Space Syntax Workshop | Battersea Redevelopment

Taking a break from Athens and Hong Kong, this week the Urban Design studios worked on a 4-day design workshop on Space Syntax. Working with Judy, Jenny, Tina, and James, my team designed a new redevelopment plan for Nine Elms. The main concerns of our design were to consider the future plans for two new tube stops in Nine Elms,  a connection across the Thames to Picolo, and a re-adjustment of the traffic pattern on Nine Elms Road. Using the Space Syntax software, we adjusted our design and found that it would become a new hub within London rather than simply a thoroughfare as it is now. Some of the design work can be seen below: 

A City in the Sky?

 Having established an interest in a top-down approach, beginning analysis at the rooftop level and moving down towards the existing street level, I began a design proposal. As with my research, I started my work on the rooftop level looking at notions of a City in the Sky. Below are two study models I made of possible design proposals: the first is of a new layer within the city that creates an above and underground where the new layer becomes a new "ground zero"; the second is of a rooftop canopy condition that somewhat resembles the gardens of Babylon playing into the ancient history of Athens.

                                                                        

 

                                                                           

Choosing a Ground Zero | A City in the Sky Proposal?

As I began to gain an understanding of rooftop conditions and the poverty in which those who chose to live on rooftops live, I started to think up a design proposal for a city in the Sky. I first made a material collage of the skyline in Athens to show how I see the rooftop condition in the city as a datum line. The collage shows the panorama of Athens as a never-ending urban sprawl of rooftops throughout the surrounding landscape. Materials included tracing paper to show the Polykatoikia structures, collaged photos of rooftops I had photographed while on site in Athens, and broken wooden chopsticks. The aim of the collage was to capture the material variety of the rooftops and establish that the rooftops are a datum within the city of Athens. 

A Tale of Two Cities Continued...

Continuing my understanding through comparative studies of Hong Kong vs. Athens, I looked at the rooftop conditions and materiality in both cities. When I was in Athens, I found the rooftop condition to be very unique as each rooftop home was constructed out of a variety of different materials. On the contrary, in Hong Kong you could almost define a "prototype" of what each home would look like as materials were universal, but interior layouts were what changed. I wanted to show these differing characteristics through a simple photo-comparative.

One Condition, Two Cities | Lighting on the Rooftops

Trying to understand the rooftop condition in Gerani, I became interested in doing a comparative between Hong Kong and Athens. When I had gone on to the rooftops in Hong Kong, it eerily reminded me of photos I had seen of Peter Zumthor's luxurious Therme Vals in Switzerland. A strange comparison to make, but a realization that maybe there was a unique character to this space. With this in mind, I decided to make some 3-d digital models and do lighting studies of the nighttime conditions of the rooftops in Hong Kong versus those in Athens. 

Gerani | Social + Political Story of Migration

Realizing that the neighborhood of Gerani would become my area of focus in Athens, I began to explore the urban condition of rooftops within the area. Similar to how I had looked at Hong Kong's rooftop communities in Sham Shui Po through the lens of 'the social and political story of migration,' I chose to do the same for Athens. A brief timeline can be seen below:

What the analysis showed is that the majority of immigrants into and out of Greece pre-2000's was Albanians and other nationalities from the Balkan region. Most of these were refugees or immigrants trying to flee the communist regimes in the areas. However, the makeup of immigrants changed when Athens decided to accept the Olympic Bid to host the 2004 Summer Games. The games brought a dire need for construction workers and skilled labor, creating a change in visa policy and an influx of Middle Eastern, Pakistani, and Indian immigrants. These immigrants tended to live together and one such area of the city they chose to occupy was Gerani. The area of Gerani is located between the Akrpolis and Ommonia Square, within the original triangle of historic Athens. Today, the area of Gerani remains highly occupied by immigrants and contains high drug usage making it unsafe to travel to post-3 or 4 pm. But it is also here, amongst the immigrants and the social turmoil, that one finds the wonderment of the rooftop living.

Re-Thinking New Orleans | Tabula Rasa or URBANBuild?

In response to the previous post about my interest in urban crisis as a means of creating unique patterns or urban conditions in a city, I am posting the research paper I wrote for the course module on ideal city proposals. The research paper examines a proposal by engineers to re-create New Orleans as a Floating City. The argument looks at whether these  macro-scale proposals are the proper solution or whether unique urban conditions exist in present-day New Orleans that cannot simply be re-created at sea. It questions these methodologies by looking at alternative micro-scale solutions such as URBANbuild projects by Tulane and Brad Pitt's Make It Right work in the Lower Ninth Ward as perhaps the "better" solution to deal with the threat of natural disaster. 

Athens | Urban Responses to "Events" + A New Site?

When we returned from Athens and I tried to organize my thoughts about the refugee village in Ambelokipi, I realized this wasn’t where my heart is. Just as I was interested in the urban response of a situation like Katrina on New Orleans, there is something about the “urban response” of migration into cities and its creation of temporary communities and slum conditions that interests me. I began to look back at Sham Shui Po and this time compare it to the area of Gerani in Athens. Just as Sham Shui Po acts as a “temporary” holding space for immigrants into Hong Kong, Athens has its areas that immigrants migrate towards. Once such region is called Gerani and also has the condition of rooftop slums. It is here that I think my potential site will lie, and this is what I now want to explore. As I consider between Hong Kong and Athens I think about what lessons I can take from the already strongly tied communities that exist in Hong Kong’s rooftop slums and how I can potentially use them as precedents for what Athens could be.