Identified and modelled elements of urban fabric in academic works of students

Abstract

Every town has a unique urban structure regardless of whether it has developed spontaneously or in a planned way. The entirety of structural elements (streets, squares, blocks, buildings, etc.) forms a tri-dimensional composition of the town - its spatial structure. Some researchers of the urban phenomenon emphasize importance of certain elements in the formation of townscape, while other researchers accentuate other elements. Some consider the street to be the key element organising urban space, while others refer to the block (or a set of land plots) as the key instrument shaping streets and squares. Still another school of thought view the built-up as the determinant of towns' panoramas and silhouettes. All these considerations are valid. However, in order to understand the entirety and to analyse uniqueness of each urban object it is necessary to analyse distinctive features of the plan, built-up, size-and-space composition. This research analyses what elements of urban fabric students of architecture recognise/identify and model/design in their academic works. The presentation looks into and summarizes the knowledge accumulated from the academic works of students of Faculty of Architecture, Vilnius Gediminas Technical University (FA, VGTU) carried out in 2010 2014. It reviews methodology, tasks, solution argumentation and methods of designing new urban quality in historically developed urban fabric.