W.03 "DEFINING URBAN SITES"

The reading this week really engaged my imagination, defining a site is hard enough without the implications of influence on ever expanding larger scales. Kahn starts to mirror the same step in the thesis process I'm currently engaged in, where an urban site refers not only to a specific location of intervention but to the entire city as well. I wish to work to continue a sites boundaries to showcase possible communication with adjacencies instead of bounding my site as shown in the Palmanuova Plan of 1713. I found the five concepts of urban site thinking refreshing and helpful, especially the notion of mobile ground. "Mobile ground describes a space of progression, slippage, and continual revaluation, where diverse realities tip over, into, and out of each other. It is where site boundaries and site images shift, bend, and flex, depending on who is looking. Its focus on urban sites as dynamic and provisional spaces where points or departure take on more meaning the places of arrival is a concept I would like to explore further. Secondly, a pivotal point of the essay is the concept of unbound sites, where any actions for a limited site in a city is at once influenced by, and has consequences for, the city as a site. This issue of scale and lack of isolation is what makes urban design a public endeavor and one that attracts me to it.