title:
The Imperative City: A Symbiotic Environment through the Reciprocity of the Urban and Natural Landscape
creator:
Paul Szczombrowski
subject:
Architecture, Connecticut, Hartford, Designs and plans; Landscape architecture, Connecticut, Hartford, Designs and plans; City planning, Environmental aspects; Architecture, Environmental aspects; Nature, Healing power of; Wentworth Design Excellence Award winner (2018)
description:
With the rate of technological advancement in our age of information, the 21st century is devolving into an unconscious entity that has been catalyzed by the post-modern city. The lack of identity of the individual and our environment is reflective of our growing detachment of the physical world as a tool to inform decisions in planning the future city. While we have been taught to recognize our impact on the environment, Nature’s role has always been suppressed in respect to urbanization. Often if not always contextualized by infrastructure as opposed to being emblematic of itself, the aspect of the non-built world is increasingly suppressed. Like New York’s Central Park or Boston Common, Nature is a synthetic implantation into the urban context as a top-down, retrospective plan for its inhabitants. The post-modern city fails to address the contemporary agency in formulating a reciprocity between the built and non-built environment not only for the betterment of our Natural surroundings, but as a consideration for human wellness. This scenario lends itself in understanding that our present day city, the one informed by modern values, are not conducive in recognizing the contemporary mentality aimed to address the growing concerns of environmental impacts, and generate the question of what is Nature’s role is in the 21st century? How can cities be more conscious of the Natural world around them to create better environments for their inhabitants? How can architecture manifest as the vessel for the human condition, where our existence must and forever shall be symbiotic with the world around us. Architecturally, “How do we reconnect to the world around us? How is the landscape embodied within architecture?” It’s grounded in making an individual connected and conscious of their environment, both urban and Natural. Architecture must then respect the element of the promenade, as an emphasis of perception that is beyond the envelope of a building and is expressed as a sequence both inside and outside. This urban colonialism, that is to say the expanding grid of the urban fabric, is to be broken down as a way to invite a more intimate, deliberate setting to a business driven world as a moment to reflect upon the city and the space in between.
publisher:
The Douglas D. Schumann Library and Learning Commons, Wentworth Institute of Technology
date:
2018
type:
Thesis
format:
.pdf
language:
eng
rights:
https://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/
