PatchWork, Living City Design Competition

Project: PatchWork, Living City Design Competition
Location: Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States
Firm: OLIN
Year: 2011
Firm Website: www.theolinstudio.com

Project Description: OLIN’s award-winning submission to the Living City Design Competition responded to ambitious standards of sustainable development within the historically rich, yet socially and ecologically underserved neighborhoods of Brewerytown and North Central in Philadelphia. Working closely with the architects and urban planners Digsau and Interface Studio, the OLIN team explored how sustainable design can be implemented within an existing urban framework by utilizing local resources, community engagement, and respect for vernacular culture and architecture.

Using an “evolving block” strategy, the team phased incremental and achievable improvements over a span of twenty-five years. To meet 100% on-site renewable energy for thousands of households, homes are retrofitted with façades of photovoltaic panels, and the commercial spine along Ridge Avenue is shaded with canopies that collect solar power. Vacant parcels punctuating blocks of row homes transform into a pedestrian-friendly network of green spaces populated by play areas, community gardens, and urban farms. Existing row homes are either retrofitted, renovated, or replaced. Structural materials deemed necessary for demolition are salvaged for reuse elsewhere in the neighborhoods, thereby supplying over thirty million bricks and three million square feet of wood for building new homes.

Rain gardens and roof cisterns combine with district-level “living machine” water treatment centers located along the green space network. This integrated system reduces the neighborhoods’ per capita potable water consumption from 69.3 gallons per day (the amount used by an average American) to 9.2 gallons, and eases demand on the city’s aging and over-burdened combined stormwater and sewer system. The long-abandoned Red Bell Brewery is refurbished, creating local jobs and opportunities for locavore farming. This measure contributes to the goal of meeting 80% of the district’s food needs within a 500-mile radius.

Image Credits: The Olin Studio.

Project Team Members: DIGSAU, Interface Studio

Cleveland Flats Connection Plan

Project: Cleveland Flats Connections Plan
Location: Cleveland, OH
Firm: CMG Landscape Architecture
Year: 2009
Firm website: www.cmgsite.com

Project Description: Building Cleveland by Design (BCbD), a joint program of ParkWorks and Cleveland Public Art, has retained CMG to lead a design process for key connections in Cleveland’s historic Flats neighborhood. The scope of work calls for planning and schematic design for connections that will both bring greater unity to the central city neighborhood and link it more strongly to surrounding areas. Cleveland’s Flats is rich in historic and environmental value. CMG has emphasized ecological design through the planning and design process as a fundamental way to treat and re-frame the area’s rich but complex conditions with sensitivity.

CMG has worked with BCbD in a nimble and responsive manner, often providing material, designs and exhibits to enable community visioning and stakeholder communication on an as needed basis. Simultaneously CMG has developed an open space framework plan to inform future public and private development of the historic Flats. Various project sites are addressed in detail within the flats framework plan. These discrete sites include: an 8 acre linear park with integral storm water treatment and habitat creation program; a remnant landscape that is nominated as a National Archeological Site that CMG has framed as an urban wild, again with an overlay of storm water treatment and habitat creation; a temporary one acre landscape installation to occupy an old parking lot. The Connections planning and design is to knit together private and public investments in the district, helping ensure that residents and visitors can move easily between new neighborhoods and parks on both the East and West banks of the Cuyahoga River. By solidifying connections, the Flats can become a complete, walk-able neighborhood, attracting people, energy and investment back to the center of Cleveland.

Project Team Members: Willett Moss, Scott Cataffa, Calder Gillin

Hunters Point – Candlestick Point

Project: Hunters Point / Candlestick Point
“Ecological equity and the last great expansion of San Francisco”
Location: San Francisco, CA
Firm: Bionic
Year: 2009
Firm website: www.bioniclandscape.com

Project Description: The City of San Francisco and a developer have proposed a 700-acre development for Candlestick Point / Hunters Point Shipyard at the southwest edge of San Francisco. It will be the last large expansion of the city. The proposal includes commercial, retail, and residential space for 20,000 people, and a new stadium for the San Francisco 49ers. In response to the plan, a coalition of environmental organizations commissioned Bionic to create an urban design alternative that better address the needs of the existing community, including environmental health, economic development, and the creation of open space and its ecology. Through a community design process and analysis of the issues on a city-wide scale, the project documented an actual and perceived exclusion from the large landscapes and open spaces that the rest of the city residents benefit from.

