Landscape Architecture & Urban Design Portfolio

CORMAC DIGGINS Landscape Architecture & Urban Design

To the professionals and educators that have enlightened me to the the wonderful, diverse, and powerful world of landscape architecture. Because of your training and passion, I am confident to begin my career to help solve today’s numerous and varied urban issues. Thank you.

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Masterplanning & Urban Design New Orleans Fall|2014 Academic | ISU

Challenge In August, 2005, Hurricaine Katrina decimated the city of New Orleans, leaving the metro area fractured by tens of thousands of vacancies. Today, organizations like the New Orleans Redevelopment Authority (N.O.R.A.), which owns and maintains 2,400 vacant lots, are working to retrofit and responsibly allocate these spaces in the name of environmental and economic sustainability.

Of the N.O.R.A. owned vacant lots, the highest concentration is seen in low-lying and impoverished neighborhoods. As climate change continues to pit New Orleans and Louisiana against fiercer storms, coastal erosion and sea level rise, these neighborhoods are in the most need of an urban design intervention.

Project Working with N.O.R.A., local landscape architects and planners, non-profits, and stake -holders, the mission is to link and establish a multitude of unused and abandoned vacant lots as a public network of usable and healthy amenities.

Through research in storm water management, underprivilaged urban development patterns, and high functioning communities, we will set out to provide New Orleans with a prospective of a sustainable brighter future &inTaylor the face of climate A Project By:and Cormac Diggins Wald change.

UrbanFlow

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Lake Terrace Pontchartrain Park Gentily Woods Desire

Desire Projects

Florida St. Claude French Quarter

Marigny lf) Gu o t ( -->T River he Mississippi

Bywater Holy Cross Lower Ninth Ward

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The Louisa Green Street

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Pontilly Stormwater HMGP Dana Brown & Associates community visioning project integrating vacant lot and streetscape retrofitting to provide large-scale storm water management. The 900 acre vision is currently en route to being completed by 2018.

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Focus Area - Lower Desire Lower Desire stands to gain the most from a new urban corridor. New transit, recreational, cultural, economic, and communal opportinities will allow positive future growth for the suffering community

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Desire Parkway A proposed project by Waggoner and Ball Architects to expand and redevelop both the Florida Canal and the vast vacancies around it into a massive bioretention system to serve the area both ecologically and recreationally.

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A waterfront park designed by Hargreaves and Associates. connects the corridor to both downtown and the French Quarter through New Orlean’s developing Mississippi River park system.

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Vacant Lots UrbanNodes The Nodes

Although it is a fraction of the overall vacancies in Lower Desire, N.O.R.A. owns as many as 66 vacant lots within the community.

Each and every one of these lots holds the potential to catalyze improvements and development in the surrounding properties and neighborhood while retaining and cleaning massive amounts of storm water collectively. Taking inspiration from the industrial history of Desire and from precedent vacant lot projects done by Dana Brown and Associates, these typical vacant lot retrofits will serve people socially and ecologically.

Typical Vacant Lot Section

Shipping Container Shelter

Shipping Container Cistern Shipping Container Planter 0

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Typical Vacant Lot

Typical Street Section Varies 8-12’ Expanded Sidewalk

Varies 5-10’ Bioswale with curb cuts

Connecting Nodes

A socially and environmentally connected urban fabric is the most successful path towards creating a new and resilient New Orleans.

Working in tandem with other proposed projects from Wagonner and Ball Architects and Dana Brown and Associates, The Louisa Green Street will be the ecological spine to collect, convey, clean, and capture storm water from the surrounding areas. On an equitable and economic level, the backbone acts as the foundational link of eight neighborhoods from Lake Terrace to Bywater, and provides a crucial connection to the city’s Bike and Park Network.

24’ Street size reduction for active elements

8’ Elevated multi-use path Primary bioswale and “Eco-Spine”

Focus Area:

Lower Desire

Building Resiliency

Desire is most famous for the establishment of the Desire Projects in the 1950s. This endevour eventually became the city’s most failed attempt to provide low income housing to minorities and the poor.

Since then, the area has continued to suffer from poverty, crime, flooding, government dinvestment and then mass housing demolition. Now, Desire has one of the highest rates of vacant lots in New Orleans.

