Made For China - Rapid Urban Prototyping Studio Spring 2011

The Studio work Ellen Anderson and I completed in May 2011 is finally up on the CCA URBANlab website:

Project Title: VarieGATE

Authors: Ellen Anderson, Alexandra Spautz

Class: Made for China, Spring 2011

Instructors: Mona El Khafif, Antje Steinmuller

VarieGATE is a strategic master plan for a four block mixed-use development in Wudadao, the British concession district of Tianjin, China. The development is situated between a busy 10-lane road to the north and lower-density historic fabric of Wudadao to the south. The master plan intends to stitch these contrasting conditions together with an intricate alleyway system. By combining the traditional Chinese use of alleyways, a new ecological efficacy, and public spaces on multiple levels, the plan is “variegated” in three dimensions. The four blocks act both as a “gate” to the neighborhood as well as new destinations of their own, encouraging an interactive experience through smaller unique neighborhoods.

This plan is defined by three main infrastructural components: Alleys, Stems, and Spines, which together form the circulation space around which the Parcels are built. The Alley is the ground level circulation and aligns with the north-south grid, but is offset at points create indirect paths through the blocks. The indirect path adds to the act of discovery and varies the otherwise vast blocks to create a sense of place.

There are seven Stems spread throughout the master plan, serving as the main vertical circulation for both people and storm water. Each Stem has a unique programmatic function and marks a central public space in a neighborhood. The Stems collect and filter storm water from the roofs of neighboring buildings, incorporating living walls and bioretention basins. Excess water is filtered to sub-grade cisterns.

The Parcel defines the built space (the solid) and is and is formed in response to the edges of the master plan circulation (the void). Each parcel is programmatically variegated, meaning that each parcel never has the same zoning type as its horizontal or vertical neighbor. Higher density parcels occur at the stems, which are attractors of density and public space. The circulation framework is always left open to the air, ensuring perforations through the Parcels, which increases sunlight within the block.

Lastly, the Spine is the primary path of public circulation for the upper layers of the built structure. The spine serves an upper level of the built structures, creating a east/west circulation artery and a secondary network of walkways, parks and plazas. The Spine is a vibrant public space, providing new opportunties for programmatic connections and views.

VarieGATE comprises many layers of interrelated systems, which all exist in three dimensions, liberating the master plan from serving only the street level with its public spaces. Instead, the environmental systems, public spaces, and programmatic activities exist in a system of layered and interwoven spines and branches, similar to the structure of a leaf. The Alleys permeate the blocks at varying intervals and are the backbone from which the rest of the system branches. The Alleys are then layered with additional green and public spaces, enriching the circulation beyond a typical alley by offering opportunities for the pedestrian to discover new spaces when they choose to take an Alley through a block. The third layer, programmatic activity, is the most dense at the Stem points, encouraging activity with related program. For example, at the Cultural Stem there is a large ecological learning center that partners with a children’s museum. The last layer is the built Parcels, which are clustered around the infrastructure and public space layers. A water infrastructure interweaves between all layers in the system, as buildings to the North of the Spine (which are taller) use the Stems to collect and filter water runoff from their roofs. Roofs below the Spine collect water have green roofs to collect and filter water. These roofs can also serve as public spaces if they are accessible from the Spine.

As the population in China continues to grow, it is essential to provide environmental systems that can accommodate this growth and even improve the conditions. VarieGATE intends to not only achieve sustainable growth through ecological systems, but also to create beautiful public spaces that encourage people to discover new destinations and interact with their neighborhood.

San Francisco Maps : Cartographic Urbanism

Over the last two weeks I have been conducting research for a final term paper in my Landscape Urbanism class at CCA taught by David Fletcher. I submitted the final version on Friday last week, as the Spring semester has now officially ended. 

