Terraform by Andrew Friedenberg

Andrew Friedenberg // University of Oregon // Hajo Neis // 2015 - 2016

MONOGRAPH

Following are a series of illustrations from Andrew Friedenberg’s thesis project Terraform, completed in 2016 at the University of Oregon under the direction of Hajo Neis. The studio was REPAIRING THE EARTH – REPAIRING THE CITY: REPAIRING THE EARTH: The idea for this advanced architecture studio or thesis design studio is to understand and analyze major large-scale world-wide problems and connect them to particular problems and locations in the urban structure, neighborhoods, parks, and buildings. The combined perspective of these two features will form the basis of your thesis research and your thesis design studio project. The main purpose of the studio is to contribute and help to preserve life and beauty on earth in a way that also our children and children’s children will be able to continue to enjoy life and beauty for a long time in to the future. REPAIRING THE CITY: Most of these large world-wide problems find their way into the structures of our cities. ‘Repairing the Earth’ therefore in our context of urban architecture and urban design also means to help ‘Repairing the City.’

Along with this MONOGRAPH of the final project, is an initial research book which was created in the first term of studies and was a prelude to this completed project.

Synopsis: Tasked with choosing a global problem for my thesis, I set out researching the history of human settlement. From explorers and pioneers, to political and environmental refugees, humans have always been on the move with fluctuations of urbanization and de-urbanization happening across different places at different times. Presently, however, we are in the greatest period of global urbanization ever... The Tokyo metropolitan area now accounts for 37 million people, Seoul 26 million, Shanghai 24 million, and the list goes on. In an age where 30% of a country’s population can live in one metropolis, this creates a consolidation of services and economy, causing further centralization as rural populations are forced to these already packed cities in search of a better future.

What has arisen from this wave of migration is a strain on the displaced populations, the urban infrastructure, and especially the ecological systems where green spaces are often condemned for more economic uses. How can this dynamic be “regenerated” at an architectural and urban level? Historically we have lived in a green environment, however during the Industrial Revolution when we entered the Anthropocene (the epoch of humans) humanity exerted the greatest impact on the Earth’s ecosystems. Since then we have paved a path converting this green natural environment into a gray man-made hardscape. A gradient of intertwined ecological ecosystems to singular human infrastructural ecosystem. A gradient of green to gray. My proposal turns this historical gradient of green-space-to-grey-space, into a symbiotic ecosystem of both green AND gray. Looking at a city from above, why does a gray block have to designate a built landscape and a green space designate a park? What if buildings themselves could also act as vertical parks? What if boulevards could also act as streams for run-off management? What if roofscapes could also act as a forest canopy? I have taken the idea of biomimicry and applied it to an urban scale where man lives amongst nature and nature lives amongst man.

canopy

This intertwining of ecosystems will be phased into the existing urban fabric spotted with isolated “zoo” like exhibits of nature. These phases follow a study of biology called DEVELOPMENTAL BIOLOGY, essentially the process by which plants grow. This breaks down into 3 PHASES:

canopy shoots

ROOTS [Horizontal networking] Roots, the primary origin of any organic matter, will unite the existing urban ecologies and serve as a catalyst for the entire project. To map these roots, I created a experiment used the organic growth efficiencies of a yellow slime mold, Physarum polycephalum, and viewed each Manhattan park as a food source. The mold radiated from Central Park and established a network connecting the various isolated ecologies (food sources) in the most efficient manner in terms of size and proximity.

roots

SHOOTS [Vertical networking]

CANOPY [Developed tripartite ecosystem]

Also known as stems, shoots provide the structure and facilitate the processing ofshoots resources whether filtering gray water collected in the canopy down to the roots or processing resources through the roots and up to the inhabitants. These shoots occur at collisions of the roots allowing for a dispersed array of stems to collect/ distribute resources captured from above (water) or harvested in the roots (food roots sources).

Canopy, the upper layer of an ecological community is formed by the collection of root and shoot systems. Evolving from the shoots it envelopes the preexisting desolate roofscape and turns this asphalt landscape into a producer. This canopy captures rainwater, filters it, and distributes it across the root network to urban farming at the street level. Grey-water is also stored in cisterns arrayed across the roofs and algae is harvested to produce biomass and ultimately energy to power the entire system.

What I am proposing in this following Monograph, is a large scale urban project that in an effort to repair social, ecological, and infrastructural problems, employs a single move of re-networking Manhattan’s ecologies, yet allows this overarching move to become a framework for a local publicly crowd-sourced system. In terms a New Yorker might relate with; it is Robert Moses as the chef cooking the pizzas with Jane Jacobs taking the orders as them come and arranging the toppings.

1609

1776

1782

A series of maps of Manhattan detailing the transformation from a SYMBIOTIC ECOSYSTEM (left) to a SINGULAR ECOSYSTEM (right).

1865

1899

2000

2016

Initially I was going to examine Manhattan as a whole however it quickly become apparent that I needed to examine a specific site. Referencing back to the optimum locations of SHOOTS, I chose a building in a very unique position in between 3 major nodes of this new network. How would this manifest in an architecture?

This created an interconnected network of continuous ecology and brought my realization of ROOTS to life and clearly identified central nodes within the city which justifies the location of stems along central corridors.

So I did it. In my basement.

