'Urban Form and Locality' by Hugh Barton

Reading URBAN FORM AND LOCALITY by Hugh Barton

Barton indicates due to the complexity of our social, political, economic structures, analysing and urban form planning can be quite difficult.

Barton discusses four dimensions of urban form

1) degree of dispersal or concentration
       Barton position is that concentration has greater advantages
       where as dispersal encourages further urbanisation of the countryside

2) degree of segregation or inter-mixture of urban activities 
        Barton states that local density plays a big part in the viability of different services and the scale of
        the services themselves (e.g. local school and regional hospital) as well as the level of diversity and
       density of mixed use

3) settlement density
       Barton argues for a density gradient that responds to arguments for high density adjacent public
       transport and issues of accessibility, and for low density in response to solar power, food, water and
       urban wildlife. This allows for density diversification to gain maximum benefit of both strategies, creating
       suburban variety

4) shape
     Barton argues for a compact linear form as this allows for density variety, high density along infrastructure
     such as water, transportation  while providing access to low density countryside, and services can
     distributed along public transport lines in local centre and major facilities clustered at nodes


These ideas provide a flexible and broad framework for analysing urban form, however; further work is
needed in developing framework for developing strategies for implementing these ideas

Archigram's 'Beyond Architecture'

Reading Archigram's 'Beyond Architecture', 


An interesting point was made on page 94:
Architecture should consider how human communities actually functioned and respond to the existing structure of the community and allow for this structure to development in positive ways
This points to the need to understanding the relationship between social structure and architecture and their ability to inform each other (in positive ways).


The Archigram's position was that relationship between social structure and architecture is dynamic so therefore argued for indeterminate architecture. This is a paradox as architecture is form. And form by its definition is defined.


This draws parallels with the BBC Documentary "Dangerous Knowledge" about 4 great thinkers whose obsessive pursuit of the deepest knowledge led them to madness and suicide. Such as:

George Cantor trying to prove his theories of infinity through the finite language of mathematical expression.  To further clarify: trying to explain non-logic with logic. and,

Bletchley Park died trying to prove that some things are fundamentally unprovable.

Week 1 Notes

Project 1: Context

Lecture 1 Notes:

Architectural propostion needs to respond to climatic, cultural, ecological, economic, geographical, political, social and technological context. (blackboard)


Define Context: life style, threats, Finance, Food, (Week 1 Lecture)



Personal thoughts: 

life style

during the lecture single people were mentioned, the arguments to design smaller apartments for them in response to space limitations.

In the past the "family" was the standard social economic unit.

what is the social economic unit now and what will it be in the future?


Analysis/Study:
1) historical satistics:  number of singles as a ratio of the population
                                 marrige satistics
                                 devorce satistics

2) Historical social structure: tribal, socialist, individulalist.


3) Social connections, interactions and relationships in a varing social contexts

4) Find the current and historical definition of  the family/social unit.
   Explore possible future family/social unit.



Threats
Urban Resiliance, (personal and social value sustems compatability),
Governance, Government accountability

Communitcations
Attempt to sell story graphicly (shapshots) through a fictional character.
Character to be incorporated in snapshots