Shared Streets: When Cars Lose, Parametric Places 2020
Course Number, Time and Location: ARCH 4/523
Summer 2020, T + TH
Instructor: Philip Speranza, speranza@uoregon.edu
Streets and plazas are where we meet. Human health has been impacted by pollution of air, sound, light, and water, energy, social interaction, housing equity, inclusive design and now Covid19.
Meanwhile urban computing has fed off the revolution of almost all data now being geolocational. Remote sensing, data visualization and design can shape the way we take back streets.
This course will be set in Barcelona’s new Superilles (catalan for ‘Super-island’). Informed by sabbatical research in Barcelona, Copenhagen and New York, this media course will explore contemporary urban design theory, parametric analysis, visualization methods and street and plaza design for people. In the case of Barcelona should design be adaptive and participatory? Strategic and well built? How centric is tourism post-Covid? How does this model adapt to lower density? Commuter neighborhoods? Cost?
How does our understanding of the environment today interact with data? How do we design with data? At what scale of space and time do we include phenomen data?
The methods taught in this class will investigate the measurement of small-scale and time-based geospatial understandings using Rhino Grasshopper and possibly Arduino microprocessor based remote sensing prototypes. Students will analyze and design for phenomena that vary within Barcelona’s existing Poblenou, San Antoni and future superilles equitably dispersed non-central districts. Following methods by world leading urban design Gehl Design, students will look to mine big data and social data following in-person pilot test in their own public spaces. Environmental micro-climatic differences will be studied simultaneously across human scaled urban and non-urban spaces. This data will be compared to baseline conditions via EPW weather database files using Grasshopper plugins Ladybug and Diva, often situated at airport weather stations miles away. Students will apply this data acquisition for design.
Urban ecological knowledge will be gained from possible Zoom communication with Superilles founders Barcelona Agency of Urban Ecology, Aldayjover Arquitectes, 2017 Pritzker Prize RCR Arquitectes, Barcelona Office of Resiliency and others. A brief history of Barcelona urban ecology will be studied from Cerda’s 1864 plan, ecologist Ramon Margalef, current Barcelona smart city planning and new deployments of the Superilles model primarily designed as refuges of healthy living within urban problems of congestion and air pollution. Research about this topic has recently been published by the instructor in the Journal of Urbanism, air pollution, about time in AD and elsewhere.
*Introductory knowledge of Rhino Grasshopper is required or pre-course tutorials will be provided. Readings, media exercises and urban design data acquisition methods will be done. https://blogs.uoregon.edu/523f17/ http://www.lcabcn2017uo.wordpress.com,
**Marziah Zad’s ARCH 484-584 Sensory Playscapes would be a good studio to apply these methods.