Individual Project One Statement

The effects of the introduction of the Congestion Charge within the Brisbane CBD has seen the decline of traffic congestion, the transfer of business growth to the outer suburbs, and an influx of people having moved to the CBD to avoid transport costs - as a result of the charge and rising petrol prices. Consequently, the council saw the need to devise a strategic plan to establish multiple, self-contained centres throughout Brisbane to alleviate pressures on the CBD and provide outer suburbs with access to business and services and promote further growth in these areas. The CBD remains the largest of these - enveloping many of the surrounding suburbs to accommodate for this influx of people to urban areas. In order to prevent further urban sprawl, the CBD has been planned to cater for rapid growth and densification. This will include a new building typology of diversified, mixed-use blocks within the overarching planning scheme.  Interspersed within the main commerce-based zones, the CBD and Fortitude Valley, is the densified residential domain consolidated with greenspace. In order to provide for the increased population, the council has devised sustainable, self-contained systems to manifest within the CBD.  This includes a transformation of the existing infrastructure within the city, most significantly an elevated rapid transit system to provide transport connections to all areas within the CBD. Also due to the decrease in motor transport within the CBD, some roads have been reclaimed as greenspace, forming green wedges cutting through the CBD – dedicated to urban food production and social activity. Advancements in technology have allowed for such systems to be controlled by automated systems, seeing the growth of specialist jobs in IT and engineering systems. Brisbane’s advanced technological identity has enabled the city to maintain its position in the global market, establishing itself as the new conference centre for Australia. Due to its expansion and demand, Brisbane’s economy has furthermore seen the need to become efficient 24/7, meeting advanced markets around the world, where it is recognised as a major capital city on an international scale.

Week Six: Final Panels

1. Future Vision:

2. Sustainable Issues:

3. People and Lifestyles

4. Architectural Possibilities:

Week Six: Poster Layouts

Our team came up with the following rough layouts planning what we needed on each panel and how to arrange these for the most effective portrayal of our scenario.

Future Vision:

For this panel we want the masterplan to be the main focus, explaining various layers of our imagined scenario (self-contained, mixed-use, densified etc.). Surrounding this will be graphs, diagrams and historical maps explaining the evolution of the CBD and how this imagined scenario came to be.

Sustainable Issues:

This panel will explain the sustainable solutions to the key issues in our imagined scenario. These will mainly be new transport infrastructure, new building typology and, social sustainability aspects.

People and Lifestyles:

This panel will be a little different to the others showing a more interactive, in depth, representation of the future by providing an insight into peoples lives in the scenario. This will be by giving an example of a day in the life of a typical family in Brisbane 2050. We plan to lay this panel out with an indication of the technological influence on the lives of people - by setting it out like an iphone message.

Architectural Opportunity:

This panel will be mainly to give an insight into what a scene from the future scenario will look like. This will hopefully be a representation of all our ideas and capture the lifestyles and of the people within it.

TIMELINE: The timeline will run throughout the 4 panels along the bottom acting as a connecting device and giving the posters some continuity.

Week Six: Poster Progress

To prepare for the presentation of our panels we firstly planned out what we wanted to include on each panel to communicate our main ideas:



FUTURE SCENARIO

• Date
• Timeline (connecting all panels)
• Mind map - showing progression of impact of congestion charge
• Graphs - data (projected brisbane population, price of petrol, family sizes, birth rate, employment rate)
• Statement of scenario
• Diagrams showing self-contained city (multi-use buildings, transport, food production, live/work and play in CBD)
• Historical maps of Brisbane (1950, 2000, 2050)
• City form (satellite city) - multiple centres surrounding the one CBD

SUSTAINABLE ISSUES

• Multimodal transport (internal and external to CBD)
• Self-contained CBD
• Food production
• Community - housing encouraging interaction and social diversity
• Social hub zones
• Energy conservation/sources
• Resources
• 24 hour job sharing

PEOPLE AND LIFESTYLES

• 24 hour city
• Impacts of advanced technology on lifestyles
• New jobs - vertical farming, lifestyle coaching etc
• Social interaction is valued in society - children still physically go to school, social community hubs for recreation, food production and interaction
• Family dynamics - size, structure, relationships etc

ARCHITECTURAL OPPORTUNITIES

• New infrastructure: Multimodal transit system - travellators (elevated walkways), pods, stations, cycling and walking
• Vertical Suburbia - Mixed-used buildings, residential towers extensions on buildings
• Community gathering spaces - reclaiming sections of the CBD for greenspace and community focused zones
• Presence of technology in the built environment

Week Five: Tutorial

In this weeks tutorial, our group worked to communicate all of our keys ideas through architectural solutions. The future scenario that we have formed gives rise to various architectural opportunities that may take place within our imagined Brisbane CBD in 2050.

MULTIMODAL TRANSPORT INFRASTRUCTURE:

With the need of a new rapid transport system, we had previously come up with elevated walkways with travellators and monorail tracks. After discussing this further we decided that monorails would not be efficient enough for our highly serviced and rapid transport network, and there would not be able to be many operating at one time on the tracks.

Instead we have opted for smaller, lightweight transportation 'pods', transporting 5-10 people at one time. By creating smaller modules, this allows the pods to come more frequently, eliminating waiting time. We plan for these pods to come about every 30 seconds to allow for the fast and efficient trasnportation of people around the city. 

