mixed-use refers to combining different zoning occupancies in a same development. In most cases it's combining residential with commercial.
Hybrid development refers to combining different typologies of the same thing, almost always residential. For instance, you will have townhouses combined with condo apartments.
It's all babble-speak. No theories involved. You are better off not thinking about any of that.
Right on Rusty. We must force people into the car to pick up milk or to do anything at all besides watch American Karaoke. Imagine the horror if my kid could actually walk down to the store and get a candy bar like I did when I was a kid. How could we have any father son time if he wasn't 100% reliant on me to chauffeur him to absolutely every activity?
Jump I am in the older part of a small town with easy access, <5 min. walking, to a small downtown. Next door is one of the top rated small down towns in the country. I have no interest in forcing people to live like me, but availability is well below demand. Most people are priced out of this market. This town is small enough, read lack of excitement and a bit short on opportunity, that it is affordable.
thanks guys...
i'm just asking this, because my graduation project is about a mixed-use development (at first with retail, offices, apartments and a cultural spaces) on an abandoned structure in the city centre. (on the photo)
And the first part of the graduation project is the theorical (where I have to conceptualize the project, and thats why I have to put it in words) and then, the project itself.
I've been reading some books and doing some researches, and found out that Jane Jacobs, Richard Rogers, Rem Koolhaas, REX, defend the mixing of uses, and density on our contemporary cities.
So, is mixing a good move? or is there a new "way" of projecting out our future?
jbushkey that's a good point, I haven't thought about this situation of family time. but what do you think about the individual cars and sustainability?
* I'm not making any judgments on your position, and I really want to know other ways of thinking.
accv when you run an errand with a car you are moving 3,000 lbs of steel and a couple hundred pounds of people and gear. I also believe in the idea that you can never build enough roads to solve traffic. When you expand a highway developers build along it. Within a number of years the area becomes completed developed and the highway is choking just like it was before expansion. This is someone else's idea and they expressed much better than I can at 2am on a Saturday. Road maintenance will also be a major financial issue going forward. I get really annoyed at people throwing a ton of ideas at the problem.... as long as the answer is cars. Bio diesel, solar cars, hybrid cars, P.O.D.S., compressed air cars, etc
to be truthful I like cars. I owned a great little convertable and loved to get in and drive until I was lost. I have accepted that cars can not be the only answer going forward.
yes jbushkey, thats true. we are so addicted to our cars, (but only because we can have it) otherwise the public transportation, when it works, its not that bad. I wish I could afford a "sustainable" car (not yet). but we (as architects) have to think not only about us, but a lot of people; and what we produce will reflect on the peoples lives. (hoping for the best)
I've been watching some videos of Bjarke Ingles, from BIG, and I think he has very interesting ideas, and ways of solving "problems" of our contemporary cities. and he proves that:
"The best way to have a good idea is to have a lot of ideas" (Dr. Linus Pauling)
If I understood correctly from rusty's explanation, mixed use is like putting in many types of fruits in a basket e.g apples, oranges,pears,bananas etc.
Hybrid is like putting one type of fruit (let us say apples) but it's many kinds in a basket e.g McIntosh, Granny Smith,Gala etc.
I hope this helps though lol It did for me now at least :)
sounds nice jbushkey. with all that are you still driving your kids everywhere? or does small town typology solve the whole deal?
i live in big city (tokyo) and my kids walk everywhere, from the pool to the grocery store, to school. we don't own a car and there is even an old-fashioned open air market where we can get all the old-timey flavor we could ever need.
But i can't say that density is necessarily sustainable. there is a downside, no doubt about it. people still drive cars and the density means there is not as much green space and all the houses are wee as heck. i am not sure the quality of life is as rich as it might be.
anyway...that archi-babble about hybrids and interlinking doesn't really say much. good use of the declarative i suppose, but beyond that not sure what the reader is supposed to take away.
it seems to be that behavior is more important than typologies, in the end. mixed use can be great, but so can monofunctionality.
for your project it seems like you might need to look at the larger picture about what is being offered in the area and what is lacking before deciding on hybrid typologies. otherwise you are just looking for a problem to fit the solution instead of going the proper way round,
I think there's probably a whole range of approaches to typologies and program, beyond just mixing or hybridizing... think Louis Kahn's servant-and-served spaces, or fast-vs-slow spaces, loose-fit spaces vs. very tightly controlled an programmed spaces... also, it might be useful to distinguish between the necessities of a type, vs the specific spatial requirements of a particular activity. For example, if an old loft building can start out as a factory, and become in succession a warehouse, an artist's studio, a gallery, a boutique, and eventually a condo, then that building obviously has a loose correlation between architectural form or type, and programmatic type. It's mandate might simply be flexibility, which can offer mixing or hybridizing as needed.
