SYNOPSIS

THE HERITAGE OF URBAN DESIGN

SAAD PERVEZ WAHID

The article The Heritage of Urban Design talks about the history of urban planning, that how the Romans and Greeks planned their cities and the spaces within the city. The article describes how the cities started to grow along the riverside. The problem along the riverside was that of the flooding, thus, they needed a system for the land division for crop planning and also the re-division of the land plotting after the floods. Therefore, rectilinear plotting suited all these needs which enabled the men to plan the use of land. Since, the agricultural land led to the rectilinear plotting, the geometry of the mud brick houses as well as the land division for the town also resulted in the rectilinear plotting. Ancient and later Greek towns, Roman colonial outposts, Indian, Chinese and preColumbian cities used the rectilinear layout of the town building and is proved to be the most efficient. Yet, rectilinear layout was not the only layout used in the geometric system for the town planning but also the grid layout was used. The grid layout is also an equally important layout system where the circular form of settlement was used. The circular form had been used by the farmers because it was an ideal form for fencing the cattle which would fence the maximum area with rather less fencing and secondly, the major role of the circular form was for the defensive purposes, e.g; the Baghdad city was planned as a circular form. The idea that Greeks opted for the town planning was that logically all things should be of the definite size to be workable. The early towns that were planned by the Greeks were quasi-rectilinear. The houses were small cubicles and the town a jumbled mass of irregular cells. The problem in the Greek town planning was that they didnt treated streets as the principal design element, but the street was the leftover space for circulation. They e didnt used streets as the meeting place but agora became the marketplace and the meeting place for the people. The Greeks buildings and towns never attempted to overwhelm the nature. The buildings had the sense of human measure to the landscape because their architectural massing and detailing was made to mans measure. The acropolis, agora and the Greek towns are the three examples that illustrate the design qualities of the Greeks. The Acropolis was built on a hilltop and was a sacred site for Greeks. It gave panoramic views of the surrounding hills and mountains. The buildings on the acropolis lacked in design relationship between the building and the acropolis. Greeks articulated the

building masses in such a way that the buildings individually or together would create a surrounding space. The agora was the place where people would meet. The buildings facades together formed an enclosed space which resulted as an urban space for the people to meet. Urban spaces needs to be flexible, thus, the buildings were grouped together around a central open space and small gaps were left in between the buildings which served as the peripheral spaces and to pathways to various parts of the city. Therefore, agora served as the most useful concept of the urban design because it was a place and a space for people to meet. The Greeks thought of cities as an area of infinite size and built the towns of a series of rectangular cells added to another. The towns would end along the steep hillside or along a shore. Earlier, Athens was series of cluster of irregular cells. The form of the Athens was absolute. But, the architects had the opportunity to build the entire towns elsewhere. Hippodamus proposed regular streets layout along gridiron patterns and the open spaces were spread throughout the grid layout. The Greek generated the idea for the town planning which was later adopted by the Romans. The Romans adopted the general design concepts of the Greeks and added a few of their own for their towns. The Romans were motivated by the political power and organization. The Greek architecture and its scale would respond to the human measurements. Whereas, the Romans were more fascinated with the huge scale of the buildings and would not respond to the human measurements. A set of proportion was used for different parts of the building which would make the whole building. This system of proportion was called module. The urban module for the Greeks was a house whereas the Romans urban module was more abstract. The Romans opted of a basic pattern for a town with overall street pattern and not the houses made to human scale. A Roman colonial town was a system of gridiron streets enclosed by a wall. They emphasized more on the street idea and introduced the idea of major and minor streets. The public buildings were not had a monumental feature because they too were placed along the streets rather than having been placed centrally. It was the ancient Rome which developed the monumental design concepts.

The Republican Forum was the commercial and administrative heart of the Rome. The level area was small which resulted in the crowding of buildings close together. The buildings had no formal relationship with each other except that their location which was along the common narrow space. The buildings of the Republican Forum were built larger and larger from their predecessors. Therefore, Roman architects came to a solution to design buildings in groups to form an urban space. The Imperial forum was composed of square, rectilinear and semicircular plazas and had a colonnade. At the end of the plaza, a key building could be placed. Such configuration had advantage that individual plaza could be connected by a colonnade. The Imperial Forum worked better because it was more spacious and open. It had regular spaces, whereas, the Republican Forum was a jumble of masses arranged irregularly. Hadrians Villa was a complex placed in the natural settings, utilizing both spatial and mass concepts. The villa comprised of many regular spaces connected together at irregular angles. The court spaces were located to fit the topography. The courts were connected at different angles, yet, the effect of changing axis was cancelled because of the spaces were designed in such a way that one enters and is overwhelmed by larger space. The courtyard spaces were strongly related to one another. One must understand the needs of urban design and should deal with planning at a regional as well as at national level.