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The new pedestrian centered connector will reinvigorate the community of Desire by shifting the paradigm of “disinvested neighborhood to “sustainable community.”

Redeveloping Louisa Street and a multitude of N.O.R.A. vacant lots into publick amenities and stormwater systems can catalyze Desire’s cultural, ecological, and economic growth.

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Containment Park Louisa Bike Boulevard Vacant Lot Parks Desire Parkland

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A plaza with amenities and food options are only the beginning of what Containment Park offers visitors.

Boardwalks, concrete stepping stones, and steel walkways circulate the visitor through an ecucational experience. People can learn about desire’s industrial history, the importance of stormwater management, and the impact that the park specifically has. In fact, by reusing industrial shipping containers as water collecting and aquafer restoring devices, The park can keep over 100,000 gallons of water from flooding the surrounding neighborhood every time it rains. Who says sustainable can’t be beautiful?

Public restrooms

Elevated steel bicycle path

Food vender and cafe

Street basin

Boulevard retrofit

Planted seating island Container shade structure

Container shade structure

Container bike shelter Food truck parking

Recycled concrete as stepping stones Wooden boardwalk

Speed bump crossing

Elevated steel grate

Street basin

Stormwater drain inlet

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Typical Pervious Decking Water proofing membrane

Storage container cistern Perforated bottom Repurposed Concrete Rip-rap

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The Eleanor C. Emlen School, Mt. Airy Neighborhood

Community Visioning & Schoolyard Design Philadelphia Fall|2015 Academic & Professional | ISU

Project Through the national collaboration of non-profits, local landscape architects, university students, school faculty and the local community, the Eleanor C. Emlen School is on its way to a healthier and more vibrant outdoor education experience. Despite a disadvantaged student population and neighborhood, a lack of needed funding and therefore below-average test scores, and no amenities for outdoor learning and play, this community has come together with student designers to produce a comprehensive masterplan for their new schoolyard. Under consultation from local professionals and national experts, students from Iowa State University generated masterplans for six schools in the Mt. Airy Neighborhood. As a pilot project the Eleanor C. Emlen School will set the precedent for the rest of the Mt. Airy community.

Role This project led me to wear many hats. As the project manager for the Emlen Schoolyard Masterplan I oversaw, edited, and created the 52 page publication to submit to the School District of Philadelphia. While in Philadelphia I organized and led two successful design workshops with 27 art students and 63 local members of the community. It was also my responsibility to oversee team management, graphics and product layout, meetings and scheduling, budgeting, document writing and editing, and national project collaboration.

Outside of the studio I managed another group of students in writing to the Knight Foundation for $150,000 to jumpstart the project this year.

The grant will be submitted in the coming Spring after review. Already there are two grants pending for the project and in October I was able to establish a Corporate partnership and donation of $10,000 annually.

A Project By: Cormac Diggins, Nanqi Dai, and Blake Andera

Local

Designers

National

Consultants

Client

“Little” Client Workshop

“Big” Client Workshop

Our team met with twenty-eight creative and artistic 4th graders to help everyone better understand what the kids of Emlen want. For an hour and a half college and elementary students, teacher Miss Vorinick, and Mt. Airy USA Director Abby Thacker all worked together through drawing and creative writing to answer the question, “What is your dream playground?”

The second charrette was much larger and set up in Emlen’s conference room. This three hour workshop was designed to help the professionals of the Land Health Institute and Confair Design and ISU students working on the project to engage with parents, faculty, and community members. A mountain of maps, ideas, issues and concepts were drawn up through a community effort.

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Entry Plaza

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Urban Meadow Chew Ave

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Proposed Playscape - Wild Weave Drawn by Blake Andera

Existing Tree

“Wild” Garden Younger Play Basketball Court

Nature Trail

“Wild” Garden Older Playground Learning Mounds Schoolyard Entrance

Water Play Schoolyard Entrance

Recess “Explosion” Point Turf Field

Interactive Mural

“One-on-One” Garden

Morning Line-up

Interactive Mural

Mt. Airy History Walk Community Agri-Garden Student Garden The “Rivers”

Fitness Play Bick Lock Area

Building Entrance Greenroof Classroom Recess “Explosion” Point

Greenroof Kindergarden Recess “Explosion” Point

Woodland Classroom

Urban Woodland

Urban Meadow and Memorial Main Building Entrance

rain barrel

roof

The “Kinder-Garden” Roofscape

channel

upper rain garden

bioswale

lower rain garden

cistern

greenroof bmp

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tree trench

water mound

ground

street

bumpout

CSO

Fitness Area/ Gym Extension

Tree Trench “River.”

