Designing Structures for Positive Urban Impact
As designers, we are always thinking about the components and elements needed to create functional structures and environments. Let's examine the Principles of Urban Design, which have been tried, tested, and improved over years of projects all across the world, to assist this thinking to become clearer.
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Designing and implementing a few principles to create an impactful neighborhood undergoes a serious thought process. These Principles, which cover several typologies and locations, serve as the foundation for our work in urban design. They are adaptable to particular cultural settings and environmental conditions while still being useful to various locations and markets. Our beliefs in the creation of excellent places through site-specific, mixed-use, mixed-activity plans as well as the universality of comfort, convenience, usefulness, and delight in successful urban design are reflected in them.
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As it is considered to be an amalgamation of minute details. Every single factor is expected to play its role effectively to benefit the users. From his work, Kevin Lynch came up with the 5 elements that make a city: pathways, districts, edges, landmarks, and nodes.
While taking a close look at these elements it includes both built and open spaces as elements that make up a city.
Basic Principles of Urban Design:
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The literature on urban design demonstrates that more subtle aspects of urban design may also affect walking, (Ameli et al., 2015; Maxwell, 2016; Ewing and Clemente, 2013), which accounts for a substantial fraction of daily travel, especially in developing countries (Mateo-Babiano, 2016). Apart from this factor, other qualitative definitions define the quality of urban design. Let’s look into them in detail and analyze how it adds value to the overall imageability of a city.
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Design and Activity for Users:
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Scaling urban surroundings to human proportions, sensibilities, and experience is necessary. Even at the municipal level, designs must be centered on the requirements and preferences of those who reside, work, and play within the urban environment. Buildings, infrastructure, areas, and facilities must be simple to use and easily accessible. They ought to be created with the end-user in mind, allowing for seamless transitions between various tasks and activities.
People are rooted, content, and drawn back for more by the exceptional experiences that great locations create. People desire contentment and joy in addition to a sense of connection and security. The experience-led urban design places a special emphasis on the crucial times in people's lives, enhancing and enriching their daily lives, and making an urban living not only easier but also more spectacular.
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Flexibility and customization are also important. To suit people's evolving requirements, a design must be flexible and offer alternatives for customization in leisure, technology, and transportation. In light of the desire for more leisure time, it is especially crucial to reduce unnecessary travel. To support wellness and well-being, design solutions that make it easier to engage in leisure activities should help individuals feel connected to nature, open space, and daylight even in crowded metropolitan environments.
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A strong people-centered approach also includes preventing technology from compromising the human experience. It is crucial to keep in mind that technology needs to be compatible with place-personality as the march towards "smart cities" picks up speed. And while data might complement the good urban design, it should never take its place. Our ultimate goal is to create "smart cities with a soul" by centering urban placemaking on people.
Well-Balanced Urban Density:
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It should be neither too tall nor too short. We believe that by approaching urban density on a scale, designers can unleash potential and opportunities at the mid-rise level. The mid-rise offers an opportunity to reconnect with the ground plane while avoiding the dizzying verticality of tall structures, permitting scaled development that is rooted in commonplace human experience.
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With architectural structures and the spaces between them developed and created simultaneously, urban planning concerning infrastructures should promote a discourse between buildings and the ground plane. This strategy also permits the construction of interconnected buildings, communal facilities, and housing, increasing connectedness and efficiency on the ground.
Along with having a variety of shapes and uses, different block sizes are crucial for fostering the organic growth of neighborhoods. We must encourage contact at the periphery of structures as the lines separating residential, leisure, and work spaces continue to blur. In terms of scale, structure, and use, we also need to permit a smooth transition between districts and zones.
We can restore living space in our city centers by reducing density. Living in the center of our metropolitan environs rather than in the outer suburban outskirts is becoming increasingly practical, as is the case in places like Singapore. The stacking of living space at higher levels makes it possible for there to be a trend towards "central residential."
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Precision of Layering:
Making cities functional through transparency and layout involves making neighborhoods and districts simple to navigate and useful. With a clear hierarchy of streets, spaces, uses, and scale, good urban planning should guarantee that plot sizes and building shapes are not unduly complicated.
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With obvious reference points and landmarks that make navigating simple, street design and layout must meet the demands of the community daily. For visitors to feel both "comfortably lost" and "reassuringly found," way finding should appear natural, with a familiarity of street signage and furniture that makes orienting intuitive.
All about Streets:
We can make street life successful and build locations through a variety of applications by curating the ground-floor level. A well-curated ground floor requires careful priority balancing. It entails making a structure safe and simple to maintain. It entails creating retail, dining, and commercial spaces that are not only functional from a design standpoint but also unified and distinctive. Additionally, it entails enhancing municipal amenities and cultural experiences in addition to generating value in the form of financial gain. Despite having limited empirical data at the street scale to back up their claims, urban planners and designers think that the built environment has an impact on the pedestrian activity at different geographic scales.
A well-designed ground floor contributes to the creation of a desirable neighborhood where residents and companies wish to be. It enables us to meet the demands and preferences of various renters while also adapting to local temperatures and weather conditions. We can offer cover, protection from the sun, or exposure, adapting barriers to local needs while putting comfort first with outdoor chairs and space. It is about taking control of the ground level through design, not merely by haphazardly arranging street furniture but also by establishing places that are clearly defined and delineated.
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Hence, the blending of various uses serves to energize critical intersections, nodes, and focal areas, energizing street life to increase foot traffic, residing time, and experience.
Life with Levels and Amenities:
Multiple ground floor planes and experiences can be provided within a single building by using design to raise amenities to higher floors through elevation and vertical layering. Going high can relieve street pressure while simultaneously enhancing solitude and privacy by elevating occupants above the commotion, clamor, and pollution of the surrounding ground level.
