GSD:ecologicalurbanism

Week-long thesis break to blog about ecology and the informal.
http://gsd-ecologicalurbanism.blogspot.com/

Spring Break Charrette - Last Day: Developing a language

The Charrette is over and I think I accomplished my over all goal: develop the beginnings of an urban, landscape, and architectural language.

I began the last charrette day by retracing the water flows on my existing terrace system. The goal was to develop a system countering the grain of the terraces for secondary paths and housing lots. While I did this I was inspired by BIG's proposal for the Calsberg campus.
For Carlsburg BIG cross references a couple of grids to create a diversity of densities and programs.

Retracing the water flows:
Resulting Density/Circulation Diagrams:
The section was another step in developing the architectural language of sectional changes in terraces, pools, roads, houses, and the community center.
Now on to fully develop these ideas and I want to thank DK, Russ, and Trevor who participated in the charrette and gave me great advice.

Spring Break Day 2-3: Grading +...

The Second and Third days of the charrette were a bit shorter as I got busy with other things. However, I have slowly made progress developing the sketches from Day 1.
PROCESS

These images also show the process of turning water flows and terraces into a working master plan. In this scheme the green is a continuous path that wraps the entire site. The off-white spaces are the community centers.

The models below put this strategy to the test and begin to think about the architectural language that can come out of the landscape.

SKETCH MODEL

Tomorrow I want to:
-Work out the section of these terraces, streets, etc...
-Take a second stab at the architectural language
-Begin to think about the secondary pattern of paths, gardens and housing

Spring Break Charrette Day 1: Grading

To keep the momentum going a few friends and I are holding a 4 day charrette during spring break. We meet around 11 tell each other what we want to do and work until pin-up at 6PM.

I chose to spend my first day working on my landscape grading plan.

The first thing I needed to rethink is what, exactly, do I want the water to do. In my midterm scheme I had the water more or less moving away from the site off to be cleaned. Some of it would come back to the site and the rest would go off to the arroyo eventually arriving in the estuary.

RUSH THE WATER?
I experimented with a similar approach (moving water away from the site). However, now the water pools at moments within the site creating the logic for the community centers while affecting the housing layout.

SLOW THE WATER!
Although this scheme works slightly better I have decided that it is the wrong approach. Instead I am now looking into a landscape scheme that tries to keep as much water on the site. To do this, the site needs to be terraced with water pooling in the backsides of the lots.
I then wanted to think about a continuous landscape band that at times bulges to create larger pools and give space to the community centers.
^plan^axo

^final sketch

Tomorrow I plan to do a careful contour model of this version to see how it works on the site.

While I do that I am going to be inspired by a lot of projects. I am specially looking at the landscape design in Kieran Timberlake's Sidwell Friends School. In my project, however the architecture and landscape architecture would be intertwined.
Not a real project, but looking at what I want this project to do it reminded me of Work AC's Program Primer in Praxis a few year's back. Specially the idea of the Swan.
Not sure how to use this part of it yet. However, I am sure this will become helpful as I begin to think about the details of my urban planning and architecture.

P.S. Lots of thanks to landscape architect Shauna Gillies-Smith and Kirsten who graciously helped me see the light on landscape grading.

Visual Inspiration: Patterns + Representation

Looking at some of the midterm images I find that I am still trying to find the best way to represent my ideas. Traditional architectural documents such as plans, sections, etc... just will not work. First, I am designing a community that is meant to change and grow over time. That change will happen in a project with intricately linked relationships between the landscape, urban, and architectural form. Finally, this project is meant to serve as a menu and guide to the people in Tijuana. For those reasons to find representation techniques that are very clear and transmit the flexibility of the system, while satisfying my critics at the GSD and the clients on the ground.

While I look at better ways to represent ideas the following are images of patterns I am looking at for inspiration:


This image describes the landscape/urban form of my project better than any of the documents I have worked on so far. The terraces are my 3m modules and the channels are where the community center would grow. I need to be able to show this clearly plus...
The pixel-like growth.

Patterns and pattern-making techniques I have been looking at for my studies include:
cell growths

shells, this one reminds me of the landscape image above and begins to include the pixelation idea...

___
Water Erosion Patterns
Weaving and its process...

Critical Activism - DRAFT

Since the beginning of the year I have been wanting to write something expanding on what I meant by Critical Activism in my '09 prediction. The following is a first DRAFT of an essay I am writing describing what I see as an emerging practice model. Influenced by Allison Smithson's 'How to Recognize and Read Mat-Building', it is partly a manifesto and partly a look at a trend in contemporary practice.

I will not have time to really work on it until after thesis ends, so I wanted to share it while still relatively close to the feature that inspired me to write it. Remember that it is a work in progress

in Archinect

A few weeks ago a senior GSD administrator, after hearing about my thesis and precedent studies, plainly asked me if I wanted to “just be an activist.” I am not sure what he meant but it seemed a clear example of the academic and professional anxiety that still exists around activism. Regardless, the comment made me question what it would even mean to ‘just’ be an activist.

