Thesis Title: Invigoration of the Fortress

[Hassan]

Hi, i am 5th year archi at the National College of Arts Lahore, Pakistan. i have a month to come up with a comprehensive and a rational solution to this urban project. so far i havent been in control of the project and it has been real frustrating for me. There are issues at the fortress stadium which will be handled with the over all Master planning of the Land Around the Fortress Stadium, and a detailed design of a building that my data would show will help in dealing with the laying issues.

The stadium was built as a avenue for the hosting of the National Horse and cattle show and for the display of Army Parade on National occasions as such as Independence Day and Defence day. the fortress stadium is located strategically and is connected with the whole city of lahore with a net work helping in making fortress accessible to people coming from any corner of the city.

the fortress stadium has grown into a hub of a number of commercial activities. the frontal area of the stadium is totally commercialized and is leased out as shops. At night there are liveily areas and dead areas around the stadium. my aim is to break the boundries and spread the loads from livily areas towards the dead areas and areas that lays vacant. now since this is my thesis i am suppose to show a lot of facts and figures and a lot of information. i have all that information recorded but it all layes scatered and needs to be properly displayed and presentable and be able to show the jury that the solution i have come up with is exactly the right soluton. now since this is a comunity and a forum of urban designers and planners who can guide students like me to go through the right process directly leading towards a logical and rational solution.

Due to the lack of proper knowledge and proper guidence i have lost my focus and interest a million of times now since its now or never situation i ask you people both professional practisoners and students to help me out with your oppinions and your knowledge to how to go about this problem from the presentation of the facts leading to the most logical solution and satisfying all the issues and considerations related to urban design and master planning of a problem as such as this.

if there are any quesstions that would make you understand the project and help you in guiding me i would be more than happy to answer them in hope to get the project handled with the most creative design decisions most logically proven a need and a feasible design solution.

it would be a big help and will be a learning experice with all you folks guiding me

thanks

Hassan

[JusticeZero]

Have to admit that I don't fully understand the problem. I get the impression that you have a central stadium that is, in essence, partly a shopping mall (an enclosed building with storefronts accessing hallways, in essence) and that parts of the "mall" have high traffic and sales, and other parts have low traffic and sales, where you want to expand the high traffic to cover the full area. In which case it sounds more like something you'd talk to someone in business and advertizing, but economic development covers that as well.. but is my understanding correct?

[Hassan]

Yes you are right the stadium building is in the center, with the frontal area leased out(but the walkway around it is not enclosed, its semi covered) with the west side alive and other directly opposite(east side) dead at night. The stadium building plan is a "U" shape, with a ring road around it, the ring road can be accessed from both main roads(one at the south side other at the east side) along the land of the stadium crossing each other at one of the corners. There are a number of activities taking place at the west side of the stadium with activities spread out on both sides of the ring road (shops, restaurants, funland, cinema, bowling alley, skating rink etc)
At night the main road at the front of the stadium is used to access the ring road where the other part of the ring road at the backside of the stadium leads to the exit point which leads to the other main road.

i hope this gives you a rough idea about the existing setup

Hassan

[JusticeZero]

Is the problem that existing venues on the east are not getting enough traffic, or that there are no vendors/attractions on the east? And if the latter, what is the problem you hope to address?

[Hassan]

yes, there are no venues and attractions and there isnt enough land as much as it is available on the west side plus there are army fields across the road along the east side of the stadium, which would prefer that area to remain dead at night.

[JusticeZero]

So - what precisely is the problem you want to fix?

[Hassan]

So - what precisely is the problem you want to fix?

There are issues related to parking, traffic congestion and circulation during peak loads, pedistrian vehicular clashes because of the absence of vehicular free environment.

There are issues related to ambiance, absence of landscaping and public amenities, lack of an architectural identity. There is a major issue of the absence of a proper policy that could act as a tool in dealing with the existing issues.

There is about 9 acre of green space that is at the front of the stadium this space has no proper use throughout the year and only serve the purpose of enhancing the view of the stadium's main elevation when viewed from the main road at a distance, and used on grand occasions for parking and need's to be properly landscaped and designed as a public park so it could be used effectively.

[silentvoice]

could you get some famous local or regional team to adopt the stadium as their home ground? It just come to mind that places like old trafford (manchester united) or highbury (Arsenal), or fenway park (Red Sox) are very well loved by their respective fans to the point they become icons. There is no need to reinvigorate it if its so popular.