Drains to Rain Gardens

Science/ Botanic Garden

Outdoor Classroom and Eating Area

Drawn in collaboration with Nanqi Dai

Scale: 1inch = 10feet

Bioswale Removed Drain Bioretention Basin Outflow Water Channel Water Play Mound Inlet

Bioretention Basin Removed Drain Cistern With Pump Outflow Storm Drain to CSO Inlet Rain Barrels Bump-Out

“River” Tree Trench

“River” Tree Trench

Rain Barrels Intensive Greenroof

Intensive Greenroof

Superstition Mountains, Apache Junction

Community Concept & Desert Design Apache Junction | Arizona Summer | 2015 Professional | J2 Design

Project The City of Apache Junction (AJ) is a quickly growing municipality on the Western edge of Phoenix, Arizona’s metropolitan area.

Unlike most suburbs, AJ is mostly self sufficient and has a proactive and tight-knit community. The city’s pride and joy however lie a little farther to the West: the Superstition Mountains.

One of Arizona’s most interesting and beautiful geologic formations, the Superstitions are home to more legends than just about anywhere in the greater metro area. This idea is worn by the city as a badge of pride and so helped shape much of the program and intent behind J2 Design’s proposal of Tierra Forma.

Team and Role Working with Landscape Architects Aaron Allen, Dean Chambers, and Kurt Montai, I performed as a designer, drafter, and graphic illustrator within the firm. Outside the office, I attended and participated in stakeholder meetings as well as the public presentation in late August of 2015. The materials here are from that presentation.

Playful Greenspace

Designing for Downtown Local History and Culture

West Pavilion/Stage East Pavilion/Stage

Desert Demonstration Garden

Great Lawn (aprx. 3060 ppl) Desert Ruins & ADA Ramp Gateway to Superstitions

Landmark Observation Deck

Kid Play & Splash Zone Restroom South Pavilion

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Peralta Pavilion

Downtown Park

One of three thematic entry pavilions. The Peralta Stones form the map to the Lost Dutchman’s legendary treasure.

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Interactive Water Wall & Fountain Play Area

Great Lawn & Event Space

Handicap Accessible Ramp & Solar Map Plaza

Superstitions

Both an aesthetic and cultural spine of AJ, these landforms hold legends reflected within the site.

Desert Ruins & Signage

Desert Ruins

Inspired by local heritage, this structure reinforces both an ADA ramp to the observation deck and AJ’s “Western” dynamic.

Observation Deck

At an elevation of 20ft, this defining structure offers a dramatic view of the rugged landscape and gateway to AJ’s native frontier.

Dutchman Pavilion & Art Installation

“Gateway to Legends” & Observation Deck

Planting Plan

Planting Legend

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WATER FEATURE SEATWALL TYPICAL SECTION ‘A’ - NTS

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WATER FEATURE SEATWALL TYPICAL SECTION ‘A’ - NTS

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WATER FEATURE SEATWALL TYPICAL SECTION ‘B’ - NTS

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POURED IN PLACE RUBBERIZED SURFACING - NTS

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12’ x 30’ RAMADA - NTS

reflection

The University of Edinburgh

The Firth of Forth

Art Installation & Place Definition Edinburgh | Scotland (UK) Spring | 2015 Academic | UE

Project The city of Edinburgh has the largest art festivals in the world, The Fringe Festival, and as such prides itself on its own permanent art throughout the stone metropolis. This project’s goal is to design and propose a sculpture that reacts conceptually to its location and context to present at the next Fringe Festival. As an artists and designers of the land, we have the responsibility to create works that are embedded into the surrounding environment. Through research and design process, the finished product was informed through its physical makeup, phenomenal reaction, and long-term transformation as a piece both contrasting and complimenting its site.

