Benedictus, Filbert
During the course of Master of Urban Development and Design (MUDD) with UNSW, there have been three major studio projects that was visited as a practice to understand the fabrics of urban life, built form of urban structures, the heritage that had created the community that is now, etc. All of these projects’ designing started from a rigorous thinking process, research and learning from case studies, which helped my team and I to design and come to a finalised stage of what have been considered to be an urban development of the cases given. Other than the three major projects, there are also some other exercises, which gave us better understanding of this subject.
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SEMESTER 1
Introduction to MUDD
Angel Place Sketches and Progression through Spaces
As we started the program, we learned through understanding the public life and how people interact with its surrounding, through Christopher Alexander’s pattern language and also producing sets of drawing as shown in the image above, to understand the progression through space by documenting the way we see and experience public space.
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Project 1: Hong Kong – West Kowloon Urban Development
Figure Ground Maps of Hong Kong
Starting off the new project, we were taught to use a very important tool to show the relationship of built form and the landscape of a particular location by creating the figure ground(s) shown in the images above. The difference in scale shows different information. The larger scale image shows that the urban area is located closer to the waterfront, while the smaller scale shows the grid street pattern of the city.
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Project Site Map
Understanding that the site is in Hong Kong, one of the densest urban areas in the world, the site of Yau Tsim Mong has became the designated urban development project by the 2000-2001 MUDD Studio project.
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Proposed Master Plan
The urban design proposed by the team (Shergill, N., Apricia M., and myself) mainly focused on creating an integration of the new precincts with harbor fronts towards the existing fabric of Yau Ma Tei. Residential housing is also an issue that is being addressed, alongside with providing the sufficient amount of commercial and job opportunities.
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Sketch of Street Level View
Existing and Proposed Green Space
In order to create a new development, which integrates into the existing fine grain of the city, detailed aspects such as the street-level activity and its character must be considered. The image above shows an example of how the proposed design might look like. Other aspects such as the environment are also addressed in this proposal. These images show the new spread, increased number of green spaces across the city as part of the design.
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SEMESTER 2
Starting off semester two, we were introduced to Jan Gehl’s methods of studying public life; and how we can interpret it ourselves to the project that we were given.
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Project 2: Wynyard Axis
Proposed Master Plan of East-West Wynyard Axis
The East-West axis of Sydney CBD, particularly in Wynyard has been a continuing problem that is yet to be resolved, mainly its connectivity and how it is being used by the public masses. Our team’s (Shergill, N., Griffiths, S., Apricia, M., and myself) project aims to solve this problem by creating a connected subterranean and ground level access for pedestrians across the axis. These newly created spaces will be used for social and cultural spaces, transport nodes, technological performances, etc. The images above are showing the proposed ground level and underground level access.
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Diagram of Technological Intervention
Interventions proposed to the site such as cycling network, free WiFi network, LED light with sensors for traffic lights, proximity sensors for lighting, etc. are used to increase sustainability and the technological advantage of the site.
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Proposed Design of Carrington Street
Most of the smaller streets are being transformed into shared zones to allow vehicles to enter at slower speed, but still providing amenity and safety for pedestrians.
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Street Level and Underground View of Martin Place
The ground-underground level are connected through existing buildings which already have subterranean accesses and facilities, thus increasing the liveliness of this particular area.
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3D View of Projects Studied
Feasibility studies were also done to give us the required knowledge of how to allocate spaces to particular functions, plan how urban structures should be built, etc. The buildings that were studied are (image shown above) One Carrington and St. James Centre.
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SEMESTER 3
Project 3A: Thallman-Kiez
The international studio in Berlin studies the currently quite vacant site in Pankow, the Ernst Thallman park and several housing that needs to be activated to create a self sustaining neighbourhood. Working with student from TU Berlin, namely we (Blum, L., Rauch, L., Ng, K., and myself) created a team to research and work on this project.
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Aerial View of Proposed Site
This project focuses on building the site to enhance the Hobrecht’s plan and use it to create a ‘Kiez’, a socially coherent neighbourhood with a strong identity. Poor connectivity inside the site, enclosed with thick tree line has caused this neighbourhood to be disconnected to the outside world, causing the absence of life on street level. The first move, and as the base idea of this project is to solve the ground level activation by creating better infrastructure and providing sufficient number of commercial, etc.
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Sketch of Proposed Design
A block typology is also created as a base to be implemented in different ways according to the needs of the particular location. Understanding the building typologies around Berlin gave us the information needed to rationalize the shape and function of these blocks. Even though this design is a new addition, one of the challenges to make this project successful is to be able to make this site as ‘Berlin’ as possible, through its infrastructure, built form, etc.
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Hobrecht Analysis of Site
The image above is showing the analysis to what the Hobrecht plan means to neighbourhood principles. This initial analysis is what drove the design of the neighbourhood by using the aspects of population density, proximity and connectivity, mix of uses and common spaces.
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Implementation of Concept into Proposed Site
These images shows how the analysis is being implemented into the design of the Kiez.
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Project 3B: Urban Nucleus
After the international studio, we continued on working more on the design, but by reducing the number of groups. My teammate (Ng, K.) and I merged into another group (Dhileepan, J., and Razali, F.) to continue working on the proposed design of ‘Urban Nucleus’.
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3D Aerial View of Proposed Site
Similar to the Thallman Kiez concept, this design proposal focuses on creating a self-containing neighbourhood, using three main components, the community, ecology and economy.
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Perspective View of Proposed Site
Strategies taken to improve the community are by shaping and framing the existing neighbourhood with new housing blocks, and enhancing the urban heritage by adaptive reuse and revitalizing heritage spaces. Strategies taken to improve the ecology are by creating a connection of green spaces and renewable energy sources. Centralized commercial core are also created as an economic corridor to provide the economic component of this neighbourhood.
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Through the journey of studying urban design and development with UNSW, there has been valuable lessons learned, such as to experience a great study environment with eager students who are all very interested in learning more about the public domain and how it affects the urban built form and vice versa.
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filbert_benedictus@hotmail.com
+61451148877
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