To summarize the ideas covered, I would first like to give my definition of how I see Landscape Urbanism, and how I understand it as a historical and theoretical approach to the landscape architecture, urban planning and architecture practices. The first sentence in the wikipedia article for Landscape Urbanism says "Landscape Urbanism is a theory of urbanism arguing that landscape architecture, rather than architecture and urban planning, is more capable of organizing the city and enhancing the urban experience." In a sense I agree, but I would say that perhaps instead of re-framing a distinct hierarchical relationship between the practices, there is a balancing that is now occurring as a result of the Landscape Urbanism movement. The significance of our surrounding environment, is more and more apparent. Instead of seeing the synthetic enclosed spaces (also known as architecture), as objects in space, seeing the solid-void relationship as one of a give and take--a symbiotic relationship between architecture and landscape that in turn are our urban environment. 

Ecology has become increasingly important as the negative side-effects of inefficient urban design are becoming more and more clear (ie urban sprawl). Climate change is a symptom of ignorance on behalf of all individuals in charge of building cities, architects, planners, landscape architects, developers, urban designers alike. Hence, Landscape Urbanism reoriented the perspective / changed the lens from which we need to view how we build cities. So I quote the first and last paragraphs of the paper:

"The San Francisco peninsula, flanked by the Pacific Ocean and the San Franicsco Bay, has served as an intermediary between the bay area region and the rest of the world. Described in a patchwork and geometrically-imperfect street grid, the urban fabric is a description of how over time the land has been divided into parcels as population density, economic vitality have risen and fallen, water and land-based transportation for commerce, recreation and military purposes have intensified and decreased. While the human activities, measured operations and inaccuracies in dividing the grid and carving pathways through the land have contributed to the asymmetry of its map, equally so have historic ecological conditions. Anomalies in the orthogonal street system are in part due to its reflexive relationship to the surrounding water. While Mission bay and Mission Creek have been filled in, historic coastal geometries of these water bodies are still literally inscribed into the city grid. The initial location of them affected granular shifts in rhythm, size and directionality of the infrastructural system, creating a rippling palimpsest of actions, functions of both humans and nature and resulting synthetic infrastructures. Overlaying historical and contemporary maps and interweaving those with histories and photographs where Mission Bay coast once lay and Mission Creek once ran, an analysis of these grid distortions can reveal further understandings of their present states. The instances analyzed are a series of reflective conditions where the fluidity of water and human movement have warped what were attempts at a set of otherwise autonomously derived divisions. Furthermore the palimpsest-like qualities unveil potential implications for future projections and further discovery."

"Ecological irregularity opposes the fixed logics of the cartesian grid. The two categories of geometry are the respective bases of landscape and urbanism. In the case of water versus city, irregularity lends itself to a natural water infrastructure and orthogonal grid lends itself to constructed urban infrastructure. Humans apply order and structure to built systems for ease of use, fabrication, and to give them strength and durability. These urban design operations are tried and true attempts at creating density and maintaining city organization. What Landscape Urbanism theories have attempted to uncover in the past is the need for this ordering system to recreate and maintain new controlled ecological systems. By giving order to a designed landscape, an open-endedness from which hybridized ecologies can be cultivated and in turn contribute to a more livable city. Now that surface water pollution, ground water depletion and fresh water scarcity are prevalent and threaten its livability, as opposed to its infrastructural efficiency, it is time that we re-think our reactive strategies to building around and over our water systems. Instead of filling and attempting to erase the drainage basins and coves like we did with Mission Creek and Bay, we should see these environmental conditions as a part of the greater ordering system that is our urban landscape. Like the creek that has surfaced in the Armory (See article: Mission Creek Runs Through the Armory), these cracks and fissures in the hardscape are reminders of the past. Furthermore, such a moment is perhaps a design opportunity to intensify and celebrate the past, as it is another layer to add to the ever-changing urban palimpsest."

For the full paper click here.

San Francisco Maps : Research Part 1

In my research tonight I discovered this image, a diagram of the shortest path from Embarcadero Station assuming the individual is using any mode of public transit. 

Source: Graphserver.

