos/susucosta/8469302346/sizes/h/in/photostream/http://www.flickr.com/photos/susucosta/8469302346/sizes/h/in/photostream/http://www.flickr.com/photos/susucosta/8469302346/sizes/h/in/photostream/http://digitalcommons.calpoly.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1026&context=crp_fachttp://scholarworks.umass.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1013&context=john_mullinhttp://www.escolessas.com/escolessas/laie/recerca/bat/ensanche/ensanche.pdfhttp://www.flickr.com/photos/susucosta/8479723336/sizes/l/in/photostream/

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Team#525_Planned Cities ENTREGA 2