In extremely crowded and polluted urban environments, elevated gardens and green roofscapes offer additional refuge and solitude. Design should aim to use loggias, balconies, galleries, and other architectural features as biophilic platforms to open up elevated floors and create meaningful and usable green space. Additionally, there is potential for "vertical farming," which involves growing crops in stacked layers up the walls of structures.
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People can travel across a crowded city without ever setting foot on the ground in several countries owing to elevated pedestrian networks of bridges, lobbies, corridors, and tunnels. These interconnecting walkways offer a further layer of topography and public space, assisting people in avoiding traffic and congestion while providing breathtaking views of the city.
Qualities of Infrastructure:
As we have a clear idea of how basic design elements contribute to the overall quality of the city. Let’s look into how strongly a building can contribute to the urban design of a city. It is obvious that these two major factors are interrelated and co-exist. To perceive a deeper understanding of how the quality of infrastructure will influence a city as well as an individual user, let’s have a look at them in detail.
Healthy Indoors:
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A minimum of 9 m2 of green open space per resident is advised by the World Health Organization. Although there are conflicts in how a city may define green space, many communities find it difficult to meet the suggested goals. There is an increasing need for cities to become greener and to design future public green spaces to accommodate residents' health and well-being, as the population and density of cities increase. There is a link between a person's mental health and well-being and their proximity to nature, according to numerous types of research. Green spaces have a positive effect on our physical and mental health as well as on social interaction, physical activity, and the creation of spaces for rest and recovery. All of these factors can help reduce the risk of developing more severe conditions like cardiovascular disease, obesity, and depression. Due to the high expense of medical care, these illnesses are costly to society and pose a threat to welfare. Thus, adding additional green space to a design is profitable.
It is straightforward to add such green spaces in an open area but when it comes to a closed space like a high-rise building, it requires extra planning and knowledge to introduce green spaces. But as we can see, in the present day this concept has received a high reach, and recently renovated office or commercial spaces are required to have semi-open spaces in a mid-level which is accessible to the entire user scale. Apart from this, they are also expected to include other possible ways that will allow users to relate to natural elements even in an enclosed space.
Natural Air and Ventilation:
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Planting trees or adding other eco-friendly features is not sufficient when creating green spaces. Along with the user's perception and experience, the quality of the place is also crucial. To identify the precise species with the most potential for the area, it is crucial to employ native, local species and to speak with biologists. High CO2 concentrations in buildings brought on by inadequate ventilation are the problem we encounter most frequently. One of the most important strategies for lowering viral exposure inside is adequate ventilation.
To reduce the danger of infection inside buildings, several tactics are applied. The simplest method to flush out any germs in the indoor air is to provide as much natural air as you can. Infection from entering viruses from the outside is extremely uncommon because contemporary air handling devices prevent the recirculation of used air back into the building.
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Whether it is natural or artificial, lighting has a significant impact on our physical and mental health. The natural cycle of light affects how we are biologically hardwired, according to evolutionary theory. As a result, artificial lighting that disregards this intricate web of qualities interferes with our biological clock and compromises our general health. According to a study, employees who are exposed to natural light sleep 46 minutes longer on average than their counterparts who are solely exposed to artificial lighting at work. This suggests that exposure to sunlight can improve the quality of sleep.
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From Urban Noise to City Sound:
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Human activity produces sounds in the city, which are a component of urban culture and a sign of the city's vitality. However, urban sounds can become damaging noise and be viewed as needless and upsetting by locals. There are 113 million people who are affected by dangerous noise pollution levels, which result in 48,000 new cases of heart disease and 12,000 early deaths. Despite this, there hasn't been much improvement in the last ten years, and noise levels are predicted to rise.
To ensure compliance with current noise norms and regulations, traffic reduction alone is insufficient. Future homes could use noise insulation and noise screens to reduce noise. Noise pollution can be reduced by creating urban quiet spaces, maintaining green spaces, and planning for them. Additionally, proper acoustic conditions are essential for students' ability to learn as well as high performance during tasks that need to focus, whether completed at home, in offices or in classrooms. This holds for both creating soundproof windows to block out outside noise and creating a comfortable inside acoustic environment with a low enough reverberation time, which allows people to stay in a space for an extended period without getting exhausted.
Active Design Principles for a better city:
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Our buildings must be designed in a way that encourages healthy activity since we spend 90% of our time indoors. Buildings with areas for recreation or sports, or those with good access to outdoor areas, are also more likely to encourage healthy living.
By promoting inhabitants' physical and mental health by getting them to live more active lifestyles, the active design movement is a trend in architecture and urban planning. This movement encourages architects to consider how living in a city or a building may affect a person's physical health and to incorporate chances for exercise and enjoyment into the design of the city.
A response to some of the unexpected effects of residing and working in the urban environment of today is active building design. Nowadays, it's typical for the average person to spend a large portion of their day sitting down. Whether you're in traffic or working at a desk, all of this inactivity over time leads to health issues. Numerous chronic health issues, such as diabetes or cardiovascular disorders, can be exacerbated by excessive sitting.
Therefore, to address these health issues, urban planners concentrate on issues like pollution and walkability to make cities more livable.
References:
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“Healthy Buildings, Cities and You – How to Design Future Living Environments.” Urban Insight, www.swecourbaninsight.com/healthy-buildings-cities-and-you-how-to-design-future-living-environments/.
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Webb, Jamie. “10 Principles for Successful Urban Design | Design + Insights | Benoy.” English, www.benoy.com/design-insights/10-principles-for-successful-urban-design/.