No abstract

The understanding of urban morphology as a means of exploring the materiality of urban areas has been an emerging practice amongst academics, but the reach of the methods in urban-design research has been limited. This research presents the integration of GIS application and fieldwork analysis as the main methods to support the interpretation of urban morphology as methodical, exploratory, and multidimensional. The Kolmogorov–Smirnov test, commonly known as the KS test, is also conducted to illustrate a contrast among the settlements. The study focuses on various dimensions of informal settlements by drawing on three case studies of informal settlements in Lahore, Pakistan. The results show heterogeneity in the urban form in terms of land-use diversity, building density, connectivity, open-space ratio, and infrastructural quality within the case-study areas. The analysis displays the context sensitivity and diversity within these settlements that provide a better understanding of how informal settlement works in relation to urban morphology. This research has the characteristics to contribute to other urban-form studies through the coherent application of the procedures to various sites. The output of mixed-use techniques exercised in this study lends itself to integration with other systematic processes related to urban areas’ design, research, and planning.

In leading architectural offices where digital technologies have become de facto part and parcel of the architectural design process, it has become pointless to talk about ``architectural design'' and ``digital technology'' as separate phenomena. In fact, those offices showcase advances in their designs through combined developments in process, tools, teams, materials, and research. Far from being a passive addition to conventional processes, digital technologies transform the whole spectrum of architectural endeavour. Architects and offices in the front of these development showcase a particular competence set that is distinct from others, which we propose to call ``digital leadership.'' We define ``digital leadership'' as the ``integration of distributed knowledge from social sciences/humanities and digital technologies through the integrative artistic power of Architectural Design applied to the built environment as a real-world research and design laboratory.'' Although there have been many digital pioneers since the early 1960'ies, we can now see digital leadership as a more mainstream movement. However, there is no unified framework or theoretical understanding of digital leadership. In this paper we report on work carried out on four universities which has the aim to build such a framework.

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to investigate ways of practicing political power in public space in the interaction between central and marginal users in Glòries, an area under transformation in Barcelona. Originally conceived as the core of its extension, Glòries is now a battle field where conflictive spatial-social manifestations are strongly linked to pending conditions and partially implemented infrastructural projects. The key actors are in large majority illegal migrants, which activities and spatial strategies are particularly uncomfortable for city administrators; challenging the traditional focus on actors that are stable and institutionalized, included and previewed by the tools for urban projects implementation. Design/methodology/approach To achieve insights on urban spatial articulations of appropriations by marginal actors around infrastructures, the method deployed is to look closely at the interplays between persecuted and persecutors and their ways of practicing power in space in the frame of the illegal street markets in Glòries. This is part of an ongoing PhD research on the complexity of involved processes. The research is executed in diverse work packages: mapping of material transformations (morphology, domain, accessibility and permeability), in diverse timeframes; surrounding functions and temporal fixities, appropriations catalysts; media presences and discussions; crossed references with immersive field work and exchange with locals. Findings A broad variety of illegal street markets have been monitored in Glòries, revealing an increase in scale, frequency and levels of tension. Around them, their dynamic properties can be extracted and measured: spatial configurations, sizes, timeframes, number of traders/visitors, the relation to other elements, the strategies of displaying, displacing and dispersing used by the police. In all, the relationship with the infrastructural elements shows crucial and a better understanding of their relations constitutes a path to understand how both infrastructures and collective behavior contribute to dynamic productive and power logics in space. Originality/value This research and case study are an outstanding framework to explore the concrete spatial interactions and interplays of different power or territorialization processes, i.e. the strategies to denote presence and agency – in novel ways. Focusing on their spatial outcomes in contemporary transformation processes where infrastructures are dominant components is a way to inform the design, practice and implementation of city project and management.

PhD programmes within the disciplines of architecture and urban design have in the last decades presented various designerly approaches. In this paper, we suggest viewing the numerous conceptual contributions as an 'emerging archipelago' of different attitudes and positions which PhD candidates, as much as PhD programmes, need to navigate, find their standing point within, and contribute to. By presenting five cross-sections of this archipelago, our aim is to offer perspectives to dissect, cut through and explore the nature of the complex conceptual landscape of PhD by Design (PbD).These cross sections have been drawn up from literature reviews and discussions within the context of the Erasmus+ project 'Mapping, Reflecting and Developing PhD-by-Design Programmes'. Each of the five sections presents one of the following topical debates: science/design, subjectivity, disciplinarity, literacies and practice/theory. In our analysis of Annelies De Smet's doctoral thesis, 'Architecting Bodies by Immersive Gestures', we (graphically) sketch out how a research project can be positioned within the messy and continuously emerging PbD landscape.Introducing the metaphor of an emergent archipelago, the paper opts for an open attitude. By dissecting this archipelago, we aim (in an inevitable act of simplification) to unpack perspectives and raise questions regarding the various approaches that coexist, with overlaps, nuances and oppositions present in their own foundations. We encourage readers to explore in a non-dogmatic way -and to position themselves in -the 'emerging archipelago' of attitudes and positions and to thus contribute to its ongoing formation.