Recursive relational urban design

Abstract

This thesis proposes a methodology for the act of urban design that is recursive and centered around explicit relational operations, enabled by taking advantage of computation and parametric techniques. It contains iterative experiments aimed to explore and discover the feasibility and potential of computational incremental urban design The initial idea for this thesis emerged as two urban design conventions are challenged. The first is the teleological masterplan. Masterplans take a long time to be implemented, causing the majority of them to be only partially implemented. In addition, as the early parts of the design are seeing completion of built development, their surrounding context would have changed and developed as well, rendering the rest of the initial design to be obsolete and out of context, which requires a new design to be created. The second is a more recent norm: the fact that contemporary designers use generative computation techniques often to generate some form of a masterplan. Sadly, most of the outcomes produce less coherent and intentional designs than what a conventional urban design approach would. Granted, each individual is entitled to his/her own belief on good urban form, but many urban design schemes produced today by computer and parametric techniques are residues of interest and passion for the tools and techniques themselves. Many computation-based urban schemes today, including this thesis, are still early explorations, but I hope to take a step towards bringing our views on computation techniques away from digital obsession and towards a more pragmatic use. This thesis is a response to my speculation that there are confusions between urban design and architecture at the urban scale. Unlike architecture, urban design cannot afford to take a single set of ideas that aims towards idea clarity, which typically ends up with having a thing as an organizing datum in a single design act, whether it's an axis, a mega structure, an open space, a topography map, etc.This approach is too one-dimensional, regardless of how complex the designer claims his/her project is.