Urban Design: The Latest Architecture and News

Deep Ellum developed in the late 1800s as a residential and commercial neighborhood on the east side of Downtown Dallas. The early 1900s flourished with industrial development, serving factory facilities for the Continental Gin Company and Henry Ford’s Model T. Deep Ellum’s real claim to fame was found in its music. By the 1920s, the neighborhood had become a hotbed for early jazz and blues musicians, hosting the likes of Blind Lemon Jefferson, Huddie “Leadbelly” Ledbetter, Texas Bill Day and Bessie Smith. Following WWII, the success of Deep Ellum started to fade. The ever-growing availability and use of the automobile led to the removal of the Houston and Texas Central railroad tracks -- to make way for the Central Expressway-- and by 1956 the streetcar line had been removed. Businesses closed and residents moved, and in 1969 a new elevation of Central Expressway truncated Deep Ellum, completely obliterating the 2400 block of Elm Street.

Update: The deadline has been extended to January 4, 2016. 

The creation of the Erie Canal was a paradigm shift for American progress in the 19th century, leveraging hundreds of miles of canal networks capable of generating cities out of swamps and ushering in a new era of exchange. Over a century later, what was the Erie Canal through Central New York has been capped over with urban development and sprawl. We are now presented with the opportunity to reposition Erie as the vehicle for a globally relevant, ecologically turbocharged urban corridor. The Elevating Erie ideas competition seeks proposals that consider our current global biodiversity challenges in urbanized regions by developing solutions specific to the Erie Canalway Trail along Erie Boulevard East connecting DeWitt to Syracuse.

A design team led by Nikken Sekkei, in collaboration with Tierra Design and Arup Singapore, has won a competition to Master Plan a 24-kilometer long former railway corridor that spans the entirety of Singapore with their proposal entitled “Lines of Life.” The proposal, chosen by a panel from Singapore’s Urban Redevelopment Authority incorporates green areas, footpaths, bicycle paths, and surrounding developments that are flexibly implementable over many years, so that the former train line can be best integrated into its surroundings.

Istanbul-based architecture studio Salon, in collaboration with Praxis Landscape, has unveiled the designs for its Beylikdüzü Life Valley Bridges and Routes Master Plan for Istanbul's Beylikdüzü district. Guided by the idea of “Keeping the Valley Alive," the project has created a new design for the area to thrive, maintaining the valley “livable, accessible, sustainable, feasible, and alive.”

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Euclid understood lines as ‘breadthless lengths,’ defined by two points and stretching on into infinity. But delineations can also be as small and simple as a flick of the wrist; the mind moving out of the hand into a gesture. Vassily Kandinsky believed lines to be ‘created by movement – specifically through the destruction of the intense self-contained repose of the point.’ Process is suggested; moments emerge from the continuity to form a rhythm. When the abstract becomes physical, delineations unite and exclude. Sociologist T.K. Oommen sees ‘the very story of human civilization’ in shifting and overlapping boundaries of all kinds. Whether blurred or accentuated, instantaneous or permanent, representational or manifest, intentional or happenstance, DELINEATIONS in the landscape are consequential. They have a story to tell.

Terreform ONE: Hackerspace + Bio Design - This lecture will discuss Terreform ONE, a non-profit design group that promotes smart design in cities. Through intensive projects, the group aims to illuminate the environmental possibilities of New York City and inspire solutions in similar areas globally. The group develops solutions for local sustainability in energy, transportation, infrastructure, buildings, waste treatment, food, and water. These solutions are derived from the interface of design, computation and synthetic biology.

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Irish Architecture Foundation in collaboration with The Matheson Foundation and Dublin City Council are launching a competition to design a play and skate park for ‘The Lawns’ in Le Fanu Park, Dublin 10. The competition is now open. The 'Play Park: Ballyfermot' project is a unique opportunity for an innovative inter-disciplinary design collective, with a passion for working in community contexts to develop a world class play and skate space for young people in Dublin.

Across industrial North America, many small working class cities are faced with a plethora of abandoned property due to the downfall of the automotive industry. The prolific ruins of the largest abandoned factory in North America, Detroit's Packard Motor Plant, have served as an emblem for dozens of similar plants dotting the landscapes of cities across the continent. In 2010, shortly after the beginning of the global economic crisis, Chrysler closed a sprawling engine factory in Kenosha, Wisconsin. The factory has since been demolished and is now at the beginning of a five-year cleanup. Located adjacent to a densely populated suburban development, the 107-acre property begs the question: what can be done with such a massive piece of land?