Lastly, I'd look into the work of Atelier Bow-Wow, specifically their books "made in tokyo", Pet architecture, and one of their monographs... they examine all of the strange mixings of program and form brought about by the density of Tokyo, and might offer some lessons for you when looking at the opportunities offered by your existing frame.
And good luck... this sort of project, repurposing the debris of financial collapse, seems like it might offer some important lessons for the future.
agreed with jump - you're going to have to do some serious analysis of existing community needs and/or make some kind of statement about the inefficiency of existing systems (supply/distribution, food/waste, water, energy, etc...)
a "hybrid" program is unfortunately a term for something that used to happen before modern zoning categorized uses/typologies. for example people used to live side-by-side with animals in the city. in Cincinnati, in the early 1800s, pigs used to wander freely in the streets feeding on food scraps thrown out the windows - today we'd view it as some kind of industrial-ag style hybrid pig-farm/butcher facility where we "interlinked" pig circulation with human circulation.
My son will be 3 this summer so he is not old enough to go places on his own yet. There are parts of this town that offer nothing in amenities. 100% single family residential. They are the newer parts built in the 60s or 70s. It seems the answer is lack of big box stores and collector roads with highway speed traffic. The answer could also be big cities with good public transportation. I would prefer someplace a bit more lively, but overall I consider myself lucky to be here.
He has enough to do that he should not need to be driven around constantly. When he is old enough to want to goto the mall he can ride his bike all the way to that next town, on a bicycle trail, which has a very vibrant downtown. He is close to all athletic fields and the hockey rink and can walk to his games if he chooses to play sports. He may need a ride to friends houses if they live in that new section I mentioned. There are some busy roads to travel that I would not want him riding a bicycle on. I don't understand how people can spend their lives driving their kids to all activities, but to each their own.
18x32
I read this article. but sometimes it seems a little confused. Can I say that hybrids are an improved version (adapted to the contemporary city) of mixed-use buildings?
jump and toasteroven
at first I decided the area I wanted to intervene. Then I started thinking “what I could do there?”. and then thinking about the environment, I decided to create a mixed-use building (not sure what were their characteristics and constraints. And that’s how I discovered this "typology" of hybrids. which left me confused about the difference between them.)
I thought of using mixed-use, because the neighborhood has houses from lower middle class, the avenue is mainly commercial, and creates a cultural hub with other cultural buildings of the city.
blanco teko
Thanks, I'll look on Atelier Bow-Wow.
Jbushkey and everybody
just out of curiosity, where are you from?
I'm from Londrina, a city of 500,000 inhabitants in southern Brazil. =)
accv. in north america both of those terms have unfortunately been monopolized by developers to a point where both have become meaningless. A marketing tool and little else. They carry as much intellectual meaning as terms like "luxury" or "open concept".
quotes by 18x32 are interesting, if in need of new phrases to describe these concepts.
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sounds good jbushkey. my kids are big enough to walk on their own but when they were younger we took them to events/clubs/etc by bicycle. i am not so sure the issue is urban form as much as it is culture. parents are simply more involved than they used to be....
my research for phd was about suburbs in japan and behavior in relation to urban form. the funny thing is that here it is completely normal to mix functions. residential areas typically have clinics, salons, shops and convenience stores within walking distance of every home. big boxes need a car or a bicycle just as in north america, but there are also trains connecting most suburbs and people will go to the mall by train if they are young enough. BUT everyone of age with a drivers license chooses to drive.
it is annoying as hell, but in the end behaviour trumps form.
to me that means it is better to start with context and community instead of with an idealised urban form. it certainly impresses me more when students do it that way.
atelier bow-wow is fantastic. not sure they offer insight outside of tokyo. they don't really do mixed-use themselves. mostly houses in fact, with amazing baroque typologies. would be cool to hear what is normal in brazil. is it common to mix land use or is it all segregated by function?
accv - "hybrids" are essentially two or more distinct and separate programs (or building types) merged into one new mutant program (or a mutant building type). Where these types intersect programmatically are the interesting parts.
the Praxis issue on "program" might also be useful
jump
my city is relatively new, it is 76 years.
It was founded and soon, in the 1950s was known worldwide as "capital of coffee". born wanting to become modern.
The main activity of the city's commerce, and therefore reference is in the region.
The downtown, in general, is composed of different uses, but there are streets with specific uses (such as shopping streets and services, health-care,...). surrounding the city are housing, with 1st necessities such as bakeries, markets,...
