Urban Design Theory

Urban Design Theory

City form and Natural Process: Towards a New Urban Vernacular

By Michael Hough

Routledge, London, 1989 

Essential principles are:

• Urban ecology as healthy basis for shaping cities
• Aim is a sustainable future
• Maintenance of biological diversity
• Environmental view involves economic, politic and planning/design issues
• Urban problems root in the inner city
• Recollection of vernacular landscapes (used for food production, pragmatic aims)
• Once: no abundance of energy à ceased by the beginning of industrialisation

 Design Processes:

• All processes are dynamic!

e.g. geological uplift, erosion, hydrological cycle as well as changes in community like social alterations, demographic change and politic shifting

• Connectedness of factors is omnipresent
• Making the most of opportunities
• Making visible the processes that sustain life 

CITY     à development to make cities environmentally and socially healthier

à diversity as precept!

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Using this Theory: Grosvenor Bridge

Grosvenor Bridge as an

energy producing (=water wheel),                          

biodiverse (=green wall & inner-city forest) and

pragmatic (=rail way level) facility.

 = making the most of opportunities!

 

Visualisation X-section:

 Before:

 

After: