Engaging the freeway as urban space: Finding legibility and order in the high speed landscape
The vast and speed-swept space of the urban freeway challenges the capacity of the city to serve as a vessel for collective and individual identity. Humanist space, which once gave definition and meaning to the place of the individual in the city, has been obliterated by the vector of speed, to the detriment of the physical environment. The highway is a permanent reality in the modern city which must be dealt with as an integral part of the total urban landscape. This thesis will explore the potentials of urban space that engages the freeway. It will investigate the possibilities of establishing a reciprocity between architecture and the space of high speed movement whereby building volumes and structural rhythms might be generated by the forces of flow and movement and in turn might contribute to making the highway a meaningful and memorable "place" in the city.
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