EXTERIOR SPACES - DESIGN, ORGANISATION, SIGNIFICANCE IN THE TRANSFORMATION OF HARBOUR SPACES

 
This PhD-project seeks to analyse the exterior spaces in the new housing areas, which arise in the old industrial areas of the harbour fronts - mainly in Copenhagen, but with other European projects as secondary cases.
 
The aim of the project is to contribute to the discussion of the architectural design of the exterior spaces in housing areas through a better understanding of the variables shaping the development of the identity of these new areas. Such an understanding can contribute to the development of architectural methods and concepts, which discuss the exterior space as a physical and social phenomenon.
 
The project contains an analysis of the organisation, the design and the significance of the exterior space in the transformation of harbour spaces with a high percentage of housing. It focuses on both the sensuous qualities as well as the identity generating aspects, with identity understood as the particular characteristics of the physical space ("stedsidentitet") as well as the users' identity with the space.
 
The research question looks at how to read the public (understood as the universal, common and social) and the private (understood as the specific, individual and intimate) in the meeting between urban and housing space.
 
Some of the main questions asked are:
How do the exterior spaces in these new housing areas arise?
What influences the development of them?
What influences the approval and the functioning of these housing areas?
What happens to the identity of these specific areas, whose functions get exchanged completely?
The PhD-project was initiated in February 2009 and thus still is in an early state. In this first phase various theories have been studied, which now will be applied in the case studies. These theories are very different by nature - they all offer lines of thoughts which read our environment from distinct viewpoints. Combining those in my case analyses will be a challenging and fascinating task.
The project is financed by the Centre for Public Space Research at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts School of Architecture and by the Centre for Housing and Welfare at the University of Copenhagen.
 
Keywords: identity, intermediate place, perception - conception, scale, atmosphere and form analysis.
Theories: Philippe Boudon, Bruno Latour, Albena Yaneva, Gernot Böhme, Kevin Lynch, theory of the Japanese "ma"