‘Public space is what in many ways makes cities more livable’, said Richard Rogers (2014). Rogers stated (2014) that public space between buildings influences both the built form and the civic quality of the city, be streets, public squares or parks. The balance between public and private realm is needed to apply practice’s design approach. City is beyond than bright of street light, shops, crowds, and weather. The city should be dense, vibrant and socially diverse where buildings and the surrounding should connect and interpret one another, with outdoor open air spaces functioning. However, the city also contains neglected public spaces that are underused and need more attention. These open spaces contribute to local economies and property values, they help people save on everything from heath care to recreation, and perform valuable ecosystem services that naturally improve the air they breathe and the water for drink. In my opinion, people who live in the city think that they like nature, but actually they need the nature as their necessity. In Singapore context, one of the identity of being garden city is need the understanding of Local urban culture and life, not just about physical attributes that typical public spaces are designed only by greeneries element. The relationship among buildings, people and public spaces demonstrate how the architect's responsibility can successfully extend beyond the aesthetic element to include the public realm. The relationship the square or street and surrounding buildings helps to stimulate public activities and create friendly environment that have social emotional, cognitive, and even psychological needs are met. Yet, large areas of neglected, poverty and empty quarters, could demolish th...
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...ments only, but also urban cultures, memory, and social functions.
II. Feng Shui Practice in Public Spaces Design
Public space could give many advantages for a city, in economy, social, culture, and lifestyle. Ultimately, people in the city need more natural open public space as an escape place from the crowd of bustling city. However, if these public spaces are not design with sensitivity of natural surrounding, based on social identity of the place and inappropriate functions, it will become neglected space and in the future. Fortunately, there is a Chinese practice could possible help transform the unused open public space become urban public space like city square that fill with vibrancy, urban culture, and memories. Feng shui practice offers a harmonious environment that invites positive energy, emotional satisfaction and visual balance for the whole design.
In his book Modern Civic Art, Robinson discussed various ways to beautify the city from avenues to small streets, the tenements, the administrative center, and the furnishings of the streets, comprehensive planning, parkways and so forth. Some of his ideas were only good on paper at that time but as the city evolved most of them have now come into fruition. He explained that the backyard should be as beautiful as the front of the house as well as the inside. (Robinson, 1903 p. 241)
I find Dr. Cole’s and Dr. Gorenflo’s research to be especially applicable to my goals. As a landscape management student, I have been exposed to common practices in landscape maintenance, construction and design. I hope to use my background to find innovative solutions and make them practical and manageable. Dr. Cole and Dr. Gorenflo are looking outside our typical urban environment for answers to make it better. They are asking the right questions. I am especially intrigued by Dr. Gorenflo’s research on human interaction with their environment. I firmly believe that a healthy urban ecological environment can alleviate many emotional, social and environmental problems in our cities.During the summ...
Since the Environmental Movement, traditional land art evolved, on one hand, to climate art, and on the other, influenced landform building. “The principles of landform building,” according to architect and theorist Stan Allen, “offer a new lens with which to reexamine phenomena as diverse as the megastructure of the 1960s, the current fascination with green building, artificial ski slopes, or the vast multi-use stadia being constructed today.” These principles include the inhabitation of the landscape, which much of contemporary architecture has incorporated into its design. However unlike land art’s wild terrains, such as the salt lake of Spiral Jetty or the vast desert of Double Negative, contemporary architecture has incorporated principles of land art into densely populated urban typology, of which the following two projects serve as significant examples.
It has been given due priority in urban design and planning for promoting social cohesion as a constituent concept of the sense of belonging and community values through ethnic mixing to deal with challenges of multiculturalism in the West especially in England and Canada. The limitation of social cohesion to deal with multicultural challenges has led to contemporary planning imaginations that emphasize the meaningful engagements among different cultures. In the multicultural context, although contemporary planning imaginations do not directly refer to the role of public space at the level of local living per se, it nevertheless consider the significance of socio-physical setting public space provides for 'meaningful intercultural interactions' (Sennet, 1994), ‘openness to unassimilated otherness’ (Donald, 1999) and, as settings for ‘active civic engagements with clearly defined goal’ (Sandercock 2003). Trying to deal with the problematic of contested nature of public space in multicultural context, these imaginations in a way argue for the active civil engagements in public space through broad social participation with clearly defined goal for promoting social and civic solidarity by maintaining the meaningful distance or unassimilated otherness to live together
Private good prevails over public good, as people tend to act in their self-interest. They want what they think will propel their life forward. Private good only gives us a temporary pleasure that influences us to want more. On the other hand, public good generates a sense of contentment to the individual, which can spread to the rest of society. Ideally, public good should be more pursued for an individual to embrace a good life as it encompasses happiness that private good cannot produce. “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks” and “The Prisoner Who Wore Glasses” demonstrate how people make choices for their own benefit, one where a family’s privacy is violated and the other where bribery reigns. Both readings also illustrate that interest in the public good would help maintain a good life and the outcome of the choices would be favorable to the majority.