In response to Kenosha's Chrysler problem, a team of urbanists, architects and researchers known as Urban Design for Everyone (UD4U) launched a global competition to reinvigorate the former industrial property. Proposals had to take the adjacent neighborhoods into consideration, with the ultimate goal of bridging gaps between disparate communities at opposite ends of the property. The winning proposals range widely from a stylized village of housing, to the creation of enormous urban farms, to the construction of an innovation park featuring a series of vast artificial lakes. After receiving 43 entries from 17 countries, a jury of local architects selected three exceptional proposals and five honorable mentions. Find out what the teams proposed after the break.

Providing more public space for pedestrians is one of the main goals of urban renewal projects taking place in cities around the world. 

By planting more trees, implementing more sidewalks and bike paths and establishing new seating areas, it is possible to design more welcoming places with less traffic congestion and that promote sustainable methods of transportation, such as walking or biking. 

With the aim of publicizing urban renewal projects that have made cities more pedestrian friendly, Brazilian group Urb-I launched the “Before/After” project, which compiles before and after photos that show how cities have redistributed their public space.

The project is collaborative so that anyone can use Google Street View, or another similar tool, to raise awareness of the changes taking place in their cities.

Read on to see the transformed spaces. 

Correction Update: This article was first published on Sunday 16th August, and originally stated that "the Burning Man management team will ultimately select a winner" and that "the final design plan will be implemented for the 2017 event." However, since then it has been brought to our attention that this is not an official competition, and the Burning Man organization is not planning to update their current design.

ArchDaily would like to apologize for this grave error, which arose because we did not realize that the Black Rock City Ministry of Urban Planning (BRCMUP) had no official ties to the organizers behind Burning Man, and is therefore not a part of Burning Man's management team. For their part, Burning Man have stated "we love the ingenuity of Burners and are curious to see what they come up with through this competition. We will certainly take a look at all the top designs in this competition, not just the winner, out of curiosity and admiration... But there are no plans to redesign Black Rock City."

The article has been updated to correct our errors. If you wish to find out more, you can do so at the competition website or Burning Man's blog post about the competition.

The Seoul Metropolitan Government has announced its Sejong-daero Historic Cultural Space Design Competition, which seeks creative designs for the site of the former National Tax Service Building, as well as a greater conceptual blueprint for the central Seoul area.

The goal of the competition centers on the idea of “creating a space for integration of existing historic cultural heritages and contemporary urban space” via a restoration of the historic essence of the building site, but also with a focus on its future uses.

As a part of its EMBARQ Sustainable Urban Mobility initiative, the WRI Ross Center for Sustainable Cities has created a global reference guide called Cities Safer by Design “to help cities save lives from traffic fatalities through improved street design and smart urban development."

Causing over 1.24 million deaths annually, traffic fatalities are currently estimated to be the eighth leading cause of death worldwide, a ranking that is expected to rise to the fifth leading cause of death by 2030.

With these staggering numbers in mind, the Cities Safer by Design guide discusses ways to make cities less dangerous, particularly with its section entitled, “7 Proven Principles for Designing a Safer City.” Learn what the 7 concepts are, after the break.

The Washington Post has published a piece looking at how infrastructure acts as a form of segregation in cities in the US. Using racial dot maps from the University of Virginia’s Weldon Cooper Center for Public Service, they show how highways, railroads, historically uncrossable avenues, and similar urban design decisions have a huge impact on the physical isolation of different races. These types of infrastructure were also found to reinforce boundaries set by natural patterns of topography and bodies of water. Cities found to have clear infrastructural segregation include Pittsburgh, Hartford, Detroit, Washington, D.C., and Milwaukee. Read the full article, here.

If you are interested in the nexus between health, design, and the urban setting, join researchers, policymakers, practitioners, designers and others for an evening of dynamic, diverse presentations, conversations, and drinks to celebrate the launch of this exciting new initiative.

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During this week’s “Alternatives for Low Carbon City Architecture and Life” conference in Shenzhen, China, we sat down with Rocco Yim to ask him how his work—driven by his interest in connecting cultures— is related to the pursuit of low-carbon or sustainable design. Yim explained the core values that motivate his approach to design, revealing his attitudes towards technologically-driven design solutions. Read on to see what Yim believes to be the essence of succesful urban spaces.

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