Reclamation of Urban Voids as Opportunities for Expansion of the Public Realm

Abstract

In any city there are small slivers and chunks of awkward spaces – in between buildings, occupying edge conditions, not large enough to warrant many forms of traditional use – which can be termed residual1. These areas of the built environment2 represent sites for possible architectural invention that have been misunderstood, misused, underused, ignored and generally not exploited to their full potential. Today there is a situation when people are always on the move, so it’s difficult to maintain a character of every neighborhood, urban voids3 serve as an opportunity to connect the cultural, traditional and architectural heritage4 of a city to the sprawling urban cityscape. The aim of this research is to study and establish the basic ways in which an urban void can be dealt with and how it can be classified to various levels of scale and typology. It is well understood that a city may have number of urban voids depending on the size and the stages of development, also to a great extent on the perspective of the viewer. It was understood after much study that the occurrence of Urban Voids does not limit itself to open spaces but rather beyond to semi-open, built structures and incidental open spaces5.