DAB525 - Week 2 Reflection

Through this lecture the main aspects Mirko covered were some theories in the perception of the environment such as.

• Thick places - Deep lived experience
• Thin places - erased of any locality
• engaging community --> safe environment

Gordon Cullen, The concise townscape (1961)

• Serial vision approach
• Place (Here & There)
• Content (This & that)

 Kevin Lynch, The image of the city

• Mental image (interviews)
• Visual Quality. Legibility of the city scape
• Identity / structure / meaning
• "image-ability" Quality of physical object which evokes memory and place.

Paths --> Edges --> Districts --> Nodes (points of interest) --> Landmarks.

Mapping & Photo's

• Boundary - Conventional subdivision
• Limit - Physical element
• Edge - an interface between two conditions

• Memorial - Tells who i am (our culture)
• Landmark - element to orient oneself. Tells where i am.
• Monument - Tells why the city has it layout (urban environment)

Venturi - Learning from existing landscape is a way of being a revolutionary for an architect.

An example of a study in class of what Mirko defined not a city was Las Vegas, due to the fact that it is a collection of objects (monuments) which does not make a city because a city requires relationship. This is due to the high demand in tourism which creates a thought pattern of demolishing old buildings and building new. So the city in total is full of exceptions so its hard to understand the rules.

Another example displayed in class was LA which is a mono-nuclear city. Designed for the motor vehicles as the main source of transportation.

K. Banhem. theory is the four ecologies.

• Surfurbia - Coastal area's which separate the water and the city (sand)
• Foothills - Middle/Upper class (Beverly hills etc)
• The plains of ID - Majority of people live
• Autopia - Motorways - main landmarks and its characteristics.

All in all the theories represented are only applicable to certain cities which limits these theories. Though these theories have opened up my understanding of how to analyze a city. My question lies between whether these theories can be utilized together to understand a city in more depth.

Walkshop.

Due to unforeseen circumstances, the weather did not permit the walkshop. This didn't stop us from going and doing it on the day due to the hours available. Below is the route that we took.

With the theories that i learned in class i tried applying it to the walkshop and the results are below.

Elizabeth street looking south.

Elizabeth street looking north.

Edward street looking towards central station.

Rivers edge walking towards the Storey bridge.

Under the Storey bridge.

On the city cat observing kangaroo points new landmark.

 The experience of exploring the city to look for the ideologies in the "perception of the environment" was quite interesting. Observing people and the built context to see how people understood/interacted/perceived it.