11th EAEA Envisioning Architecture: Design, Evaluation, Communication Conference in 2013

Track 2 | Experiential Simulation | The sensory perception of the built environment

Moments of experience in urban design projects

ABSTRACT

Working at a large scale, it might be easy to miss human scale sensitivity in urban design projects. While it is important to analyze macro scale characteristics, movements, flows and systems, most of these issues also have to be considered at the micro scale as they influence the immediate human experience of the environment. In an urban design studio for undergraduate students at an architecture department, a major focus is to observe, analyze and design moments that students experience on site along with large-scale systems. This process results in a scalar flux throughout the project. Another main concern for the studio is to pay attention to discreet moments and characteristics of the site and integrate them into design process to amplify and improve the character of the place.
During their first visit to the site, students acted as Flanuers and prepared conceptual pieces representing their first impressions. Later, through a more formalized and systematic observation, they recorded and analyzed conditions that had attracted their attention. Secret spaces, hidden layers, heat affects, smells, compression-and-tension, enclosures, thresholds, moments of memory, unconventional landmarks, and barriers are some of the conditions that the students noticed. Analyses of such conditions required some experimental and unconventional tools and methods of representation.
In addition to the small-scale analyses, larger scale conventional analyses were conducted and synthesis diagrams were created. Various conditions of different scales were mixed up and recombined together by the help of a game process. Resultant moments were diagrammed and became important nodes for master plan, while the overall logic of the game shaped up a vision for the site. While it is a challenge to connect design thoughts and ideas of different scales during the design process, fragmented moments were stitched together for a cohesive master plan that also addresses the macro scale concerns. This paper will present the overall process of the studio while focusing on various representation methods and strategies that were not only useful for analysis, but also had a generative role in the design process.

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AUTHOR

Mine Hashas-Degertekin

Architecture Department, Southern Polytechnic State University, Atlanta, GA, USA

Mine H Hashas-Degertekin is an assistant professor at the Architecture Department of Southern Polytechnic Sate University, teaching urban design, design fundamentals, and research methods. Her expertise is in community and urban design with a focus on social, psychological and experiential aspects. She coordinated first year design studios in the past and is currently coordinating urban design course. She is Southeastern Regional Director for Design Communication Association. She earned her Ph.D at North Carolina State University, M.Arch. and B.Arch. at Istanbul and Yildiz Technical Universities of Turkey. She had practical and academic experience in the UK, The Netherlands, Germany and Turkey.

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