I do not see my city as segregated. but I live in the downtown, and everything is around me, my University is 3 blocks far, market is 5.
but in the last years, the city has sprawled a lot.
what I think, is that here in Brazil, we are so dependent on cars, that rarely i go out without it. I believe that the topography doesn't help.
I used once the public transportation (here we only have Bus) but it really doesn't work. (and its not that I dont like it. when I was living in Italy, I used and it was so nice, but there it worked, and I didnt have a car either)
About mixed-use buildings, most are the traditional type (trade on the ground floor and housing above)
argh. lost the post. not sure why. let me try again.
thanks for explaining accv. i think it is telling that you can say the mixed-use typology is traditional. in america i don't think it is possible to answer the question that way. whatever tradition of mixed use is so long gone it is impossible to conceive of it as something that we have a continuous connection to.
it sounds like for you the fact of hybrid or mixed use is not a great leap then. maybe it is more challenging to think about how the building fits into the city. does it contain the city, does it shut it out, is there a typology where the city is transformed and new behaviors can emerge because of the typology? sort of thing. those are the kinds of questions architects should be asking but seldom do, even in this world we are still urbanising.
even atelier bow-wow avoids that sort of question. mostly they mimic some of the flavor of the more extreme typologies they find in the city. they make interesting objects that shut the city out, have interesting interior spaces, but otherwise do not engage their context. which is interesting since their reputation is grounded so firmly in urban theories. much more interesting is the work of kazuyo sejima and ryue nishizawa, or for that matter, sou fujimoto. they are quite challenging concepts about where the city stops and where the home begins. i find that more powerful than just putting a shop in the ground and a home above, or whatever...
sorry, but i didnt understand the 2nd paragraph.
could you, please, be more didactic? (my limited-english doesn't help me to understand so easily ~ google tradutor is helping me out!)
i'm very interested about this subject.
I am writing a graduation project, so I have to understand a lot to defend it, or not.
it was more clear the first time i wrote it...really ;-)
your comments suggested that mixed use is normal in your city. in which case it is not new to mix uses. or not enough on its own at the very least. the same as in tokyo it is not anything special at all. unless that is not the case and i misunderstood your comment. ?
my own position is that we are all living in an ever more urban world but that the way we live in cities is not connected to the past (cars and personal mobility have made urban living patterns a completely new thing) and so we need to rethink the role of cities in buildings, and vice versa.
if mixed use is not special then what is?
it is my own thing, but i find it more interesting to look at how buildings interact and connect to the city than to simply build an object and say it is "new" because you can live in it and work in it too...but then this "new" design looks just the same as a building where only one function is possible. nothing has changed.
i wonder if there is not something new in the city today. ie, this house by ryue nishizawa, called the moriyama house
which is dispersed, creating several semi-open small apartments that the owner can choose to occupy or rent on his own.
the plans are amazing and extreme
similarly there is a project by sou fujimoto which is a house that has quite fuzzy boundaries
which is the precursor to a recent project he did for a library in musashino
or this apt building also in tokyo
none of these projects are about mixing use or hybridised functions because those kinds of questions are irrelevant in japan in many ways. instead they are asking how do we occupy the city. the city becomes part of the projects in a way that is not possible when a building is just an object or an icon.
i am not advocating for these projects but the questions that they represent are much more interesting to me than whether or not a building mixes residential with commercial. in brazil, or even just on the site you are looking at, maybe the questions can be more interesting too....?
jump, I think your views on mixed use are perhaps a bit jaded by living in a city whose genetic make-up is mixed-use on steroids. Not every city is as fortunate. My opinion is mixed use is fundamental, but not an end in and of itself. The broader question to me is how do patterns of mixed use come together to create functional and dynamic urban forms.
accv, I think you are on to something when you look at the existing patterns of urban development in your city, i.e. retail corridors, nodes, centers, connectors, etc. How can you build upon or introduce new overlay development patterns onto the existing fabric? I think what you'll find is that larger urban forms require planning methods far more complicated than applying a simplistic mixed-use formula, i.e. ground floor retail and residential/office above.
i don't believe tokyo is a model for anywhere but tokyo, which is why i don't recommend looking here for anything other than an attitude about the city. there is not much hybrid building going on here in any case. mixed use comes from individuals doing different stuff close to each other, but not so much within a single building. which sounds different from the model that accv describes above....
anyway, i think mixed use is over-rated. simply having it is not that big a deal. it doesn't change that much in the end without the culture to go with it. which is why i also think that mixed use is something that should emerge from other concerns, and not be an end in itself.
the only way to avoid that is to look directly at the context, just as you say. if mixed use comes from the needs then cool, but that should be the end point not the starting point, in my mind. otherwise it is just a solution looking for a problem, like New Urbanism.
i mean really if you decide from the start that something should be mixed use then the next question is what functions should be mixed and the whole enterprise is false from there on.
