How can we make the city work better, be more people-friendly and less harmful to the local and global environment by preserving its own historical and cultural identity?

Urban space is not clean, abstract design; it is a complex human experience. It depends on an interaction with the observer and the information field: more specifically, a combination of visual, acoustical, thermal, and tactile information fields. However, in our times, city building is neglectful of human feeling; it is a cold, harsh enterprise devoid of the amenities for living. There is a big hunger for the open spaces for breathing.

Architecture is an extension of the human mind to the environment. We must be able to connect our buildings to the open spaces; this extends our consciousness to our immediate surroundings. Nevertheless, “today general tendency is to see the individual building as a crafted machine, well detailed and smoothly articulated, but held somewhat in isolation from its immediate environment. Modern architecture grew in the atmosphere of the machine aesthetic, and so tended to produce a succession of well-crafted objects, surrounded by inarticulate space. Historically this approach has been credible in terms of individual buildings, but less successful when we consider the aggregate effect of buildings set within the city”14. If we cannot connect to surrounding surfaces, then we find ourselves in an alien environment, and our most basic instincts drive us to leave it.

In historical cities, streets rarely broaden out into squares directly; the transition is usually marked by some narrowing structure creating partial closure at either end. This serves as a join between street and square, or between different sections of street, offering visual information to anyone walking along the axis. An arch over a street is a useful and powerful boundary for urban space. Ending the street with a façade, as the closing wall of a T-junction, provides axial information. The same principle helps to break up a long street through the use of bends and monuments placed in round-abouts12.

Architecture is an extension of the human mind to the environment. We must be able to connect our buildings to the open spaces; this extends our consciousness to our immediate surroundings. If, on the other hand, we cannot connect to surrounding surfaces, then we find ourselves in an alien environment, and our most basic instincts drive us to leave it.

Besides the form and proportions, unity factor should be taken into account. The form of the buildings should appear as surfaces rather than as mass. When the buildings ranged along a street have varied forms, styles and treatment, the space loses definition. In older cities, narrow streets having continuous frontages constructed from the same building materials, using a few elements and incorporating similar details are very successful in creating a good scene.

Some topics in this essay:
Renaissance Baroque, , Urban Space, Street Furniture, Town’s Information, Town Landscape, Architecture Buildings, Advertisement Outdoor, Culture History, Keywords Urban, urban space, surrounding surfaces, urban spaces, global environment, creating city, originating surrounding surfaces, creating image, street furniture, history culture, creating cities, information field, ornaments harmonized creating, city image spatial, harmonized creating city, creating city image,