Reuniting Urban Form and Urban Process: The Prince of Wales's Urban Design Task Force

• Autores: Brian Hanson, Samir Younés
• Localización: Journal of urban design, ISSN 1357-4809, ISSN-e 1469-9664, Nº. 6, 2, 2001, págs. 185-209
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • This article explains how the Prince of Wales's interventions of the 1980s in architecture gave rise to his Institute of Architecture and his Urban Design Task Force (UDTF). It points out that both institutions were intended to foster closer dialogue between theory and practice, and to embed formal architectural and planning typologies in building process. A distinction is drawn between the approach of the UDTF and the "urban village" thinking which underlies The Prince's Foundation (successor body to the Institute of Architecture). The Institute of Architecture and the UDTF were helped by the fact that Leon Krier and Christopher Alexander, respectively leaders of the formal and process-orientated (or "structural") schools of urban design, supported their efforts. The unique encounter between the two suggested a "Third Way" for urban propositions, able to mediate between political extremes (e.g. between historical reconstruction and a modernist tabula rasa), and to provide clear formal strategies of an inclusive and broadly accessible kind. The article looks in detail at the 1997 UDTF in Lebanon- in which Samir Younés and Hajo Neis, acolytes of Krier and Alexander, worked on the design of a new urban quarter adjacent to the ancient city of Sidon- and estimates the value of the resulting dialectic between master plan and generative processes at work in the city. Also discussed are the nature of "tradition", the meanings and limitations of the master plan document, the "hidden hand" represented by latter-day building processes, and the value of "restitution" as against "restoration". In conclusion it is asked how an "urban renaissance" can be brought about in a period of economic and political liberalization.