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Thesis Info

LABS ID
00400
Thesis Title
Organic Urbanism and the Implicate Order: Understanding Urban Patterns Through the Geometries of Nature
Author
Maria Rosália Palma Guerreiro
2nd Author
3rd Author
Degree
Phd Thesis
Year
2011
Number of Pages
220
University
ISCTE - IUL Lisbon University Institute
Thesis Supervisor
Maria José Roxo
Supervisor e-mail
mj.roxo AT iol.pt
Other Supervisor(s)
José Luis Saldanha
Language(s) of Thesis
Portuguese
Department / Discipline
Architecture and Urbanism
Copyright Ownership
ISCTE - IUL
Languages Familiar to Author
English, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, French
URL where full thesis can be found
hdl.handle.net/10071/2911
Keywords
Systemic thinking, Emergence, Self-organization, Fractality
Abstract: 200-500 words
The research is about the scientific understanding of the concept of "life" in ur-ban space and its main purpose is to explain the underlying order that is present in or-ganic cities. It was found that this order is emergent (bottom-up), a product of a self-organization, a fractal geometry that characterizes the geometries of Nature which is substantially different from the visual order (top-down) we are used to look at our cities. The biological metaphor in city planning has been used since the sixteenth cen-tury. However, this analogy has been made mainly because of its shape and appearance rather than by the investigation of their geometric properties and laws of formation. Checking the parallel between the geometries of Nature and the geometries of the or-ganic city, through the recognition of a set of patterns and emergent properties I con-clude with this work that these forms and these structures emerge for the same reason: the constraints of physical space and the laws of nature are the same everywhere. That’s why a city and a tree so strangely resemble. One of the most immediate consequences for the design cities as a result of that way of thinking, which is holistic and systemic, is that the urban form (at various scales), is not only the product of our models, wishes and inspirations as well as the result of the spatial context it is inserted. The artifact and context form an indivisible whole in a web of relationships and therefore the expression is the result of adaptation to the surrounding environment.