Walls of Our Public Realm A study of frontage use and design in relation to location
Typ
Examensarbete för masterexamen
Master's Thesis
Master's Thesis
Program
Architecture and urban design (MPARC), MSc
Publicerad
2023
Författare
Gimfjord Nielsen, Johanna
Modellbyggare
Tidskriftstitel
ISSN
Volymtitel
Utgivare
Sammanfattning
The gap between the buildings and
their surrounding urban environment,
termed street-level architecture,
though vital in shaping urban life, is
not always adequately planned or
designed to consider the building’s
location, context, and local needs.
The term “levande bottenvåningar”,
directly translated to “lively ground
floors”, is widely used today by
planners and other actors in city
planning as an ideal quality for an
attractive urban environment. The
most common strategy for achieving
this being ’active frontages’, where
large transparent frontages allow
the interior activity to spill out into
the public realm. However, this
overreliance on a single strategy
causes the envisioned lively ground
floors to often turn into vacant or
empty retail stores without enough
customers, or apartments with the
blinds constantly drawn to avoid
outside visual intrusion.
As architects, we want to shape
our building’s ground floors to
maximize their potential contribution
to urban life, but it’s important to
note that there isn’t a one-size-fits-
all solution that can achieve this. By
first recognizing the unique urban
configuration and the different
opportunities each location affords,
can we design functioning street
levels, even for streets that are
offshoots from the main streets but
still in the public eye.
This thesis explores what makes
grounds floors lively and whether the
concept of ’interactive frontages’
can be used to achieve this
desired liveliness in secondary and
background streets, which often
do not have enough foot traffic to
support commercial activities yet
make up most of the street network.
The thesis consists of studies of
ground floor architecture in an urban
context focusing on the design of
the frontage, the program behind
it and its local and global location
and context. The result is a tool-kit
showcasing how to design the right
frontage zone in the right context
with a resilience spanning decades
of urban life. The tool-kit is then
implemented, tested and evaluated
through a design study in a specific
site in Gothenburg.
Beskrivning
Ämne/nyckelord
Interactive ground-floor, frontage design, urban design, space syntax theory, street level architecture, public space