Sounds like you cannot but built a carpark of somesort as well. Maybe on the greenspace in front? Or underground.

[JusticeZero]

How is this connected to increasing the load on the center? If you disperse he businesses over the area it will lower their ability to operate because you will be creating "empty teeth" that discourage foot traffic. If you want to take over the east side and add businesses, you will have to do so by increasing the capacity - and annoying the neighbor, as you mentioned.

Lemme take a rambling shot at it anyways.. may or may not be what you're looking for..

"parking, traffic congestion and circulation during peak loads, pedestrian/vehicular conflicts because the parking area is not walkable"
...trying to see if I have this straight. I'd have to see a map of the area, but it sounds like the same problems that plague any mall, stadium, or other commercial venture. Either you need to provide facilities for both cars and pedestrians with distinctive interaction points (that is, sidewalks or equivalent everywhere people need to walk, and roads of a different texture/material where people need to drive, with crossings clearly marked both with signs and with change in road texture, such as cobblestone crossings over paved road with at least a stop sign) or you could make the shared space in such a way as to highlight that auto use is secondary to pedestrian use, such as the woonerfs (sp?) which feature irregular paved areas lacking lane markings and containing permanent benches, trees, fountains, and similar in such a way that no straight high velocity vehicle route can be in any way inferred, and open to indiscriminate pedestrian use - thus cars slow down because the area is built in a way that visibly was not constructed primarly for vehicle access. The first way is less controversial, less innovative, and seems to usually be more than sufficient; the second seems to be more specialized, and you likely don't have the needs it's specialty applies to, imo.

One issue is that this is a STADIUM as well as a shopping center. Stadiums are built around short duration events. It's the nature of the beast that they will have astronomical access demands for very short periods of time, then be empty for other times. It's like the people complaining (in a seminar class I attended) that HOV lanes 'didn't work' when they pointed at the unused lanes on the side of the road that was NOT experiencing rush hour congestion in the sample photo. You build for peak capacity because you have to. What you do with the slack when you don't need capacity is pretty much an exercise in creativity.

"ambiance, absence of landscaping and public amenities, lack of an architectural identity"
...I can't speak to "Ambiance" or "Lack of architectural identity". Those are kind've problems for the architects and painters who are in the area and can walk around the place. Absence of landscaping, well.. I can't see it from here. I am, personally, a firm believer in the wonders of local flora - planting local trees, weeds, and shrubs is pretty economical and can look good when you use it to block out the area you want to focus attention into, rather than expecting it to be a point of attention. That is, you use natural vegetation as negative space to define a positive space, as people are accustomed to thinking of natural vegetation as, in a way, "off the edge of the world" in urban spaces. Once again though, i'm not there.
Public amenities... well, if you need them, add them. You didn't say what the problem is here.
Absence of policy for dealing with issues.. more a management issue imo. Rather, a lack of management issue. Maybe the business owners have some ideas into how they want management to be created, since bad incidents hurts them too. Is there some sort of comittee or council of the people involved in the project?

This is pretty much just a whild shot in the dark here, since it's really hard to get a good idea of what you're working with from a distance.

[Hassan]

How is this connected to increasing the load on the center? " .

I mentioned all these facts to point out the complexity of the number of problems that exist's in the existing setup.

If you disperse he businesses over the area it will lower their ability to operate because you will be creating "empty teeth" that discourage foot traffic.

If i take up these issues of ambiance and landscaping and their solutions and put them in the exisiting setup i will not only be making them a feature in the already alive area but will also be considering their dispersal towards the vacant and underused areas which lay dead at night, resulting in the sharing of excessive loads.
for example if landscaping and ambiance are to be considered along with the design of an attraction in some other region that surrounds the stadium it would not only be acting as a magnet for liveining up of the dead areas but it would help in sharing the loads on the west wing.

Your comments regarding my following number of problems:
"-parking, traffic congestion and circulation during peak loads, pedestrian/vehicular conflicts because the parking area is not walkable"

Either you need to provide facilities for both cars and pedestrians with distinctive interaction points (that is, sidewalks or equivalent everywhere people need to walk, and roads of a different texture/material where people need to drive.....

