Ground / Potentialities of the Urban Volume
2012 - Current
EPFL / U. Laval
Affiliations: Associated Research Centres for the Urban Underground Space (ACUUS)
How does our relationship to the urban underground change when we begin to think on the scale of our planet? When we are no longer attached to a particular patch up earth, to a single ground, but learn to encounter multiples grounds and to encode and address them virtually and physically? When the ground is no longer a homogenous poché, but a heterogeneity of geological formations that condition the possibilities of an architectonic articulation? When the city is no longer three-dimensional but n-dimensional? How can machine intelligence augment our ability to perceive and render public the potentiality of our common grounds?
Potentialities of the Urban Volume (PhD Dissertation, EPFL, 2016)
This dissertation looks at the urban volume, in its natural and artificial materiality, as a source of potential for future urbanization. Underground resources—for buildable space, geomaterials, groundwater and geothermal energy—tend to be addressed only as needs arise. This has historically led to conflicts between uses: basements and tunnels flooded by rising aquifers; drinking water sources endangered by infrastructures that carry pollutants into groundwater systems. The work was carried out as part of the Deep City Project, which argues for a paradigm shift of ‘resources to needs’ in which the potential of underground resources is addressed prior to any urban project or plan. The work presented here further develops a methodology to map the combined potentials of resources and includes an original investigation of the spatial relationships between underground and surface urban commercial spaces.
The following publications are related to this project:
-
Doyle, Michael R. 2016a. “Potentialities of the Urban Volume: Mapping Underground Resource Potential and Deciphering Spatial Economies and Configurations of Multi-Level Urban Spaces.” PhD in Architecture and the Sciences of the City, Lausanne, Switzerland: Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne (EPFL).
-
———. 2016b. “From Hydro/Geology to the Streetscape: Evaluating Urban Underground Resource Potential.” Tunnelling and Underground Space Technology 55 (May): 83–95.
-
———. 2017. “‘Resources to Needs’: A Paradigm for Addressing the Potentiality of the Urban Volume.” Urban Planning2 (1): 6.
-
———. 2019. “Mapping Urban Underground Potential in Dakar, Senegal: From the Analytic Hierarchy Process to Self-Organizing Maps.” Underground Space, June, S2467967418300412.
-
Doyle, Michael R., Philippe Thalmann, and Aurèle Parriaux. 2016. “Underground Potential for Urban Sustainability: Mapping Resources and Their Interactions with the Deep City Method.” Sustainability 8 (9).
-
Doyle, Michael Robert, Aurèle Parriaux, and Philippe Thalmann. 2020. “Construire En Sous-Sol: Un Bilan Économique.” TRACÉS, no. 14 (December): 8–14.
-
Doyle, Michael Robert, Philippe Thalmann, and Aurèle Parriaux. 2019. “Embodied Energy and Lifecycle Costs: Questioning (Mis)Conceptions about Underground Construction.” Buildings 9 (8): 188.