Abstract – How we deal with density and how we can do it better

One of the earliest human behavioral patterns is the way we design and build our cities. The clear template of two dimensional streets which wraps urban functions is with us since the dawn of history. Even though that in the course of history the building blocks which the city is composed of have become much more diverse and the way we design and build them have changed significantly, the way we organize them in space remained almost unchanged.

The main paradigm which dictated the way we think about urban design was two dimensionality – the drawing of streets which encapsulate colored stains that represent different land uses, like nothing had changed since the days of the Roman Empire.

In fact thinking in two dimensions is so rooted in urban design (and in architectural design in general)' that even if a design is not a straight forward two dimensional, it is almost always a superposition of several two dimensional designs which keeps on existing individually. The technological advancement only affects the height for which we can extrude those colored stains drawn on urban plans, but the way these stains are organized was accepted as an axiom which defines that the biggest architectural component is the building – which stands as a clear antithesis to the street.

The reality of increasing density in the centers of the cities has virtually transformed any urban design plan to a variation of the modernist zoning concept, when the created building are like islands in the urban space. The land uses plan, no matter how sensitive and complex it might be still focuses on it literal meaning of how to use the land level and its immediate periphery, employing minimal reference to the vertical dimension.

There for even if in street level we get a mixed use design above it we get the same paradigm that the new urbanism is trying to contradict, when the street is experienced mainly by the random user rather than by the people which regularly work and live in it. As the building gets taller it gets more detached from what is happening on the street level and the urban design is losing its meaning.

The solution for this problem might be a fundamental three dimensional design. By defining the street as the largest building block opposed to the single building, while "pulling" the street upwards and organizing the built mass around a street all the way up, and designing it on a volume based method transforming the traditional concept of land uses to a more three dimensional concept of Space Uses.

The three dimensional reference to space uses allows us to create a more interesting environment containing much more uses, such an environment which allows the creation of many connections between the urban function enveloping the "street", enabling us to receive large amount of information without overloading our senses.

A system which emphasis the connections between different parts might be the basis to an organic like structure which is able to expand and evolve by connecting to specific functions. Just as grass shoots (or strawberries if you prefer) expand by sending extensions so does a system can expand by creating new masses and connecting them to existing ones.

Such an expansion method enables the creation of a reach environment which has minimal footprint, touching the ground level on select points and growing in space. In fact due to the nature of such system it is possible to use it as extension to existing urban tissues that can no longer follow their original design by creating new intensive urban focal points while maintaining high quality of life to their users.

The ability to pinpoint the exact location of the system's entry points/connections can produce a surgical treatment to urban tissues planting the seeds of a three dimensional structure and allowing it to grow in order to match its needs.