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Mazlin
Joined: 25 Apr 2007
Posts: 10
Location: Malaysia
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 Posted: Thu Apr 26, 2007 11:32 am Post subject: Honeycomb housing: an alternative to terrace or row houses |
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I don't see the Honeycomb layout as a Utopian model , perfect in every sense. Its just better than the conventional alternative. This is an alternative to the terrace or row houses, that you find in Malaysia and many other countries. Where indeed do neighborhood kids get to play soccer in these sort of streets?
According to planning rules in Malaysia, 10% of the development area has to be green. That would mean, ideally, a neighborhood park with a football field. Only some of the houses get to face the park. It is perceived as a park for the town council to maintain. A distance from most houses, pre-schoolers get to use it only with adult supervision. The idea in the Honeycomb concept is to place about half of the green area where they are most appreciated: in front of every home. The other half can be a smaller neighborhood park.
The cul-de-sac roads can function like the 'Woonerf', the European residential streets where cars don't have priority rights - where it is safe for children to play in the streets. Except in this case there is no need for traffic legislation because the Honeycomb street pattern naturally slows down vehicles and eliminates through traffic. Here children can play not only the 2000sf of grassed area, but the whole courtyard, including the paved road area.
And mothers can watch over their preschool children playing just outside the home.
Crime? The influence here is again American - Oscar Newman and his concept of Defensible Space. Since the 70's, much research has been done that show that creating semi-private spaces just outside the home - that they can overlook, that they feel they 'own', such that residents can influence what goes on out there - reduces petty opportunistic crimes.
In the Honeycomb layout, up to only 16 households, perhaps 60 people share the courtyard; in a cul-de-sac, only 40 houses or so, maybe only 150 people. Not too many to perhaps know everyone by sight. The better to recognize strangers, who may be challenged by a friendly 'hello'. It is likelier to get small groups of people to interact as neighbors than it is with bigger groups.
From where I come from (living in a cul-de-sac in a country where they are rare) , I have to work hard to figure why many people dislike the cul-de-sac and insist on connectivity. Connectivity on foot, that I can agree. But why must we let just any car use the street in front of private homes? Cul-de-sacs were introduced in England by Raymond Unwin, the architect of the first Garden Cities, who had to convince Parliament to repeal a Building Regulation forbidding dead-end streets.
But his cul-de-sacs were short, and there were footpaths connecting up the dead-ends to other streets. That is a feature that can be adopted in the Honeycomb.
As for topography, land too steep and unsuitable for terrace houses would not be right for Honeycomb too.
Finally, (thanks, Antisthenes) this is a link to answer the fire truck question. The other questions have to wait.
http://tessellarfaqs.blogspot.com/2007/04/can-fire-truck-access-honeycomb-cul-de.html
God Bless and goodnight!
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phansford
Joined: 18 Apr 2004
Posts: 829
Location: SW Ohio
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| Posted: Thu Apr 26, 2007 11:55 am Post subject: Re: Honeycomb housing: an alternative to terrace or row hous |
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| Mazlin wrote: | | Crime? The influence here is again American - Oscar Newman and his concept of Defensible Space. Since the 70's, much research has been done that show that creating semi-private spaces just outside the home - that they can overlook, that they feel they 'own', such that residents can influence what goes on out there - reduces petty opportunistic crimes. |
Please don't cite Oscar Newman. He is a hack. I live in Dayton, the only place who has let him actually built his "Defensible Space." All he did was block off some street with large gates. It has created more problems than it solved. Now the police get blocked by the barriers that fool erected. Driving in the neighborhood is difficult. His entire plan is half-concieved. There is no coherent plan or method of implementation.
Defensible space, yes. Oscar Newman - NO!!!!!! You can still have defensible space and connectivity. |
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Mazlin
Joined: 25 Apr 2007
Posts: 10
Location: Malaysia
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| Posted: Mon May 14, 2007 11:43 am Post subject: |
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In this Honeycomb development we try to create friendly interactive communities. A maximum of 16 houses form a small ‘courtyard neighborhood’ of roughly 80 persons - where children play together and parents can meet frequently and informally. This is part of a larger ‘cul-de-sac neighbourhood’ with at most maximum 46 houses, with some 230 persons. The whole development is a neighbouhood’ of around less than 1000 people in 230 houses and shops, families enjoying their own privacy yet all within walking distance and self-organized into a secure community.