The Meadows Park

Calton Hill

Holyrood Palace

Holyrood Park, Central Edinburgh

The Craigs

Focus area

Arthur’s Seat

Queen’s Dr

Exploration

Context & Phenomena

A site is rarely defined only by itself. Rather it is defined by the overarching themes and context of the place in which it exists. Holyrood Park, within its context of Edinburgh, contrasts the urban fabric by providing a sense of nature in its built surroundings. The park surrounds visitors in natural phenomena, including rain, wind, light (or lack of), vegetation and geomorphology. Taking these ideas and manifesting them into a work that can provide form and contrast to an otherwise natural environment can act as a representation of the park itself.

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Concept Form:Represent

Water Basin

Holyrood Park has a rich geologic history. Formed by millions of years of volcanic and tectonic activity, the area is made of a variety of geo-materials. The strongest and most profound rock forms are made of dolerite sill, an igneous remnant. The combination of a cut stone base and black steel plating form a cold, geometric pool that beautifully contradicts its rustic surroundings.

This irony is reminiscent of Holyrood’s stark and iconic juxtaposition to the geometries and constructs of Edinburgh.

Black Steel Edge

Cut Stone (Dolerite Sill)

85cm Cantilever

Structure:Rebuff Twelve feet (3.5m) of cantilevered structure extend from the slope without visible support to the visitor. This effect was considered necessary to accomplish installation’s purpose and meaning. This section was created to illustrate how the piece might actually be constructed subsurface. Reinforced concrete footings and columns are bolted to the above structure, acting as both the weighted support and backfill retainer. Neither element of wind or erosion will move the piece.

450cm Exposed Structure Bolted Steel Siding Dolerite Sill Base

30cm

Reinforced Concrete Support

120cm

Concrete Footing

40cm

Prepared Subgrade

Sand-set Stone Seep Canal 180cm

Time:React Over time, the water basin will inevitably fill with soil and organic matter by process of erosion. This evolution reflects how Holyrood Park itself has been molded and shaped by natural phenomena over millions of years.

present:pool

Existing Grade

future:terrace

phenomena, reflected

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The designed intervention is a reaction and representation of place derived of my own personal experience in Holyrood Park. Working with materiality and form to symbolize the park’s geology, chilly persona, and contexual juxtoposition within Edinburgh. In function, the work is meant to reflect the natural phenomena that characterizes the experience of the place; manifesting wind, rain, and light through water tension. Utilizing time as the final design element, the work will evolve over time as the uphill soil erodes and fills the basin with vegitation.

gallery

Property Line

Hardscape Design & Construction Dtls Ames | Iowa Fall | 2014 Academic | ISU

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Project The client is a local art collector and entrepreneur. Over the last few years, his attention has been directed more and more toward building his own art gallery in Ames from an old house. Our contract was to design and spec both the front and back of his new property to accommodate for guests and local artists. The final design centers around gathering spaces, artistic sculptures and elements, and the diverse use of stone and concrete as the structural, functional, and aesthetic basis for the site.

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Front Patio

Pool & Walls (typ.)

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Concrete Pavers

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Driveway Crushed Stone

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Property Line

Showing Gallery

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Lava Rock

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Showing Gallery

Cobblestone

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Irr. Flagstone

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Dim. Bluestone

Crushed Stone

Back Patio

hand:make

16th Scale Site Model Tucson| Arizona Spring | 2013 Academic | ISU A Project By: Cormac Diggins & Taylor Wald

Tucson Convention Center

by Eckbo Dean Austin & Williams

hand:draw

Far Left Background

Far Left

Middle Left

Near Bottom Left

Near Top Left

Above

“Millenium Park” Field Sketch.

Drawn in Pencil.

“Even Paper Scissors are Dangerous” Component Diagram.

Drafted in Pencil.

“Section 4” Section of Model.

Drafted in Pencil.

“Model Profile” Profile of Model.

Drafted in Pencil.

“Winter Tree” Field Sketch.

Drawn in Pen.

“The Architypes” Concept Plan in Fall.

Drawn in Pen and Copic Markers by Blake Andera and Myself.

THANK YOU E: Crdiggins@gmail.com T: +1 602-399-2953

If you would like to connect or know more, please click here:

https://issuu.com/ cormacdiggins

LinkedIn.com/in/ DigginsLA