Five phasese of the developing New Urban Metabolism Theory

Melbourne’s Docklands is a growing problem for nearly two decades. The urban renewal project of Docklands drained people’s tax money but still is called the ghost town by the Melbournians. I see the problem not in the Docklands itself but in the connection between Docklands and CBD, called the ‘West End’ sector.

 

The dull rail yard is separating the city centre into two and there are few connections via bridges which do not help this situation at all. This non-space needs to be the missing link between Docklands and CBD to bring the two together and thus the theory of New Urban Metabolism is developed and used to transform into spatial design.

 

West End Site Condition

Analysing Docklands showed clear problem between the two, lack of physical connections. This site is used mostly as transitional space where people from outside Docklands use to move across into west part of Melbourne exiting from the CBD.

Further analysis shows that this rail yard is blocked from existence by creating walls and having building’s back to this area. This may work for small area but for 25ha land where constant movement is occurring, enhances the separation of the two and since the recent Docklands problem with financial failure, gives negative reputation to this area despite how amazing it is to visit.

 

Site Explosion

Matrix One: ‘Site Categorisation’

New Urban Metabolism, which is a design tool used to connect urban layers are constructed in three stages, Site Explosion, Site Re-categorisation and Site Re-order. These help identifying the trends of a city which can be used to unify the disconnected zones.

 

There are similarities between how city functions and how people’s digestive system works. Food traveling in our body becomes energy and fuel to operate activities from reading a book to playing extreme sports. Cities also digest and the fuel is called people, they move around parts of the city and do different activities that make a city live and allow it to function. In order to understand a person’s lifestyle, we need to look at trends and habits, in this case, diet. If a person has high protein diet, he/she is either sporty with built muscles due to high energy usage during exercise, or obese due to lack of burning energy. Like this, when there is an empty space to design, we need to understand the trends and traits this place offers, and this is called [Urban Digestive System] and I have used this system to design ‘West End’ into a platform connecting Docklands and CBD that functions as an urban green park.

Matrix Two: ‘Site Re-Organisation’

1st Matrix

The site currently is not analysable because, there is too much information jumbled up in one space. That’s why I exploded the site, pulling out elements and categorising them into ‘Objects/Choice and Audience’. These three are what makes ‘Urban Transformation’.

 

2nd Matrix

Re-ordering the pulled out elements, I came up with 5 extreme metabolisms which became lenses that will be focused on designing. ‘West End’ will be designed 5 times, each time only looking through one lens at a time. This will allow me to mitigate all 5 extremes when they are joined together. Each lens is has a precedent allocated as bench marks or inspiration.

 

Transforming New Urban Metabolism into spatial design

When the Urban Digestion and Urban Metabolism of each lens combine, there seems to be a trend of Urban Digestion being tangible element and Urban Metabolism is non-tangible element.

 

There are 3 roles that the design can be.

• Barrier which is setting up strong border between the two entities

• Destination which is making ‘West End’ attraction point to bring in the two entities

• Transition which is all about smooth blending design to connect.

•  

In order to connect different designs, these are the type of role the movement needs to be.