Architecture, Urbanism and Planning
Eric Cheung & Ulysses Sengupta of Softgrid Ltd have BEEN CONFIRMED for PRESENTATIONS & WORKSHOPS on New Computational Methods for Urban Design and Planning – Within constant change  at:
TIMES OF SCARCITY & RECLAIMING THE POSSIBILITY OF MAKING
Please find more details at:http://www.scibe.eu/category/euss/
Some images from the exhibition Unplannable City recently curated at Studio X Mumbai. The work included excerpts from Design Unit 5 at the University of Nottingham, who are a postgraduate research unit looking into complex urbanity and new tools to address traditionally ignored situations. Working with KRIA, Rachna Sansad, TISS and Mumbai University, the projects addressed issues of informal and formal building. The exhibition was accompanied by Lectures (Rohan Shivkumar, Shivani Singh and Ulysses Sengupta) a Workshop (Postgraduate students from KRVIA and NMIMS).
Please see the parallel academic blog designunit6.com for the video lectures shortly.
This is a short video describing our investigation attempting to integrate the formalistic relationships of the Forbidden City grid into a natural topography, which is the site of a new Taoist temple and masterplan. The investigation was inspired by an interview with the Taoist Abbot in which the shortest desrciption he provided of Taoism was ‘nature’. This brought up questions about the possible manifestations of the formal basis of the religion which is inherited from imperial associations (and historically intertwined with royal rites), when applied to a natural site such as this one.
Softgrid’s entry for the Taiwan Tower Conceptual Design Competition (SKY-MILL) received a Merit Award. We have added additional images of the competition to this post. Please click on an image to enlarge.
Please see ‘Judging Results’ at:
http://www.twtower.com.tw/index_e.asp
Allowing the Informal – Urban Block – 001 from softgrid_limited on Vimeo.
A study into how emergence can be allowed and partially directed within urban territories by understanding the underlying rules.
Part of a series of urban models incorporating emergent behaviour by Eric Cheung while he was a student in Post-Graduate Unit 6 at the University of Nottingham.Please see the following link for more detail:
http://designunit6.com/
Student: Eric Cheung
Research Leader: Ulysses Sengupta
I was invited to sit in as a panelist on a session at the festival by Marisol Garcia, from UCL at the Eleanor Marx-Aveling Galleries. The discussion was on the contemporary influences, forces, processes and outcomes of urban transformation in Istanbul, centred around the case of Kartal, where an international design competition has been won by Zaha Hadid Architects to transform a post-industrial neighbourhood into a new CBD for Istanbul (‘the CBD’ being the broad theme for this year’s festival).
Following a well researched presentation by the students, the discussion moved onto the possibilities that may exist somewhere in between practice and research to influnce urban change towards more inclusive futures. It was interesting to note both the depth of research and the attempt to implement methodologies for bottom up drivers within processes of urban transformation. The session proved to be too short for the discussion to progress to combining bottom up approaches and inputs with the top down policies and debates. It will be interesting to see if parallel tools will be proposed.
For further information on the context of the session, a web article by UCL’s MSc Building and Urban Design in Development (BUDD) is linked here
http://www.ucl.ac.uk/dpu/courses/masters/msc_building/Fieldwork/Istanbulreport2010lowres
Blog by MSc Building and Urban Design in Development course at UCL (within Development Planning Unit)
http://www.abitare.it/highlights/city-of-islands-istanbul-at-a-crossroads/
Festival Website
http://thisisnotagateway.squarespace.com/2010-programme/