Over the past few years, I spent a lot of time backpacking across Europe by train (my favourite method of transportation). Inspired reading Le Corbusier’s Journey to the East and my time living in Singapore and Chicago, I jotted down some updated observations on urban life in my sketchbook:
Ideas for Megalopolitan Life:
On an increasingly dense planet where metropolises have exploded into sprawling megalopolises, and the boundaries between urban zones begin to fade (and rural areas cease to exist), we find more than ever the need to build in a way acceptable for dense, urban civilisation.
The modernist ideal city has been realised across the globe as a proliferation of glassy boxes, crammed together with little care for public space or other everyday needs of the inhabitants; creating cities segmented into programmatic clumps, not captivating urban environments where life is enjoyable.
In most places, our current built environment is filled with structures unsuitable for rich and dense urbanity: either classically inspired, stark modernist towers stripped of their originally-planned adjacent open spaces, or economical structures with little or no thought given to urbanity.
To this day, classical European cities remain some of the best built examples of successful urbanism- with a rich mix of commercial and residential spaces, interspersed with numerous activated public spaces. However, this model is outdated for a global population fast approaching ten billion, and attempts to replicate them have been widely unsuccessful.
Some intelligently planned cities such as Singapore, have been able to belie their relative density by restricting space-hogging private transport, with mixed-use structures, and prolific public and green spaces not only at ground level, but throughout the vertical strata of high rise development.
However, most of the world has been unable to produce a successful urban environment. The affluent attempt to escape this contrived urban nightmare by doing something worse- eliminating urbanity from their daily lives by imprisoning themselves in fenced-off houses, content to experience life exclusively through electronic devices.
We must build in a new way for 20+ century life in an overcrowded world, in order to bring back the joy of urban life!
The entire paradigm of human existence has changed dramatically since Le Corbusier’s landmark Towards a New Architecture was penned, when 20% of the world lived in urban areas. 50% of people on earth now live in cities, denser and denser. Corbusier’s five architectural guidelines, created in a world just getting accustomed to the industrial revolution: buildings raised off the ground, open floor plan, free facade, horizontal strip window, and roof gardens have become standard to various degrees in the modernist and contemporary architectural vocabularies. In an increasingly urban world, a path towards a new-new architecture needs new principles of urbanity.
Reflecting on my international life & travels, here are five ideas for improving urban life through architecture. These concepts were critical in developing my projects at university.
1) PERMEATE Enhance permeability, allowing for multiplicitous circulation and environmental porosity
Example project: Permeable Plaza + Canopy Courtyard
2) DENSIFY Incorporate a dense and diverse range of mutually-beneficial programmes
Example project: Vertical Park School
3) IDENTIFY Contribute to the specific contextual (urban and cultural) identity
Example project: ± Museum
4) PUBLICISE Improve existing public spaces, while creating interspersed new and innovative ones
Example project: Metroport
5) MIX Integrate public and private activities in exhilarating new ways
Example project: Megashelter