By leveraging existing ecological assets and projecting a reconfiguration of property lines, the alternative planning approach calls for an urban design that is fundamentally different from the City/developer proposal. It proposes flora/fauna/pedestrian connections to open spaces outside the project boundary, and the re-connection of existing patches of habitat. The resulting composition of large-scale spaces provides an alternative that creates more development areas, continuous habitat corridors and large open spaces, and connects existing neighborhoods to the water.

The open space becomes one continuous park representing the six ecological communities of San Francisco. The habitat corridors expand the potential for existing species to flourish while additional habitat is created to reintroduce native species. Anticipating the future importance of water infrastructure for the immediate area and the City, the approach defines areas for water resources. The open space is capable of hosting water storage, wastewater treatment, and large-scale storm water treatment as infrastructural elements. On-site water resources will mandate the integration of building systems with the open space infrastructure. A sub area of the plan proposes to add several city blocks to the project area for the daylighting and restoration of Yosemite Creek. The addition would connect the waterfront to Third Street, the main commercial and transit corridor for the Bayview neighborhood. Once the stream is daylighted, it presents ample opportunity for a variety of open space uses, such as stormwater treatment, urban agriculture, and active and passive recreation. Most importantly, it provides a connection from the existing community to new parks, open spaces, and the Bay.

Project Team Members:
Marcel Wilson-Principal, Kelly Schoonmaker- Associate
Client: Saul Bloom – Arc Ecology]
Sierra Club
Urban Strategies Council
LSA-Transportation

Anning River New South Town

Project: Anning River New South Town in Miyi County: Future Historic Ecologies
Location: Miyi County, Panzhihua, China
Firm: SWA Group
Year: 2009
Firm website: www.swagroup.com

Project Description: The design for the development of the 200-hectare Anning River New South Town proposes an innovative hydrologic system, a hybrid of the historic waterways and a new ecological system to serve as the backbone for a vibrant new town. At the core of the proposal is an understanding of how people and program interface with water systems, ranging from infrastructure (new hydroelectric dam) to ecological recreational features (a lake for swimming at the southern end of the project containing filtered water). The goal was to create a city identified through an improved relationship with water, setting a new precedent for Chinese waterfront design.

The proposal was based on thorough analysis conducted by the landscape architect and affiliated consultants, including commercial consultants, civil engineers, and hydrology engineers. Central to this study was an understanding of the site’s landscape structure, defined largely by the Anning River and its new hydroelectric dam, a system of mountain and agriculture waterways, and the agriculture fields that they serve.

The successful execution of this project relies on an integrated approach to land planning and hydrological design. The project is defined by three strategies: integrating the existing landscape systems and agricultural heritage with new development, enriching the new city’s relationship to water with a hybrid approach to new and old hydrological infrastructure, and using an array of planning strategies to activate the rich underlying landscape infrastructure.

Project Team Members:
Project Lead Designer: Gerdo Aquino, President
SWA Group Project Team: Gerdo Aquino, Patrick Curran, Ying-Yu Hung, Dawn Dyer, Alexander Robinson, Youngmin Kim, Grace Qin Gao, Ying-Hu, Michael Hee, Natalie Sandoval, Gary Garcia, Meng Yang, Ryan Hsu, Hyun-Min Kim, Qiu Hong Tang
Architecture: Studio Shift, Mario Cipresso, Chris Warren
Sustainable Planning and Engineering Consultants: ARUP, Tony Chan, Yong-Wei, Qi-Liang He, James Chen
Control Plan: Shanghai Tongji Urban Planning & Design
Ecological Engineering: Biomatrix Water

