From Zoning Based Area To A Hybrid Space; The Transformation Strategies

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A B S T R A C T One of the contemporary city`s ambition nowadays is to be more comfortable, flexible and coeval. Although numerous urban design attempts have appeared to enhance the user’s gratification, there are urgent demands to upgrade the classical public space to be more agreeable with the necessities of everyday life. Most of the urban areas after industry era are zoning based, meanwhile, have been less adaptable to daily life conditions economically, environmentally and psychologically alike. The zoning based space has a single- activity such as public or private, workspace or leisure space, etc., while the urgent demand is to look for kind of space, has mixed -activities that give it more richness, diversity, and interaction. This type of Heterotopic space has potentials, characteristics, and efforts that reconcile the everyday life requirements. On another hand, it could be defined, as a smart space, which is more correspondent with technological development through applying the digital technologies involved it. Regarding the principles of the deconstruction approach in urban studies, predominantly the hybrid space is compatible with these principles. Some of the key strategies that are sharing in both deconstruction approach and hybrid space concept are the layering and the binary oppositions. This paper is an attempt to reframe the principles of creating the public space and portrays the features of transforming the zoning based area into a hybrid one. In addition, it aims to implement deconstructive approach tools as strategies for enhancing user satisfaction in public space. The paper adopts a comparative approach that criticizes the zoning theory from different perspectives according to numerous situations and it accepts the hybrid space theory as a substitutional possibility to deconstruct the typical public space.

