Digital Modelling for Urban Design Workshop

Synopsis

Modern elevated expressways are monuments to modern engineering and afford accelerated and expanded vision of the urban landscape. However costly maintenance, congestion, pollution, and the quality of life alongside or under elevated expressways must be weighed against the benefits of building bypasses above the city’s streets.

This ten day digital modelling workshop will compare the future of expressways in Hong Kong, Bangkok and Taipei – where they are relatively new, with the discussion in New York to dismantle the aging Sheridan Expressway -

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/13/nyregion/13sheridan.html.

The Cheonggyechon Restoration Project in Seoul and the Highline Project in New York demonstrate how the removal or the reprogramming of older infrastructure can revitalize a city. What would be the impact of removal or creating new uses for expressways in the four cities?

Or perhaps we have not urbanized our expressways enough? Does the Asian megacity point to new more intensive use of expressways as part of a multilevel city? The vision of an expressway city like Le Corbusier’s plan for Algiers has yet to be realized.

Teams will be formed in the workshop to use digital modelling tools to test removal, reuse, or intensification strategies for expressways in Hong Kong, Bangkok, Taipei and New York. Based on the book ‘Digital Modelling for Urban Design’, students will explore different spatial and temporal scales in creating digital archaeologies, genealogies, and schizoanalyses of selected expressways in the four cities. These scales can range from geological time and the formation and archipelago of the cities in question, historical time which traces the various periods of the city development change to the micro-temporalities of the ten day workshop – expressways in the four cities. While the workshop starts with transforming the mundane to the marvellous through digital drawing and modelling of the urban infrastructure, development of urban design models for socially innovative sustainable futures is expected at the finale.

Workshop Director

Brian McGrath, AIA

M.ARCH/ Princeton University

B.ARCH/ Syracuse University

Research Chair in Urban Design
School of Constructed Environments
Parsons The New School for Design

Fulbright Senior Scholar in Thailand

India China Institute Fellow

Workshop Instructors

Kerrie Butts, LEED A.P.
MAUD/ Harvard University

M. ARCH/ University of Louisiana-Lafayette
Instructor/ INDA International Program in Design and Architecture
Faculty of Architecture, Chulalongkorn University

Bangkok/ Thailand

Eugènia Vidal Casanovas

PhD candidate, Barcelona School of Architecture (ETSAB), Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya. BarcelonaTech (UPC), Barcelona, Spain.

M.Sci (Archi&UD)/ Columbia University

B. Arch and M. Arch., ETSAB, UPC, Barcelona, Spain.

Associate Professor/ Department of Architecture

Barcelona School of Architecture

Barcelona/ Spain

Cheng-Luen Hseuh

M.Sci (Archi&UD)/ Columbia University

B. ARCH/ National Cheng-kung University
Assistant Professor/ Department of Architecture
Faculty of Architecture

National Cheng-kung University

Tainan/ Taiwan

Victoria Marshall, LLA

M.LA and Cert UD/ University of Pennsylvania

B.LA/ UNSW

Director, BS Urban Design Program

School of Design Strategies

Parsons The New School for Design

India China Institute Fellow

Students

Chulalongkorn University (Thailand) – 11 students

National Cheng-Kung University (Taiwan) - 19 students

Chu Hai College of Higher Education (Hong Kong) – 85 students

Dankook University (Korea) – 1 student

University of Illinois at Chicago (USA) – 2 students

’Digital Modelling for Urban Design’ Books
Singapore

Sheryl Chan

shchan@wiley.com

+65 64604 283

Resource for workshop
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IXYYYB5n2-A

http://www.australiandesignreview.com/feature/12659-On-the-Origin-of-Cities-Adaptive-Urbanism-Brian-McGrath

Reference Projects

Reprogramming

- Eichbaumoper: temporary transformation of a metro station located between two motorways into an opera house, Raumlaborberlin, Mülheim an der Ruhr 2006-2009.

- The High Line, James Corner Field Operations/ Diller Scofidio + Renfro, New York City 2004-.

Addition: Along

- ‘Urban Balcony’, Manuel de Solà Morales, Genoa 1998-1999. (not built)

Addition: Under

- Garscube landscape link: the phoenix flowers, rankinfraser landscape architecture + 7n architecture, Glasgow 2008-2010.

- Layout for the space covered by motorway A8, Pieter Bannenberg, Walter Van Dijk, Kamiel Klaasse, Mark Linnemann, NL Architects, Zaanstadt 2005.

Addition: Over

- Freeway Park, Lawrence Halprin, Seattle 1972-1976.

- Art Museum Olympic Sculpture Park, Weiss/Manfredi, Seattle 2001-2006.

- Skywalk, passageway for pedestrians and cyclists, Architekturstudio Bulant & Wailzer, Aneta Bulant - Kamenova, Klaus Wailzer, Bulant & Wailzer / Wagner / Fritsch, Spittelau Wien 2004-2007.

Burying

- MadridRío: burying a section of the M-30 ring route, Burgos & Garrido/ Porras&La Casta/ Rubio & Álvarez Sala/ West 8, Madrid 2007-2011.

Removal

- Cheonggyecheon Restoration Project, the Seoul Metropolitan Government, Seoul 2003-2005.

Digital Modelling for Urban Design Workshop

Sunday, March 4, 2012

Links and Background Information on 4 cities

W H E N E X P R E S S W A Y S H I T T H E C I T Y