First, I wanted to understand the anxiety around activism. The roots, as is often the case, seem to come from modernism. From Le Corbusier’s Plan Voisin, to Buckminster Fuller’s Dymaxiom home, to many other proposals, designers promised a brave new design world. This world would be one of egalitarianism brought upon by technology and expressed through urban and architectural design. We now know that this modernist brave new world never arrived. The people who architect’s thought would arise to take their place in an egalitarian modern society instead arose against the modernist housing blocks and moved to nostalgic homes in the suburbs. Thus a period of heavy involvement, even activism, by designers ended. Since that moment, activism in design has had a patina of utopian idealism and even mockable hippieism.

However, we are once again facing some major changing conditions, such as ever expanding suburbs and urban slums. Design professionals that have staked out their positions in those issues have so far been seen as in the periphery of the profession. The best among them, have learned the lessons from earlier efforts and seem to be rethinking the meaning of activism. Looking at designers like Teddy Cruz, Marjetica Potrc, the late Sam Mockbee, Urban Think-Tank, and Elemental Do-Tank you begin to see just such a rethinking.

The work by these and other designers begin to comprise an emerging movement of critical activists. The elements that tie these practices and characterize ‘critical activism’ include: 1) active practices that rely in new funding and organizational structures and collaboration; 2) active involvement in exposing political, social, and economic conflicts; 3) active proximity in the institutions that can help solve those conflicts; and 4) a desire to architecturalize these conditions with active designs that rely on inhabitant participation. The next few pages will take closer look at each of these items.

Active Practices
In the current model of practice the architect waits for a single client with the appropriate funds to give them a project. This leads to a profit driven system making the architect subservient to the myopic whims of the market. This system is simply not flexible enough for architects to engage the built environment in a way that can change it.

The practices identified as part of the critical activism tackle the problem of practice in two ways. First they find a new organizational structure and model of financing. Estudio Teddy Cruz (ETC), Rural Studio, Urban Think-Tank and Elemental are all tied to academic institutions while holding a non-profit status as well. This set-up allows flexibility in the identification, design, and financing of projects. Second, this firms are open and seek active collaborations with design professionals and practitioners from other disciplines.
Marketic Potrc in collaboration with Urban Thinktank

Active Involvement
Often the first step in solving a problem is recognizing the fact that it even exists. The critical activist practice plays that role for the design field by exposing conflicts in the built environment. They show emerging problems and point them as possible places for design inquiry.

They differ, however, in the way they expose those problems. Marjetica Potrc uses the gallery as a place to confront people with the reality for millions of people world-wide. Teddy Cruz tackles two scales, first he identifies a ‘political equator’ that separates the global south and north. He then specifically maps this condition as it occurs in the San Diego - Tijuana border. He does this by mapping the condition as well as a series of other art projects and installations. Urban Think-Tank exposes the conditions in Caracas through videos and books.
Estudio Teddy Cruz, Political Equator

Active Proximity
It is of course not enough to simply expose the problems within the built environment. These practices seek to change the conditions. To do so, [i]critical activist[/i] firms seek to engage the institutions that can bring change to communities in need of it. These institutions include: the academy, government, financial institutions, and the legal system.

Teddy Cruz, for example is involved and partners with developers and social non-profits from the very beginning of a project. He has also lobbied government to change codes when they conflict with designs. Similarly, Elemental engages institutions throughout the design process. However, they also create new institutions that turn inhabitants into ‘active partners’ after construction is completed.


Teddy Cruz, Casa Familiar

Active Designs
The final, and perhaps more important, element that defines critical activists is the active nature of their designs. This activity is mainly expressed through interactive designs that require involvement by inhabitants. Elemental, for example, built only half a house for the residents of the Iquique housing project. Each tenant was then free to finish the other half as finances and time allowed. The result is that all the inhabitants have the basic infrastructure needed in all residences but have the freedom to finish it to their liking.

Teddy Cruz has used similar approaches in projects with Casa Familiar and the Maquiladoras. Urban Think-Tank has gone as far as to propose naked skyscrapers in the Barrio Vertical project.

Iquique Housing by Elemental

related to:
Frame and Infill Study

Also posted in Archinect

Midterm Review Reviewed

CRITICS
Eric Howeler, Architect (Thesis Advisor)
Margaret Crawford, Urban Planner
Shauna Gillies-Smith, Architect, Urban Planner, and Landscape Architect
Mack Scogin, Architect

MIDTERM WORK
1- Broaden it Up!
The first thing I wanted to do is to situate my site in ts larger context. After all my project deals with the degraded social and environmental systems of the entire Los Laureles canyon. To do that I began by making some maps showing the current conditions.

