Description
Emergent-city is an urban design project with the purpose of bringing the human being back to the center of city design. The aim of this thesis is to provoke thoughts, discussions, and a reconsideration of the design of cities as dominated by cars. Thus, the question should be asked: is being over human or human over being? This work is a starting point of a project to suggest that we as citizens need to reconsider our role in cities and return to focus of urban design back to its main occupants, people. This work was inspired by my experience as an immigrant and my first time being in the USA. After traveling from the Middle East to North America and visiting some Californian cities, the first notable characteristic to me was the paradox of contemporary urbanism. People dream of a house with a garden that is isolated from the center of the city while simultaneously desiring a sort of downtown vitality. This is the paradox of human- centered design: we crave communal activity and resources while also seeking privacy. This urban design project is based on vertical circulation, which is configured to match the human scale. The deconstruction of the concepts of wall, roof, and floor and converting them all into one single architectural element allowed me to maximize the habitable area. This singular architectural element consists of a surface-based container which then houses the buildings inside of itself and places the streets at a higher level of the horizon. This exhibition presents the conceptual idea of a habitable minimal surface form that doubles as a city to result in the promotion of a social life through walkability, a sense of discovery through experimentation, and comfortability through the mixed-use zoning provided in the design. This proper relationship between the existing roads and the new design provides the improvement of access and mobility throughout the site. The usage of vertical movement easily provides human-scale spaces, while maximizing the usage of land. Incorporating the natural elements with everyday activities, citizens are the ones who define the function of each space in this city.