[Dis]assemble Detroit

Project: [Dis]assemble Detroit
Location: Detroit, MI
Designers: Alamira Noor, Bani Hashim
Year: 2011
Program: Harvard University Graduate School of Design
Faculty Advisors: Toni Griffin, Andrea Hansen

Project description: It goes without saying that unprecedented levels of vacancy have taken a social and economic toll on Detroit. However, the proliferation of unmaintained vacant lots also has potentially transformative repercussions in the form of emergent landscapes that can be collectively harnessed into a new open space system to improve Detroit’s ecological performance and its communities.But first, a change in perception and ideals is required. We must let go of what we know as Detroit, unthink it, interrupt it, and reexamine the pieces to build a better, healthier city. [Dis]assemble Detroit examines Detroit’s ecological health and suggests a series of interventions aimed at improving it. These interventions are tied together by the theme of disassembly: symbolically, through efforts to change the perception of traditional urbanism, but also procedurally, through the identification of sites and intervention typologies as the outcome of a metaphorical “puzzle game” of city. In Detroit today, parcels are scattered into tiny, unusable pieces. In order to operate systemically and connect individual parcels into an ecological network, parcels must be filtered for their potential. The puzzle game sets the tone for reshaping the city by re-sorting vacant parcels independently of their location so they can be evaluated by metrics of parcel size, shape, land use or vacancy.

[Dis]assemble Detroit’s methodology classifies vacant land based on its general characteristics, geographical condition, and the severity of its situation. Based on the resultant classification, the land is assigned one or more of four functions: 1) stormwater mitigation, 2) soil remediation, 3) recreation, or 4) urban development. These functions are implemented across two geographies. The first geography is a series of new performative green bands across Detroit that aid in stormwater mitigation and soil remediation. The second geography consists of three consolidated development areas that are centered around existing healthy cores, where vacant parcels are incentivized for investment.

The Culture Now Project: Productive Landscapes

Project: The Culture Now Project: Productive Landscapes
Location: Flint, MI
Designer: Layton Petersen
Year: 2011
Program: University of California, Los Angeles
Faculty Advisors: Thom Mayne, Karen Lohrmann
Website: www.suprastudio.aud.ucla.edu/

Project Description: Converting blight into a city wide productive landscape.

WHY SAVE FLINT?
The city has the highest crime rate in the United States. It has lost half of its population since 1960. The automotive manufacturing industry that once supported the city is all but gone. The city has six police officers for every 100,000 people. One-third of the city has been abandoned. However, Flint has a number of large foundations with over five billion dollars in combined assets committed to helping the local population. It has major educational institutions. It has an excess of vacant urban land. It has well-connected highway and rail infrastructure. It is in the center of Michigan, the second most agriculturally diverse state in the nation, with an agro-industry that generates sixty billion dollars for the state economy. Flint’s social, economic, and cultural assets lie in its agricultural potential and the recycling of post-industrial wasteland into productive landscapes.

SPACE POSITIVE
The territory Flint occupies is too large, with too little population to fill it. The city is transforming into a town, but the urban spaces opened up by de-population have the potential to be the most valuable. Flint’s new empty spaces range in size from quarter-acre suburban lots to the two hundred acre Buick City automotive manufacturing site, creating a complex fabric of urban vacancy. The Genesee County Land Bank, one of the first in the nation, manages over ten thousand foreclosed homes and vacant lots around Flint, tearing down empty houses and selling under-utilized lots for private and public use at a fraction of their original cost.

THE PRODUCTIVE LANDSCAPE
Flint’s new agricultural economy is developed over three distinct phases: Ecological Remediation, Agricultural Education, and Agricultural Production. Phase one, Remediation, uses modified Poplar trees to clean polluted soil. Phase two, Education, trains a qualified agricultural workforce, and phase three, Production, transforms Flint’s surplus of space into an economic asset by developing micro- and macro-scaled agriculture on Flint’s empty land.