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From Zoning Based Area To A Hybrid Space; The Transformation Strategies * Ph.D. Candidate FARHAN ABDULLAH ALI Department of architecture, faculty of architecture, design and fine art, Girne American University, North Cyprus Department of interior design, College of Arts and Letters Cihan University, Erbil, Iraq Email: farhan.abdullah@cihanuniversity.edu.iq A R T I C L E I N F O: Article history: Received 02 February 2018 Accepted 10 Jun 2018 Available online 02 July 2018 Keywords: Zoning Based Space; Hybrid Space; Heterotopia; Zoning Theory; Deconstruction; Transformation. A B S T R A C T One of the contemporary city`s ambition nowadays is to be more comfortable, flexible and coeval. Although numerous urban design attempts have appeared to enhance the user’s gratification, there are urgent demands to upgrade the classical public space to be more agreeable with the necessities of everyday life. Most of the urban areas after industry era are zoning based, meanwhile, have been less adaptable to daily life conditions economically, environmentally and psychologically alike. The zoning based space has a single- activity such as public or private, workspace or leisure space, etc., while the urgent demand is to look for kind of space, has mixed -activities that give it more richness, diversity, and interaction. This type of Heterotopic space has potentials, characteristics, and efforts that reconcile the everyday life requirements. On another hand, it could be defined, as a smart space, which is more correspondent with technological development through applying the digital technologies involved it. Regarding the principles of the deconstruction approach in urban studies, predominantly the hybrid space is compatible with these principles. Some of the key strategies that are sharing in both deconstruction approach and hybrid space concept are the layering and the binary oppositions. This paper is an attempt to reframe the principles of creating the public space and portrays the features of transforming the zoning based area into a hybrid one. In addition, it aims to implement deconstructive approach tools as strategies for enhancing user satisfaction in public space. The paper adopts a comparative approach that criticizes the zoning theory from different perspectives according to numerous situations and it accepts the hybrid space theory as a substitutional possibility to deconstruct the typical public space. CONTEMPORARY URBAN AFFAIRS (2019) 3(1), 26-37. https://doi.org/10.25034/ijcua.2018.4679 www.ijcua.com Copyright © 2018 Contemporary Urban Affairs. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction The public space is an essential part of the urban morphology; it is the lung of the city. Through history, there was a concern about designing the activated public space. In the 19th century with the development of industry sector, a new functional theory of urban planning had appeared to recognize and to zone the city areas, activities, and economic sectors. Industry impacts and immigration to cities during the 20th century provoked the zoning approach obsolescence. It became not able to compete with the increasingly changing in city lifecycle. Thus, public space started aging and slowly hibernating. On another hand, the people themselves in the cities had suffered from the impact of work conditions, pollution and taxes. They began to feel disappointed, depressed and alienated. Those kinds of economic, environmental and psychological effects on the consumers of the city have manifested the question about the role of Public Space in improving the emotional steadiness of human being. On the contrary, the public space that should be created as an outlet for the city has become the more worryingly status. It has suffered from many problems such as the waste disposal; lack the capability to exploits the potentials of greenery and loss of sense of diversity alike. Predominantly this problem had not appeared in the ancient cities due to the simplicity of lifestyle and the rareness of city activities. Therefore, most of the public open spaces were agreeable with everyday life conditions at that time. Public spaces like the agora, the forum, the plaza and the souk were fixable, sensible and comfortable. It involved mixed activates that enriched the sense of place. This heterogeneous or hybrid space can consider as the area where complex and multiple social and technological conditions overlaid; It looks like an adequate answer to the city dilemma. This paper arises a question about the demand to revitalize our living spaces and to go with creating a heterotopic space that helps to reactivate the dead areas and refreshing the city blood cycle. It adopts the concept of hybrid space as a substitutional option; the paper started with clarifying the architectural concept of hybrid and heterotopia then highlighted the definitions and the terminology that related to these concepts. Then it manifests the past attempts that applied the idea of hybrid space to give more attention and reinforcing the raised thoughts. The zoning based space has become fossilized, obsolescence and unmatchable with requirements of contemporary life. The paper analyses this kind of zone principally to compare with the new trend of design the public space. The core paper questions are; how could create an open space that a liable to everyday life? And how could transform and upgrade the old ones? 1. Hybrid space and Heterotopia concepts 1.1. Definitions, Terminology, and Beginnings Etymologically, the term hybrid has been used in English since 1601. According to Merriam-Webster dictionary, it came from Latin hybrida, genetically; it is an offspring of two animals or plants of different races, breeds, varieties, species, or genera; A hybrid of two roses; a person whose background is a blend of two diverse cultures or traditions; something heterogeneous in origin or composition: composite hybrids of complementary DNA and RNA strands a hybrid of medieval and Renaissance styles; something (such as a power plant, vehicle, or electronic circuit) that has two different types of components performing essentially the same function drives a hybrid that gets really good mileage. Nowadays, the hybrid space has a multilayer meaning depends on the purpose of the study, in the sense of technological milieu, it mean an area involves information that flow within it; it is an objective synonym for the virtual space. It is “space that is manifested in the physical world, but embodies digital information to make invisible social aspects of a coworking space visible." (Bilandzic, 2013) This kind of embodied hybrid space is "physical environments blended with ubiquitous computing technology.” (Bilandzic, 2013) In the sense of the built environment, the hybrid space can be defined as an area involves mixed-used activities such as work and leisure - shopping, etc. and it might have mixed-concerned perspectives such cultural, social and technological. The term heterotopia might is not common in the architectural literature, although it had a philosophical origin from the 1960s when Michel Foucault gave a lecture through architectural studies circle 1967, but it did not publish until 1984. Foucault in his speech described our age as the age of space. He referred to Gaston Bachelard`s phenomenological viewpoint about lived space to describe this kind of heterogeneous space “…. We are living not in a homogeneous and empty space but, on the contrary, in a space that is laden with qualities, a space that may also be haunted by fantasy." (Faubion, 1998) He argues that there are real places, in every culture and civilization, these actual places; " …are designed into the very institution of society, which are sorts of actually realized utopias in which the real emplacements, all the other real emplacements that can be found within the culture are." (Faubion, 1998) He called this space a heterotopia as opposed to the utopia that according to him has no real place.

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