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where are we?

The status
urban design
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•What is it?

Dimensions
How will you define
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Urban design involves…..

the design of public buildings, group of
buildings, spaces and landscapes and bring
together the issues of planning, transport,
architectural design, landscape and
engineering to create a vision for an area
and then ensure it is delivered.
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Urban planning

•The scale
Urban Design

Architecture
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•Why urban design?

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• economically competitive
• high quality of life
• create a place that people are proud to call
home.
• Public health
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• To whom we are
designing?
The ‘public client’
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• What is the process?

The importance of ‘ Re-’ programs
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•Components?
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• Built components
• Ecology
• Open spaces
• Streets
• Transportation and mobility
• Infrastructure (Physical and Social)
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• Understanding the
city and Kevin Lynch
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• Concept of Legibility
and Imageability
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Kevin Lynch

• What time is this place?

• City sense and city designs: writings and project
• Good city form
• Site planning
• Wasting away
• The Image of the city
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The Image of the City

“There seems to be a public image of any
given city which is the overlap of many
individual images. Or perhaps there is a
series of public images, each held by some
significant number of citizens. Such group
images are necessary if an individual is to
operate successfully within his environment
and to cooperate with his fellows. Each
individual picture is unique. with some
content that is rarely or never
communicated, yet it approximates the
public image, which, in different
environments, is more or less compelling,
more or less embracing.”

Kevin A. Lynch

The Image of the City, page 46.

"Looking at cities can give a special pleasure, however, commonplace the sight
may be. Like a piece of architecture, the city is a construction in space, but
of a vast scale, . . . perceived only in the course of long spans of time . . . At
every instant, there is more than the eye can see, more than the ear can
hear, a setting or view waiting to be explored. Nothing is experienced by
itself, but always in relation to its surroundings, the sequences of events
leading up to it, the memory of past experiences . . . Every citizen has had
long associations with some part of his city, and his image is soaked in
memories and meanings . . .
1. The Image of the Environment
2. Three cities
3. The city Image and Its elements
4. City Form
5. A new Scale

Appendices
• Some references to orientation
• The Use of the methodology
• Two examples of analysis
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• Methodology of working:
• Make visual plan
• Analyze the existing form and public image of the
area.
• Understand the critical problems, opportunities and
image elements and use them in designing a city .

• To explain that he takes three cities- Boston, New

jersey, Los Angeles as examples and tries to
introduce a system in which one can derive design
examples and tries to introduce a system in which
one can derive design guidelines.
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• a sentimental
combination
between objective
city image and
subjective human
thoughts.
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• To become completely lost is

perhaps a rather rare experience
for most people in the modern
city.
• We are supported by the presence
of others and by special way-
finding devices: maps, street
numbers, route signs, bus
placards.
• But let the accidental
disorientation once occur, and the
sense of anxiety and even terror
that accompanies it reveals to us
how closely it is linked to our
sense.
• He also concerned with how we locate ourselves
within the city, how we find our way around. To
know where we are within the city, therefore, we
have to build up a workable image of each part.

Legibility
• Definition: The ease with which type characters
can be read.
• By Lynch : Legibility is essentially the ease with
which people understand the layout of a place.
• By making questionnaire surveys, Lynch
defined a method of analyzing legibility based
on five elements: paths, edges, districts,
nodes and landmarks. He defined these as
follows:
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Imageability
• The quality of a Physical object which
gives an observer, strong and vivid image

• High imageable city well formed

and distinct elements
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Familiar routes followed-“Are the channels along which the observer g customarily,
occasionally, or potentially moves.”
The continuity depends on:
•Width •Gradient •activity
Paths are the channels along which the observer moves. They may be streets,
walkways, transit lines, canals, railroads.
-Kevin Lynch, The Image of the City.
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Edges are the linear elements not used as paths by the observer. They are
the boundaries and linear breaks in continuity: shores, railroad cuts, edges
of development, walls.
- Kevin Lynch, The Image of the City
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Districts are the medium-to-large sections of the city which the observer
mentally enters "inside of," and which are recognizable as having some
common, identifying character.
- Kevin Lynch, The Image of the City
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Nodes are points, the strategic spots in a city into which an observer can
enter, and which are the intensive foci to and from which he is traveling.
They may be primarily junctions or concentrations.
- Kevin Lynch, The Image of the City
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Landmarks are another type of point-reference, but in this case the

observer does not enter within them, they are external. They are usually a
rather simply defined physical object: building, sign, store, or mountain.
- Kevin Lynch, The Image of the City.
 Creating Mental Map
• A person's perception of the world is known as a
mental map. A mental Image A persons perception of
the world is known as a mental map. A mental map is
an individual's own map of their known world. Mental
maps of individuals can be investigated .