NEW AGRICULTURAL ECONOMIES
Flint’s value lies at the regional scale. Its new Productive Landscapes can feed over five million people, easily meeting the food demand of central Michigan while developing local economies of production and distribution.

Project Background: This project is one of eight proposals presented under the 2010-2011 UCLA MArch II Suprastudio. From August 2010 to June 2011, Thom Mayne, Design Director of Morphosis, Karen Lohrmann, and a group of advisors have been leading fourteen post graduate architecture and urban design graduate students in an inquiry about the dynamics of culture now. The project is going forward next year to include thirteen other universities with the hope of creating an extensive discussion about contemporary culture and the nature of American cities. Additional work and information is available for download on the suprastudio website.

Image Captions:
Image 1: City Analysis: Analysis of the geography, city image, cultural climate, and local leadership forms a strange network of possibilities.
Image 2: Vacancy Types: Flint has an abundance of vacant land categorized as park, residential, and industrial properties.
Image 3: Filling the void: Each vacancy type is associated with an appropriate type of agricultural production. City parks become dense forest, residential properties become low-yield urban gardens, and industrial lots become high-yield green houses.
Image 4: Forests, Farms, Greenhouses: The three types of agriculture transform the image of Flint.
Image 5: 21st Century Arcadia: Void spaces mapped throughout Flint fill with agriculture.
Image 6: Residential production: A house converted into a productive field.
Image 7: Regional production: Flint’s vacancy becomes a productive food hub capable of feeding neighboring cities within the region.

The Culture Now Project: High Speed Small Town

Project: The Culture Now Project: High speed / small town
Location: Merced, CA
Designers: Dylan Barlow, Wayne Ko, Sepa Sama
Year: 2011
Program: University of California, Los Angeles
Faculty Advisors: Thom Mayne, Karen Lohrmann
Website: www.suprastudio.aud.ucla.edu/

Project Description: Connecting isolated opportunities to create integrative solutions: How high speed rail and a state university will change the culture of California.

NEW GROWTH
Located in California’s agricultural heartland, the city of Merced is experiencing rapid transformation from rural town to urban campus. With the establishment of the newest University of California campus in 2005 and a proposed station for the state’s high-speed rail line, a city once recognized only for agricultural production has been expanding quickly into the 21st century.

PROVIDING THE CONDUIT
With the proposed high speed rail system, Merced’s access to the economic and cultural hubs of the San Francisco Bay Area and Los Angeles becomes possible. The high speed rail provides the conduit for expanding the reach of students attending a university founded on research and innovation. The rail station and university act as catalysts for High Speed Small Town’s proposed small town growth.

SYMBIOTIC EXPANSION
Rejecting existing plans that separate the city and university by a $400 million highway, High Speed Small Town aligns diverse interests into a hybrid urban system that encourages shared infrastructures and symbiotic expansion of education and culture.

A MODEL FOR INTEGRATED GROWTH.
This approach for Merced’s future growth engages three central components: the city, the rail station, and the university. By extending agricultural crops from the existing city’s edge and centralizing the university’s infrastructure, we create an integrated model for landscape preservation, city expansion and university outreach.

ACTIVATE THE DIALOGUE.
Merced has the potential to expand the dialogue for how a hinterland city can utilize existing assets and shared infrastructure to represent the twenty-first century high-speed university. What happens when extreme growth meets successful agriculture? How do you deal with the future now? How does a city prepare? High Speed Small Town seeks to explore and answer these questions.

