IN-PERSON: Livable Cities – New York
Abstract
Beyond the scope of master planning and iconic skylines, people experience the contemporary city as a complex network of intimate public encounters. Woven into macro-scaled initiatives guided by municipal government, transit infrastructure and commercial interests, is a matrix of modest interventions that impact life within city in a critical way. These human scaled insertions into the public realm furnish the rituals of daily life, provide shelter, cultivate community and foster civic engagement. Invisible when viewed through the lens of a 1:500 zoning map, cities are haptically experienced through interaction with bus stops, bike racks, parking meters, kiosks, light poles, park benches, sidewalks, trashcans, and shade structures that form the fundamental building blocks of our immediate, tactile experience. This paper examines an alternative, urban design pedagogy developed and deployed in a series of upper-level, undergraduate architecture studios focused on the developing mega-cities of the Arabian Gulf. Focused on the human-scaled urban landscape, these studios embarked on a phenomenological and tectonic journey into the leftover spaces of the contemporary city. Design research was focused on the small, innocuous, and often overlooked opportunities associated with the provision of housing, shade, sustenance, and respite that enable and embellish urban life. Specifically, the studios examined the combined cultural, economic, environmental and technical issues related to the design of affordable housing and public space. Pedagogies were designed to enable students to learn from informal physical and social infrastructures in order to activate new spaces for living within the city.
Educated at the University of Virginia and Princeton University Michael Hughes is a Professor at the American University of Sharjah. His teaching combines full-scale, hands-on pedagogy and community outreach through projects focused on small, unremarkable, and often forgotten places adjacent to the lives of underserved people. Located in the boundary between architecture and landscape these micro-urban projects seek to create experiential delight out of small-scale design opportunities that enhance public space, promote play, and exhibit a social and environmental conscience.
Jason Carlow holds a B.A. in Visual and Environmental Studies from Harvard University, a Master of Architecture from Yale and is Associate Professor of Architecture at the American University of Sharjah. His recent work focuses on issues surrounding housing for dense urban environments and he is the co-author of the forthcoming book, Cities of Repetition: Hong Kong’s Privately Developed Housing Estates.
3:15 pm - 4:45 pm
Wednesday 14th June, 2023