Feng shui, or “wind-water”, is a Chinese philosophy that lasted for thousands of years. Wind represents the vitality and power, while water is change and flow. The feng shui practice discusses architecture in metaphoric terms of "invisible forces" that bind the universe, earth, and humanity together, known as qi: since people are part of nature, nature is also part of the people. A more systematic “feng shui” principles originated from the warring states period, roughly around 403BC. The core idea of “feng shui” is the harmony of man and nature; the early feng shui ideas are for choosing the best locations for palaces, homes, villages, cemeteries, and constructions.
Public Spaces provide unique experiences and contribute to the identity of a city. Found as places like plazas, parks, marketplaces, within buildings, lobbies and many more. Public spaces are important to our society and therefore face more arguments in design and construction compared to private spaces.
Again, this section will give a working definition of the “urban question’. To fully compare the political economy and ecological perspectives a description of the “urban question” allows the reader to better understand the divergent schools of thought. For Social Science scholars, from a variety of disciplines, the “urban question” asks how space and the urban or city are related (The City Reader, 2009). The perspective that guides the ecological and the social spatial-dialect schools of thought asks the “urban question” in separate distinct terminology. Respected scholars from the ecological mode of thinking, like Burgess, Wirth and others view society and space from the rationale that geographical scope determines society (The City Reader, 2009). The “urban question” that results from the ecological paradigm sees the relationship between the city (space) as influencing the behaviors of individuals or society in the city. On the other hand...
In China, urbanization is at dramatic pace but in static patterns. This leads to the Chinese cities losing their own styles, and being built in the static architecture modes which are introduced from developed countries. Moreover, the traditional architecture cultures are being eroded by the static modern architecture patterns. Some of them are even on the boundary of extinction. Recently, architects in China have shown an increasing interest in the issue of traditional architecture in the modern era. This paper studies on the causes and effects of the erosion of the modernity to the traditional architecture and the possible solutions. It will be divided into three parts: the first part focuses on the causes and effects; the second part presents the combination of modern architecture and traditional culture; the third part concerns the cultivation enhancement of Chinese architects.
Reminding us that natural spaces persist in urban areas and pointing out that it is in our best interest to promote stewardship of these spaces and plan them within our urban areas rather than traveling to go visit “nature”, Hough encourages us to reexamine pre-industrial era philosophies and utilize our new found technologies to reduce our carbon footprint while enhancing our ability to incorporate nature back into our urban lives. Pointing out the contradiction between the value we claim to have for our natural resources and the behaviors we engage in within our urban spaces, Hough illustrates how we continue to treat nature as if it is foreign to urban spaces, belonging somewhere else, in a place you visit during your leisure time. Rather than imposing traditional beliefs and utopian ideals upon these natural spaces within our urban areas, Hough argues that we should be embracing their natural beauty and appreciating their biodiversity.
With more needs for nature experience and sustainable development in urban areas, increasing importance has been attached to urban open spaces since they play a crucial role to support the ecology system and form a natural network in the cities (Chiesura, 2004; Tzoulas et al., 2007). Urban open spaces include plazas, parks, campus, greenways and other green spaces. They serve as islands of nature, enriching urban landscapes, adjusting the microclimate, promoting biodiversity and providing habitats for other species (Chiesura, 2004; Do, Kim, Kim, & Joo, 2014; Morimoto, 2011). Apart from these benefits, they also show a great impact on urban dwellers’ health, since open spaces offer places for outdoor activities and opportunities for contact with nature (Chiesura, 2004). Tyrväinen et al. (2014) indicated that even short-term visits to urban green spaces have positive psychological and physiological effects on perceived stress relief. People were attracted to urban open spaces for physical activities, social interactions, and a relief from daily life, which benefit their mental and physical health (Thwaites, Helleur, & Simkins, 2005). A large epidemiological study in Britain looked at mortality and morbidity among three income levels in relation to urban residents’ access to green open space (Mitchell & Popham,
Well-recognized cities worldwide have built over the years great buildings with a variety of designs and concepts however consequently too much building has been making grievous decrease on energy efficiency. Now, “Green Architecture” has been popularized and as a result a modicum of energy efficiency has increased and also it has substantiated a new perspective, a new versatile way on architecture.
A city has to be beautiful, though the definition of “beauty” is so vague. The beauty can be physical, such as enjoyable parks, streetscapes, architectural facades, the sky fragment through freeways and trees; or it can be the beauty of livelihood, people, and history. As landscape architects, we are creating beautiful things or turning the unpleasant memorial.
However, architecture is not just the future, after all, buildings are intended to be viewed, traversed and lived by us, people. Despite this, many architects today rarely think deeply about human nature, disregarding their main subject matter in favour for efficiency and an architecture of spectacle. In this there seems to be a misconception that underlies much of architecture, that is, human’s relationship with the city, the building and nature. In much of today’s architecture, people are treated with as much concern much as we treat cars, purely mechanically. The post-modern search for the ‘new’ and ‘novel’ has come to disregard the profound affect design has on our lives, impacting our senses, shaping our psyche and disposition.
In China, very few pieces of architecture are still intact. Most of the influential architecture left is the Forbidden City. One main idea in Chinese architecture is walled cities, like Beijing and Chang’an. These cities are rectangular in shape and have streets that run north, south, east, and west like a grid pattern. The Chinese architecture concentrates on the balance and symmetries. The palace in the center of the city is based on the idea of the harmony of the universe and its cosmic order.