origin of the research

A lot of nowadays urban built-up areas need to increase conspicuously the residential density. Almost half of world's population has moved from country to city and urban areas often go in crisis because they keep using the same traditional models, with buildings which grow hypertrophically in height, with a consequent mobility jam of the road system at the ground level.
This goes on happening even if town-planners and architects have been suggesting alternative models for more than a century.

“Ville Radieuse” by Le Corbusier - 1930

Why towns will be denser and denser

New proposals for architecture and urban design should connect urban density with concepts as comfort, green areas diffusion, rapid transit, efficient facilities and cheapness. In a “dense city” you can find: fast and efficient public transport, a network of bicycle and pedestrian way, equipped public park, gymnasiums, stadiums, swimming pools, multiplex cinemas, theatres, museums, universities with advanced research sectors, well furnished libraries.
In contrast with what we can think about at a first sight, only the dense town makes possible human settlements which are ecologically sustainable.

“The sustainable way to inhabit the planet needs a dense and very integrated three dimensional city, this postulate has led to a renewed interest for mega-structures in an actual version with a reduced scale.”
Ole Bouman, Arjen Oosterman, Yearbook of World Architecture 2008

“esplanade” of Eur - Rome

Buildings spread

“Vondelpark” Amsterdam

Traffic

The dense town can have a chaotic and congested circulation if it is not appropriately planned.
Planning a town in an urbanistic way is not easy because its growth follows random developments, unpredictable market-dynamics, slow or very fast periods of time.

A model like Hilberseimer's vertical town is completely judicious and rational, however it has never found application because not even the most inflexible and authoritarian totalitarian country could build a million-inhabitant town just on one occasion.

“vertical city” of Hilberseimer

The current market dynamics can realize built-up areas of very high buildings but they are not able to create a road system on two levels like the one planned by Leonardo Da Vinci five centuries ago.

Leonardo da Vinci’s “ideal town”

However, the solution for the metropolitan jam is just on a multilevel network of transport. Now it is largely proved that a town planning which foresees urban spaces and webs of transport completely located at the ground level has not a future.

“Multilevel Underground” Amsterdam

Entire Italian areas which are developed and economically productive (such as Veneto) are based on vehicular networks at the ground level, on the other side, in the town of Friburg in Germany, with no more than 200.000 inhabitants, there is a railway station with escalators and elevators which link a tramway and pedestrian overpass, the platform of the trains, the vehicular and underground car park and the multilevel elevator which is adjacent and which is used as garaging and bicycle hire.

Friburg Germany

The urban green

That of urban green is a modern concept and necessity which was rarely present in old towns, we can think about historical and urban places which are well kept, such as Piazza San Marco in Venice and Piazza del Campo in Siena, where there are no trees. The progressive enlargement of the contemporary town, its becoming denser and denser and the presence of the motorized traffic created this necessity.

Piazza San Marco Venice

It is appropriate to suggest the green in the modern town, on the condition that it is thought organically to the urban planning. It has to be also correctly quantified: it can appear as paradoxical, but examples like that of Le Courbusier's Ville Radieuse and the few others which are similar to it, and which have been realized generically, supposed eccessive public green areas.
For this reason, recently, the most clever town planning policies, go on building these areas, reducing and reorganising the green, such as in the quarter of Bijmermere in Amsterdam. In this policy hanging gardens and vertical green achieve interest and become an important device for the future green city.

Bijmermere district - Amsterdam

“New cities should be compact, they should have green areas, they must allow citizens to move without cars, they should have districts easily to reach by feet and designed in respect of landscape and bio-climate that surround them.”
Mitchell Joachim, Area 99 “save energy”, 2008

sum of the method

Herby typology produces buildings or urban groups without excessive dimensions.

HERBY™ system pat.pend. is applicable for the construction of buildings with different shapes, dimensions and heights that could be combined one to each other in order to create a 3D town-planning. It is the development of the short distance pedestrian city, the vision of urban planners more sensible to urban ecology.

3D town planning: typology for a new idea of town

The goal of the idea of building which is going to be described, is that of having a vertical connection system which is the most similar to a traditional urban rising road. A model that adds “Italian quality” to the most diffused examples of green-building.

"Piazza Mercatale and Palazzo Ducale" in Urbino and a “HERBY path”

The concept is easy: twisting around itself a whole built area, road and porches included, to make a real three-dimensional urban system. The way, producing a promenade with porches, which would be organized in ramps (with a 8% gradient), staircases, private inside elevators with stops at each floor on the porch) and public outside ones with panoramic views which would move very fast (stops every 4/6 floors), in which on the one side there would be gardens, open spaces, and lay-bies in a continuous outside terrace, while on the other one there would be shops, cafés, restaurants, offices, lodgings, expository spaces and even kindergartens, libraries, gyms, schools.

dwelling in Herby

     
places for cultural activities in Herby


Promenade in Herby


Schools in Herby

From there, at different levels, covered or uncovered bridges could start, and these could connect to other potential adjacent buildings. Even if it is not immediately perceptible all the floors of the building would have a side which faces on the pedestrian road, therefore the functions which face directly on it could spread to all the floor, and so they would be able to easily house a great variety of different functions.
The way could be extended also to some underground floors, and this could give light also to the floors normally undervalued from the qualitative point of view, even if they are very crowded, as the underground car parks. This road would have to give a perception of continuity between the ground level and the high levels, and the way would have to be fluid and continuous so as to realise a real multiplication of the public area.

"Connections"

Herby system is applicable for the construction of buildings with different shapes, dimensions and heights that could be combined one to each other in order to create a 3D town-planning, that could bring back an environment inspired to natural landscape and the medieval european city.

Example of Herby application

The center of roundabouts is the most inaccessible space in our contemporary urban environment. The following example demonstrates how is possible to settle this lost central area with a green, panoramic, pedestrian space.
The project increases of 50% the original volume, but it allows to obtain a pedestrian green area that added to the other pedestrian surfaces overreach the total amount of useful surfaces of the building even if it maintains the average in standard o parkings.