Teaching Urban Morphology

The importance of urban morphology is argued from three perspectives—philosophical, cultural and practical. Urban morphology makes sense of the world around us and this chapter will demonstrate the importance of ‘ways of seeing’, arguing for a philosophical approach that integrates physical, social and cultural dimensions of cities. Culturally, understanding urban morphology is a prerequisite to an awareness of urban aesthetics and the layers of meaning attached to townscapes. Through such appreciation, its study adds to the quality of life. Practically, the study of urban morphology performs a vital educational function. Through the detailed study of urban form, we learn both what not to do and how to do things better, a vital objective in achieving successful and holistic urban management. Urban morphology provides an appreciation and unique training for integrating closely related fields of practical application such as urban design, planning, architecture and conservation.

The general dissatisfaction about the quality of the urban built environment gave rise to questions on the link between practice and research on urban form in the last decades. Within these two sides of inseparable relation, research is related to understanding and explanation of physical form and its functioning through an investigation of the change of urban form throughout long periods, while practice is concerned with shaping the physical form of the urban fabric through creating an urban composition. This study examines the relation between research and practice on urban form with a particular attention to the development of planning decisions and their implementation. Turkish planning practice is taken into consideration for such a discussion. It is seen that morphological research is not the basis for the prescription of the future development, and practitioners are not aware of the essence of the subject that they are dealing with. There is a need for an education strategy to develop responsive planning policies.

This chapter develops a cross-disciplinary philosophical basis for the study of urban morphology within the sciences and the humanities, with particular emphasis on the necessity for a geospatial perspective, and lays out a systematic conceptual structure for cross-disciplinary scholarly inquiry, research approaches, and interpretation of findings in urban morphology.

The theory outlined here has been developed within the Laboratori di Progettazione Architettonica e Urbana, held by the writer of this chapter at the Facoltà di Architettura di Firenze. The theory is born from the ‘architectural thought’ of Saverio Muratori and it is aimed at understanding the processes of transformation of the anthropic space. The dialectical relationship between man and nature (mind/reality, subject/object) is progressively developed in time and space, resulting in increasingly complex and extensive structural changes, mainly due to the relationship between building type and architectural organism. In this relationship, the building type, the collective idea of the building to be realized, constitutes the design matrix of the realized architectural organism, which in turn can create, in the mind of those operating in the same cultural area, a new building type improving the previous one. The serial multiplication of similar buildings, coupled with the production dynamics associated with food needs, imposes some scalar ‘jumps’ to human societies, called to manage aggregative forms more extensive and consistent. To the focus of the idea of city, the main human invention, now so widespread throughout the planet, which would seem to be destined to become a single large city in the future. The drawings included in this chapter are dynamic models that represent the theory, the general sense of which can ultimately be summarized in the formula Reading—Projecting—Building—Dwelling: the four phases of the hypothetical law of cyclic—scalar development, with which presumably man in his history has transformed the world to his own use and consumption.

The focus of space-morphology, a specific branch in urban morphology, is to ‘uncover the fundamental characteristics of urban geometries’ (Moudon in Ordering space: types in architecture and design. Van Nostrand Reinhold, New York, p. 289–311, 1992) and ‘enrich the description of built form in ways that express aspects of performance and function’ (Peponis in Investigative modeling and spatial analysis: a commentary of directions. p. 2, 2014). Two research directions are important when discussing space-morphology, both developed in the UK during the 1970s. First, the work at the Centre of Land Use and Built Form at Cambridge University directed by Leslie Martin and Lionel March and their seminal work ‘the grid as generator’ (Martin and March in Urban space and structures. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1972). Recently, this direction received renewed attention with publications such as ‘Streets & Patterns’ by Marshall (Urban Des Int 17:257–271, 2005) and ‘Space, density and urban form’ by Berghauser Pont and Haupt (Spacematrix: space, density and urban form. NAi Publishers, Rotterdam, 2010). Second, the Unit for Architectural Studies at University College London, directed by Bill Hillier, that developed in what we today know as the Space Syntax laboratory. Besides the description of these two directions in what we call space-morphology, this chapter will discuss how these two directions can be combined and how this can benefit the other schools of urban morphology, not least when it comes to identifying typologies. Typologies, being specific combinations of spatial properties, perform and function in specific ways and can be an effective way to inform urban design and planning practice when they intervene in cities and change these types or add new ones. Such an evidence-based approach puts new demands on the education of architects, urban planners and designers.

