Description:
Neighborhood Analysis is a multi-step activity that explores multiple forms of documentation for experiences and observations to help students understand forms of urban and architectural elements. With a deepened understanding of their own neighborhoods, students identify important architectural and urban aspects of their own built environment through assets and constraints that ultimately inform opportunities to improve their neighborhoods.
- Layers of Representation
- Understanding Physical and Ephemeral Quality of Space
- Learning skills for documentation
Learning Objectives:
- Collect images from your neighborhood that capture the urban experience
- Describe the experience aligning with collected images
- Read imaginative fables and analytical texts to become familiar with the language describing built architectural and urban forms
- Study maps and diagrams of urban neighborhoods and learn to identify, interpret, and isolate important features
- Develop graphic and visual literacy to translate written words and ideas into visual data and abstraction
- Develop strategies to read, decode, analyze, and make maps
- Present the work to classmates
Tools Needed:
- Phone with camera
- Free photo collage apps – PicCollage
Process:
Lab 2a:
On your way home:
Create a photo collage of your commute from school to home.
- Collect: pictures that document your commute home from school.
- Review: David Hockney’s process video covered in the class lecture.
- Arrange: use PicCollage or another photo app to create a collage that expresses your experience
- Write two paragraphs that narrate your commute. For example:
I started at the school building, noticed that there were clouds in the sky and worried that it might rain. I looked down the blocks for building canopies that might block the rain.
Lab 2b:
In-class and complete at home:
Part #1:
Abstract mapping; connected to your neighborhood.
- Read: selected chapters from Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities
- Choose: one of the stories that most interests you
- Identify: at least 10 architectural elements found within the text
- Collect: Sketch and download images of the architectural components found in the story that are also found in your neighborhood.
- Assemble: a collage of the items to resemble the narrative
Part #2:
Historical mapping; connected to your neighborhood.
- Read: selected from Kevin Lynch Image of the City
- Collect: Find and print historical and present-day maps of your community: this includes, your block, your borough, your city, and your region.
- Identify the following zones:
- Residential
- Commercial
- Landscape
- Circulation; major and minor roads
- Transportation
- Zones of pedestrian density
- Areas of congregation –
- Kevin Lynch 5 elements outlined in the reading and found in your neighborhood. (paths, node, landmark, edge, district)
Part #3:
Analyze your neighborhood.
- Identify assets, opportunities, and constraints within your community.
Deliverables:
Complete all parts and post to Miro
Blank templates for instructor’s use: Miro Template Lab 2
View student samples on Miro:
Associated Lectures on Course Dropbox: