Transforming the Future:
Modernization processes and regionalization of Tehran Metropolis.
TUDelft
Urban planning has always influenced and shaped social and economic organization of cities, it’s not politically neutral. This research is addressing the ongoing urban growth and transformation of Tehran through the last century and the relation between urban form and social transformation through the process of modernization and regionalization of this city. In this research we trace how every new plan with its socio-political intentions in every stage of urban growth realize new urban form and culture. Since the 1850s, successive historical interventions in Tehran have imposed morphological changes that amounted to entire new urban space and urban lifestyle. Our contribution will be limited to the political role of urban space, and the interrelation between every new form of governance and the way it’s represented in the space and influence urban life during the last century in Tehran.
Augmenting Cape Town’s post-apartheid urban transformation
Partizan Publik
Post-apartheid Cape Town is in the midst of fundamental cultural transformation. New urban development projects both obscure and make visible remnants of the city’s heritage and history. This work proposes to take the ending of apartheid in 1990 as a point of departure for grappling with the meaning of postcolonial urban transformation.
Since the end of apartheid, those involved in the planning and design of South Africa’s built environment are faced with a difficult task. Under pressure to undo the injustices of the past, they must attempt to create new, more inclusive, urban spaces for working, housing and leisure, while in some way paying tribute to the traumatic memories that characterize the city’s heritage. Additionally, they must work within the existing economic and spatial system, which is, not without limits.
Theoretical strands or three elements of current societal change highlighted
studioAitken
The central question of this research project focuses on two issues; both the design process as well as the actual role, nature and quality of the implemented design – the product. In order to illuminate the first issue, the study will need to assess the relationship between the client (local government and private and/or public partners), the designer (or design team, consisting of architect, urban designer, landscape architect, highway engineers etc.) and the user within the design process. How was each of them organised? What was the organisational model of the design process? How much power had the designer, and the citizen? How strict was the brief? Who made the brief? Has there been stakeholder participation? Has there been public involvement, and if so how often and in what way?
Warfare vs. Welfare; Forms of Occupation
FAST
This PhD proposal involves research and design, theory and action. It will encompass the specific theme of transformation, but is de facto a research into respective disciplines of architecture, urban planning, design and activism.
I am interested to explore the underlying forces that shape these areas. I want to study the typological forms of these spaces and their components. Following this study, I would like to examine possibilities of transformation and adaptation of the physical forms of foreign occupation and make them useful from a local, civic perspective.
The process of typological exploration and adaptation to a new use will reflect upon contemporary studies on international law, globalization, militarization and sustainability.
Referring amongst other to work by Derek Gregory, Saskia Sassen, David Harvey and John J. Mearsheimer.
The socio-politics of a collective cultural landscape (a traditional public space for the modern megalopolis)
TU Delft
The research aims at setting up an architectural tool for studying the urban society, its changes and culture, through a specific case study:Tehran Grand bazaar. City eventually is the context of social, cultural and historical studies, which asks for a coherent approach to be truly grasped. The main object of the research is to introduce the bazaar as an active cultural, social and political urban structure for the city of Tehran. Eventually, the research scrutinizes the resistance of an urban artifact which sustains itself through the vicissitudinous history of modern Tehran.
This research attempts to theorize the body of the Tehran Grand bazaar in respect to its active role in the urban scene of Tehran as well as its socio-political stages.
Concept workflow Ecocity manual
Dynamic city foundation
The ecocity has established itself firmly on the global agenda, yet for those regions where new cities are actually being built, no existing eco-planning model seems viable. This project sets out to develop a planning strategy for ecocities, equipped to operate within the extreme forces driving China’s urbanization – specifically market pressure and rapid pace of development. The objective is to formulate a much vaunted yet never realized holistic planning manual. To achieve this the project connects research across five different scales: national, regional, city, block and individual. Secondly, acknowledging China’s diverse and highly dynamic society, design solutions derived from this manual must be scalable across China, yet adaptable to site-specific conditions; respond to acute needs to urbanize, yet malleable to changes over time.
A TALE OF TWO CITIES: How Urban Form Influences Protest Behaviour.
Univeristy of Technology Malaysia
The main motivating question for this research is how urban form influences protest behaviours. The main objective is not to discuss why people protest; it is to understand why they protest in certain manners given the urban form as the containing space for protest activities.
The research questions are:
1) How do different urban patterns (layouts), grains (width of frontages), and textures (height) influence protest behaviours?
2) How do behaviours differ in the same urban space between normal (low‐zero tension) and protest (high‐tension) times?
3) How do cultural and psycho‐geographical understandings of the urban form influences behaviours?