The first question should be what does the neighbourhood need, not which type of mixed-use function should i stick in to the site....
jump, we basically agree. I think the minor difference is that you are approaching the question from at least partially an architectural angle, and I'm writing exclusively about urban form. I can think of very few single use districts that create dynamic urban environments; mixed use is generally a prerequisite for good urbanism.
I completely agree with your last sentence. It's such a simple concept, but I think in the pursuit of easy answers architects (and developers!) too often assume a generic mixed use building type when the best solution comes out of an understanding of the complex forces that come together to create districts and neighborhoods as your examples above show.
thanks.
you guys have made me think about a new perspective on the city.
and I think that's what's missing in the architect's graduation (at least in mine), this open discussion with different points of view.
the purpose of my project is to take an abandoned building (the construction was interrupted more than 10 years ago) near the city center.
right now, i'm really confused on what i'm going to put in the building-program, and how it will interact with each other and the city.
oh, and there is an interesting fact. this avenue where the building is located, is a very busy structural avenue, which at night it become a desert, and is where you found prostitutes in the city.
maybe creating a mixed-use with activities all day long, the environment will become more secure. even for them.
totally agree won and don. in this case since it is an architecture project i kept myself to just the building. it is pretty hard to find buildings that manage to go beyond object making and really question their context the way the architects above have. i only know japan in much detail but would love to find similar works by architects in other countries. am sure they are out there....
@ accv, no worries. sorry for adding to the confusion though ;-)
in fact, my project shouldn't be strictly architectural, since my college is about "architecture and urbanism" (some are just architecture). then we need to think together, even though in the end the project focuses more on architecture.
I think it is inevitable to think so, because otherwise, the building loses its context.
confusion is good. makes us think and rethink things.
do you think it is possible to have an effect on urban character with just a building? or is it necessary to do a block or at least two buildings before enough energy or whatever will accumulate and cause real change....?
one of my partners says it is possible, the other says not. i suspect it is the former, but have no idea how to do it unless the building is x-large.
Jump both of them could be right. One building isn't much, but if it opens up some minds to the possibilities, attracts the types of artists and forward thinking people who are usually involved in turning neighborhoods around here in America it might be enough.
I always thought it might work if you could assemble a group of investors to do several buildings at once. Do the jobs follow or does there need to be some good places to work first?
not to jump into the conversation unannounced, (I find this topic particularly interesting) but I would say that one building could go both ways. If the new building is on a highly dense, urban site it might not have large effects except for aesthetic approval (or disapproval). To have any effect on urban character, the new building must somehow actively change that character. This could be offering an alternative programmatic function at the street level (i.e. public) or the space surrounding the building at the street must somehow be altered. Benches and glass can't really do much, unless it is somehow linked to how the indoor and outdoor spaces are used... I would think that corner buildings have much more potential to change the character of a block or many blocks, where a building in the middle of the block loses some of that influence.
Apr 28, 11 12:05 pm ·
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mixed-use or hybrids?
Hi... I was wondering what's the difference between mixed-use and hybrids developments?
where can I find some theory about those typologies? and which architects likes this typology?
thanks! =)
mixed-use refers to combining different zoning occupancies in a same development. In most cases it's combining residential with commercial.
Hybrid development refers to combining different typologies of the same thing, almost always residential. For instance, you will have townhouses combined with condo apartments.
It's all babble-speak. No theories involved. You are better off not thinking about any of that.
Right on Rusty. We must force people into the car to pick up milk or to do anything at all besides watch American Karaoke. Imagine the horror if my kid could actually walk down to the store and get a candy bar like I did when I was a kid. How could we have any father son time if he wasn't 100% reliant on me to chauffeur him to absolutely every activity?
well you could always move out of the suburbs jbushkey ;-)
i think the point is to not get hung up on phrases and keywords.
Jump I am in the older part of a small town with easy access, <5 min. walking, to a small downtown. Next door is one of the top rated small down towns in the country. I have no interest in forcing people to live like me, but availability is well below demand. Most people are priced out of this market. This town is small enough, read lack of excitement and a bit short on opportunity, that it is affordable.
thanks guys...
i'm just asking this, because my graduation project is about a mixed-use development (at first with retail, offices, apartments and a cultural spaces) on an abandoned structure in the city centre. (on the photo)
And the first part of the graduation project is the theorical (where I have to conceptualize the project, and thats why I have to put it in words) and then, the project itself.
