B.Arch Curriculum · Semester 7 · Theory

Urban Design

Architecture designs the building. Town planning draws the land-use map. Urban design works in the gap between them — it designs the space BETWEEN buildings: the street, the square, the public realm, and the three-dimensional form of the city as people actually move through, read and remember it. This course is the theory of that in-between scale: how we perceive city form (Lynch's image, Cullen's serial vision, Rossi's collective memory), what makes public space alive (Jacobs and Whyte), what goes wrong (blight, slums, sprawl), and how cities are remade (renewal, participation, transit-oriented development and conservation). Less a style than a way of seeing the city.

5Units

6Outcomes

2Credits

FreeForever

Start with Unit I All student courses

Unit III · How we read the city

Organization of Space — the Canon

This is the canon-heavy unit — the great ideas about how urban space is organized, perceived and given meaning. Kevin Lynch showed the city is read through five elements: paths, edges, districts, nodes and landmarks. Gordon Cullen showed it is experienced as serial vision, a moving sequence of revelations. Norberg-Schulz named the spirit of place, genius loci; Aldo Rossi found the city's collective memory in its persistent types and monuments. And Jane Jacobs and William H. Whyte turned from form to life — the four generators of diversity, eyes on the street, and the empirical discovery that people sit where there are places to sit. Plus Edmund Bacon on movement as the organizer of city form.

Lynch's 5 elementsSerial visionGenius lociCollective memoryEyes on the street

Open the lesson

The syllabus

Five units, from the space between buildings to the renewed city.

Transcribed from the official B.Arch syllabus. All 5 units are live as full interactive lessons, each with original diagrams, a self-assessment quiz and a studio task.

Unit 1 — Introduction to Urban Design

Live

What urban design is and how it differs from architecture and town planning — the design of the space BETWEEN buildings; the 1956 Harvard conference; perception of city form; townscape elements; figure-ground and the Nolli map; urban scale, massing and the quality of urban enclosure (the D/H ratio); behavioural issues; scope and objectives.

CO1

Unit 2 — The Role of Public Space

Live

Public space defined and typed; its evolution — the Greek agora, the Roman forum, the medieval market square, the Renaissance/Baroque piazza, and the Indian maidan, bazaar street and chowk; place-making and identity; urban morphology; the image of the city and the perception of the urban environment.

CO2

Unit 3 — Organization of Space — the Canon

Live

How space is organized and articulated, read through the canon: Kevin Lynch's image of the city (paths, edges, districts, nodes, landmarks); Gordon Cullen's townscape and serial vision; Norberg-Schulz's genius loci; Aldo Rossi's collective memory and type; and the social life of streets — Jane Jacobs and William H. Whyte; Edmund Bacon's movement systems.

CO3

Unit 4 — Issues in Urban Space

Live

Urban blight and obsolescence; slums and squatter settlements (the UN-Habitat five deprivations); methods of survey, data collection and presentation; the prevention and upgrading of slums (in-situ vs relocation); and contemporary approaches — the urban catalyst, the transit metropolis and urban sprawl.

CO4

Unit 5 — Urban Redevelopment

Live

Objectives and programs of urban redevelopment; redevelopment vs rehabilitation vs conservation vs renewal; public involvement and community participation (Arnstein's ladder); the privatized public realm (POPS) and the role of real estate; transit-oriented development (the 3 Ds and the ITDP principles; India's 2017 TOD policy); urban heritage conservation and sustainable design ideas.

CO5CO6

Course outcomes

What you should be able to do after completing all five units (CO1–CO6, from the syllabus).

Understand

Explain urban space — its formation and transformation — and where urban design sits between architecture and planning.

Understand

Describe the organization and articulation of urban spaces, including public space and its evolution.

Understand

Read the morphological and perceptual development of urban space through Lynch, Cullen, Rossi, Jacobs and Whyte.

Understand

Explain urban blight, slums and sprawl, and the importance and methods of urban renewal.

Analyse

Analyse urban regeneration — participation, TOD, the privatized public realm, heritage and sustainability.

Create

Frame design ideas for a large-scale urban renewal / public-realm project.

Topics follow the published B.Arch theory syllabus (L2 · T0 · S0; 100 marks). Every diagram is original Studio Matrx work; the canon is referenced to its sources. We flag the myths — urban design is not beautification, Lynch's five elements are perceptual not prescriptive, a plaza is not automatically public life, the D/H ratio is a heuristic not a law, urban renewal is not demolition, and TOD is not mere proximity to a station. Cross-links the landscape guides and the Landscape Architecture course.

Design the space between buildings.

The image of the city, the life of public space, the issues of decline, and the craft of renewal. Read the five units, study the diagrams, then test yourself.

Open Unit I Back to Students

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