Mark Bradford: Urban Collage

I met Mark Bradford in my first semester in undergrad at UCLA in 2001. Malerie Marder, my photography teacher brought our class to his studio to see his work. Not only did the man have an amazing presence, towering above us with a booming voice, but his work was incredible. He left such an impression on me for many years I kept the flier from his show and a sheet of the perm paper that he gets from African American barber salons to make his collages. I have a feeling that these now-collectibles have probably disappeared by now, but  I just found him in a google search for another artist who's name I forgot. The keywords were "famous collage artist, los angeles". 


The piece below is in the Saatchi Gallery collection. And I caught a glimpse of this piece in the google images preview and I knew it was his work. 

Kryptonite 

Mixed Media Collage on Paper

2006

I saw him at the ICA in Boston back in 2008. I was really excited to see his work in the top floor gallery alongside the Anish Kapoor show. Now I realize what I really love about it: it's relevance and aesthetic resemblance to the urban grid, urbanism and architecture. It is a landscape of its own, a montage of signs and squares in a huge blended field that is the city. The city as an infrastructural palimpsest.

Below are shots of Mark Bradford's work I took at the ICA in Boston from my iPhone camera back in 2008:

The following is another image from the Saatchi collection:

The Devil is Beating His Wife 

Billboard paper, photomechanical reproductions, permanent-wave end papers, stencils, and additional mixed media on plywood

2003

Mark Bradford had an impact on me, when I was an 18 year old kid in art school. His work will forever be imprinted in my mind.

Final Project Inspiration

Today we had a mini-review from a number of critics including Alan Lewis, Principal at Hargraves Associates, a local landscape architecture firm here in San Francisco. He was a rigorous critic with no-holds-barred. It was clear we have a lot of work ahead of us. Our final critique is 10 days away, so the presentation contained a lot of "place-holder" imagery, like clunky Rhino model shots that are not showing much detail yet, we need all our diagrams, but we also need to reveal the experiential qualities of the space.

Before describing the project in detail, I thought I'd give a sneak peak on some of the rendering precedents that we are looking at for inspiration. The elements we like are collage, atmospheric and textured qualities, incorporation of some black and white retro people, and a splash of humor.

Here are some rendering inspirations that we found through KRob:

Nathan Freise

 Nathan Freise

Pascal Bronner

Jerry Lai

On Saturday April 30th Ellen Anderson and I plan to have an amazing set of renderings to go along with our master plan project. Stay tuned for the final products.

On Decay / Renewal

I am attempting to finish putting together my portfolio this weekend. Working on it for several weeks now and rooting through old files, I found this scan of a 4x7 print from a 35mm SLR: an alley in Barcelona in 2003. Pivotal to my development as an architect, the moment depicts a relief on the wall revealing the history of the city through decay. It holds a beauty in its honesty unique from the rest of the intricate local fabric. Decay represents renewal, as well as the temporal quality of what is usually considered permanent: architecture. 

Architecture is fragile. And there is a peacefulness to the architecture that only exists as a frayed edge of the urban fabric, freshly carved and ready for reassesment. 

Bano Demolido

Alex Spautz

2004

Later in my path to architecture I worked for MH/A in San Francisco and managed events at 3A Gallery. In April of 2008, I contacted Katherine Westerhout's dealer (Electric Works Gallery) and we set up a show of her Detroit work. The large format photographic prints of interior shots of derelict buildings in Detroit was a huge success. Detroit represents less opportunity and more return to nature. It is unfortunate it also implies urban sprawl, but ironic that the reason for this change was because of the decline of the car industry in the U.S.





Katherine Westerhout
Richmond III
2002


Now having studied architecture, landscape urbanism and urban design at CCA, I reflect back on the affect photography of decay had on me, and I recognize a clear relationship. Alan Berger's "Drosscape" and the Antoine Picon article "Ancient Landscapes From Ruin to Rust" are only a couple texts that begin to represent the embedded implications in the crumbling city center of Detroit, as well as the opportunity for renewal in frayed gaps and edges in the city fabric. 

Alan Berger
Graphic on Urban Sprawl in Atlanta, Drosscape
2006