4.26.- SEPI Desarrollo Empresarial, S.A

As mentioned in the discussion on the architectural approach above, typomorphological analysis deals with buildings, cells, rooms, structures and materials - more individual elements. The geographical approach followed the historical development of urban forms and the evolution of those forms; on the other hand, the philosophical approach emphasised the social and mental dimension as well as the power relations affecting the city. After all, the urban design approach brought other dimensions such as the quality of the public realm, public space, place and people, and how to connect the each part with the whole by negotiating the relations between multiple actors and considering the socio-economical issues and regulations, while taking into account the building within its local and global context.

Urban space and public space rather than only the building itself were further discussed in the late nineteenth century, particularly by Camillo Sitte (1889) in his book ‘City Planning According to Artistic Principles’; Zucker (1959) in ‘Town and Square: From the Agora to the Village Green’; Aldo Rossi (1982) in ‘The Architecture of the City’; Rob Krier (1979) in ‘Urban Space’, and Row and Koetter (1978) in their work ‘Collage City’. These urbanist theorists and architects were the forerunners of urban design. Their main areas of interest were the typology of urban spaces, aesthetic dimension of urban space, form, coherence, and geometry, as they were inspired by ancient Greek and Roman cities. Above all, they also criticised the space being transformed in order to accommodate cars through the construction of straight roads and wide streets. In Collage City, in particular, Row and Koetter explain the modern city as a combination of

sculptural buildings, which can also be called objects, and the texture as the background (Carmona et al., 2003). This hypothetical city involves the traditional urban centre versus modern periphery, fragmented farmlands, territorial infrastructures and wastelands (Wharton, 2005).

The historical development of the ideas regarding the city, before the 1960s, were more ‘prescriptive and utopian’ (O’Sullivan, 2000), searching for ‘ideal cities’; such as Howard’s (1898) work ‘Garden Cities’ in England, Le Corbusier’s (1929) ‘Ville Radieuse’ and Wright’s (1945) ‘Broadacre’. The Urban Renewal Movement started in cities, which includes the period between the second half of the nineteenth century and 1945. The intention was to cope with the unhealthy and inhuman places lacking in infrastructure that the industrial cities caused. This movement was followed by renewing the cities through opening large boulevards and streets; as Haussmann did in Paris between 1850 and the 1860s. Parallel to this movement the ‘City Beautiful Movement’ was flourishing in North America, and with the advent of the twentieth century, the ‘Modernist Movement’ emerged especially with CIAM (International Congress of Modern Architecture) that triggered the demolishment of some parts of cities; because according to the CIAM principles, a modern city should be beautiful, clean, green and healthy (Akkar, 2006).

By the 1960s discourses regarding the city turned into more analytical approaches. Lynch (1960), Jacobs (1961), Alexander (1964) and William H. Whyte (1980) made valuable contributions to the field of urban design both with their observations of places and people and also due to their humanistic approach (O’Sullivan, 2000). For instance, Lynch developed five elements in order to reveal the hierarchical character of a city structure: paths, edges, districts, nodes, and landmarks (Nowak, 2003). Above all it is important to mention that Alexander is considered as the godfather of the mathematical works and concepts. In ‘A Pattern Language’, Alexander and his colleagues deconstructed the urban system into smaller units in order to understand the whole. Pattern language has the structure of a network. This pattern system performs in an order, which follows a

sequence (Alexander et al., 1977). Moreover it is a kind of tool, which includes the design rules in order to cope with the design problems, besides revealing how to create semi-lattice structures. He compares the city to semi-lattice (as in organic cities) rather than a tree (less complex, planned and zoned cities formed by rational design methodology) in his favourite quote, ‘A City is not a Tree’. According to Alexander, the city is formed of grouped sets of related elements, which are the meaningful intersection of elements (O’Sullivan, 2000). This arrangement starts from the largest pattern and comes down to the smallest one in a hierarchical way; such as in sequence from regions to cities, enclaves, neighbourhoods, and houses; even down to the rooms. This hierarchy of patterns is the summary of the language, which is the method of gathering words together meaningfully and constituting an index. As Alexander emphasises, if we read the sentences that connect one pattern group to another then we can have the idea of the whole language (Alexander et al., 1977). In order to understand the complex system, internal structures are being analysed. Patterns here indicate human activity and interaction. His main point was to form a method creating coherence in the built environment, as well as the organisation of connections for a unified whole (Salingaros, 2000). Salingaros (2000) was influenced by Alexander’s thoughts specifically in comparing the structure of complex systems in biology, nature and geometry. As Alexander did, Salingaros also reflects that urban geometrical coherence is essential for the quality of life and the vitality of the city. Consequently, through examining complex systems, he puts forward eight rules for the geometrical coherence of urban form: couplings, diversity, boundaries, forces, organisation, hierarchy, interdependence, and decomposition. A coherent city form has to be plastic, which means that it has to have the possibility of being bent and extended. In order to be plastic this urban fabric has to be strongly tied at the small scale and weakly at the large scale. Large-scale coherence can be maintained by hierarchy, interacting sub-units, connectivity at all scales, and variety at small scales (Salingaros, 2000).

Another important analytical theorist is Hillier, who developed space syntax as a mathematical tool in order to analyse space. Similar to Alexander, Hillier et al. (1987) also points out pattern, which can be seen from multiple points of views for understanding how towns work. He gives an example to differentiate spatial order and geometrical order. For instance, a grid system can be understood to be geometrical when seen from above, however, when we move through this system, it may be difficult for someone to find their way and orientate themselves because every part looks as the other. On the other hand, irregular deformed grids of traditional towns can be seen as disordered from above, but while moving through, the town seems well ordered. Hence by exploring the local we can have an idea of overall, global pattern (Hillier et al., 1987, p. 218).