LECTURER 07

TOM SCHUMACHER

" Contextualism: Urban Ideals and Deformations "

Tom Schumacher presents two concepts that make up the twentieth century town which are the traditional city and the city-in-the-park. The traditional city is primarily an experience of space defined by continuous walls of building, essentially a subtractive form of space making for public urban space. It emphasizes the spaces by figuring void and de-emphasizes the building volumes. The concept is humanistic approach by following the human scale and usage like create pedestrian and hybrid urban experience. I think our pasar design need humanistic approach for better user experiences by using the void in solid procedure to make public space as gathering place with anthropometry consideration. It is vital that designing a common space for human interaction and socialization. Due to historical approach of development, the city planning is more density and complex. For instance, the city of Rome had scattered irregular block to fit into the site, blur division of land use and no zoning. The irregular and blurring zoning planning reflect the street market(pasar malam) in Malaysia now with all the mix stall together and make the users difficult to find the directions sometimes.

Emphasize space by figure voids(circulation)

City of Rome: narrow street with pedestrian experience

The city-in-the-park concept is consist of collections of isolated buildings set in a landscape.It is modernist approach of city planning that emphasize functionalistic, efficiency and convenience. I think it is more towards my pasar design intention now. Owing to the typology in the current economic condition, we need to find the solution for pasar to thrive in 20 years time against supermarket and mini market. Therefore, I plan to use modernism design and more diverse or high efficiency technology to attract the youngster have curiosity and visit the pasar. For example the pasar had drive through options to buy things like MCDonald's. 

Moreover, it emphasizes building volume by figuring solids and not the spaces which the buildings define. It is arranged orderly and uniformly by using grid method regardless of site. It is standardize and form a machine-like city. However, the consequence is the mismatch between the building and human scale. Thus, I found that it is important of site context and human scale that we need to consider when we planning design so will produce better urban configuration and have linkage between context and building. For instance, our pasar site is almost surrounded by residential housing, therefore we can make a hierarchy and attraction in pasar to engage the kajang community come to the pasar.

Emphasize building volumes by figuring solids

gird uniform layout

Contextualism is the urban ideals as the middle ground that reconciles these two contrasting concepts. Schumacher found out the ideological and social differences among the two plans making us think about how land values and economic necessities of grouping people in high concentrations have greatly limited the flexibility of the capitalist city. Economic pressures and design preferences have led to the typification of housing as packages assembled repetitiously and based on profit rather than need. Hence, when we designing pasar, I think we should consider the human needs and site respond rather than put all the typical repetition blocks with no reasons because of the economic pressure that the buyers intend cheap and simple design without appreciate the limited land use.

Tom Schumacher: Contextualism

Schumacher by de-emphasizing the “form follows function” assertion, was willing to consider those spatial and planning pressure and try to find a solution. Public spaces should respect a hierarchy together with the buildings within the urban factory, consequently the rest takes shape. I think it is a good point that spatial planning and functionality is important when we doing pasar design and public space should be hierarchy to make a grand feel and attraction spot to the visitors. The rest of the plan could just takes shape like the Le Corbusier bubble analogy, the exterior and interior can be using the same language and characteristic.

Collage

Deformation

Densely packed in Mei Foo Sun Cheun VS
Deform in relate to social meaning arrangement

There are two techniques to achieve contextualism which are collage and deformation. Collage is the fragmentation of basic part and reorganisation base principle. It respond to the constricted environment by unified whole. Deformation is the basic part which the adjustment made to fit in the existing context that respond to constricted environment. For pasar design, we can extract the good elements from the ideal housing forms and reformulate the arrangement of buildings in the site based on the need of human beings. In short, pasar is a vital community engagement place. Following Schumacher theory, I think city-in-the-park ideas and contextualism are more towards my design intention now and i would applied in my design. Besides. I think we should maintain the pasar culture but we can input some new attraction in pasar like foods paradise with nice photo session and become a popular spot so it still thrive even in the future.



Written by Chiew Jing Yi, 1001644071