Thesis title: Schools as Community Centers An Analytical Investigation of How Schools can Act as Elements to Regenerate the Neighborhoods in the Contemporary Cities Case Study: Historical City of Kashan in Iran
ABSTRACT
It is apparent that all around the world schools are considered as functional elements of the social, cultural and economic growth of the communities. Therefore, it could be an area of interest for architects and urban planners to design schools not only as separated and isolated buildings only for educational objectives but also as public centers with interactions with the urban space next to them. Consequently, they could play a significant role to rejuvenate the context of settlements by promoting academic, social and urban cohesion in this way.
This thesis is going to address the issue of schools as integral elements to regenerate communities in the contemporary cities through the ages. We carried out this procedure in the historical city of Kashan in Iran. To achieve this goal, this research aims to study the morphology of Kashan first at urban level to recognize different phases overlapped each other, then in plot and block levels. In the following, it examines schools inside the urban fabric to investigate possible transformations in nodal areas of the urban space.
Based on the relationship between the shape of the urban-space and the shape of the teaching space, this work aims to provide useful guidelines for the redesign of the school buildings of consolidated urban fabrics. The research defines a typological abacus of school buildings and uses a historical normative survey useful for tracing the evolution of the scholastic question. In this regard, the non-intervention has led us to face this study.
We decided to focus on the consolidated fabric, by tracking the block-like type and examining it with the aim of defining the possible interventions. We intend to generalize the operation on the architectural type by setting a congruence relationship between the architectural quality of the building and the proposal of renewal intervention that offers, as a final result, the possibility of obtaining a compositional matrix for reuse and renewal.
In order to make flow teaching space into urban space, we decided to include civic functions within the school complexes so that they become a reference point for the community; we intend to create innovative didactic environments, to relate the design solution with the reference context and to open the school to the territory by operating on the base of the building.
To carry out this task, field research and descriptive-analytical techniques were employed to develop the documents. The schools that were included as case studies in this research were analyzed through urban morphology tools. Moreover, block and plot types inside the urban contexts were studied to support better identification, understanding ,and description of this procedure.
Keywords: Schools, Urban Morphology, Regeneration, Kashan, Community Center