I've been reading some books and doing some researches, and found out that Jane Jacobs, Richard Rogers, Rem Koolhaas, REX, defend the mixing of uses, and density on our contemporary cities.
So, is mixing a good move? or is there a new "way" of projecting out our future?
jbushkey that's a good point, I haven't thought about this situation of family time. but what do you think about the individual cars and sustainability?
* I'm not making any judgments on your position, and I really want to know other ways of thinking.
I'm accepting ideas... anyone?
accv when you run an errand with a car you are moving 3,000 lbs of steel and a couple hundred pounds of people and gear. I also believe in the idea that you can never build enough roads to solve traffic. When you expand a highway developers build along it. Within a number of years the area becomes completed developed and the highway is choking just like it was before expansion. This is someone else's idea and they expressed much better than I can at 2am on a Saturday. Road maintenance will also be a major financial issue going forward. I get really annoyed at people throwing a ton of ideas at the problem.... as long as the answer is cars. Bio diesel, solar cars, hybrid cars, P.O.D.S., compressed air cars, etc
to be truthful I like cars. I owned a great little convertable and loved to get in and drive until I was lost. I have accepted that cars can not be the only answer going forward.
yes jbushkey, thats true. we are so addicted to our cars, (but only because we can have it) otherwise the public transportation, when it works, its not that bad. I wish I could afford a "sustainable" car (not yet). but we (as architects) have to think not only about us, but a lot of people; and what we produce will reflect on the peoples lives. (hoping for the best)
I've been watching some videos of Bjarke Ingles, from BIG, and I think he has very interesting ideas, and ways of solving "problems" of our contemporary cities. and he proves that:
"The best way to have a good idea is to have a lot of ideas" (Dr. Linus Pauling)
Pamphlet Architecture #11 by Joseph Fenton is a nice little essay on Hybrid Buildings.
i've found this magazine... a+t...very interesting
http://aplust.net/tienda.php?seccion=revistas&serie=Serie%20Hybrids&idioma=en
But I still dont understand the difference between mixed-use and hybrid...
I would think of the difference like this accv.
If I understood correctly from rusty's explanation, mixed use is like putting in many types of fruits in a basket e.g apples, oranges,pears,bananas etc.
Hybrid is like putting one type of fruit (let us say apples) but it's many kinds in a basket e.g McIntosh, Granny Smith,Gala etc.
I hope this helps though lol It did for me now at least :)
sounds nice jbushkey. with all that are you still driving your kids everywhere? or does small town typology solve the whole deal?
i live in big city (tokyo) and my kids walk everywhere, from the pool to the grocery store, to school. we don't own a car and there is even an old-fashioned open air market where we can get all the old-timey flavor we could ever need.
But i can't say that density is necessarily sustainable. there is a downside, no doubt about it. people still drive cars and the density means there is not as much green space and all the houses are wee as heck. i am not sure the quality of life is as rich as it might be.
anyway...that archi-babble about hybrids and interlinking doesn't really say much. good use of the declarative i suppose, but beyond that not sure what the reader is supposed to take away.
it seems to be that behavior is more important than typologies, in the end. mixed use can be great, but so can monofunctionality.
for your project it seems like you might need to look at the larger picture about what is being offered in the area and what is lacking before deciding on hybrid typologies. otherwise you are just looking for a problem to fit the solution instead of going the proper way round,
I think there's probably a whole range of approaches to typologies and program, beyond just mixing or hybridizing... think Louis Kahn's servant-and-served spaces, or fast-vs-slow spaces, loose-fit spaces vs. very tightly controlled an programmed spaces... also, it might be useful to distinguish between the necessities of a type, vs the specific spatial requirements of a particular activity. For example, if an old loft building can start out as a factory, and become in succession a warehouse, an artist's studio, a gallery, a boutique, and eventually a condo, then that building obviously has a loose correlation between architectural form or type, and programmatic type. It's mandate might simply be flexibility, which can offer mixing or hybridizing as needed.
Lastly, I'd look into the work of Atelier Bow-Wow, specifically their books "made in tokyo", Pet architecture, and one of their monographs... they examine all of the strange mixings of program and form brought about by the density of Tokyo, and might offer some lessons for you when looking at the opportunities offered by your existing frame.
