C. A. Doxiadis's Pedestrian Esplanades

Deborah Antoinette Middleton

doi:10.53910/26531313-E2024842674

Authors

Deborah Antoinette Middleton Xi'' an Jiaotong-Liverpool University https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2055-6618

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.53910/26531313-E2024842674

Keywords:

Pedestrian Esplanades, post-war urban planning, urban spatial fragmentation, C. A. Doxiadis

Abstract

In the early 1960’s, the phenomena of the displacement of free social space and people in cities due to the reshaping of urban centers to accommodate automobiles, became a driving force propelling C. A. Doxiadis (1913-1975) to explore design variations for urban squares and esplanades. In this article, analysis of a series of urban plans for Korangi, Islamabad and Lahore Pakistan, New Eastwick Philadelphia, Louisville Kentucky, USA, Tema, Ghana, Aleppo University, Saigon, Vietnam, and Miami, Florida USA, developed from 1957to 1972 applies space syntax and Conzenian methods to understand the genotype of Doxiadis’s new urban design variants for pedestrian urbanism. Viewed holistically, the project sequence reflect Doxiadis’s epistemology of design inquiry into future social spatial relationships in the city. His experimentation with a diversity of planning strategies for pedestrian squares and esplanades are found to generate a distribution of movement in ways that often downplays urban centrality forming a new genotype for the 20^th century post war city.

Author Biography

Deborah Antoinette Middleton, Xi'' an Jiaotong-Liverpool University

Dr. Deborah Middleton is Associate Professor in Architecture at Xi’an Jiao tong-Liverpool University and lead of the Cultural Innovation and Critical Practices　research lab. She is active in teaching architecture design studio as well as courses in Urban studies, and Architecture history and theory. Deborah received her doctorate degree in History and Theory of Architecture from Georgia Institute of Technology with prior degrees in Environmental Studies from York University　(M.E.S.) and Sociology and Art History (B.A. Honors) from Carleton University in Ottawa Canada. Deborah’s research applies space syntax methods and emerging　technologies to investigate design thinking, spatial cognition and new environmental design approaches to urban planning, that span scales from the architectural interior and landscape to the mega structure of the city. Her design writings are published by Oxford University Press, and Springer as well as leading sustainable design research journals. She is active in international conferences and　serves on scientific committees with the Environmental Design Research Association and (IHIET) International conference on Human Interaction with Emerging Technologies and Artificial Intelligence.