urbanGround: Seminar - Design Plus Presents for Urban Voids

Design Plus Presented for Urban Voids

Date: 31st March 2010
Location: India Habitat Centre, New Delhi
Organised by: GREHA

“The spirit of our times is neither the grand optimism of utopian modernist ideals nor the playful technological wonder that influenced the avant-garde of the 60s and 70s.”[1]

Through this lecture I try and address the layers of complexities of an urban setting. Attempt to objectify and tap into the overload of information that floats around. Reduce this information into data sets. And eventually question the role of Architects and Urbanists in “designing” an urban Model.

[1] Theodore Spyropoulos – Prologue: AADRL Documents 2, DRLTEN A design research compendium, AA Publications (2008)

The question that design plus posed for themselves if a dilution of program was possible in Nehru Place and more importantly who decides what’s to be done (assuming something needs to be done in the first place).

From the flyover, Nehru Place is a collection of concrete skyscrapers clustered around a few central plazas. In the buildings themselves, a number of very legitimate businesses. But on the ground level is India’s IT boom in action: an explosion of brand names, a cacophony of vendors, waves of young men in fashionable shirts, and ancient diesel generators that roar to life every time the power goes down.

Agents/ Boids/ Drones were deployed into the plaza with a simple rule of avoiding each other and spending time in the plaza. Originating from either end and based on fuzzy principles of directionality, location, conferences, final target etc they merrily just walk around the plaza.

Each agent, each simulating a set of visitors, divides the plaza.

We picked up one such division to identify the density pattern in the created areas. Identified 4 distinct areas based on boid congregation.

Touch me nots
Display Portal
Pavilions/ Follies
Use me as you please

With division sorted. We were unsure of the next step for the 3^rd dimension for a 24x7 environment. This stage of design methodology was purely intuitive, purely out of long hours of just staring at the ******* patterns the ******** boids had created and one inspiring video.

We adopted 3 approaches to deal with the 4 areas created.

1^st we adopted a packing exercise of the entire plaza. Repel and Scaled the geometry to restrict the packing in the “use me as you please area”. Created a portfolio of more patterns that provide another layer of information.

2^nd – we adopted simple paper folding exercise to provide an alternate terrain to the flat plaza.

3^rd – left alone the highly dense areas.