CENTRAL AIRSPACE:

URBAN VILLAGE

Central air space was another practice in urban design studio in order to redevelope the central station of Sydney  , make the better use of deid spaces around it and make the city more alive. In this practice as a team we use Urban Village concept in Jane Jacopes novel. This time we worked in larger group consisted of 6 people.So one of the experiences was to work in a big team. We also leaned how to use feasibilty in our design.

 Description of Design:

  Urban Village as a concept, provides an alternative to modern patterns of urban development common across western cities, namely decentralization, suburbia and urban sprawl. Drawing inspiration from Jane Jacobs novel ‘The Death and Life of Great America Cities’, the following key components that make up a good Urban Village are: vibrant streets, self-contained, mixed-use, Diversity, Different buildings types, Mix of old and new,Medium Density, Good Public Spaces,Walk able, the ‘street’ as the center of activity and fine-grained nature.

The proposed site is bordered by Chippendale,Haymarket, Ultimo, Sydney CBD, Surry
Hills and Redfern.All of these areas havedistinct and unique qualities.the proposal is to create an UrbanVillage that is a hybrid of the surrounding neighborhoods, to connect, bring together and create flow between the surrounding precincts.

Site Access

80% of people in the Sydney CBD area are office workers. By drawing upon the diversity and
character present in the surrounding areas the aim was to avoid creating a mono-culture development.fosters diversity, increases connectivity between the surrounding suburbs, gives back to the community through quality public spaces, encourages pedestrian and bike transit, possesses an animated street life, is mixed use, is constructed of contemporary and heritage buildings, ranges in scale, has key anchor institutions and overall projects a strong sense of place.

To develop a feasible project we propose to build a platform over Central Station and utilize the
airspace in this corridor.

Cape Town
East City Triangle Site

 Designing the East City Triangle Site was one of the most interesting and challenging experience that i had in Urban Development and Design.  We had an interesting trip with our teachers to south Africa which was a great opportunity to become familiar with the area,culture,issues and opportunities more closely. Furtheremore we had the chance to work with urban designers in council and use their opinions on our works.As group work we practice different paradigms to achieve the best design for the Triangle site. After our trip we started to work in new groups and use the information and experiences that we achieve from Cape Town.Our team consisted of three people with architecture and planning back ground. Therefore we used our skills and provided the best underground parking that could be built there and also the best built form. 
Description of Design:

To rethink the potential of ‘city making’ using elements of urban design such as open spaces, built form and transport. In response to the key issues of the site, the proposed scheme acknowledges the increased demand for parking within the CBD and proposes to transform the existing site that is located at the edge of CBD, where the built environment is fragmented and requires a catalytic project such as an underground car park to trigger further development.

Ground floor plan

Future developments in east city site reinforce a walk able environment with an opportunity for ICT

innovation, media, creativity and entrepreneurship development. The Innovative Park will be developed as a place favoring people rather than vehicles. Apart from creating jobs and contributing in economic growth, it will also serve as a new destination and link in the neighboring area.

Conceptual diagram

Development phasing from catalytic interventions

 Phasing 1: Demolish the original car parking, build the central park and
underground car parking.
Phasing 2: Building the business park, providing office to attract
enterprises, so there will be more job opportunities to attract users.
Phasing 3: Provide mixed use and residential buildings serving for the
prople work in the business park. Because the site is the gateway of
the eastern suburban to Cape Town CBD, sit will allow higher FSR as
incentives to encourage high quality built form or provision of more
affordable housings.
Phasing 4: Finalize the rest landscape part, include the small park in the
west corner and beside the pedestrian lane.
Phasing 5: Demolishing the existing buildings in the northeast of the
site and encourage amalgamation development. By considering the
shadow impact to the central open space and in response to Castle of
Good Hope, the west tower should lower than the east one, no more
than 45m.

The principle was to create a well-designed central park with the underground parking as the catalyst. Master plan for the site would be able to accommodate future changes in the market, as well as providing high-quality office space that is flexible, well-serviced and able to adapt to occupiers needs. Designed for pedestrian priority, all vehicular activity is routed around the edge of the site, to surrounding car parks or underground parking built on the site. The creation of a low-rise business park would engender a sense of community and integrate with the local context, providing a place for both work and recreation.

Cape Town

Plan City Precincts

Plan City Precincts was my first design experience in Urban Development and design. In this design the experience was to find one part of the city which has more potential to redevelop. I actually learned  which kind of development could be the better to be located next to CBD and waterfront.which in this case was mostly residential.Another experience was to use the suitable building type for the project.In Cape Town there is no certain built form for buildings. Therefore as a team we tried to use perimeter blocks. Furthermore we use the old grid network of the CBD and demolished one of the main highways of cape Town to make it more connective. After doing research and study about Cape town as group we found out about location, type of development and built form by knowing the opportunities and problems of area. 

Our team had two teem members with different back grounds, nationality and experiences. Therefore we split the work according to our skills and backgrounds. My teammate Ye Peng from Singapore was an experienced guy with management back ground who mostly did the analysis of the site and I as an architecture think mostly about the design. 

Description of the Design: 

The design is for a new waterfront mixed-use neighborhood in Cape Town CBD, seamlessly connected to the harbor. The neighborhood would be a new gateway for Cape Town and the CBD, connected with a new cruise terminal and plugged into the city’s bus rapid transit based IRT system. It would also provide a new waterfront city centre and community focal point.

The elegant city grid first laid out by the city’s Dutch colonial masters was abandoned in favor of radial infrastructure and larger lots to facilitate industrial development during the city’s industrialization. The mass population exodus from the CBD during the Apartheid period gutted its residential population and liveliness. The strategic location of the site and the progressive expansion of the adjacent V&A Waterfront into the site offer a new window and opportunity to re-connect the city to the harbour. New housing developments of mixed classes proposed offer opportunities for displaced residents to return to live in the CBD.

The key design ideas were to break down the existing brutal road network and highway viaducts, replacing it with the traditional 60x60m Cape Town CBD grid. The grid is used as a basic building block for the new neighbourhood for the layout of buildings, roads, pedestrian paths and
view corridors. New housing developments in the north and south will be served by a new tourism, job and amenity cluster in the centre of the site.