We provide shared and public spaces that are pleasant and useful to residents. A pocket park is found in each courtyard in front of every house. The large trees in the middle and smaller ones in front of the houses create a cool shady area. There are also central communal facilities for prayer, sports and meetings. Footpaths ring the development and join the courtyards at the edges. Shops and a bus station are also in the site. Schools and town parks can be found within 500meters radius (5minutes).
We try to create streets that are safe from traffic and strangers. The winding roads (with the straight stretches decreasing from 150meters (500’) in the distribution road to 25m (80’) in the cul-de-sac) slows traffic down to below 5 mph in front of the houses.
The courtyard is a place where residents can collectively exert their influence, with eyes on the street and knowing who belongs and who does not. The street is thus made safe for children to play.
This proposal got presented to the Town Council last week. It might get built. See more athttp://honeycombkuantan.blogspot.com/
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lekizz
millennium club
Joined: 11 Jan 2006
Posts: 1212
Location: UK
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| Posted: Sun May 20, 2007 9:38 pm Post subject: |
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It looks nice. Good luck! I doubt it would work in the UK, personally I prefer terraced housing and dense developement. I live in an old row of terraced houses backing onto another row less than 40 feet away, you can chat over the fence and develop a neighbourly sense of community. Like you say, the modern problem is the car and social mobility, which encourages people to be part of a widely dispersed 'community' and discourages children from playing in the street. I've seen children playing football in my local streets and they are often shouted at by residents who are worried about their cars getting damaged  |
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alexneverhurts
Joined: 01 Jun 2007
Posts: 43
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| Posted: Sun Jun 10, 2007 11:27 am Post subject: |
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Personally I got lost every time when I drive to my friend's honeycomb community. I can navigate myself better on the block-like road system, of which roads are either north-to-south or east-to-west and interwoven as a network. But the hex-directional tree-like road system of a honeycomb community often drives me mad, especially after I'd come to a series of dead ends.
I do appreciate the security, shared space, and the beauty of harmony that a honeycomb design provides, and see it as one of the ideal models of the medium-dense inexpensive suburban community. But maybe I just don't want to get lost when I visit my friend. |
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Mazlin
Joined: 25 Apr 2007
Posts: 10
Location: Malaysia
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| Posted: Tue Jul 10, 2007 4:06 am Post subject: |
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The question that Alexneverhurts asked is one that I've been working on for a while. Its true that winding roads can be disorienting, but you would never say that that would justify railroading a straight route across hilly land.
In small scale development, maintaining a sense of location would be a smaller problem. Also I think, a bigger development that is composed of clearly defined sectors each with its own identity, would be easier to navigate.
If the issues of scale and monotony are handled badly, even gridded layouts can be a problem, particularly where the sign-posting is poor (which is often true in my country).
Landmarks help. I've been working on a honeycomb plan for a new district town layout, and thought about how zigzagging roads can provide opportunities for vistas. On straight roads we see only the road disappearing into the horizon, but buildings where the road bends can become landmarks.
The proposal is that main streets are framed by buildings that dominate the vista at each end
This is the main boulevard in between the Assembly Hall and the Secretariat
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alexneverhurts
Joined: 01 Jun 2007
Posts: 43
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| Posted: Thu Aug 23, 2007 11:17 pm Post subject: |
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| Mazlin wrote: | Also I think, a bigger development that is composed of clearly defined sectors each with its own identity, would be easier to navigate.
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Very bright idea! And it adds to the dynamics of the community as well!