And good luck... this sort of project, repurposing the debris of financial collapse, seems like it might offer some important lessons for the future.
agreed with jump - you're going to have to do some serious analysis of existing community needs and/or make some kind of statement about the inefficiency of existing systems (supply/distribution, food/waste, water, energy, etc...)
a "hybrid" program is unfortunately a term for something that used to happen before modern zoning categorized uses/typologies. for example people used to live side-by-side with animals in the city. in Cincinnati, in the early 1800s, pigs used to wander freely in the streets feeding on food scraps thrown out the windows - today we'd view it as some kind of industrial-ag style hybrid pig-farm/butcher facility where we "interlinked" pig circulation with human circulation.
the "hybrid" is city-wide composting with pig farm.
Jump,
My son will be 3 this summer so he is not old enough to go places on his own yet. There are parts of this town that offer nothing in amenities. 100% single family residential. They are the newer parts built in the 60s or 70s. It seems the answer is lack of big box stores and collector roads with highway speed traffic. The answer could also be big cities with good public transportation. I would prefer someplace a bit more lively, but overall I consider myself lucky to be here.
He has enough to do that he should not need to be driven around constantly. When he is old enough to want to goto the mall he can ride his bike all the way to that next town, on a bicycle trail, which has a very vibrant downtown. He is close to all athletic fields and the hockey rink and can walk to his games if he chooses to play sports. He may need a ride to friends houses if they live in that new section I mentioned. There are some busy roads to travel that I would not want him riding a bicycle on. I don't understand how people can spend their lives driving their kids to all activities, but to each their own.
18x32
I read this article. but sometimes it seems a little confused. Can I say that hybrids are an improved version (adapted to the contemporary city) of mixed-use buildings?
jump and toasteroven
at first I decided the area I wanted to intervene. Then I started thinking “what I could do there?”. and then thinking about the environment, I decided to create a mixed-use building (not sure what were their characteristics and constraints. And that’s how I discovered this "typology" of hybrids. which left me confused about the difference between them.)
I thought of using mixed-use, because the neighborhood has houses from lower middle class, the avenue is mainly commercial, and creates a cultural hub with other cultural buildings of the city.
blanco teko
Thanks, I'll look on Atelier Bow-Wow.
Jbushkey and everybody
just out of curiosity, where are you from?
I'm from Londrina, a city of 500,000 inhabitants in southern Brazil. =)
accv. in north america both of those terms have unfortunately been monopolized by developers to a point where both have become meaningless. A marketing tool and little else. They carry as much intellectual meaning as terms like "luxury" or "open concept".
quotes by 18x32 are interesting, if in need of new phrases to describe these concepts.
This is [url=http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=easthampton,+ma&aq=&sll=42.266757,-72.66898&sspn=0.080666,0.181618&ie=UTF8&hq=&hnear=Easthampton,+Hampshire,+Massachusetts&ll=42.264924,-72.666439&spn=0.002537,0.005676&t=h&z=18]Etown!!![/url]
[url=http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.noho.com/images/downtown2.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.noho.com/&usg=__7Wzfb8b3DUHsrAfwD5gjZoQ_UBM=&h=317&w=520&sz=82&hl=en&start=0&sig2=Yh1u48jn3lrP7L0XWva08Q&zoom=1&tbnid=iplMwmIo0nR3BM:&tbnh=119&tbnw=195&ei=Fma3TdDGO4nfgQeM8a1-&prev=/search%3Fq%3Dnorthampton%26hl%3Den%26safe%3Doff%26client%3Dsafari%26sa%3DX%26rls%3Den%26biw%3D1439%26bih%3D764%26tbm%3Disch%26prmd%3Divnsum&itbs=1&iact=rc&dur=467&page=1&ndsp=28&ved=1t:429,r:0,s:0&tx=109&ty=68]next town over[/url]
sounds good jbushkey. my kids are big enough to walk on their own but when they were younger we took them to events/clubs/etc by bicycle. i am not so sure the issue is urban form as much as it is culture. parents are simply more involved than they used to be....
my research for phd was about suburbs in japan and behavior in relation to urban form. the funny thing is that here it is completely normal to mix functions. residential areas typically have clinics, salons, shops and convenience stores within walking distance of every home. big boxes need a car or a bicycle just as in north america, but there are also trains connecting most suburbs and people will go to the mall by train if they are young enough. BUT everyone of age with a drivers license chooses to drive.
it is annoying as hell, but in the end behaviour trumps form.
to me that means it is better to start with context and community instead of with an idealised urban form. it certainly impresses me more when students do it that way.