Image Captions:
Image 1: City Analysis: Observing the Geography, city image, cultural climate, and local leadership a strange network of possibilities is formed.
Image 2: California re-organized: With the advent of hi-speed rail travel, the city of Merced, CA will be an hour away from Los Angeles, and San Francisco. This infrastructural addition will dramatically change California’s cultural landscape.
Image 3: Move the UC into the city: Both the University and the city are growing. We propose a symbiotic expansion of both and suggest the UC align with the city. If the city is integrated with the University then precious farm land may be preserved and the city will have opportunities to intensify.
Image 4: Proposed timeline: Growth pattern are re-thought over the course of 50 years. Out model shows the university moving into the city.
Image 5: Save some money: The city is proposing to build two majors roads to connect the university and the city. These new roads will be expensive and they will also cause the city to consume farmland. This could be avoided by mobbing the University into the city.
Image 6: Merced 2050: A hybrid model of dense city and agriculture is very appropriate and positions Merced as a culturally unique place in California.

The Culture Now Project: Empower The Periphery

Project: The Culture Now Project: Empower the Periphery
Location: Tucson, AZ
Designer: Grady Gillies
Year: 2011
Program: University of California, Los Angeles
Faculty Advisors: Thom Mayne, Karen Lohrmann
Website: www.suprastudio.aud.ucla.edu/

Project Description: Through an integrated system of power generation, Tucson’s vacant lots harness solar power for technical and cultural transformation.

TUCSON IS GROWING. A city of expansive growth since its inception in 1853, Tucson’s landscape has been a coveted since the annexation of Mexican territory to more recent population surges seeking the increasingly elusive American Dream. According to the 2010 U.S. Census, Tucson and its regional population surpasses one million residents as Americans flock to the Sun Belt.

POSITIVE GROWTH CAN HAVE NEGATIVE CONSEQUENCES. Restricted only by geography and the reach of its infrastructure, Tucson is expanding at a pace quicker than strategies can be planned or implemented. The city’s constant expansion challenges not only the control of sprawl, but the regulation of its natural resources.

THE CITY HAS REACHED ITS BREAKING POINT. The suburban expectation of the American Dream has been replaced by the homogenous urban sprawl. Plentiful land, inexpensive energy, and the “pursuit of happiness” have promoted an unsustainable lifestyle and a city. Power, linked both to environmental exploitation and human development, remains a consumed commodity instead of a produced asset.

THE DELIVERY METHOD MUST CHANGE. The next American Dream will require power and energy. If a city’s power supply is reformulated as an integrated and performative component of its fabric, this transformation is possible. In a territory that receives 350 days of sun per year, solar harvesting provides this potential.

EMPOWER THE PERIPHERY. As a new productive surface within the urban landscape, Tucson can generate a reimagined American Dream where community health transcends individual wealth. The installation of solar canopies within existing city voids can create secondary social spaces and a new cultural identity. Tucson will become not only energy neutral, but a catalyst for innovation and transformation.

Image Captions:
Image 1: City Analysis: Observing the Geography, city image, cultural climate, and local leadership a strange network of possibilities is formed.
Image 2: City Timeline: Population growth is not sustained with water and energy resources.
Image 3: Explosive growth: Many people relocating to Tucson in search of cheaper lifestyle, work, land, or weather.
Image 4: Map of Tucson 2010:
Image 5: Solar Potential: The southwest could power the rest of the United States with solar energy.
Image 6: Secondary Programs: A varied use of program could occur at the base of each heliostat reflector
Image 7: Commerce corridor: Heliostat reflectors provide shade in a region that needs it.
Image 8: City Image: Helios

The Culture Now Project: 100 Points Of Public Space

Project: The Culture Now Project: 100 Points of Public Space
Location: Cleveland, OH
Designers: Clayton Taylor, Jai Kumaran
Year: 2011
Program: University of California, Los Angeles
Faculty Advisors: Thom Mayne, Karen Lohrmann
Website: www.suprastudio.aud.ucla.edu/

Project Description: The post-industrial city is a global phenomenon of the late twentieth century. Cities around the world need something to occupy the sites of old industry.