But still I'm doubtful about your idea of a honeycomb town: isn't the zig-zag road reduces the traveling efficiency? Will the plan has positive or negative impact on traffics during rush hour? |
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usarender
millennium club
Joined: 01 May 2004
Posts: 1258
Location: San Diego, Ca
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| Posted: Mon Aug 27, 2007 8:38 am Post subject: The question is how all this will work in practice |
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These ideas of defensible space, connectivity, personalized areas and the introduction of the cul-de-sac are fantastic and much needed in the urban tissue. Too often communities are impersonal, turned in on themselves but lacking the shared common personalized spaces where neighbors can interact. It does seem such cul-de-sacs, however, favor the interaction of children and it doesn't seem those small parks in front of every home would be space enough to stimulate adult activities. The neighborhood parks for more general adult use in your scheme seem a little detached from the clusters in the sense that too much zoning of privacy can also reduce community integration to a sense. Thus, there should be a central park and community centers, located at the center of your scheme.
The idea of shared and public spaces is nice and when personalized, can carry more significant meaning, association and a greater sense of security, privacy and community unity to it's residents. One needs to achieve a balance however, between too much personalization and close-knit private spaces and greater community unity and feeling as a whole. In the cul-de-sac arrangement, the winding roads also increase a sense of security and help to reduce the amount of undesirable stranger traffic. It does create a sense, however, of being lost, and houses become difficult to find in a maze of streets. There is something to be said, however, for the landmark concept. This, however, suggests the need for a mixed use zoning and the taller buildings would thus be far apart from each other, and thus, not all larger buildings are accessible in walking distance. This may help to reduce the density of the urban tissue, and distribute the business sector with the residential sector, but also it suggests many buildings will only be reached by car. It suggests a very large community also and more communities to function well should be smaller in scale and maintain a relationship to more dense commercial areas that function at the center of multiple residential areas, as in a more traditional layout. It also suggests large tracks of land that can be easity controlled, developed by one central planning board. This is not always the case. Cities often develop in a metamorphic way and rarely one gets a chance to plan well a city before it exists, and pre-determine how the city will breath. A city is a function of how the development takes place based on economic need and decisions, and the relation the city has to economic development, other cities, and how people will actually absorb the urban tissue in practice. When one pre-determines all this, it may work or it may not work as expected.
Such zig-zag layouts could also be nice to people who live in the cities, but for new people arriving or simply traveling in and through the cities, it could create much confusion. Further, the relation of such communities to other city areas becomes not clear, and seems to suggest if we are to design communities in this fashion, there is an imperative need also to re-design our city layouts, and even greater layouts of the relation of cities to one another. Such zooming out could continue, where an entire state could be optimally designed and laid out prior to being developed. But in practice human occupation and development is quite complex and very un-frequently can be intricately planned in advance. Frequently cities who try to do this end up with areas that do not function as planned.
Mr. Nelson
Architect, Designer, Inventor, Scientist, Musician, Writer.
http://renderusa.homestead.com
The Logistics of ARchiTectural ThougHt ------->>>>
1. A Problem. A global world of mass exploitation by a few global players.
2. A context. A Fractured world of poverty, misery and war.
3. A function. To enable the global community to run the show.
4. A concept. "Des-integrate and re-structure mental energy".
5. A form. Born. Project Liquid Universe.
http://www.globaldeveloper.net
It speaks for itself.
The world will listen. The world, will never be the same.
http://www.designcommunity.com/forums/viewtopic.php?p=3264218#3264218
Last edited by usarender on Mon Aug 27, 2007 6:52 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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usarender
millennium club
Joined: 01 May 2004
Posts: 1258
Location: San Diego, Ca
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| Posted: Mon Aug 27, 2007 4:23 pm Post subject: Expanding the Honey-Comb Idea |
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Hey P.C. did you see this post ? Maybe you would like to combine this in some way with the honey-comb structural technique, so as to offer affordable construction solutions for large housing complexes. It could then be honey-comb design in many senses.