First of all, it is important to note that the high real estate prices in Tijuana and the maquiladoras located around the canyon are the main reasons that people from all over Mexico Central and South America move there. Although they do this with a lot energy and determination they move to the riskiest most environmentally sensitive areas. This causes risk to themselves, their property, and the larger ecosystem of the Tijuana river estuary.

The main problems are:
1.1- De-vegetation due to building
1.2- Said de-vegetation creates dangerous soil erosion
1.3- When it rains the polluted water full of sediment moves up stream, disrupting the ecosystem of the estuary
1.4- Because of the topography, the risk involved, and the fact a lot of these are illegal settlements the infrastructure and social services network does not have a wide reach.
2- Yo (Cuido) Los Laureles - I (Care for) Los Laureles
To solve some of the problems above at the canyon level I propose:
2.1- Cut from Risk - cut out houses from places of physical and environmental risk
2.2- Move On Up - Increase densities on appropriate areas
2.3- Pixelate New Community Centers - Make community and housing prototypical centers for building experimentation in the Canyon. These centers bring needed social services and provide space for commercial activity.
2.4- Tie it with Ecology - Create a park out of all the environmentally and otherwise risky areas
3- The San Bernardo Prototype
My site and project serve as prototype for the rest of the community centers. It is a prototype ion that displays an attitude and method of working not one design meant to be replicated.

To design it I will use the principles I learned in my study of landscape urbanism and relational aesthetics (1, 2, 3, 4), and my study of frame and infill. My goal is to create a holistic landscape, urban, and architectural strategy that channels and cleans water, re-vegetates the site, brings needed social services, and creates economic opportunities.

All this while always aware that top-down solutions seldom work in this context. The most important lesson from the frame and infill study as that all the designers, from Cedric Price to James Corner to Teddy Cruz, were strategic on WHAT to design. That is to say that designing for conditions that change over time does not mean that design gets thrown out the window. Giving over control over some parts of the design gives freedom to focus on the careful design of other.
4- Yo (Patron) San Bernardo - I (Pattern) San Bernardo
Now on to the design I presented at midterm. Before I get into it, though, it is important to note how I will be using the Frame and Infill concept. Among my critiques of a lot of the designers that have used it is that the frame, although allowing for change within it, is often rigid and static. It is hard for it to recognize new conditions or change as social/environmental conditions change. It is thus that I am using the Frame along side the idea of Pattern. A basic set of rules that can be applied taking into account local conditions.

As OMA and Field Operations' designs for Downsiew Park, design that changes over time is as much a narrative as it is an object, and here is the narrative for San Bernardo.

4.1- Slow the Water
Create ledges and berms in areas around the site to begin slowing down the water flow that passes through it.
4.2- Drain It
Find the places of major water flow and create some swales to drain water away from the site.
4.3- Compost it / Wetland
Begin a composting center close to the school, this will be used to begin repairing the soil on the site. After the soil by the school recuperates the composting area will change into a water-cleaning wetland. The cleaned water from said wetland would be used in the community for irrigation and the rest released into the arroyo that takes it into the Tijuana river estuary.
4.4- 3-meter modules
Inside the site, do contour plowing trying to re-vegetate beginning with 3m intervals and in some areas working in from there.
4.5- Streets
Begin to build up streets in the drainage areas. These streets would be done with permeable concrete tiles.
4.6- Community/Commercial Center
On top of the streets (on the drainage areas) you can begin to build the community center, starting from the southern most area of the site and moving north. The center would have the social services this site lacks such as health and adult education.
Space will also be provided to bring in artists from around the burgeoning Tijuana scene. This will bring people from around Tijuana and even tourists, creating local economic opportunities.
I am designing the bulk of the three community centers (allowing for some flexibility)
4.7- Houses
The houses would then pixelate towards East and West of the street/Community Center and would follow the 3m module set up by the contour plowing. The module for the houses is 3m X 6m and people can build up on them as necessary. I am proposing strategies for three types of housing without designing them fully.
The following are a FEW images from the project. There were of course a lot more including some that take into account the narrative described above and the pixelation of the houses.




COMMENTS:
Seems to have received generally well. HOWEVER, there is a LOT of work to be done. I need to tighten it up all over the place, Shauna graciously invited me to her office to work on grading and tighten up the landscape. Margaret wants me to be specific on who would move here and why. what are economic and social reasons, etc...
They all also agree that I need to tighten up these areas ASAP to get into the architectural design. They like the holistic approach I have taken to the design but all feel I can focus a bit more. As I said in the description above I am designing the bulk of the community center (leaving room for change) and making a list of menus and tactics to be used in the housing.

I will try to have another midterm/pin up in about a month that deals mostly with the architecture. Although I am not sure what it will look like, I am sure that the design of the building will also use ideas of patterns and what I learned from the frame and infill study.

Now on to the fun part...