LOCATING OPPORTUNITY
By the middle of the twentieth century, Cleveland was a thriving industrial city with a population of one million. Occupying a strategic location on Lake Erie, the city and its river were at the center of a booming steel industry. Cleveland’s decline began after World War II as global economic patterns began to shift industry and manufacturing away from the United States. The Cuyahoga River fire in 1969 was a landmark industrial accident that triggered the start of the modern environmental movement, and the advent of the Environmental Protection Agency and the Clean Water Act.

As a result, Cleveland’s economy and identity suffered. Since then, the city has witnessed half of the city’s population move and into the suburbs. Its industrial core, once a thriving economic zone, now divides the city. 100 Points of Public Space locates cultural opportunities in the industrial landscape by identifying, marking, and appropriating empty spaces, abandoned buildings, and existing infrastructure.

UNDERUTILIZED ASSET
In cities like Paris, the river is regarded as a cultural object and a vital urban element. In post-industrial zones like the Ruhr Region, a cultural landscape has been updated, engaging educational and recreational infrastructure to accompany existing cultural institutions and establish new public space.

Cleveland has ignored the Cuyahoga River. Occupying a 2,400 acre valley in the center of the city, three times the size of New York’s Central Park, the Cuyahoga is crossed by a dozen bridges that support over 100,000 people daily as they move across the city. Instead of a forgotten void, the valley and river could become a cultural landscape, a civic armature connecting the diverse neighborhoods.

ONE HUNDERED POINTS
100 Points of Public Space exposes the opportunities inherent in the river valley. Its terrain is crisscrossed with rail, boat, and vehicular traffic, but there is no public access to observe the city or experience the valley. This project identifies new urban and cultural locations that open venues for public engagement with the city. Each point is positioned at the intersection of existing infrastructure, and activated at different times throughout the year according to program and use. Through this system, the valley can be traversed and experienced in many ways, from point to point, along existing infrastructure via new connections.

MAKING THE CONNECTION
100 Points of Public Space is aimed at uniting communities, investors and civic entities in spatially, socially, and visually active modes. As such, the proposal takes on the conceptual layout of the Documenta in Kassel, Germany, which became a worldwide fount of contemporary art, transforming a city destroyed by World War II into a thriving cultural landmark. 100 Points of Public Space is a series of contemporary places, rather than a post-industrial museum, offering a field of possibilities to the surrounding neighborhoods and the entire city.

Project Background: This project is one of eight proposals presented under the 2010-2011 UCLA MArch II Suprastudio. From August 2010 to June 2011, Thom Mayne, Design Director of Morphosis, Karen Lohrmann, and a group of advisors have been leading 14 post graduate architecture and urban design graduate students in an inquiry about the dynamics of culture now. The project is going forward next year to include thirteen other universities with the hope of creating an extensive discussion about contemporary culture and the nature of American cities. Additional work and information is available for download on the suprastudio website.

Image Captions:
Image 1: City Analysis: Observing the geography, city image, cultural climate, and local leadership a strange network of possibilities is formed.
Image 2: Locating opportunity: The Cuyahoga River Valley is at the center of Cleveland. This area has immense potential to become the connective tissue that could tie east, west, and downtown Cleveland.
Image 3: Marking the Valley; Each point marks opportune intersections of rail, road, and river, which are abundant throughout the Cuyahoga River Valley. These places are no longer useful for industry and need to be interpreted for post-industrial society.
Image 4: A dispersed park system: The 100 Points of public space are idiosyncratic and varied but collectively operate as dispersed park system integrated in the urban fabric.
Image 5: Making the connection: Unused roads, railways, and the Cuyahoga river assist people in making the connection from point to point.
Image 6: Points in context: Each point is interpreted differently throughout the river valley. Some points mark abandoned buildings or stoops, others mark bridges and optimum viewing points of the city.
Image 7: Ibid., detail.
Image 8: Experiencing the valley: The 100 point of public space interprets industrial objects for post industrial culture.
Image 9: 100 points of public space: Diagram of point variation. Each crossing of road rail and river is taken directly from the Cuyahoga, river valley.