Elevated Walkways Diagram

Sketch designs of the transportation 'pods'

COMPACT HOUSING:

One of the main features of our future scenario was the compactness and densification of the CBD, due to more people wanting to live in urban areas. This presents the need for new types of housing and mixed-use building typologies. Our main ideas were that the majority of the new CBD area will be mixed-use, almost always including retail and residential. We have had the ideas of community housing and compartmentalised living. We also explored the idea of creating housing which can have rooms added or removed, as required, as part of a vertical system which can cater to each dwelling's individual needs (we also envisage family dynamics/sizes to vary quite alot).

This would work as each dwelling would have the main living spaces ie. living room, kitchen & laundry, bathroom, 1 main bedroom and outdoor living. Then the 'extra' rooms would be interchangeable between levels, and could be moved (on vertical tracks) up and down the building, as required, and locked into place on the side of the building.

Mixed-Use Community Housing Blocks 

Sketch design of the modular, interchangeable, community housing.

COMMUNITY SOCIAL HUBS / GREENSPACE:



The existence of communal housing / dense living would also create compact communities within the city, with opportunities for community hubs for gathering and activites. As vertical space would be restricted, in this densified CBD, we saw the need for the emergence of dedicated community greenspace areas for recreation, food production, exercise and social interaction. As seen in the lecture this week (exemplars from New York - Central Park and the High Line), green space can immediately activate space within an urban setting, as it offers a refuge and a change of pace to the business of the city.

3D Representation of Queen St in 2050



Week Five: Lecture

The lecture this week, delivered by Dr Phil Crowther, was very engaging and helpful to this project. Many of the ideas that Dr Crowther talked about were very similar to ideas we had as a group, including urbangreen space/food production, alternative transport systems (including elevated walkways), communal housing and urban community hubs.

Dr Crowther also discussed the impressive urban renewal project in the New York called "The High Line." This project took a major piece of infrastructure which had previously been unused and unwanted and made it relevant to the city by transforming it into an urban park, which meanders throughout the district, across roads and through buildings. Personally, I think this project was extremely successful in creating a new identity for the meat packing district of New York and providing the area with new opportunities that came with the influx of people wanting to see and use the new attraction. The project has also had a great impact socially and culturally, as it activates the unused structure as a natural retreat within the urban setting in which it resides and acts as a destination, rather than a mere transportation route.

The old High Line was an elevated train system which meandered throughout the city, until it eventually became unused and irrelevant.

Now an urban park, the injection of greenspace offers a public attraction in the Meat packing district of New York. In our future scenario, we have imagined alot more greenspace within the city to form public attractions and community hubs.

An elevated walkway connects various places and buildings fitting comfortably into the urban scene. This is a feature of our imagined future scenario (elevated travellators/walkways). 

As the High Line does, our groups vision for greenspace within the city was that it would activate areas within the city and create destinations for the surrounding community to go by offering a retreat for various social activites in the midst of a busy city.

The idea of an elevated walkway was one similiar to what we had as a group, as it does not disrupt the ground plane below, and presents a new platform for activity above.

I also found a similar project in Paris, called the Promenade Plantée, also reinvented old railway. This structure also involves a multi-level route with some enclosed sections, as it passes between buildings and through tunnels, and some open sections with expansive views of the city.

Week Four: A Day in the Life of a Typical Family in 2050

The tutorial activity asked us to create characters that exist within our imagined scenario. This gives an insight into how the future scenario has effected peoples' lifestyles and how they interact with that world. By approaching the scenario from the perspective of what the people would be doing within it made a lot of sense and allowed us to be a bit more creative with the characters!

A DAY IN THE LIFE OF A 'TYPICAL' FAMILY IN 2050....


FELIX - 10 year old child

• Only child
• Likes to play Virtual Golf
• Walks and take the travellator to school nearby
• Plays with friends in the recreation park nearby

VELMA - 42 years old

• Stepmum of Felix
• Works from home
• Takes care of vegatable patch on small balcony outside
• Microwaves instant meat for dinner

REX - 40 years old

• Father of Felix
• Works in the urban farms in a supervisor position
• Is awarded Salary + Food benefits each week
• Works flexible hours
• Loves team sport - goes out into suburbs to play cricket.

BRENT - 81 years old

• Grandfather of Felix
• School teacher at Felix's school (Life skills)
• Coeliac

By combining some of our previous ideas with new, brainstormed ideas we were able to be creative and came up with the following lifestyle factors for our characters:

• Shift in dynamic from normal family
• Less practice of religion
• Increase in technological reliance
• vertical and urban farming
• 24/7 operating servicing
• Majority of the population eat out
• Social networking becomes standard communication
• Decrease in social and sexual taboo
• Large engineering and IT workforce
• Increase in Part-time and Job share positions
• Online services
• ID profiles held under facebook account
• Shift work to accommodate for a 24/7 economy
• Lower working hours in a week
• More emphasis on the importance of social interaction in society - our group thought it was important to address this fact. Therefore there will be more social interaction opportunities, such as cafes and parks Also it is essential for children to still develop social skills - therefore they still physically go to school to encourage these skills, rather than watching podcasts from home