Half-Time Semimar: Eva Minoura, "Urban Ambiguity: Designing for Territorial Performance"

Title: URBAN AMBIGUITY: Designing for Territorial Performance
PhD student: Eva Minoura, Arkitekt SAR/MSA

Opponent: Ali Madanipour, Professor of Urban Design (Newcastle University)

Supervisors: Lars Marcus, docent Stadsbyggnad (Arkitekturskolan KTH), Alexander Ståhle, Landskapsarkitekt LAR/MSA, Tekn. Dr. (VD Spacescape), and Meta Berghauser Pont, Assistant Professor (TU Delft)

Articles:
1. URBAN AMBIGUITY AT THE ‘SOFT EDGES’
2. TERRITORIAL PERFORMANCE OF URBAN FORM
3. THE ‘UNGARDEN’: WHERE IS APPROPRIABLE SPACE IN CURRENT PLANNING PRAXIS?

The concept of urban territoriality is situated at the very heart of urbanism - namely at the interface between the public and private realms, entangled with both circulation and habitation. This research seeks to understand the role of urban form as a parameter in use and appropriation of collective open space. For instance, empirical evidence shows that a sense of ownership of space and appropriation through personalization (with gardens, furniture, etc) is a component distinct from use, facilitated by different built-form elements. However, sometimes sanctioned use and ownership are not supported by the built form, a condition abundant in postwar modernist suburbs but also in very recent residential proposals. Whether this is a problem depends upon how much credence is given to the ‘performative’ aspects of the built environment, given that use-value to residents appears to suffer as a result of unclearly differentiated open space. In fact many residents with open courtyards don’t perceive that they have a yard at all. Strategies are needed which combine densification aims with knowledge about territorial behaviour and how transformation strategies can support resident perceptions of what a yard is.

The PhD work is a research-project entitled "Suburbia in Territorial Transformation" that aims to address these questions empirically, using questionnaires to gauge user preferences, site audits to understand where territoriality emerges and various spatial analysis methods to measure built form and assess it’s performativity. The study focuses on multifamily residences and the open space framed (sometimes very loosely) by built form. Using GIS and correlation analysis, patterns emerge which reveal that use of space and taking ownership of space differ. It will be argued that this naturally has implications for densification and the growing impetus to built compact cities.