2020 Volume 24.2
Editorial comment
The only thing that is constant is change
Articles
The spatial morphology of synagogue visibility as a measure of Jewish acculturation in late nineteenth-century London
L. Vaughan {+}Abstract [Full paper, PDF, 11MB 
]
ABSTRACT: This paper's historical focus is the latter two decades of
nineteenthcentury London. During this period the established Jewish community of
the city benefited from political emancipation, but this was not the case for
the recently-arrived impoverished Jewish migrants from Eastern Europe.
The spatial constitution of religious practice also differed across the city.
A comparative study found that the more prosperous West End, other than
an isolated case in the impoverished district of Soho, had purpose-built
buildings fronting the street; while the poorer district of Whitechapel in the
East End was dominated by smaller ad hoc arrangements – one-room or
adapted premises, shtiebels – serving a wider communal and social purpose,
similar to the practice of the old country. A comparative space syntax
isovist analysis of the visibility of synagogue façades from surrounding
streets found that while, in the West End, most synagogues had a limited
public display of religious practice by this time, East End prayer houses
remained visible only to their immediate, Jewish majority surroundings.
This paper proposes that the amount of synagogue-street visibility
corresponds to the stage of growth in both social acculturation and political
confidence.
The urban form of Portuguese cities
V. Oliveira, V. Medeiros and J. Corgo {+}Abstract [Full paper, PDF, 9MB ]
ABSTRACT: This paper addresses two main challenges: how to offer an
overview on the urban form of Portuguese cities, and how to analyse
the fundamental aspects of the evolution of this physical form over time.
The Morpho methodology is applied to address these challenges. This
methodology focuses on a reduced number of urban form elements and
characteristics, all related to the town plan: the spatial accessibility of the
street system, the dimension of street blocks, the density of plots, and the
coincidence between building and plot frontages. Morpho is applied to
Portugal’s 20 most important cities. In addition to producing specific new
knowledge on this sample of Portuguese cities, the paper presents results
that are relevant for a wider geographical context, and demonstrates the
potential of the methodology in comparing a large set of cities.
Urban conservation and urban morphology in Kiruna, Sweden
J. Sjöholm and E. Hidman {+}Abstract [Full paper, PDF, 7MB ]
ABSTRACT: This paper investigates the interaction between urban conservation
and urban morphology. This relationship was studied using the three basic
components of urban morphology – resolution, form and time – in the
context of the urban transformation of Kiruna. Kiruna is a mining town in
northern Sweden where, as a result of the subsidence caused by mining, a
new town centre is being built on a new site and extensive parts of the existing
settlement are being demolished. The empirical data comprises conservation
plans adopted by the authorities and residents’ perceptions of the town
identified through an urban living lab study. The mapping of stakeholders’
perceptions of urban environments that are important to Kiruna’s character
enabled identification of characteristic features of the town’s urban form
and selection of the most significant areas for in-depth analysis. The study
shows that traditional containment relationships between form elements,
which are internationally recognized as desirable, did not prevail in the case
of Kiruna. Therefore, contemporary urban planning and design ideas need
to be adapted to the local context rather than only based on the overall
understanding of urban form.
Assemblage and aggregation: reading the ancient city and urban composition methods
G. Strappa {+}Abstract [Full paper, PDF, 12MB ]
ABSTRACT: Some of the classical methods of analysis in urban morphology
have been based on the reading of the historical city. Taking ancient Rome
as an example, this paper examines how the reading of the ancient city also
gave rise, from the Renaissance to the present, to different ways of designing
modern urban form. In particular, the notion of aggregation, understood as
a system of formative laws, gave rise to synthetic design methods tending to
follow a continuing process. Today this statement seems far from obvious:
indeed, one of the characteristics of contemporary culture seems to be the
impossibility of a synthesis. The idea of assemblage, historically opposite
and complementary to that of aggregation, is then examined. Intended as a
gathering of autonomous and self-sufficient parts, this notion has had, and
continues to have, great success among architects. It is suggested that the
distinction between the two different methods of reading the ancient city, one
based on morphological analysis and the other on perception, can contribute
to understanding the current condition of urban design.
Urban industries and the production of space: a typomorphological analysis of the mixed urban fabric around the historical national road Jetsesteenweg in Brussels, Belgium
F. Vandyck, I. Bertels, I. Wouters and M. Ryckewaert {+}Abstract [Full paper, PDF, 7MB ]
ABSTRACT: From the second half of the twentieth century, industries have moved
from locations in urban areas to the monofunctional fringe due to zoning
policies and rising real estate prices. More recently, high unemployment
rates, lengthy commuting journeys and economic dependability have reoriented
the urban planning agenda towards the qualitative retrofit of
small-scale production in vital inner-city areas. However, this reveals that
designers seem to have ‘forgotten’ how to spatially integrate industries in
the city. As large industrial sites have remained in the mixed urban fabric
of Brussels, it serves as a useful research object to explore this knowledge
gap. This paper aims to retrace the role played by small-scale industries
in the morphogenetic and typomorphological development of the city’s
historically-important national roads. Hence, historical reconstruction and
functional mapping are combined to unravel types of the industrial mix at
different scales and through time. Through process typological analyses of
the city’s mixed urban fabric, this research explores what can be learned
from the logics underlying the path-dependency of urban industries.
Review article: A new urban historical atlas: viewing the best of the past
M.P. Conzen [PDF, 7MB ]
Obituary: Exploring the frontiers of space: Bill Hillier (1937–2019)
A. Penn [PDF, 2MB ]
Viewpoints
A configurational theory of architecture: the lifework of Bill Hillier (1937–2019) M. Serra
Urban form and climate change planning: on the normative framework for urban design P. Osmond and M. Hanzl
Designing for sustainability: retrieving a systemic role for urban form T. Marat-Mendes
A commentary on (V)ISUF COVID-19 crisis calls (V stands for virtual) Y. Stojanovski, I. Samuels and P. Sanders
[Viewpoints, PDF ]
Reports
Fifth ISUF Italy Conference, Rome, Italy, 19–22 February 2020 V. Oliveira
PNUM: ten years after V. Oliveira
[Reports, PDF ]
Book reviews
G. Caniggia and G. L. Maffei (2017) Interpreting basic buildings; G. L. Maffei and M. Maffei (2018) Interpreting specialised buidings I. Samuels
T. R. Slater and S. M. G. Pinto (2018) Building regulations and urban form, 1200-1900 V. Oliveira
D. L. Viana (2019) Maputo: (auto)organização e forma-dinâmica urbana A. S. Fernandes
[Book reviews, PDF ]
Book notes
[Book notes, PDF ]
Notes and notices
- Obituary: Ron Johnston (1941-2020)
