a) The Spine – an almost two kilometre long housing wall parallel to the remaining rail line b) Housing Everywhere – a fairly traditional grid with mixed use buildings and c) Big Box Urbanism – consisting of scattered clusters in a park-like setting where large commercial, cultural, leisure, office and other uses are wrapped in a cladding of perimeter housing. Interestingly enough, an overwhelming majority of students had no problem to abandon their own design framework and continue exploring the possibilities of a design provided by others. Some of the winning team’s students even chose to develop one of the other two winning designs for further exploration. Above all, some students even voiced that the group they joined for the final round was more important to them than the design on which they were to concentrate.
Urban Framework- Housing Everywhere (above), Spine (below). Image credit: UD Studio, WS 2015/16
June 2016 | CITY OBSERVER143