Urban Theory: A Kevin Lynch Study
As a project in my urban theory and design class we were to take the work of Kevin Lynch, a successful urban planner, and apply them to neighborhoods in the Atlanta area. My partner, Jesse, and I chose to focus on Tech Square, Grant Park, and Castlewood as our neighborhoods to study in depth. Our goal was to find the paths, nodes, edges, landmarks, and districts within the neighborhoods and compare each neighborhood. After many visits to each location and comparing each we determined Grant Park was the most successful in terms of urban planning and development. A successful urban neighborhood would be one that has places to accommodate basic human needs such as being active, socializing, and is easy to get to places within the neighborhood using paths. We determined this because of the many accessible paths which made walking around easy and the high volume of people in the area due to landmarks such as Zoo Atlanta, Grant Park itself, local churches, and schools gave places for socializing, comfort, and room to be active.
Grant Park
Edges
Paths
Nodes
Landmarks
Districts
Tech Square
Edges
Paths
Nodes
Landmarks
Districts
Castlewood
Edges
Paths
Nodes
Landmarks
Districts
I created the site plans above for the Grant Park and Tech Square districts, while my partner created the ones for Castlewood. We both walked around each areas, took pictures and observed people in these area together to better understand how people interact with the space and how successful of an urban area it truly is.
Structures: Scaled Bridge Model
This is one of my favorite projects from when I was an architecture major! It showed me what I really could do if I set my mind to it. Myself and two other classmates created this scaled model which is over 4ft long. The objective of the project was to create a bridge that was structurally sound, the site was on campus next to the architecture building to allow students to cross the street without interfering traffic. We had to use a famous architect as our inspiration, our’s was Calatrava’s many bridges, we all loved the elegance and form of his works. Below you will see the final bridge model created from laser cut basswood.