Reinventing the Urban Block
Final Isometric.
How can historic street structure influence legibility, permeability, and public space within an urban block?
School/Level
Category
Year
Shopping centres have in fact destroyed public urban space and streets – consolidating urban blocks into privately owned and regulated commercial space, which is a highly relevant problem within a number of cities not just in Perth. The area of study currently lacks in character, accessibility and public space. There is a lack of designing places and spaces for pedestrians and more focus on maintaining vehicle access in replace of incorporating human scale. People are the most important priority of public space in the process of planning cities. The design research project explores ways in which permeability and legibility can be applied to an existing urban block, whilst learning from the historic street structure and urban form within Perth City Centre. The proposal investigates ideas relating to both private, public and civic space with the aim being to strengthen the relationship with the surrounding context and to revitalise public space within the historic core. The themes of legibility and permeability, urban form and public space are explored through the removal of the existing shopping centre in Perth. Alongside this, the application of the historic street structure and urban form within the same space sets new parameters to create a more walkable, pedestrian orientated city block.