Speaker
Description
The growing pressures related to urbanization and environmental challenges, including climate change and intensive land use, make attention to underground spaces crucial as a strategic resource for future cities. Usually analyzed in two dimensions, our metropolises are growing in depth without real structured volumetric urban planning: a systematic criterion for analyzing and understanding the underground landscape's complexity and the vertical city is lacking. This contribution aims to fill this gap by proposing an in-depth typological analysis of underground spaces, targeting, identifying, and classifying what already exists beneath our cities and exploring its untapped potential for future needs.
The three-dimensional perspective of the city started with the underground sewer pictures taken by Felix Nadar in 1864 in Paris. From that moment on, everyone started to perceive what lies underground as part of the metropolis and an active participant in the city's development and transformation. Currently, the underground landscape is analyzed in three different ways: firstly, considering which activities can be buried below the surface to avoid urban sprawl and still offer the 15-minute city development, then how to design these spaces, avoiding the cave-like atmosphere and finally, the resource potential the underground can offer. The below surface realm is studied as a shield from extreme weather, providing stable temperatures for heating and cooling and reducing energy consumption thanks to its isolation characteristics. Even with its great potential in urbanism, these approaches are analyzed separately without creating a holistic view of the subterranean space, which remains not comprehended as a whole object. Therefore, a fundamental aspect of the research is the concept of 'thick city,' which redefines urban morphology as a multidimensional system where visible and invisible spaces intertwine.
The research introduces a theoretical framework based on four stratified stratus that characterize the underground realm: surface layer, medium layer, deep layer, and ultra-deep layer. Each level is the container of specific functionalities, from basements and utility networks next to the surface to strategic infrastructures such as the metro in the medium strata or storage and geothermal systems going deeper. By examining case studies such as the first sewage and metro systems of Paris and London, The Cargo Swiss terrain in Switzerland, the Zero Carbon Farms in London, or the underground apartments in Beijing, the research analyzes the interactions between different layers and the surface, emphasizing the role of the underground as an urban palimpsest.
The focal role the underground landscape has in the city's transformation and growth is described in the research by the use of maps: the cartographic method introduced by Henry's Beck in 1933 for the subways network of London introduced a topological approach to the underground where more than the geographical reference, the starting and ending points result crucial in the analysis. Beck's diagram introduces a typological study of the subterranean landscape, where spatial underground connections are divided into geometrical or topological, and possible connectivity solutions between horizontal, vertical, and nodal urban development and growth are classified.
The results offer a typological taxonomy of underground spaces, which helps analyze existing infrastructure and plan future interventions. The contribution concludes with recommendations for designing policies that leverage the underground as a resource for sustainable and resilient urban growth, in line with climate challenges and the needs of contemporary cities.
A three-dimensional urban morphology approach is needed to solve our age's principal emergency: the first step is a solid urban plan theory, which can help us understand how the city's landscape we leave is structured. Only after understanding how the city is structured will we know how its components can influence its transformations.
References
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| Keywords | Underground Urbanism; Typology; Subterranean Taxonomy; Thick city, Layered Urban Landscape |
|---|---|
| Best Congress Paper Award | Yes |
