Modularity and sustainability: Eindhoven as an example of pragmatic sustainable design

Abstract

Sustainability has become the transdisciplinary buzzword of urbanism. Sustainability can be leveraged as an integrated tool that can fortify design and redesign of urban forms that are deemed ‘unsustainable’. For this study, sustainability is given criteria, following the methodology of Frey, and applied to the redesign of an actual existing city. This methodology reorganizes cities or districts into ‘urban quarters’, which are modular units within the city. In this manner, the city of Eindhoven, The Netherlands was taken as a case study and the sustainability criteria given by Frey’s method were used to analyse and identify the levels of sustainability in urban quarters in Woensel, a district of Eindhoven. The results indicate that a grand part of the evaluated areas as unsustainable possess characteristics that diagnose a loss of modularity principally in the quarters in the north of Woensel. A redesign proposal is presented, to modularly restructure the district Woensel. The development of a large urban unit is carried out as example, through the union of sustainable and unsustainable areas.