• by asking for directions to a landmark or other

location.
• by asking someone to draw a sketch map of an area or
describe that area
• by asking a person to name as many places as possible
in a short period of time.
 Imageability
• The quality of a physical object , which gives an
observer a strong, vivid image. He concluded
that a highly imageable city would be well
formed, would contain very distinct parts, and
would be instantly recognizable to the common
inhabitant.
• The elements of legibility paths, edges,
districts, landmarks, and nodes, when placed in
good form, increase human ability to see and
remember patterns, and it is these patterns that
make it easier to learn.
• Image derived from Verbal Interviews
• Image derived from Sketch maps
• Image derived from distinctive elements
• The visual form as seen in the field
• Problems of Boston Image
• Comparison
 Public image after the Surveys
• All the material would finally be synthesized in a series of maps and for
design of the reports which would give the basic public image of the area
and the general visual problems and strengths, the critical elements and
elements interrelations.
• Such studies would produce a library of material on the effects of physical
form. On which the designer of cities could draw.
• The methods can be apply to different scale or func on than ci es: a
building, landscape, a transportation system or a valley region.
• The studies helps to create the poten al structure of the city which would
allow one gradually to construct a more complex picture.
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Jersey city
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Los Angeles

Source:
image study by Prasenjit Karmakar
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Urban design study based on theories presented by Kevin Lynch in The Image of the City.
Dublin

Source:
https://www.behance.net/gallery/4980011/Dublin-Urban-Design-Case-Study
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NEO EMPIRICISM

KEVIN LYNCH
ROBERT VENTURI
GORDON CULLEN
• EMPIRICISM— ( Lat. empirismus, the standpoint of a
system based on experience.)
• The source of all human knowledge is
experience. Empiricism was largely a British
movement opposed to rationalism.
• Empiricism (philosophy) means a method of study
relying on empirical evidence, which includes things
you've experienced: stuff you can see and touch.
• Hıghlıghtıng perceptual and spatıal qualıtıes of the
urban envıronment.
• Representatıves:
KEVIN LYNCH
ROBERT VENTURI
GORDON CULLEN
KEVIN LYNCH
• One of the first coherent analyzers of the urban
scene in empirical terms is “The Image of the
City” (1960).

• Presented hıs prıncıple rules for desıgnıng cıty

spaces as:
– LEGIBILITY: the mental pıcture of the cıty held by the users
on the street

– STRUCTURE AND IDENTITY: recognızable coherent pattern

of urban blocks, buıldıngs and spaces

– IMAGEABILITY: user perceptıon ın motıon and how people

experıence the spaces of the cıty
ACCORDING TO LYNCH:

• SUCCESSFUL URBAN SPACE MEET THESE REQUIREMENTS

• PARTS OF THE CITIES - “ELEMENTS OF URBAN FORM”

SHOULD BE DESIGNED ACCORDING TO THESE REQUIREMENTS
He conducted investigations on several people. These included mental
mapping ( An individual’s own map of their known world) and also the
imageability (quality of a physical object to create a strong image in the
observer’s mind).

He found that a highly imageable city would be well formed, would

have distinct parts and is instantly recognizable.

He used the elements of legibility to make a pattern from which a person

can percieve the city easily. This helped him in getting a public image of
the city.
Through surveys and research, Boston
appears to be perceived only as one-
sided with vivid districts and highly
confused path system,

Jersey City is described as a formless

place disrupted by strong edges and

Los Angeles, despite being well structured,

seems as faceless as Jersey City, with non-
prominent recognizable districts and
confusing paths.
ROBERT VENTURI
• Practitioner Architect (graduated from
Princeton Uni. In 1947)
• Artist, Scholar, Author & Teacher.
• His book ‘Complexity and Contradiction in
Architecture’ – written in 1962.
• According to him, most of the outdoor spaces
created by modern movement are lost spaces
– ısolated from ıts total surroundıngs.
Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture
• The 60s,age of pluralism & revision (a key transitional
period)
o Conditions in cities
• Post WW II, vast construction project & rebuilding for
the destroyed European cities
• Modern architecture actualizing the mass production
and the social theories.
• Corporate firms adapting the Modern Style, Striped
from its original social program.
• Modern Architecture proves to be failure in dealing
with urban problems or social aspects.
Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture
• Zoning regulations urban renewal & anti-city theories
of design added to the problem.
• The result is Eroded urban fabrics, dull and
dangerous built environments.
• Suburbia and other sprawls as lived realities.
Principles
• Conscious sense of the past/ presence of the past.
• Historical precedent is thoughtfully considered.
• The multiple levels of meaning.
• Thomas Gordon Cullen was an English
architect and urban designer
• promoted Townscape movement.
•Used sketchy drawings that conveyed a
particularly clear understanding of his ideas

Thomas Gordon Cullen

Gordon Cullen is one of the authors who had incorporated the idea of
an observer in movement as basic element for the perception of the
constructed space and in the workmanship Urban Landscape considers
the notion of serial vision for the first time as a conceptual instrument
for an urban reading.

CONCEPT

•EXPLORED THE EXPERIENCE OF SEQUENCE THROUGH URBAN SPACE

•UNIQUE SENSE OF PLACE FROM STREET LEVEL
•RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN THE OBJECT & MOVEMENT
•THE EVENT OF ARRIVING AT / LEAVING CITY SPACES
THE CONCEPT OF SERIAL VISION

Serial Vision is to walk from one

end of the plan to another, at a
uniform pace, will provide a
sequence of revelations which
are suggested in the serial
drawings opposite, reading from
left to right.
THE CONCEPT OF PLACE
Sense of being in a particular place conjure different visual images and feelings w.r.t place
characteristics

Deflection Punctuation Narrow

Focal Point Focal point is the idea of the town
as a place of assembly, of social intercourse, of
meeting, was taken for granted throughout the
whole of human civilization up to the
twentieth century.

Enclave
Interior open to the exterior and having free
and direct access from one to the other is
seen here as an accessible place out of the
main directional stream.