This practicum focuses on the issues of the overlapping boundaries between Student housing and downtown redevelopment. Can graduate students find a place in the downtown to meet their need for off-campus housing, and simultaneously help build a healthy, vibrant, downtown community; ensuring the housing facility represents a quality space for both graduate students and the local community? The following is an investigation of related issues including: Richard Florida’s notion of the Creative Class, multi-purpose development, the university as an urban catalyst, and adaptive reuse. The combination of graduate housing and the city’s downtown redevelopment will create new design typology that benefits both graduate students and downtown community. The practicum project consists of a live/work space for Winnipeg in the Waterfront area by adaptively reusing the James Ave Pumping Station building. The renovated building includes a bookstore, a coffee shop, a daycare, and an urban grocery store. However, the design focuses on the informal learning space and the quality of graduate students’ living experience through aspects such as accommodation, study space, meeting and casual spaces.

This practicum focuses on the issues of the overlapping boundaries between Student housing and downtown redevelopment. Can graduate students find a place in the downtown to meet their need for off-campus housing, and simultaneously help build a healthy, vibrant, downtown community; ensuring the housing facility represents a quality space for both graduate students and the local community? The following is an investigation of related issues including: Richard Florida’s notion of the Creative Class, multi-purpose development, the university as an urban catalyst, and adaptive reuse. The combination of graduate housing and the city’s downtown redevelopment will create new design typology that benefits both graduate students and downtown community. The practicum project consists of a live/work space for Winnipeg in the Waterfront area by adaptively reusing the James Ave Pumping Station building. The renovated building includes a bookstore, a coffee shop, a daycare, and an urban grocery store. However, the design focuses on the informal learning space and the quality of graduate students’ living experience through aspects such as accommodation, study space, meeting and casual spaces.

In the Stone Town of Zanzibar, a World Heritage Site, the amalgamation of various cultures has created a complex architectural as well as cultural heritage. Public space is regarded as male space due to the strong Islamic legacy, and currently women have very limited access to public or recreational spaces, despite prominent spaces having been available for their exclusive use historically. However, cultural practices are slowly changing as women are gaining better access to education, the workplace and decision-making roles, and are thus moving into the public realm. The project investigates the potential of architecture to react to and accommodate this shift. Gender roles are acknowledged as valuable social constructs and the project aims to facilitate the creation of a living, changing heritage. This proposal for a women’s centre in Stone Town draws from both the tangible and intangible heritage to develop a contemporary interpretation of traditional values and aesthetics while aiming to empower women in their quest to reclaim public space. The project is located on a street that had formed part of a previous planning scheme to incorporate vehicles into the dense town, and had subsequently developed as a scar in the urban fabric. A public square that has fallen into disuse due to illegal construction and an enclosed garden next to it offers the opportunity to revitalise the area. The proposed project will consist of areas that afford the following activities, each suitably designed to respond to and maximise the gender-related needs and restrictions of the activities: demonstration workshops, shops, restaurant and demonstration kitchen, offi ce space, study area and library, turkish bath, swimming pool, and various garden spaces. The architecture will explore the application of traditional technologies in the construction of contemporary buildings in order to develop an architectural language that fi ts harmoniously within its surroundings but contributes to the legacy of outstanding architecture in Stone Town. / Dissertation (MArch(Prof))--University of Pretoria, 2014. / Architecture / MArch(Prof) / Unrestricted

Milosevic, S. 2014. Buller – Hur planers en bullerfri stad?. Kulturgeografiska institutionen, Uppsatser, Uppsala universitet.   This essay is about noise pollution caused by urbanization. The field study takes place in Uppsala and explores their organization of handling problems with noise pollution caused by traffic. Noise pollution has long been neglected as an environmental hazard. Studies show that noise pollution can cause severe health problems such as increased blood pressure. Therefore the EU has made a new directive on how cities should handle noise pollution. The essay also exemplifies how the work with noise pollution is implemented in a residential production of today. I have come to my results by observing the surroundings and interviewing the planning engineer of the new residential buildings on the street Stationsgatan which is close to the Central station in Uppsala, Sweden. I have also interviewed the project manager of the municipality’s action plan for reducing noise pollution which was made due to the EU-directive. My results show that we must reduce our dependence of cars and plan for a soundscape as much as we plan on the visual aspect if we want to reduce the noise pollutions in our cities. Not only will the noise pollution reduce if we reduced the use of private cars but also a lot of other pollutions would decrease.

