Green City aims to take a traditional, local London high-street morphology and adapt it to function as a core element of a very high density urban environment. Doing so provides an opportunity to replace the old, vehicular-centric transport infrastructure with a highly optimized pedestrian-centric grid system supporting major, vehicle free green-corridors (the new high streets). Green City aims to establish a new system of social interactions through positive local economic transactions and environmentally and socially feasible built infrastructure.

Lei Zheng
William Haviland
Jose Garcia
Suhash Patel

This project aimed to create a new, high-density with socially and economically positive urban environment on the Isle of Dogs. It was informed by a number of case studies of successful urban areas in the London area. It adapted a traditional high-street morphology and it was applied to a new urban morphology.

Lei Zheng
William Haviland
Jose Garcia
Suhash Patel

The proposed public spaces in this project opens the possibility to use the green corridor to foster the creation of spaces to gather people and provide a variation of soft and hard surface within a city. Green areas create desirable environmental conditions. The high-street ambition is to couple boulevards, parks, plazas. The typology of these public spaces are organized as follows:

A. Private: Garden within the building
B. Semi-Private: Common Garden of a block.
C. Semi-Public: Parks.
D. Public: Green Corridors, Plazas.

Lei Zheng
William Haviland
Jose Garcia
Suhash Patel

It was important that residential spaces had good access to the main pedestrian corridors and green spaces. In addition, it was essential that street-fronts were lively, productive commercial and serviceable spaces. The amenity and utility access to the green corridor takes priority over residential. The system is one in which a positive, high-density residential environment is supported and activated through productive commercial spaces.

Lei Zheng
William Haviland
Jose Garcia
Suhash Patel

Due to the high density requirement and the set rule of heights, buildings will occupy a large footprint area at ground level. To generate multiple connections between buildings, architectural bases and raised platforms provide a visual interaction and connection. In addition, buildings will have an interior atria, which will be arranged and oriented to always maintain a visual connection from the interior of a building to the interior of its neighbouring buildings. These are designed to provide light and ventilation to the interior of the building.

Lei Zheng
William Haviland
Jose Garcia
Suhash Patel

Public amenities and commercial programs will be distributed to the lower portions of the building, and residential programs will be distributed to the higher portions of the building. No building will function as solo/singular program building. Program distributions are configured to avoid repetition and cluster.

Lei Zheng
William Haviland
Jose Garcia
Suhash Patel

The primary factor to consider from the development of the architectural scale of this project are the diagonal cuts. The diagonal cuts are created with the intention to simulate atrium spaces and based on an environmental criteria which allowed the penetration of light to the ground.

Lei Zheng
William Haviland
Jose Garcia
Suhash Patel

Case Study Analysis of Betweenness, Close, and Connectivity. The results of these tests were considered when generating a street network for the Isle of Dogs.

Zeynep Aksoz
Amro Kabbara
Olga Kravchenko
Daniel Zaldivar

Each category is represented by a bar showing the relative influence of a specific category on the Isle of Dogs. A full bar indicates that for this category the needs of that area are fulfilled, or, if exceeded the amount needed, it could provide options for the future population on the Isle of Dogs. An empty one indicates a need in that category and hopefully to be fulfilled by the design proposal.

Zeynep Aksoz
Amro Kabbara
Olga Kravchenko
Daniel Zaldivar

By drawing an analysis of how the distribution of functions informs the morphology, the result of the detailed distribution informs each plot regarding which functions it should provide. The different distributions were overlaid and extruded showing the total demand of each category for each cell. The aim of this was to generate a numerical way for the morphology algorithm to apply functions within a given plot.

Zeynep Aksoz
Amro Kabbara
Olga Kravchenko
Daniel Zaldivar

An analysis was carried out several times within the framework of the larger genetic algorithm which generates and selects a network that can accommodate different density gradients, block sizes and a desirable sky view factor.

Once the grid is subdivided into a final configuration, the specific building aggregation types are distributed according to the given plot morphology. Each of these types will become the basis for the final algorithm which generates the building morphologies.

Zeynep Aksoz
Amro Kabbara
Olga Kravchenko
Daniel Zaldivar

The elevated walkways extend through the multi-level spaces within buildings and through their surrounding areas, linking large extents of open space. This results in an interconnected space system with continually varied visual experiences.

Zeynep Aksoz
Amro Kabbara
Olga Kravchenko
Daniel Zaldivar

The network is developed by extending a connecting line that moves though the centre of every plot, forming a second orthogonal grid. This network is trimmed following the contours of high density areas and placed where the building morphologies permit an open space at the fourth floor and where the network attaches itself to the buildings

Zeynep Aksoz
Amro Kabbara
Olga Kravchenko
Daniel Zaldivar

This project proposes an urban system to densify the Isle of Dogs through the use of computational experiments and algorithms as a method for developing a complex urban strategy. The framework uses an integrated design approach that employs evolutionary algorithms and space syntax tools to optimize a multi-variable criteria and improve urban performance on a larger context

Zeynep Aksoz
Amro Kabbara
Olga Kravchenko
Daniel Zaldivar

Urban spaces may be built or unbuilt, paved or green spaces or in some cases waterscapes. The spaces have complex interactions, informing formation, growth, and character of one another. The eventual urban form is the result of multiple iterations of a recursive process that defines the configuration and character of the built, open and public spaces. The flow of data is manipulated throughout the process. The results at each stage inform the next, with each experiment and recursion feeding the next.

Georgios Bitsianis
Amritha Krishnan
Arghavan Arjmand Nik
Nicole Vergini

Two objectives drive the development of building morphology. The first is to satisfy the different combinations of data contained within a plot, with particular consideration to the relation between public, semi-public and private spaces within the urban tissue. The second is the multi-fold environmental ambition of solar access to the building itself, solar penetration to the ground surface and prevention of over-shading of adjoining buildings. One or more of these would need to be compromised to achieve the others. The morphology allows for variations that allow these parameters to be satisfied to different degrees.

Georgios Bitsianis
Amritha Krishnan
Arghavan Arjmand Nik
Nicole Vergini

Design at the urban level defines the morphological traits of the buildings in terms of form, area they occupy, and function. The form is defined according to the micro-climatic considerations of solar exposure. The building encapsulates within it the requirement for built and green spaces. The functions apportioned to each building is numerically determined based on the population to be accommodated.

Georgios Bitsianis
Amritha Krishnan
Arghavan Arjmand Nik
Nicole Vergini

This project investigates the re-development of an urban tissue, south of Canary Wharf, based on computational design and evolutionary algorithms. Different criteria that affect the urban development, such as density distribution (building and population), distribution of open spaces in terms of parks and piazzas, network allocation, buildings typology and buildings morphology, have been considered and studied in detail.

Georgios Bitsianis
Amritha Krishnan
Arghavan Arjmand Nik
Nicole Vergini

The built space responds to the requirements and standards of a high density urban tissue. Demographic studies of the local population and comparative studies of other high density urban tissues were undertaken to establish the requirements of built space.

Georgios Bitsianis
Amritha Krishnan
Arghavan Arjmand Nik
Nicole Vergini