Cities For People
After watching this video, there is alot of different perspective of Urban Design in the modern times. The speaker friend's once said, "Urban design is not about architecture, it is about the culture of the place, the design, the space." I agree on what he said as later in the video, we can see the disadvantages when we don't think of design for the people, for the space. Instead, urban design is what the buildings that are design do in the space itself, the city itself. For example, how it invokes people, how it changes the perspective of the space. Another quote from the video is, "In the current times, as development increases, Poverty increases too." which is sadly true. The income gap between people is slowly increasing, we as designers, should start considering for people and not just the design, the art itself. We are slowly building a social catastrophe. Designers forget about quality and only think about the aesthetics department, which shows no consideration at all towards the space. For example from the clip is, A 60KM/H highway. Yes, it does serve its purpose in transportation part but there is no consideration for the space. How so ? since its a long, large road. Users will just drive at a high speed through the whole way and there is no detail, no design, no time to interact with the surrounding.
Urban design is when we include micro details, specific tiny details that people mostly miss out, or choose not to bother about their existence. Trees, cafes, footpaths, small civic places, all these adds up to alot as a whole and can contribute positively or negatively to the overall space. The video also states that there is a new bad habit in designers called the "Brasilia Symptom". It means designing from "above", birds-eye level. Designers just plong in the structure from above and have no consideration towards maybe the buildings beside it, across it. It looks nice above air on a helicopter but from eye level, it is disastrous. This again, links back to the problem where designers only design just to look good. Another problem is Scale Confusion. Where the structures gives people a very uneasy, sense of confusion just by the buildings and the environment beside it. An example would be in our very own country, Singapore. The Singapore River is a good example. There is shophouses beside the river but beside the shophouses are huge massive skyscrapers. This shows a sense of Scale Confusion. People will find it weird. Video also says that recently, landscape architects are also slowly becoming obsessed with form too.
Good architect/architecture is not about form. It is Form + Life = good architecture. Finding the balance between these 2 is the formula to becoming a good architect. We have to consider every point in a space that is assigned before designing something. Small details can actually add up to alot.
Another example would be where the speaker is from, Copenhagen, Denmark. The view from above is terrible, monotonous and boring. However from an eye-level perspective, it looks like a perfect town to stay in. Scale is right, suitable amount of traffic on the roads, people cycling, people walking to work. A cozy atmosphere to stay in. Therefore, Eye-level scale and perspective is the most important in design as stated in the video. People tend to forget how the town/city look like from above when during eye-level perspective is good.
"First, we shape cities, then they shape us", i like this quote alot from the video. We first design an empty space, and next we are going to live in it. How we design it, affects the mood, the atmosphere. Which then in turn affects us. In conclusion, we must take all small details into consideration, is the design pragmatic ? does the design have a proper flow ? and not be too obsess with the form itself and have no care for function.
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