Week #12

Eco-Cities

This weeks lecture was split into three separate presentations that each covered the idea of an Eco-City and how it should be designed. The first presentation was done by guest lecturer Elise Robertson, the second by Magdalena Kowalik and the final presentation by Susan Loh. 

Elise discussed three main types of Eco-Cities and their positive and negative points:

The Garden City - Centres become overcrowded due to circular shape, and affordability becomes an issue. These cities are planned and always include bounding gardens and parks.

Howards Garden City Plan

Historic City Centres - These cities evolve over time and are generally walkable cities such as rome. They lack the ability to keep up with current technology such as transportation, so the use of cars is rather difficult in these places.

Utopian Green Cities - These cities have continuous landscape and try to avoid the 'urban sprawl' by creating an ideal and hygienic housing environment. This unfortunately detaches people from the streetscape causing communal problems. 


Magdalena discussed the context of sustainability, and where we are with sustainable design today considering how long we have had the knowledge to be environmentally friendly. She went on to talk about how sustainability effects everything and everyone, not just the architectural community and this can be seen in the diagram below. 

Sustainability Diagram

As architects we need to think full circle and achieve, contribute, add, enhance and change the way things are designed. Most importantly change the way we think about design and the way others see it. 


Finally Susan discussed Eco-Cities from the points of view of other architects from many years ago and how these ideas could and have influenced future urban design. One way of tackling eco-design is to analyse the surroundings, the water, agriculture, slopes, animals, land use and pollution of an area and try to reverse the damage or design to filter it. There were many radical examples of eco-cities from famous architects such as Frank Lloyd Wright and many others. 

Project #3

This week I have been working on my creative essay component for the final assessment piece. I have almost completed an entire draft, however some parts I'm not entirely happy with and they will require more work later in the week. I also visited Simon this week to see how the model of my Cathedral went, and unfortunately the model cracked because the walls in the 3D model (.3ds file) were too thin to support its weight in the machine, and oddly enough part of the powder didn't attach correctly which was a fault on the machines behalf. So I've readjusted the model and thickened various parts as well as added some additional details which can be seen in the images below.

Wall thickness of Cathedral model

Front of Cathedral

Back of Cathedral

Reflections

This weeks lecture series has been a bit of an eye opener in regards to how slowly we have adjusted to the concept of sustainable design. For almost the past 90 years or so architects and artists have been thinking of sustainable design in both small and large scale projects, most of which have never come to realisation. Only now is sustainable design becoming the norm. However the damage is already done, I believe as architects we need to know how to design for the environment and how to redesign what has already been made. I think the money will be in refitting old buildings to bring them up to sustainable design standards. The idea of an Eco-City might be achievable by keeping what we already know and own but just renovating it to create a healthy lifestyle for us and our environment.