Visual Description: Collage, pencil hand drawing, and digital photographs of cityscapes and architectural models. Showing the concept of This Is Not A New City.
THIS IS NOT A NEW CITY [ AARHUS ]
2012 // THESIS PROJECT / PART THREE // AARHUS SCHOOL OF ARCHITECTURE [DK]
[ A A R H U S ]
[ City Condition, part one ] [ Paris, part two ] [ The Model, part four ] [ Manifest ]
According to Forslag til planstrategi 2011 [ the 2011 strategy plan developed by the municipality of Aarhus ] the predicted growth of Aarhus by 2030 is 50.000 workplaces and 75.000 new inhabitants in 50.000 new dwellings.
In the publication the municipality forward their solution to cope with this growth, operating with two strategies: urban renewal and satellite development. This is a short account and comment on the plan, the numbers and calculations can be found in the appendix, at the end of this pamphlet.
Urban renewal
According to the plan, urban renewal should consist of 3 mill m2 of floor space, half used for dwelling [ approx. 15.000 dwellings ] and a half for workplaces [ approx. 35.000 workplaces ]. There are three main sites within the city for this development, the harbor [ 600.000 m2 ], the former Ceres brewery [ 156.000 m2 ], and the former freight yard [ 144.00 m2 ]. The remaining development is to be found in suburban, marginalized apartment block residential areas, far from the city center. [ Turn the page to see a map of the area ]
New satellite cities
The new satellite cities will have to provide 35.000 dwellings [ 3.500.000 m2; 52.500 inhabitants ] and 15.000 workplaces [ 650.000 m2 ]. The majority of new inhabitants [ approx. 36- 49.000 ] are to settle in three new developments 10-15 km outside of Aarhus, in Lisbjerg [ 25.000 ], Malling [ 4-7000 ], and Elev [ 10-17.000 ] along with Harlev, Årslev, Tilst, and Skødstrup-Løgten 10-25 km outside Aarhus.
Reading the plan it became clear to me that the city was not moving towards its stated goals of the agenda 21-statement “Advancement of sustainable urban development and urban renewal. / Reduction of the environmental impact. / Advancement of biological diversity...” as they write that the development “shall first and foremost happen by developing four new dense cities and the renewal and densifying of the existing city”.
The satellite development will further revoke the landscape, both through the construction of the buildings and by an increased need for expansion of the existing and development of new infrastructure.
“The new cities must have a size so they can have their own city center, where dwellings and workplaces are neighbors. This will create an urban intensity and variation, which is a precondition for the development of an active, vibrant, and independent city identity”. This should be the goal for every city, but as this is a plan for the development of Aarhus, why then move the development 10-15 km out of Aarhus, instead of having it within the city limits?
I have chosen to work with Aarhus as my site, in order to show a different way of developing our cities. I believe in many of the municipality’s ends but strongly disagree with the means. This project claims to show an alternative form of development for the city. I want to show that it is possible to put the total development of 7.145.000 m2 within the existing city limits and by doing so achieve a higher quality of life for all inhabitants.
Visual Description: Digital map of Aarhus and the surrounding area. To the right is a square showing the expected growth of Aarhus. Rather than distributing this area to even further suburbs, This Is Not a New City suggests that it can be located within the two ring roads creating the edge of Aarhus.
Visual Description: Map of the edge of Aarhus, indicating the different programs and housing typologies.
Visual Description: Diagrammatic excerpt plan. Buildings are marked in red, while the color of the ground underneath them indicates the typology. Overlaid are a series of bobbles, with shared green spaces, showing the disconnect in the current system.
In the 2011 strategy plan, it is stated that a plan must be developed so that at least 90% of inhabitants in Aarhus by 2012 have 500m or less of green space. Looking at the map I had created and contemplating the lessons from Paris and Skanderborgvej with the green goals of the municipality, the strategy had to be about connecting; it was about connecting three very different green spaces: wetland / a well-kept park/forest.
Skanderborgvej cuts straight across the periphery in a southwest / northeast movement; similar to the cut I made through Paris. Skanderborgvej hosts many different programs and scales. Walking the road, I felt the area to be disconnected. The housing program has turned its back on the road and is hiding in the ditches. The road is a very straight cut, and not at all the interesting spatial experience I found in Paris, with the subdued twists and turns, connecting side spaces, and changes in spatial shape. To build an understanding of the area I started to map the points of interest in the vicinity of Skanderborgvej.
The neighborhood was established in the 1950s. The building files show that there have been many small modifications to the villas, mainly regarding permission to build a carport. Since the neighborhood is more than 50 years old, there are some beautiful old trees, worthy of preservation. To the north of the site, a green wetland is located, from here a path leads to the huge Lake Brabrand. The site slopes, from Skanderborgvej towards Lykkeholms allé [ a drop of 5-8 meters ], enabling a view over the wetlands.
An investigation into the different structures of the city reveals, that by comparison the structure of the city and the suburbs are quite identical; a multiple-dwelling-block fits almost perfectly, on top of a single-family-block. This lead to an investigation into ground area / floor area use and density, the numbers and calculations are in the appendix at the end of this pamphlet. The site used for the comparison is a single-family-block bordering on Skanderborgvej. The multiple-dwelling-block is assumed to be approximately 10 meters deep and five stories high. This shows the multiple-dwelling-block uses roughly 3 times as much ground area, but delivers about 15 times as much floor area.
Public space is the most important factor in developing the city condition. As public space is defined as the gaps in the built environment, buildings have to hold the street line, in order to define this. I perceive the single-family-block as a solid mass, wherein the matter is removed to give room for public space. Hereby the notion of the passage and the square arises, wherein an existing tree can define a public square. The site has a suitable size for containing an inner street, as it is roughly the same size as two blocks in ‘kartoffelrækkerne’ in Copenhagen [ Image 1 ]. The complex relation of juxtaposing spaces, as in the mastersection model [ city conditions ], is further investigated in the dwelling on-dwelling model [ below ]; pieces of wood are stacked to create a cube and then cut open to reveal the structure. The structure that emerged has great similarities to the superimposed city drawing [ Image 3 ]. The paint was applied to one of the slices and used as a stamp, over the site, leaving a pattern of spaces, as a map [ Image 2 ]. This texture layer and one generated from the superimposed city drawing became the base from which the first sketches of the plan were developed [ Image 4 ].
Visual Description: Photo of an open sketchbook, with a hand drawing showing the green strategy of linking shared exterior spaces throughout the city, to a pedestrian and bike-friendly primary network.
Visual Description: Conceptual model of the typical single family dwelling linked into a network of living units capable of moving across the city.
Visual Description: Model made from wood, metal, and string. Thin metal rods are bent to create three-dimensional pathways hung with fishing string underneath a grid of metal rods, within an open wood box. The metal rods are supporting digital black-and-white prints, of diverse housing solutions; remixing the existing city in the z-axis.
Visual Description: Collage, pencil hand drawing, and digital photographs of cityscapes and architectural models. Showing the concept of This Is Not A New City.
Visual Description: Close-up of collage, viewing down through the transformed streetscape. On the right-hand side line drawing suggests a multi-faceted street space, where the inhabitant’s living styles become expressions in the public space, on the left, the collage is cut open to reveal a deeper space within it, as the block opens upon further engagement.
Visual Description: Close-up of collage, showing an opening in the city block inviting people to enter and cross through the blocks, allowing for a finer ally way system of navigating the city.
Collage pencil hand drawing, and digital photographs of cityscapes and architectural models, of concept for This Is Not A New City, by neuroqueer and autist, artist and architect Troels Steenholdt Heiredal