Urban square as theater : issues of continuity and discontinuity in urban design

Abstract

This thesis tries to establish some criteria for designing a good urban square, with concern for the static and dynamic approaches. The former refers to aesthetic issues, and the latter refers to social and contextual ones. I start by examining the phenomena of modernity from two aspect: the impact that modernity has on contemporary cities, and its influence on today's' people. Basically, it has made today's urban spaces inhuman, and made people lose their senses of self, the most basic and instinct concept linking body and environment. The issues discussed here are the time-space notion, self-identity, 20th century urban utopias, and the public-private relationship. Then the discussion goes to the dialect between" continuity" and" discontinuity." The argument is that discontinuity is necessary for creating abundant images of a city. It links all the elements on the urban level, and interestingly makes the whole urban environment continuous. The concept of "theater" is employed as a tentative framework to connect the theory and the practice parts, namely the criteria development. An analog based on some features shared by the urban square and the theater is taken to specify the characteristics of the urban square. Finally, three criteria for designing the urban square, boundary, theme, and collective activities are developed through studying some cases.