Lecture4-Eurogreen

09/21/10
Lecturer : Douglas Kelbaugh


A city is not a large building, it is a large living, lively vibrating organism, ever-changing,
that cannot be composed or designed in the same way that a building can.

The lecture started with criticism on the modern urbanism led by Le Corbusier and CIAM(International Congresses of Modern Architecture), which once was dominant urban planning agenda and has shaped a modern city as what a city looks like today. The insertions of super highway system and high-rise apartment blocks have produced disconnections and unresolved edge conditions within a city and between a city and a rural area.

Housing is about putting your love and affection into the details, windows, doors, entries and lobbies. It is not about creating amazing shapes.

He argued that we should look at the model of European cities as an alternative of urban design: grid system in smaller scale rather than cul-de-sac along one single linear paths, low-rise buildings with more diversity and integrated sustainability technologies(passive solar heating, solar or wind energy production.)
New mobility is not so much about providing new transportation systems. What makes a city more walkable is establishing infrastructure connecting disconnected nodes of different transportation modes such as bus, bike and train.