‘Town-plan analysis’ developed to account for those portions of the intricate patterns of spatial organization and visual character of towns and cities that can be retrieved from a study of the chief elements of their ground plan. It investigates the configurations of streets, plots and buildings created over time as cities have grown from unpretentious beginnings or bold designs into complex territorial compositions of built environment. Inevitably, the pressures of urbanization have usually triggered extensive modifications to original layouts, producing often complex alterations to the spatial structure of the urban core and variable impacts on the successive urban fringes of cities as they have expanded and been absorbed into the urban mass. Advances in town-plan analysis have created many useful concepts to explain the dynamic processes that have shaped and altered the ground plans of cities, and a selection of the most successful concepts is presented here. They lie at the core of a coherent system of urban morphological explanation.

Despite the recent resurgence of research on the use of geographical urban morphology in planning and urban design practice, the exploration of urban morphology for pedagogical purposes in urban design has been slow to develop. The application of urban morphology to an urban design studio focuses on the urban waterfront redevelopment in Auckland, New Zealand. A field-based active learning process supports the characterization of the waterfront landscape forms and the assessment of their socio-economic consequences. Urban design guidelines and conceptual development plans prepared by students aim to contribute to maintaining and improving urban waterfront history, cultural tradition and identity.

It is essential, in architectural education, that the student understands how designing is a process that includes: (i) built analysis (object); (ii) interpretation by the designer (subject) who observes the built landscape, the problems it poses and the transformative potential that it presents; and (iii) the possible congruent transformation forecast in the built reality (synthesis). This forecast takes into account all the components that contribute to the transformation, including the contributions of disciplines different from architecture. The first and the second points are, actually, not separable in different moments, but are part of the same designing phase which we will call reading. This reading is always critical: the way we look at the transformation of the object already contains some options. The forecasting, on the other hand, is also not neutral. It is expressed by a project that originated from the same method to understand operationally the built reality used in reading. This chapter aims to demonstrate, through examples, how the method of critically reading the object is a constituent part of the project itself.

Teaching urban design in Brasilia is a peculiar challenge, for the city is a World Cultural Heritage Site. A big issue is the immensity of open unused spaces, which are, at the same time, a great asset. The students are first introduced to a way of looking at the city through various dimensions, or aspects of performance of urban morphology—i.e. its spaces (voids) and its forms (volumes). They become aware that city form may have contradictory performances: good in aesthetics, bad in functionality, for instance. In stage two, they apply this theoretical framework to a real situation. The identification of problems is the result. There follows three or four design stages. In each stage a dimension of performance is brought to frontstage, notwithstanding an underlying reflection on the other set of dimensions, but which remain rather in the background. Stage by stage, additional dimensions are brought to frontstage until all of them have been covered by the end of the semester. The aim is to introduce more livability—that is urbanity—in the city fabric. The specificities of Brasilia are the ‘jewel of the crown’ in this process: how to deal with a site which has essential undisputable qualities that must be preserved, not only for the sake of history but for the sake of timeless morphological qualities, and, at the same time, to mend its obvious—and serious—problems.

Urban design engages urban morphology when the questions of where and why are paramount—that is, where and why a building or site needs to be designed, a landscape enhanced, a street calmed, or a garden planted. This framework for teaching and practicing urban design is fundamentally different from an orientation that stresses balance, texture, and composition, which are the pre-occupations of urban design that is more focused on a single block or specific site. This chapter explores the significance of urban morphology in the teaching and practice of urban design. It lays out examples of showing how urban morphology informs and improves urban design pedagogy, underlying an approach that is analytically straightforward, incremental in approach, and directed by sustainability principles.

