Robustness in street architecture : a study of some selected streets in Colombo and Kandy

Abstract

Street is a series of urban spaces, which are connected together to support a specific I' way of activities. The street becomes memorable when people are active in the street. Even though, people could not find any specifically designed places for outdoor activities in urban streets. Some places could be found which give more opportunities to use them as public spaces that can be adapted for many purposes even in Sri Lanka. Nowadays, urban designers are giving less consideration to-the-se important entities when they design places for people. As a result, the built environment is being affected with loss of intimacy. The man - environment relationship is being divorced at many of our urban streets. This is ever clear when thinking of diminishing of responsive qualities in the urban street. In order to rebuild the bridge between those two conditions it will be vital to identify the role played by 'robustness' and the way it contributes to create a livable urban street. In this respect the robustness in the street architecture is identified and studied through a theoretical approach. First the responsiveness of the urban street is considered. Secondly the characteristics, determinant factors and modifying factors of robustness are identified. Then the manner in which they contribute to create livable urban street, is studied and identified. Likewise, it is established that robustness contributes to create a live urban street. Finally it is illustrated with selected actual examples in Sri Lankan urban context (The study proves the existence of the given conclusion as a set of clues for the creation of better urban street.)