Digital Modelling for Urban Design

Digital Modelling for Urban Design

Brian McGrath

A highly topical text book that introduces the powerful technique of digital modelling to a wide audience of students, architects, designers, planners and urban citizens and anyone else involved in the complex decision–making processes involved in shaping the urban environment.

Drawing on two decades of teaching and practising urban design, Brian McGrath explores new theories and technologies of digital modelling to create moving and interactive 3–d drawing situated within the histories of urban theory, design and representation. The book is both theoretical and practical. For the main examples Rome, New York and Bangkok McGrath draws on his own experience of living and working in these three cities on three different continents. Analytical discussions of the cities combine historical and abstract knowledge with the ground truth of empirical experience.

While a rich array of urban studies books have been published over the last thirty years, there is currently no single book like this that brings together urban design theory and new digital technologies in urban information mapping, modelling and 3–d simulation, as a way of understanding how cities transform and differentiate over time.

Prelude.

Digital Modelling for Urban Design.

Flattening Urban Design.

Modelling Discourse.

Development of the Book.

Organisation of the book.

Archaeology and War.

Genealogy and trade.

Schizoanalysis and Desire.

Possible Urban Futures.

Acknowledgements.

Introduction.

The Spectacularisation of Urban Design.

Ground Zero.

Preliminary Design concepts.

Innovative Design Study.

The Design Exhibition Spectacle.

Transit Hub, Memorial Design and Freedom tower.

Other Representations.

Beyond the Spectacle.

Chapter 1. Archaeology.

1985–1995: Transparent Cities.

1995–2005: An Archaeology of Globalisation.

From Transparent Cities to Archaeological Modelling.

1893–1901: Forma Urban Romae.

1915–1928: The Iconography of Manhattan Island.

Manhattan Island.

1890–1932: The Geo–body of Bangkok..

Assembling New Urban Design Models.

Collateral Space.

Correlative Space.

complementary Space.

Multiplicities and Seriality.

Chapter 2. War.

1801–1893: The Emergence of Scientific Archaeology.

50BC – AD 203: Modelling the Spoils of War.

Urban Design as Triumphal Model.

300–1300: The Recycling City Model.

Churches: The New Urban Artefacts.

1300–1944: Urban Design as representation and Destruction.

The Dispersed City Model.

Destructions and Dispersals.

Chapter 3. Genealogy.

Descent and Emergence.

Three Urban Design Genealogies.

Rome: A Genealogy of the Master Plan.

New York: A Genealo9gy of the central business District.

The Urban designer as Organisation man.

Bangkok: A Genealogy of Lifestyle Centres.

Bangkok′s CSD.

The Dispersal of Power.

Chapter 4. Trade.

Timing.

Gaming.

Texting.

Mapping, Monitoring and Modelling.

Collaborating.

Interfacing.

Diagramming.

Back to Ground Zero.

Urban Design as the Production of Difference.

Chapter 5. Schizoanalysis.

1745–1778: A Schizoanalysis of War.

1978–2008: A Schi8zoanalysis of Trade.

2000–2005: A Schizoanalysis of desire.

Spectacular Feedback.

Chapter 6.Desire.

Simultopia.

Pathumwan Intersection.

Siam central Interchange Station.

Ratchaprasong Intersection.

Chitlom Station.

Complementary Space.

Virtual Itineraries.

Attentive Circuits.

Conclusion.

Modelling Urban Design Futures in India and China.

Liberalisation.

Gentle Arrivals: Fatehpur Sikri and West Lake.

World Financial Capitals: Mumbai and Shanghai.

Governance: Delhi and Beijing.

Migration and Resettlement.

Short–and Long–Term Plans.

Happiness, Harmony and Sufficiency.

Glossary.

Index.

Photographic Credits

Brian McGrath is Associate Professor of Urban Design at Parsons, the New School for Design in New York. For many years, he also taught urban design at Columbia. He has taught internationally in Taiwan, Denmark, Hong Kong and Thailand, where he was a Fulbright Senior Scholar in 1998–99. He recently completed a research fellowship at the India China Institute at the New School. McGrath is co–author with Jean Gardner of Cinemetrics: Architectural Drawing Today (2007) and co–guest–editor of Sensing the 21 st –Century City: Close–Up and Remote (2005), both published by John Wiley & Sons. Brian McGrath is that rare writer and teacher who can portray the complexity of the city without reducing it to simple stereotypes. Grahame Shane, Adjunct Professor of Architecture, Columbia University. Brian McGrath is an urban inventor who has developed nuanced techniques to approach the impossible complexity of representing the city. This book shares those techniques while also transporting the reader deep into some of the world′s most intricate urban fabric. Keller Easterling, Associate Professor, Yale School of Architecture.