Redesigning is Hard?

For the third unit of the course Urban Planning we studied things such as how do all of the different parts fit together to create a city, and what is the difference between a well-designed city and a poorly designed one. We also studied different cities to see how they were planned, how streets are organized, how transportation works and how everything comes together. We also learned that T.H.I.S. means Transportation, Housing, Infrastructure, and Services, while N.I.M.B.Y stands for Not In My BackYard. We watched TED Talks from different people, who believed that our city is boring, it needs to be fixed, it needs to be beautified and the new urban planning should benefit the people. For our action project, we chose a spot anywhere in the world to redesign according to what we learned. I chose the city Matagalpa in Nicaragua because I am going there for the summer and I chose a triangular spot that didn’t have anything. During this project I had difficulty with Tinkercad, a 3D design program and I learned how redesigning a place for people around the area is not easy.

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I will be redesigning an area in Matagalpa, Nicaragua. The area I chose is a triangle with nothing on it, not even grass. It’s in a corner between two streets, in front of houses on two sides and next to a soccer field. Strengths of this area are that it’s big, and it’s close to a street so it’s not in the middle of houses. Some weaknesses are that it’s a triangle so it will be difficult to use the whole space, it’s close to the soccer field, so people might prefer to go there instead and it’s in front of some houses, so people living there might complain having strangers in front of their house. This space needs a beautiful garden with a fountain, different trees, seats and lots of flowers.

The shape is a triangle. The measurements are 314.06 ft by 442.71 ft. The equation to find the area of a triangle is ½ x base x height. Plug in the numbers and you get: A= ½ x 314.06 x 442.71, A= ½ x 139,276.566. A= 69,638.283ft^2.

KIS. Google Matagalpa Space. 2016.

Some improvements that this space can use to make it for the people and pretty are to add a leaf design to the space, add a bridge so they can be able to see the design from above, add trees to make it like a park, stepping stones so they don't step on the grass, and a flower like seating area (tall and cut in half both ways to make the seat).

KIS. New Design. 2016. 

I was inspired by a leaf vegetable garden design called La Chatonnière. I was inspired by it because of the way it included nature and enhanced mother earth. I was also inspired by the Japanese garden, not only because of the trees, but also the bridges they have. Their bridges have different architecture than usual ones and that was something that caught my attention and I would like to make a similar one.

My redesigned space is for pedestrians primarily, there is no designated parking for cars. There are lots of houses close to the garden and the garden has a bridge so they can see the design from above. Some services that my garden will need will be water to take care of it and someone will need to buy grass because there is no grass in that area.

Flower pedal seat: Half a cylinder
Diameter: 29.6 ft, Radius: 14.8ft
Height: 8
Pi x 14.8^2 (8) = 5505.07/2 = 2752.53ft^3

Tree Sphere:
Diameter: 21 ft, Radius: 10.5 ft
4/3 pi x 10.5^3
4/3 pi x 1157.625
4/3 (636.78) = 4849.04ft^3

One difficulty I encountered during this process was putting some space between the park and the houses that are close to it. I used the bridge to draw an imaginary line so I that my design doesn’t go beyond the bridge. I also struggled a little in making it appealing because since there’s a soccer field next to it I want my design to bring people and use the space. I also struggled with the Tinkercad program I used to make my 3D model because it was hard to get precision and try to create everything that is on my sketch in the model. The only thing that I don’t have on my model is the seating inside the leaf and I wasn’t able to show the bridge clearly.