Space syntax is a significant theory and tool that describes buildings and cities as evolutionary processes, offering valuable support to architectural and urban design. However, theory and analytical research are different from the processes that characterise the generation of ideas in design practice. This chapter elaborates first, on the differences and intersections of analytical knowledge and intentional design, and second, on some projects charged with integrating space syntax analysis into the studio. Considering design as a propositional field manipulating elements and relations through intuition and logical order, we argue that classification forms a crucial concept in design thinking, serving as a tool for design generation and invention. We propose a ‘bisociative’ approach as the intellectual synthesis of relations in two domains, the ‘form-of-a-class’ and the ‘syntax-of-a-class’. The former refers to conceptual relations of similarity and difference in design, while the latter describes network properties among elements of built space. Based on the membership of elements in the same or different domains, we identify two fundamental modes of design operation, the ‘convergent’ and ‘divergent’ modes. Bisociation can be used in the design studio to generate ideas while maintaining intellectual synthesis and rigour.

If, on the one hand, sustainable architecture has been viewed very largely through the lenses of technology and energy performance, remaining at the margins of architectural culture, on the other, urban morphology has acquired, for several years now, a globally recognized role among the disciplines that deal with urban analysis. This role has then grown further, thanks to the irruption of sustainable topics nominating urban morphology as a disciplinary ‘plug-in’ between architecture, urban design and landscape. Urban morphology can thus be a valuable tool connecting the technological aspects typical of sustainable strategies to the various cultural, social, civic and formal aspects of urban design and architecture. That is why teaching urban morphology in a sustainable perspective is of the upmost importance. An educational methodology, morphologically-based, allows students and practitioners to develop a design and sustainable culture within the body of the architectural discipline giving them the needed awareness to face with the wide and complex topic of sustainability.

Instruments of analysis of urban form have been developed to a high degree of sophistication and complexity by academic researchers to the extent that even the term urban morphology can put off the use of these methods by practitioners and those enrolled in design courses––architects, urban designers and town planners. This chapter describes how the urban morphological concept of urban tissue has been used as a design tool in the Joint Centre for Urban Design at Oxford Brookes University (formerly Oxford Polytechnic), and in other institutions including Cracow University of Technology, to analyse and explore design solutions for extensive housing projects. It describes the technique of applying tissues which represent developments known to the designers followed by an interrogation of the result to ascertain the degree to which that tissue is appropriate. The speed of the method enables a number of solutions to be rapidly evaluated and modified to achieve the best fit. Because of its ease of use, the way the method has been used by non-professionals in participation events (which closely resemble New Urbanist Charettes) is also discussed.

As a taught subject, the interdisciplinary nature of urban morphology presents both challenges and advantages. One challenge lies in providing some kind of structure or ‘scaffold’ that can aid the student in bringing together the diverse strands of the subject. Conversely, addressing the very different backgrounds of students who come from different disciplines might seem to undermine the benefits of any common structure. Both of these potential problems can be turned to advantage in light of Howard Gardner’s principle of multiple intelligences (Multiple intelligences: new horizons. Basic Books, New York, 2006) and the more general practice of differentiated instruction. That is, the diversity of urban morphology as a subject lends itself to differentiated instruction and the diversity in the backgrounds of the students and their different modes of thinking. Taking this premise as a starting point, the chapter describes some of the practical methods used to teach urban morphology in a graduate-level course and reflects on the benefits of a differentiated approach. The methods discussed include field visits, analytical and design exercises, presentations, critiques, project-based coursework and a studio environment for inter-student learning. The chapter concludes with reflections on the role of design in providing a way into an exploration of the underlying principles of urban morphology.

This chapter describes a course in urban morphology, based on the book ‘Urban morphology. An introduction to the study of the physical form of cities’, recently published by Springer (Oliveira in Urban morphology, an introduction to the study of the physical form of cities. Springer, Dordrecht, 2016a, Springer, Dordrecht). The course, and this chapter, is in seven parts: the elements of urban form, the agents and processes of urban transformation, cities in history, contemporary cities, different approaches in the study of urban form (including the historico-geographical approach, the process-typological approach, space syntax and spatial analysis), the relation between scientific research and professional practice and, finally, the relations between urban morphology and other fields of knowledge of a social, economic and environmental nature. The course has been taught, in different formats, in different universities in Brazil, China, Portugal and Spain. The chapter addresses a number of theoretical, methodological and procedural issues in teaching this course.

This chapter brings together some of the main arguments presented in the previous chapters and of the wider debate on teaching urban morphology. The chapter, as the book itself, is in three parts, discussing why teaching urban morphology, what to teach in an urban morphology course and, finally, how to effectively teach urban morphology. It also includes the identification of a number of lines for future research within the science of urban form.