After conducting extensive research on the process of mapping efficiencies, I recalled learning about a Japanese experiment which utilized a slime mold (Physarum polycephalum) to map the incredibly dispersed Tokyo subway system. Slime molds are “eukaryotic organisms that can live freely as single cells, but aggregate together to form multicellular reproductive structures”. This single cell grows to create complex systems uniting the isolated food sources into a single network. Atsushi Tero at the Hokkaido University harnessed the organism by creating a map representing Tokyo and then used a food source as the desired train stations. He released the mold in the center and then through the natural process of expansion, the cells created a interconnected network amongst the food sources. It was almost identical to the existing Tokyo subway network which was created by engineers. Could this simple system of organic mapping provide me with the framework to re-establish Manhattan as a functioning ecological ecosystem?

What was once a thriving cohesive ecosystem has been restricted to certain “exhibits” of nature. Although celebrated as an incredibly diverse array of ecosystems for a dense urban environment, this would be similar to saying a zoo is wild. So how can we reunite this fractured biome? And by what means?

Mannahatta Pre-Human Occupation

My site.

MADISON SQUARE PARK

UNION SQUARE PARK GRAMERCY PARK

>21st Century

3.7 mi2

19.1 mi2

18th - 21st Century

22.8 mi2 <17th Century

<1 mi2

We must create a new map...

2016

MY SITE

2066

This streetscape illustration shows what an ecological corridor will look like on Broadway running from Madison Square Park (in the distance), to Union Square Park (behind). It shows the relation of ecology to the human experience and the connection of systems. For example a green corridor takes advantage of the surface level while a grey infrastructural resides in a -8 ft day lit tunnel. This creates a permeable surface to the cities urban fabric while actually expanding the street network (adding additional lanes + parking) to facilitate the growth of the combined ecosystems.

Rainwater filtered through the vertical cladding is channeled aboveground to the Hudson, rather then below-ground to a series of waste water treatment plants.

Water captured in the canopy is utilized for algae cultivation for biomass before being processed through an assortment of vertical filters where it provides nutrients for wildlife, urban agriculture, and plants. Once cleansed it is rerouted through the shoots to provide water for traditional services and the cycle continues.

Site Development Diagrams

Organic

1. Roots Determination

2. ROOTS

Organic as unit

3. Shoots/Canopy Optimization

4. SHOOTS

5. CANOPY

This aerial illustration shows the area of Midtown between Madison Square Park, Gramercy Park, and Union Square where Broadway (the street cutting across the illustration) and E21st Street have become part of the greater ecological network uniting the various parks and green spaces of Manhattan. In the very center, resides the structure that I envisioned as the new prototype for vertical expansion. It blurs the line between structure and landscape, between park, and building. Also it facilitates the flow of resources from the canopy to the roots.

Exploded Axonometric

Lateral / vertical structure

Core

Cladding walkways

Cladding

Cladding components

Bridge?!

Roof Catchment

AFFORDABLE HOUSING (400sqft)

COMMUNAL PROGRAM (x sqft)

STRUCTURAL STAIR / WATER FILTRATION PIPE Housed within the large structural stairs is a hollow chamber allowing water to flow from its collection on the desolate roofscape down through various filtration methods either with the builidng, or on the street level.

Stair Diagrams

STRUCTURAL BIOMIMICRY In the process of researching efficiencies wthin structure, I stumbled across Euplectella apergillum which directly inspired the wrapping elements which frame the structure of this new protoype of building. This deep sea glass sea spnonge synthesizes a diagonally reinforced cage-like skeletal tube that forms a delicate latticework consisting of periodic open and closed spaces

STRUCTURAL STAIR

ESCHER STAIR Aside from the stairs as a primary strcutural element, I viewed them as a means for the public to access the heights that Manhattan has to offer (which today seems only accessible by the incredibly wealthy). SImilar to an Escher illusion, I created an continious public way spanning every dimension.

A program of systems. Ecological systems + Infrastructural systems + social systems.

Bamboo Greenhouse

Algae Greenhouse Turbine

Satellite

Structural Planter

Algae Cultivation Solar Water Heater

Photovoltaics

Green Wall Observatory

Water Wheel

Photovoltaics

Nature Incubator

Structural Stair

Drone Port Drone Port

Bird Condo

Water Barrels Bamboo Louvers

Balconies

Turbines

Water Filtration Planters Solar Water Heater

Waste Control

Composting

Public Information

Pavilion

Gathering Space

Slide

Within the cladding exists a new continual public space allowing for the streetscape to rise up. A deli now can reside on the fifth floor and have a storefront with passersby. These public walkways exist where necessary and do not exist where not necessary. In front of residences, there is no public walkway, but personal balconies giving every New Yorker the opportunity to engage with the environment.

+70 ft

Plans

+100 ft

+170 ft

+210 ft

This illustration shows what the prototype for future structures built within Manhattan will look like. A structure of systems, turns what primarily was viewed as solely human inhabitation, into an incubator of life, whether human or not. The canopy turns into leaves gathering sunlight and water, the facade turns into a tree trunk filtering and transporting these resources and providing structure for vertical inhabitation.

Systems Diagram

RAIN WATER

SUN

BAMBOO GROWTH

fil

ion

ter

atio

MATE

filtrat

TUR TRUC

OR S

F RIAL

ALGACUTLURE

seq car

bon

SOLAR PANELS

n bo

e st

tio

ues

FACADE LATTICE

DRINKING WATER

ALGAE BIOFUEL PRODUCTION PLANTERS

ECO CORRIDORS

carbon sequesteration

CO2 CARS ALGAE BIOFUEL

ENERGY

FOOD

Model