Urban design shapes cities' physical and social fabric, creating functional, sustainable, and livable environments. This paper examines Tokyo’s urban systems, focusing on how amenities, public spaces, and transportation networks contribute to livability, sustainability, and long-term viability. Guided by the Tokyo Sustainability Action 2023, which emphasizes people-centric design, the analysis explores how urban spaces balance people, planet, profit, and purpose. Sustainability here extends beyond material conservation, addressing how spaces benefit residents and the city meaningfully & holistically.

This study draws on literature such as Gordon Cullen’s Townscape, Juhani Pallasmaa’s The Eyes of the Skin, and Jan Gehl’s Life Between Buildings to explore how urban environments foster social interaction, multisensory engagement, and greater adaptability. Case studies include Tokyo Midtown, Koto City Islands, and Shibuya Station. Tokyo Midtown exemplifies successful mixed-use development with adaptable, aesthetic spaces. Koto City's man-made islands, however, illustrate how poor connectivity and a lack of amenities lead to underutilization. Conversely, Shibuya Station’s redevelopment highlights effective urban design, promoting a balance of mobility, diverse users and mixed uses.

The hybrid methodology combines literature review, logical argumentation, and site-based observations supported by sketches and photographs. Field analysis compares findings with urban planning theories, providing a detailed critique of Tokyo’s urban fabric. Figure-ground diagrams illustrate how the relationship between built and unbuilt spaces enhances cohesion and function.

This research demonstrates that successful urban design addresses evolving human needs while maintaining ecological responsibility and financial sustainability. Tokyo offers models of thriving urban systems, integrating aesthetics, functionality, and accessibility. Failures like Koto City Islands underscore the importance of holistic planning that prioritizes livability and sustainability. Lessons from Tokyo inform a conceptual framework broadly applicable to urban centers, emphasizing that quality environments - sustainable design - must foster engagement, adaptability, and multi-dimensional use of space, ultimately improving quality of life globally.

ABSTRACT: Charles Darwin proposed that the challenge of survival fundamentally relies on an object's ability to adapt to a dynamic environment. This theory extends its applicability to the field of architecture (Zuk & Clark, 1970).

Transformability in structures presents opportunities to challenge traditional spatial programming and form-making concepts. Unlike conventional static buildings, deployable structures provide dynamic solutions to changing environmental conditions, adaptive locations, functional transformations, and emergency relief scenarios, either on other planets.

In the field of designing for emergency situations and other planets, transformable structures with moveable joints refer to structures or buildings that may adapt their size, shape, or purpose to suit shifting circumstances. These structures are designed to be flexible and adaptable, allowing them to change over time. Flexible glass fiber-reinforced polymers (GFRP) rods have been selected for this study due to their combined high tensile and flexural strength, low bending stiffness, low weight, and large deformations to make free-form structures, considering the mentioned attributes, they can also be used on other planets as a possible material for architecture.

The objective of this research is to examine movable joints in the context of lightweight transformable structures with rods and joints. In these structures, movable joints enable relative movement between different structural components. According to the current literature review, there is a lack of research focused on moveable joints in the context of transformable systems. Thus, this research aims to expand the body of knowledge on how joints can provide novel forms of spatial deployability and transformation. (Azizollahi S, 2024)

The small-scale toy ’Magic Torus’ (Nishihara A., 2014) will serve as design inspiration and a translated case study in the development of prototypes for an inhabitable environment.

Wierzbicki’s 4-step approach is a methodology. Progression through each step is contingent upon satisfying joint behavior and the movement test of the previous step.

ABSTRACT: The increasing demand for sustainable and resilient high-rise structures has driven the development of advanced structural systems that integrate material efficiency, structural performance, and environmental adaptability. Diagrid structures, known for their high lateral stiffness, reduced material consumption, and architectural versatility, have emerged as a prominent solution. This study investigates the optimization of diagrid systems in tall buildings using a multi-objective parametric framework. The primary objectives are minimizing structural mass, volume, and lateral displacement while ensuring stability and addressing environmental considerations, such as daylight access.

A computational workflow integrating parametric modeling, structural analysis, and optimization tools evaluates the influence of key variables, including diagonal member inclination, diagrid density, and building geometry. The study explores a range of configurations in plan utilizing stress-line mapping techniques to align diagrid patterns with principal stress trajectories. Daylight factor analyses refine the configurations to enhance environmental performance without compromising structural safety. Results demonstrate that diagrid inclination angles within specific ranges, combined with optimized geometric parameters, improve lateral stiffness while reducing material use. These findings provide a systematic approach for balancing structural and architectural objectives, contributing to the broader goal of sustainable and efficient high-rise design.