"The World Bank's central mission is to fight poverty. Over 2 billion people around the world live in poverty. With such pressing concerns, why bother about arts and culture: because we must accept the importance of social well-being, educational and intellectual fulfilment. Culture is profoundly important. We need to understand the cultural dimension of development: for example effective educational projects must take into account the cultural expression and language of the community. We have moved from involvement solely with financial capital to a financial being balanced with social and structural factors, a more holistic view that incorporates lending criteria that accommodate 'social capital'. We will do our utmost to make a difference. Bank finance in culture is truly complementary to that of others. A Kenyan proverb displayed at the Museum of Natural History in New York reads: "Let us treat nature well. It was not given to us by out fathers but it was lent to us by our children". I suggest we insert 'cultural heritage' for nature." Ian Johnson - Vice President Environmentally and Socially Sustainable Development, The World Bank (http:\www.arts&culture trust.htm) The Inner City of Pretoria is rapidly degrading. Businesses are moving out and poorer people are moving in. To create a place for real people, more than just economic stability is needed. At the Vienna Architecture Conference in 1993 "The End of Architecture?" Zaha Hadid stated: " Being an architect today one is faced with the challenge of a profession torn in two distinct aspects. On the one hand architecture became pure technique, as if it were a branch of engineering; on the other hand, it becomes image production, as if it were a branch of advertising."(Noever, 1992; 27) The theme at the conference alluded to the fact that architecture for architecture's sake no longer predominates, and it now seems that only fashion is being rewarded. Architecture for architecture's sake cannot be the solution, cannot be the antidote to fashion; only a social purpose to architecture, publicly formulated, can be such an antidote. There can be no great architecture without a social programme. A visionary architecture has to take part in a political vision, and its reality presupposes a political process, which puts a new architecture on the agenda and thus transforms the profession into a movement with new aims and inspirations. What matters to the inhabitants of the Inner City, apart from the fundamentals for physical survival, is the quality of buildings and the in-between spaces that they generate. Keeping this in mind one should realise that designing outside spaces is as important as designing buildings. There has always been a distinction between interior and exterior space, with architects and interior architects responsible for the latter and landscape architects responsible for the first. If one intends to create a real people's place there should be a fusion between these two elements. They should be perceived as spaces created for people, without drawing a distinction between inside and outside. This is one of the elements which the city lacks most. The open spaces in the Berea precinct are either not planned or not utilised in the way they were planned. Today cities may be increasingly sophisticated in meeting technical needs, but now is the time to bring deeper human needs into the brief. / Dissertation (MArch (Prof))--University of Pretoria, 2005. / Architecture / unrestricted

Vad är det i den urbana väven av platser och byggnader som på lokal nivå gör den välfungerande, hållbar och till en plats vi människor kan leva i och verka på tillsammans?Hur utformar vi bäst staden när behovet av dess infrastruktur, service, platser att bopå och så många andra aspekter ökar i takt med en ständigt ökande urbanisering?Ett verktyg som tas till hjälp allt oftare i denna utmaning är en förtätning av de redanbefintliga miljöerna med ytterligare nya byggnader, i vilka olika former av funktioner ochverksamheter ska erbjudas i en lämplig blandning för att förtäta och koppla ihop stadenoch dess invånare än mer.Vi undersöker i detta projekt hur ett antal internationella exempel på urban förtätninghar fallit ut och försöker dra generaliserande lärdomar av det, med målet att hitta ochverifiera principer som kan vara vägledande för att skapa väl fungerande och täta urbanabyggnader och miljöer framöver. Utifrån dessa principer samt platsanalys skapar viett designförslag för en obebyggd tomt i centrala Malmö. I vår analys och de tester avgestaltning och form vi genomför av de funna principerna, ska vi se att det är möjligt attlära av den förtätning som skett under de senaste åren och kanske också redan nu dravissa slutsatser av hur framtida urban förtätning bör ske. / What is it in the urban fabric of places and buildings that at the local level makes it wellfunctioning, sustainable and a place where people can live and work together? Howdo we best structure and shape the city when the need for its infrastructure, services,places to live and so much more increase at a rate on par with an ever increasing levelof urbanization? A tool used more and more frequently to handle this challenge is that ofurban infill of the already existing environments with additional new buildings, in whichvarious forms of functions and activities are to be offered in a suitable mix to densify andconnect the city and its inhabitants even more.In this project, we investigate how a number of international examples of urban infill haveworked out and try to deduce generalized principles from it, with the aim of verifyingthose principles to work as guidelines in the creation of well-functioning and dense urbanbuildings and environments in the future. Based on these principles together with siteanalysis we create a design proposal for an undeveloped plot in central Malmö. In ouranalysis and the research-by-design test we carry out of said principles, we shall see thatit is possible to learn from the urban infill projects which has taken place in recent yearsand that we already may draw some conclusions as to how future urban infill shouldpreferably be carried out.

