UN Buffer Zone Transformation

type
size
location
course
academy
date

team

Studio Project
Urban
Nicosia Cyprus
Architectural Design VI
METU
Spring 2014

Farzad Golghasemi
Alican Sungur
Deniz Topcuoglu
Onur Kamburoglu
Oya M. Duman

SUSTAINING NICOSIA : A RESPONSIVE GRID By transforming the abandoned UN Buffer zone which divides the city of Nicosia to two, it was aimed to sustain and support the city in case of unification. In accordance with the demands of Nicosia, a district with five different interrelating functions was offered. Voronoi Grid was proposed as a tool to implement the analysis results and the general design proposal. This grid was proposed for two different layers: The area inside the project site,the Green Line, and the whole city area.

    step 1
  • The Burgess Model
  • Central Businness District /City Center
  • Transition Zone
  • Low-Class Residential
  • Mid-Class Residential
  • High-Class Residential /Commuter Zone
    step 2
  • The Burgess city model is cut by the Buffer Zone which becomes the central business district /a linear city center itself.
  • This interference does not divide the city into two, but instead it leads the potential interaction to the middle from both sides of the city.
    step 3
  • The sample model and the zones are manipulated and rearranged according to the inclusion of the Buffer Zone.
  • As the circular shape of the city center turns into a linear form, zones also change shape and are lined up following the linearization of the city center.
    step 4
  • After the zones are arranged, the grid plan is introduced to the model. this leads the city to have both horizontal and vertical connections within the borders.
    step 5
  • According to the geometry of the borders of the Buffer Zone and the transportation axes within the city, the grid and the zone borders are manipulated for the fnal result.
    Evolution of the Buffer Zone
  • Original Buffer Zone determined by United Nations
  • Transformation of the Buffer Zone in time
  • Project proposal for the modification of Buffer Zone
  • Proposed Buffer Zone with the Voronoi grid plan

For a given set of points, called sites or generators, each Voronoi cell defines the set of points in the plane that are closer to each site than to any other site. The outlines of all Voronoi cells form the Voronoi Diagram.

Initial situation with the given points /sites
Neighbouring points and line between them
A Voronoi edge falls on the perpendicular bisector of two neighbouring sites
Three perpendicular bisectors
Resulting Voronoi Diagram
Voronoi vertex (v) is the center of the largest empty circle passing through all three sites

The concept above is applied using half plane intersection. The Voronoi Cell is completed for the highlighted triangular site.

Association the corner points of the basic grid with attractors. In accordance with the location of the attractors, the points create an inverse or reverse attraction to the corner points.
Creation of a new deformed grid according to the cumulative effects of the attractors throughout the whole grid.
Utilization of the vertices of the new grid as the generators of the final grid. Formation of the optimum cell structure based on a special parametric operation called Voronoi tessellation.