Urban design projects

Spring 2024

During my time abroad in Copenhagen, I took an urban design class to broaden my horizons and explore my options within design. Although I was initially intimidated by the topic and the class makeup of mostly architecture students, I had an amazing time and learned so much about the design process and its extensive applications.

The semester-long course included two large projects in which we were given real plots of land in a Copenhagen neighborhood known as Nørrebro. The first couple of weeks of each project were spent interviewing residents and locals and walking around to explore and understand the space. The rest of our time was spent ideating and making many, many site plan iterations. I was encouraged by my architecture-major teammates to take on the role of drawing each of the plans for both projects, with which I had no prior experience.

The images I included are the final site plans for the two projects and highlights from our project presentations to show our full process, also detailed below.

The courtyard site plan

Panoramic collage of original courtyard

Courtyard plan w/ our maps of observed resident pathways

Sunlight analysis

Features to save and celebrate

Summary of intent visualization over final plan

Final site plan

Site plan with annotations

Seasonal usage

Collage to visualize our site plan in action

Site plan

Annotated site plan

Original site plan— Train tracks rum along the top, with shipping container housing beside it. Most of the buildings seen are car dealerships with a soon-to-expire lease.

Key interview takeaways

Repurposing of existing buildings on the site

Connecting our intentions with the area to the people who use the space and its existing conditions

Early site plan iteration (We initially struggled a lot to understand tjust how big a 100,000 square meter site is, we had to densify what we had and add features to fill the space)

The reasoning behind our bold choice of the inclusion of a Ferris wheel on our site

Bike storage concept to be used around our site

Repurposing the large Porsche dealership to accomodate a multi-cultural food hall

Ferrisparken collage

Project 1:“The Courtyard”
40 x 70 meters squared
Group members— myself, Hannah, and Monty

INTENTIONS-Celebrate pre-existing features (fruit trees, flag pole, sculpture)
-Spotlight natural pathways of residents’ daily lives

RESEARCH METHODS-Ethnography
-Field interviews

RESEARCH FINDINGS-Visibility is crucial to safety of resident children, currently too many covered structures (such as trash rooms) to use to hide
-Not enough protected bike parking for cold months
-Sunlight has to be maximized because of how little sun there is during the winter

REDESIGN KEY FEATURES
-Reconfiguration of pathways to fit pre-existing resident routines, lined with covered bike parking
-Playground moved to center for visibility and extra sunlight. Redesigned to include more natural elements such as logs and hills
-Community firepit to encourage year-round use of the courtyard
-Clear, corrugated plastic roofs for visibility and easy maintenance

Project 2:“Ferrisparken: The Masterplan”
102,000 meters squared
Group members— myself, Monty, and Tia

INTENTIONS-Increase connectivity with the rest of the neighborhood
-Encourage community building
-Increase housing
-Repurpose car dealership buildings to include needs for the community

RESEARCH METHODS-Ethnography
-Field interviews

RESEARCH FINDINGS-Majority of site is abandoned and covered in trash and metal waste
-Portion of land next to the train tracks is used as temporary student housing made from shipping containers
-Limited privacy
-With the help of Jan Gehl’s Twelve Quality Criteria for Urban Design, we found the space seriously lacks trees, greens, and shrubbery

REDESIGN KEY FEATURES
-A Ferris wheel, encouraging both tourists and locals to visit Nørrebro and marking the final stop of the long park and bike pathway that runs diagonally through the neighborhood
-Multi-cultural food hall, library, movie theater, and community center
-Bike and pedestrian path that runs through the entire site to increase connectivity, lined by small ponds, green spaces, bushes, and trees
-More affordable housing

Elizabeth Fallon