atelier bow-wow is fantastic. not sure they offer insight outside of tokyo. they don't really do mixed-use themselves. mostly houses in fact, with amazing baroque typologies. would be cool to hear what is normal in brazil. is it common to mix land use or is it all segregated by function?
goofed that link up
http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=easthampton,+ma&aq=&sll=42.266757,-72.66898&sspn=0.080666,0.181618&ie=UTF8&hq=&hnear=Easthampton,+Hampshire,+Massachusetts&ll=42.264924,-72.666439&spn=0.002537,0.005676&t=h&z=18
accv - "hybrids" are essentially two or more distinct and separate programs (or building types) merged into one new mutant program (or a mutant building type). Where these types intersect programmatically are the interesting parts.
the Praxis issue on "program" might also be useful
jump
my city is relatively new, it is 76 years.
It was founded and soon, in the 1950s was known worldwide as "capital of coffee". born wanting to become modern.
The main activity of the city's commerce, and therefore reference is in the region.
The downtown, in general, is composed of different uses, but there are streets with specific uses (such as shopping streets and services, health-care,...). surrounding the city are housing, with 1st necessities such as bakeries, markets,...
I do not see my city as segregated. but I live in the downtown, and everything is around me, my University is 3 blocks far, market is 5.
but in the last years, the city has sprawled a lot.
what I think, is that here in Brazil, we are so dependent on cars, that rarely i go out without it. I believe that the topography doesn't help.
I used once the public transportation (here we only have Bus) but it really doesn't work. (and its not that I dont like it. when I was living in Italy, I used and it was so nice, but there it worked, and I didnt have a car either)
About mixed-use buildings, most are the traditional type (trade on the ground floor and housing above)
argh. lost the post. not sure why. let me try again.
thanks for explaining accv. i think it is telling that you can say the mixed-use typology is traditional. in america i don't think it is possible to answer the question that way. whatever tradition of mixed use is so long gone it is impossible to conceive of it as something that we have a continuous connection to.
it sounds like for you the fact of hybrid or mixed use is not a great leap then. maybe it is more challenging to think about how the building fits into the city. does it contain the city, does it shut it out, is there a typology where the city is transformed and new behaviors can emerge because of the typology? sort of thing. those are the kinds of questions architects should be asking but seldom do, even in this world we are still urbanising.
even atelier bow-wow avoids that sort of question. mostly they mimic some of the flavor of the more extreme typologies they find in the city. they make interesting objects that shut the city out, have interesting interior spaces, but otherwise do not engage their context. which is interesting since their reputation is grounded so firmly in urban theories. much more interesting is the work of kazuyo sejima and ryue nishizawa, or for that matter, sou fujimoto. they are quite challenging concepts about where the city stops and where the home begins. i find that more powerful than just putting a shop in the ground and a home above, or whatever...
jump
sorry, but i didnt understand the 2nd paragraph.
could you, please, be more didactic? (my limited-english doesn't help me to understand so easily ~ google tradutor is helping me out!)
i'm very interested about this subject.
I am writing a graduation project, so I have to understand a lot to defend it, or not.
thanks =)
sorry.
it was more clear the first time i wrote it...really ;-)
your comments suggested that mixed use is normal in your city. in which case it is not new to mix uses. or not enough on its own at the very least. the same as in tokyo it is not anything special at all. unless that is not the case and i misunderstood your comment. ?
my own position is that we are all living in an ever more urban world but that the way we live in cities is not connected to the past (cars and personal mobility have made urban living patterns a completely new thing) and so we need to rethink the role of cities in buildings, and vice versa.
if mixed use is not special then what is?
it is my own thing, but i find it more interesting to look at how buildings interact and connect to the city than to simply build an object and say it is "new" because you can live in it and work in it too...but then this "new" design looks just the same as a building where only one function is possible. nothing has changed.
i wonder if there is not something new in the city today. ie, this house by ryue nishizawa, called the moriyama house
which is dispersed, creating several semi-open small apartments that the owner can choose to occupy or rent on his own.
the plans are amazing and extreme
similarly there is a project by sou fujimoto which is a house that has quite fuzzy boundaries
which is the precursor to a recent project he did for a library in musashino
or this apt building also in tokyo
none of these projects are about mixing use or hybridised functions because those kinds of questions are irrelevant in japan in many ways. instead they are asking how do we occupy the city. the city becomes part of the projects in a way that is not possible when a building is just an object or an icon.
i am not advocating for these projects but the questions that they represent are much more interesting to me than whether or not a building mixes residential with commercial. in brazil, or even just on the site you are looking at, maybe the questions can be more interesting too....?