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Flyovers, or grade separated bridges or roads, are a type of urban infrastructure that has been used to facilitate high-speed vehicular movement. This once-popular strategy of the west, despite being considered as a failure for sustainable urban growth, has been adopted in Bangladesh to combat traffic congestion in Dhaka that has a crippling effect on daily life of the citizens. As was anticipated by many urban planners and architects, these expensive structures did little to reduce traffic congestion, but created additional problems of noise and air pollution as well as reduced pedestrian mobility. More importantly, these flyovers created wasted void spaces underneath that are uncomfortable, devoid of human scale and act as physical and visual barriers that cause tears on the urban fabric. The objective of this thesis is to explore how architecture can unlock the potential of the unused spaces under the flyovers in Dhaka, by turning these linear leftover spaces into dignified public places that improves the daily lived experiences of the urban dwellers, by minimizing the disruptions caused by the flyover and by realizing the potential inherent in the robust structure of the flyover. This thesis examines a democratized way of building, where the role of architecture is to facilitate organic and heterogeneous growth, addition and modification to the flyover in order to bring the human scale back to the massive flyover structure through a reconciliation of top-down and bottom-up approaches. The architectural interventions respond to the site conditions, potentials and demands. The architectural outcome is based on the concepts of creating a threshold, architecture as armature and parasitic structures. / Master of Architecture / Flyovers, or grade separated bridges or roads, are a type of urban infrastructure that has been used to facilitate high-speed vehicular movement. This once-popular strategy of the west, despite being considered as a failure for sustainable urban growth, has been adopted in Bangladesh to combat traffic congestion in Dhaka that has a crippling effect on daily life of the citizens. As was anticipated by many urban planners and architects, these expensive structures did little to reduce traffic congestion, but created additional problems of noise and air pollution as well as reduced pedestrian mobility. More importantly, these flyovers created wasted empty spaces underneath that are uncomfortable and act as physical and visual barriers that cause tears on the urban fabric. The objective of this thesis is to explore how architecture can unlock the potential of the unused spaces under the flyovers in Dhaka, by turning these linear leftover spaces into dignified public places that improves the daily lived experiences of the urban dwellers, by minimizing the disruptions caused by the flyover and by realizing the potential inherent in the robust structure of the flyover. This thesis examines a democratized way of building, where the role of architecture is to facilitate organic and de-centralized growth, addition and modification to the flyover in order to bring the human scale back to the massive flyover structure through a reconciliation of top-down and bottom-up approaches. The architectural interventions respond to the site conditions, potentials and demands. The architectural outcome is based on the concepts of creating a threshold, architecture as armature and parasitic structures.

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Within the context of the contribution that urban infill development makes to urban wholeness, this thesis examines three specific sites in the city of Charlotte, North Carolina. The thesis tests the impact upon these sites of certain environmental design theories and principles developed primarily during the twentieth century. Subsequently, it examines what effect the infilling of these sites has upon the urban wholeness of the surrounding city. / Master of Science