URBAN SWIRL – AN ALTERNATIVE DESIGN CONCEPTUALIZATION FOR COMPACT CITIES | ABEER BASHA

As an alternative approach to conventional design processes, the focus of this thesis exploring computational tools for the design of urban systems, in this case compact cities. One of the significant methodological contribution of this thesis lies in the concept of linking and emphasizing equally the design process and output throughout the design. The proposed urban planning and design allows a variety of massing and its adaptability to local context of New Belgrade’s existing gridded urban layout.

Architect: Abeer Basha
Project Location: India
The overall aim of this thesis has been to challenge the static nature of traditional urban designing and planning processes and practices and to develop dynamic urban forms that serve as interlinked and integrated urban systems in cities. The strength of the design proposal lie in its ability to evolve and adapt to the changes and demands of the future city.

Architects, Planneres and Designers have been overly dependent on one program when it comes to parametric design but this thesis opened up another trajectory for design experimentation and development. This thesis, Urban Swirl, showcases how softwares used in fields other than architecture enables more design possibilities with dynamic results. The design conceptualizing and development of urban swirl involved extensive research and analysis using 3dsmax tools.

Complex modelling, procedural modelling techniques and dynamic systems were tested. This thesis adopts an interdisciplinary approach using computation and urban theory and concepts (field conditions). The final proposal embeds the potential of the combination of these various tools alongside the understanding of urban spatial dynamics and systems for city designing.
The thesis opens up various trajectories for city designing and visualization not only for architects or urban planners but also for designers from other field like animators, game designers, vfx artists highlighting the potential of multidisciplinary approach to urban planning and design.

The project also shows how one can come up with infinite number of permutations and combinations in a short amount of time. The design proposal of this thesis is not conceived merely as a tool-based parametric urban planning and design but as a creative process-laden approach to futuristic city design.

Architects , urban planners and designers play an important role in shaping cities and its development, and there is a need for innovative approaches to tackle and address the impending challenges of urban futures. This thesis is one such attempt to offer an interdisciplinary parametric design lens for urban form-finding which organically evolves and offer opportunities for adaptability and change enabling progressive transformation in cities. Organic planning does not begin with preconceived goal, it moves from need to need ,opportunity to opportunity, in a series of adaptations that themselves become interestingly coherent and purposeful(Lewis Mumford 1961).

Grounded in parametric urbanism, the thesis uses the computation approach in developing a urban plan proposal for Blok 24,25,26 plots in New Belgrade which is characterised by sprawling development and rigid gridded urban layout.Blok 24,25,26 is taken as the site which sits besides famous Blok 21. The design methodology adopted involve from manual to generative modelling allowing several possible solutions. The various design possibilities are further studied and examined to offer an innovative urban response to compact future city design and development. The thesis developed proposal for two possible urban development scenarios through parametric variations- High dense and compact urban development and Medium dense urban development .

The design proposal creatively embeds the existing gridded layout while giving a new character and identity to the urban context through parametric modelling.The development is designed based on swarm intelligence logic. Swarm intelligence is the collective behaviour of decentralized, self-organized systems, natural or artificial.The agents follow very basic rules and there is no centralized nucleus or control that dictates the agent. They follow rule of separation cohesion and alignment .Following these logic,the grided urban plan is deformed and modelled in 3dsmax software with procedural modelling technique where each element in design is connected to each other and can be controlled parametrically.All the parameters are interlinked in such a way that the modifications made in one of them wold influence the behaviour of other. These parametric interaction between the design elements lead to the emergence of intelligent global behaviour.