Networked Urbanism

design thinking initiatives for a better urban life

Design critics: Belinda Tato and Jose Luis Vallejo, principals of Ecosistema Urbano


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Joyce Lee
Carolina Yamate
Hayrettin Gunc

Vision and understanding about Bahrain and Muharraq

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After several weeks of desktop research, one seven day site visit, and two expert guest lectures, students began to grasp an understanding of Bahraini culture and the needs for public space in Muharraq. As a whole, Bahrain is full of tensions. It is a society with extreme weather conditions, where summers can reach over a 100 degrees Fahrenheit and the air conditioned indoors can be in the low 50s; where the public values privacy; and where half of the population are non nationals who lack voting rights.  Within this backdrop, the Ministry of Culture established a pearl trail to serve as public space in Muharraq and to celebrate the nation’s pearl diving past. While elegant and modern, the trail appeared underused during the students’ site visit and a bit exclusive with its expensive amenities. To complement the Ministry’s effort, the design team wished to establish something temporary that celebrated the present and was inclusive to all types of users.

Strategic concept

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After visiting the site, the design team felt humbled by the nuances and intricacies within the city. We realized there was so much to a city we could not observe, experience or understand within the short duration of our visit and the scope of the semester. Our original conception of public space did not jibe well with local conditions. Based on our limited knowledge, we felt it was most appropriate to design a process or urban strategy rather than a fixed space. To do this, we identified a few parameters as if we were to design each space, but then left the actual choice to the users. We followed this process for small, medium and large scales, or for intimate use to larger social gatherings. Given the short length of the academic term, the design team only focused on detailing the medium scale.

Focusing the concept: presenting the research and approach

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This project went through many iterations, but for the final presentation, the design team relied on five screens and one floor projection to narrate the process and introduce the design. This method engaged the audience through multiple senses–visual, auditory and physical (the audience needed to stand up and gather around to see the floor projection). Since students had the luxury to visit the site, we wanted to bring as many sensory elements to the performance.
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– Human scale: how social life will be affected.
The proposed design offers a low cost cooling mechanism that allows for more social interaction on the street level.
– Zoom out Urban scale: how the city life will be affected and transformed.
On an urban scale, this project introduces more active participation in the public realm. This design takes into consideration the many different types of city residents and attempts to offer some form of accommodations for all.
– Envisioning  the future
This project aspires to create public space that is fun, desirable and inclusive. It is an experiment that explores social agency and challenges how we design and who we design for.


Muharraq, the old capital city of Bahrain, used to be famous for its regional attraction that was defined by the charm of an old-world Arabic city and by its significance as the major pearling center, is now facing with emerging problems. Narrow streets, tiny alleyways and the fine historical buildings were places for various urban activities to occur, but now the situation has changed: those signature places are losing their capacity to hold social communications. Meanwhile, the increasing population of immigrant workers, the disorganization of an integrated community, as wells as the extreme climatic condition, are all parts of the factors that may decrease the vitality of the city.

 

The project is based on researches of the social reality that is waiting to be improved and technologies that are able to launch this improvement. We look into the structure and distribution of current Muharraq population, which leads to the conclusion of an unresolved tension between local people and migrant workers, in both terms of the form of place-occupation and the pattern of program-needs. The site experience then draws our attention to the residue spaces in the city. Taking advantage of fine conditions of ventilation and shading, existing as penetrable spots that are able to grasp flows, those spaces are the key to transform Muharraq into a better place for communication and interaction. The research on a new technology is equally essential. The development of a new inexpensive treatment for cotton fabric could help boost efforts to collect water from humid air. This new treated fabric is effective without the need for wind, and can also be used to collect and release water. The treated fabric is much more hydrophilic than the fabric by itself, and yet when the temperature gets warmer, the fabric becomes hydrophobic and releases all of the absorbed water without any other further action. This “sponge fabric” makes the structure alive. It also offers the opportunity to the appearance of greenness.

 

M+ is a network of urban oasis infilling the residue spaces, which have been underused in the old city fabric Muharraq. It is responding to several local issues: the extreme climatic conditions; the increasing number of migrants and decreasing existence of locals; as well as the lack of urban vitality. In this project, we incorporate water, solar and sponge fabric to build a low-cost, self-sustained system that generates electricity, coolness and hanging garden for the public audiences. Each of the structures is composed with standard sized unites, adjustable in height and concentration. The fabric surface can be used as spatial partitions as wells as the plane for image projection. And all the interventions of M+ are tailored to fit in a specific urban neighborhood. Each year, 12 tops rated programs voted by all residents will be distributed and shuffled for every month around the city. The construction of the M+ network will finally increase social interaction from the dimension of a single spot to the scale of an integrated community and then make the city of Muharraq a better place.

 

 


The project aims to enliven multiple elevational voids of the city of Muharraq, engaging various users who bring an array of programs over a continuously evolving spectrum of time.
As the city of Muharraq contains urban voids, the voids in plan also create elevational voids that expose blank wall facades. These blank facades, composed of brick or concrete walls, reflect sunlight to heat the city, especially with the current programmatic function as parking lots.

The project works with the juxtaposition of a light new scaffold structure against heavy existing solids. The public realm becomes an ongoing project that gets built up or down according to the user’s own needs. A set of users, all with different occupations, age group, and gender, can easily building up their own stall according to an ikea-like set of procedures. The accumulation of these stall-scaffolds can create an elevational market space, theater, or educational facility according to the user’s needs in different times of the year. Addressing the locale, the construction and deconstruction is part of the process of making the public space, the time and effort both an architectural construct. The narrowness of the scaffolds and the delicate textile skin are reminiscent of the old Meshirabyas, a balcony-type of finely detailed artifice. As its Arabic root of the word Meshirabya suggests “the place of drinking,” the project acts as a shade or screen with allows breeze to enter and create a cooled area for filtration and concoction of water as well as traditional beverages like Limonana, or Mint Lemonade.

These scaffolds bring life to the adjacent rooftops, creating a network of new public arena that continues the Arabic tradition of living in verticality. A newly established visual network will not only infill the elevational voids to reduce heating, but also activate the locale to create proximate destinations for people to sell, buy, or socialize. Each of these sites will respond with different programmatic functions over courses of years. Depending on their traditional character of the neighborhood, programs could range from a market in the Suq neighborhood to a space of worship and prayer near the Mosque. The multiplicity of program as a respondent to the locale of the place situates program on an underlying level of necessity. Program emerges from the needs of the users.

Final Present by Yoonjee Koh


We were in Bahrain last week and the king was watching us.

http://kingiswatchingyou.tumblr.com/


Evolution of Muharraq:

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Public/Collective/Private:

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Mapping a restaurant menu:

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This is part of a two video series that should be watched simultaneously side by side. They talk about the long standing pearl diving tradition in the Arabian Gulf and the consumerist society that quickly transformed the Gulf after oil discovery from once sleepy humble towns to bustling metropolises.


This is part of a two video series that should be watched simultaneously side by side. They talk about the long standing pearl diving tradition in the Arabian Gulf and the consumerist society that quickly transformed the Gulf after oil discovery from once sleepy humble towns to bustling metropolises.


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