Is it possible we can even expand the honey comb design to cities, to interior layouts of buildings, to organizational patterns at other levels, to parks, to public spaces, to strictly commercial areas ? What would be the implications of such a general expansion of the ideas ? The possibilities would be endless! |
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Mazlin
Joined: 25 Apr 2007
Posts: 10
Location: Malaysia
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| Posted: Thu Aug 30, 2007 3:22 am Post subject: |
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But still I'm doubtful about your idea of a honeycomb town: isn't the zig-zag road reduces the traveling efficiency? Will the plan has positive or negative impact on traffics during rush hour? |
Alex, I'm not a traffic engineer, but I think:-yes, short stretches of road will limit the maximum speed of town traffic and that is good -three way junctions are much smoother compared to cross junctions
| Quote: | | It does seem such cul-de-sacs, however, favor the interaction of children and it doesn't seem those small parks in front of every home would be space enough to stimulate adult activities. The neighborhood parks for more general adult use in your scheme seem a little detached from the clusters in the sense that too much zoning of privacy can also reduce community integration to a sense. Thus, there should be a central park and community centers, located at the center of your scheme. |
I agree with Usarender that the pocket parks in the cul-de-sacs cannot take the place of public spaces for the larger community. Both are needed. But the fact is that in most town plans, only the larger public spaces are provided for. I would argue that these small pocket parks should be designed for small children, the elderly and the disabled - members of our society who are the least mobile - and who will most appreciate the small public spaces right in front of their homes. Adults and older children are more mobile and can easily choose to socialize with their peers at work, at school, at their places of worship, at sports stadiums and other places in the city.
| Quote: | | Cities often develop in a metamorphic way and rarely one gets a chance to plan well a city before it exists, and pre-determine how the city will breath. A city is a function of how the development takes place based on economic need and decisions, and the relation the city has to economic development, other cities, and how people will actually absorb the urban tissue in practice. When one pre-determines all this, it may work or it may not work as expected. |
I agree we can't 'build' cities; perhaps we can only try to 'grow' them. I think that the best in planning and architecture results from a tension between the general and the particular, the generic and the special. And there nothing more universal than geometry.
Of course the geometry has to be modified to suite the particularities of a specific time, place and people. It not easy to get planning approval in Malaysia, plus the commercial climate is tough. By the end of the process, with the developers and various authorities chipping in, the layout would have 'metamorphosed' quite a bit. And that's just the plan on paper.
You might like to see the early design for a mixed use town sub center in the north of peninsula Malaysia. It's a real project and the layout is still changing in response to stakeholder concerns:
http://tslr-sp.blogspot.com/
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usarender
millennium club
Joined: 01 May 2004
Posts: 1258
Location: San Diego, Ca
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| Posted: Thu Aug 30, 2007 10:20 am Post subject: A few comments on Sungei Petani |
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Your Sungei Petani layout is interesting indeed. I was able to view the page/blogspot you posted.
As you cited, it is a mixed use project. I can see some of the honey comb layouts will be fairly very accessible to the commercial, light industrial and shop house/bus terminal. Some areas will need to cross a busy highway. Will there be a bridge there ?
In this less dense arrangement, some of the issues brought up do no apply as it is possible to achieve less in a more crowded urban space. So in essence, some of the things that can be achieved in a honeycomb layout would be more restricted in this urban context. Issues could arise, with delimiting small residential spaces within the fabric of a city, such as less privacy, possibility of outsiders or curious people entering the areas with less control, concentration of vehicular traffic, and possible noise problems due to the proximity with the main urban highways. In essence, I see this as a residential area within the heart of a city, thus typical urban problems will emerge. The honeycomb layout here is not realized to it's full potential. It does help to create somewhat more sub-zoned smaller areas with more privacy then would be otherwide achieved, and to help isolate the residential areas from the commercial. So it still has it's immediate benefit, although the full potentials cannot be explored, due to the restricted space. |
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P.C.
millennium club
Joined: 26 May 2004
Posts: 2163
Location: Denmark
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| Posted: Sat Sep 22, 2007 8:36 am Post subject: |
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Thank you "Mazlin" , this is a wonderfull tread, there are quality and thought, this is what this fora has been missing.
Thank's. |
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usarender
millennium club
Joined: 01 May 2004
Posts: 1258
Location: San Diego, Ca
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| Posted: Mon Oct 01, 2007 6:05 pm Post subject: Yes, sure is a great post |
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| Nice to see you also enjoyed the post pc. |
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edjefzz
Joined: 21 Dec 2008
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Location: Czech Republic
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edjefzz
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