jump, I think your views on mixed use are perhaps a bit jaded by living in a city whose genetic make-up is mixed-use on steroids. Not every city is as fortunate. My opinion is mixed use is fundamental, but not an end in and of itself. The broader question to me is how do patterns of mixed use come together to create functional and dynamic urban forms.
accv, I think you are on to something when you look at the existing patterns of urban development in your city, i.e. retail corridors, nodes, centers, connectors, etc. How can you build upon or introduce new overlay development patterns onto the existing fabric? I think what you'll find is that larger urban forms require planning methods far more complicated than applying a simplistic mixed-use formula, i.e. ground floor retail and residential/office above.
won and don, that is just my point. i think ;-)
i don't believe tokyo is a model for anywhere but tokyo, which is why i don't recommend looking here for anything other than an attitude about the city. there is not much hybrid building going on here in any case. mixed use comes from individuals doing different stuff close to each other, but not so much within a single building. which sounds different from the model that accv describes above....
anyway, i think mixed use is over-rated. simply having it is not that big a deal. it doesn't change that much in the end without the culture to go with it. which is why i also think that mixed use is something that should emerge from other concerns, and not be an end in itself.
the only way to avoid that is to look directly at the context, just as you say. if mixed use comes from the needs then cool, but that should be the end point not the starting point, in my mind. otherwise it is just a solution looking for a problem, like New Urbanism.
i mean really if you decide from the start that something should be mixed use then the next question is what functions should be mixed and the whole enterprise is false from there on.
The first question should be what does the neighbourhood need, not which type of mixed-use function should i stick in to the site....
no?
jump, we basically agree. I think the minor difference is that you are approaching the question from at least partially an architectural angle, and I'm writing exclusively about urban form. I can think of very few single use districts that create dynamic urban environments; mixed use is generally a prerequisite for good urbanism.
I completely agree with your last sentence. It's such a simple concept, but I think in the pursuit of easy answers architects (and developers!) too often assume a generic mixed use building type when the best solution comes out of an understanding of the complex forces that come together to create districts and neighborhoods as your examples above show.
Jump and won and done williams
thanks.
you guys have made me think about a new perspective on the city.
and I think that's what's missing in the architect's graduation (at least in mine), this open discussion with different points of view.
the purpose of my project is to take an abandoned building (the construction was interrupted more than 10 years ago) near the city center.
right now, i'm really confused on what i'm going to put in the building-program, and how it will interact with each other and the city.
oh, and there is an interesting fact. this avenue where the building is located, is a very busy structural avenue, which at night it become a desert, and is where you found prostitutes in the city.
maybe creating a mixed-use with activities all day long, the environment will become more secure. even for them.
my word: confused! ahaha =T
and Jump thanks for explain to me again! =)
totally agree won and don. in this case since it is an architecture project i kept myself to just the building. it is pretty hard to find buildings that manage to go beyond object making and really question their context the way the architects above have. i only know japan in much detail but would love to find similar works by architects in other countries. am sure they are out there....
@ accv, no worries. sorry for adding to the confusion though ;-)
Jump
in fact, my project shouldn't be strictly architectural, since my college is about "architecture and urbanism" (some are just architecture). then we need to think together, even though in the end the project focuses more on architecture.
I think it is inevitable to think so, because otherwise, the building loses its context.
confusion is good. makes us think and rethink things.
I think there is a very real set of problems new urbanism seeks to address:
do you think it is possible to have an effect on urban character with just a building? or is it necessary to do a block or at least two buildings before enough energy or whatever will accumulate and cause real change....?
one of my partners says it is possible, the other says not. i suspect it is the former, but have no idea how to do it unless the building is x-large.
?
accv you should make that building adaptable for future uses. If the neighborhood improves it will likely need different types of businesses.
Jump both of them could be right. One building isn't much, but if it opens up some minds to the possibilities, attracts the types of artists and forward thinking people who are usually involved in turning neighborhoods around here in America it might be enough.
I always thought it might work if you could assemble a group of investors to do several buildings at once. Do the jobs follow or does there need to be some good places to work first?
not to jump into the conversation unannounced, (I find this topic particularly interesting) but I would say that one building could go both ways. If the new building is on a highly dense, urban site it might not have large effects except for aesthetic approval (or disapproval). To have any effect on urban character, the new building must somehow actively change that character. This could be offering an alternative programmatic function at the street level (i.e. public) or the space surrounding the building at the street must somehow be altered. Benches and glass can't really do much, unless it is somehow linked to how the indoor and outdoor spaces are used... I would think that corner buildings have much more potential to change the character of a block or many blocks, where a building in the middle of the block loses some of that influence.
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