Now! if the curved ring road (that is along the "U" Shape stadium) is made vehicular ristricted at night and properly landscaped, it would sure lessen up the problems of congestion and circulation keeping the vehicles at a distance from the pedistrian zones area creating a sence of harmoney. This will be by disconnecting the stadium and its access from the main road from the south side and providing vehicular access and exit points from the road long the east side and designing a parking fascility for the overall parking, at the back.

Now the jury notified me to display all the facts and figures and the data that shape these design decision, as they said. It has to be through a process which i have to admit that, i am simply unable to comprehend. This thesis requires a brief understanding of the urban issues and the fact that i cant take this project isolatly from its surrounding. meaning that its a major attraction and a very important icon of lahore and is one of the major attractions for the people comming from all sides. than there is the ideology of status and class, and differentiating between the hiearchy of status and catering for them, which is very swear here in Pakistan. Plus it is located in an army cantonment area and i need to understand their ideology and politics, giving facts and figures?? now these all issues lay at my hand and are unsolved and require a brief understanding and comprehension to be in control of the project.

I hope i have given you the required information and insight to the issues and the condition of the thesis project progress, and the condition i am going through at the moment!

Hassan

[munibulldog]

Crowds of people attract people. Maybe you need to focus on creating a small, dense, active pedestrian area with numerous attractions which create a lot of pedestrian traffic. If you spread out the people and the attractions, you may destroy the crowd factor. Make the auto roadway adjacent to your concentrated activity area narrow and limit the amount of parking directly adjacent to the attractions. Provide parking on the backside of the pedestrian area. Tie in public transport stops so people step off the bus/train/tram into the center of activity.

Let the concentrated pedestrian activity area grow, rather than taking concentrated activity and spreading it out over a large area. Wide right of ways, large parking lots, big parks are pedestrian traffic killers except for the times that they are used for festivals, etc.

Just some thoughts.

[Hassan]

hi, i really appreciate all that you wrote and your ideas about the exisiting setup! But the thing is its not what i was looking for i wanted to understand that process with which we make such a decision! i mean the matters which counts in such projects the considerations that the urban planner's have to take before making a decision. i have already made the master plan of the whole thing infact i have worked to the very small destail of designing a module of a landscape feature and the desiging of a recreational complex. but these all things were not taken as a right solution as the method with which i come up with these decision wasnt there, these decision have to be based and proven with facts and figues which i am unable to comprehend too, the answer to which was the required solution here. i have even documented the landuse and displayed the understanding the number and types of activities taking place over there, but the process with which i make the design decision is missing and this fact was rightly pointed out by the jury. i hope i m making any sence over here?? as right now its something which has been feeded to me as i have no comprehesion and i have no other clue but to ask you folks!

thanks

[JusticeZero]

Okay, so you want a community development, rather than an economic development, angle.

You're going to want to organize the people involved, in essence, and have them work out a vision of what they want the place to look like. Then they can do things like charrettes for specific changes, or whatever.. that process is a bit more nebulous though. The core of it is that you get to organize the people directly involved in your area together into an agancy and provide venues where the people in that area can, in a focused and inclusive fashion, work out what they want; you'll have to do the necessary "public participation" procedures of making sure that notice is notoriously placed out to ensure that the interested parties are, in fact, included, you will likely also want to have some form of survey done.

[munibulldog]

...but these all things were not taken as a right solution as the method with which i come up with these decision wasnt there, these decision have to be based and proven with facts and figues which i am unable to comprehend too, the answer to which was the required solution here. i have even documented the landuse and displayed the understanding the number and types of activities taking place over there, but the process with which i make the design decision is missing and this fact was rightly pointed out by the jury. i hope i m making any sence over here?? as right now its something which has been feeded to me as i have no comprehesion and i have no other clue but to ask you folks!

thanks

Gotcha

Your jury wants you to use planning theory to justify your design. Planning theory is sort of an academic ego stroke that you have to do before they let you out of the program. You have to go and read planning journals and papers, real scientific ones, not magazines (the fewer pictures the better). Then you have to find articles that relate to your project concept in some way and quote them and write about what they mean. A good way to do this is to take two articles and write: "Distinguished author A says this, but Revered Author B says the other thing. A is correct in a manner of conditional abstraction but B's premise is applicable in certain theoretical situations." Don't be afraid to bull****.

Its a good idea to find out what articles your professor or jury published and read them and read the reference articles that they used. Just copy a lot of quotes out of them and try to make some sense out of the whole paper.

GOOD LUCK