International Design Studios
The purpose of the international studios is to get students and staff to think about the nature of their own worlds by challenging them to deal with other worlds.
Budapest Studio - Session 1 and 2, 2007
In the Budapest studio two generic problems were addressed: ‘What to do with the thousands of
Modernist housing estates built throughout the world?’ and ‘What to do about abandoned industrial sites?’ The specific areas studied were Rákosmente on the outskirts of Pest and the abandoned Óbuda Gasworks site in Buda. Within the first area, the housing units in the apartment blocks of Rákosmente are privately owned, the open space between them is, however, all publicly owned. It is hardly a lively world. Rákosmente is also bisected by a major highway, Pesti Út. The second site with its historic relics in Buda was part of a company town. ‘How can one create an environment within the site that captures the imagination?’ and ‘Who should it serve?’
In all, eleven possible designs for each site were developed – one by each student – and a detailed report written for each site in which the designs are presented. The reports have been forwarded as a gift to the City of Budapest in return for all the hospitality received from the city and its people.
Tokyo Studio - Session 1 and 2, 2007
In order to approach the purposeful design of the city in the face of complex modernity on the one hand and deep tradition on the other, the Tokyo studio moved from the idea of a ‘city without suburbs’ to reality, taking a strategic site on the periphery of Tokyo to test the Fiber City proposition. The site at Kashiwanoha, 30km north east of Tokyo, is located on the recently completed Tsukuba express line. The City of Kashiwa, has proposed a conventional transport-oriented-design master plan for the area. The Tokyo studio adopted a critical ‘Fiber City’ response to the proposal. Taking the established development strategy of land pooling within a Land Readjustment Boundary, expansion of the boundary and the transfer of development rights were proposed to create new patterns of land use and density to save the historic village and green resources of the district as elements of an inter-connected park system.
The initial design responses overlaid low rise/high density Tokyo models on standard Garden City/Linear City/Central Park/Multi Function Polis paradigms. From this, more nuanced and considered design proposals for 3 projects which can be further divided into 8 sites were prepared by the students.
Undergraduate Degrees
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