UF Masters Research Project - Ke(Edward) Sun

POETIC URBANISM Rethinking American Suburbs Through Sun and Light: A New Manifesto for the Suburban American Dream

KE(EDWARD) SUN

POETIC URBANISM

POETIC URBANISM Rethinking American Suburbs Through Sun and Light: A New Manifesto for the Suburban American Dream

University of Florida Spring 2016 A Master’s Research Project presented to The University of Florida Graduate School of Architecture in partial fulillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Architecture

Chair: Charlie Hailey PhD, Professor Co-Chair: Frank Bosworth PhD, Professor 3rd: Stephen Bender, Professor

KE(EDWARD) SUN

© 2016 Ke(Edward) Sun

the land, I dwell, sheltering the dream the horizon, I wander, in the woods the vertical, I gaze, piercing the sky the ritual, I read, between me and the sun a daydream of intimacy and haziness - Ke(Edward) Sun

Orlando, U.S.

CONTENTS 9

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

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ABSTRACT

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MANIFESTO OF A NEW VISION Introduction American Dream and the Vision of Poetic Dream American Land - Ownership and Abundance The Suburban Sprawl: Single-family Home

Failure of the American Dream Project Statement Precedent Study and Literature Review

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POETIC URBANISM Urban in Suburb - A Design of Integration Holistic Ecological Landscape Solar Space: Spatial and Energy – A Poetic Transformation

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SUBURB, POETRY AND THE SUN A Chinese Painting and A Vision Site or Siteless A Realistic Utopia Principle The Vision – A Narrative Path through the Grid Poetic Vocabulary Plane – Residential Module Vertical – Solar Tower Horizon – Solar Farm Edge Line – Roads Diagonal – Solstice Public Path Fill – Conservation Land and Parks Soft – Water and Wind

Materiality Above Ground Poem of American Dream and Poetic Urbanism

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REFRAMING THE NEW AMERICAN DREAM Poem of A Start

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BIBLIOGRAPHY, NOTES AND ILLUSTRATION SOURCES

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Working with Prof. Charlie Hailey on my Masters Research Project was a learning and relearning process. His poetic way of thinking architecture enriched my vocabulary of architecture. This process is synthetic and romantic with a deep complexity. And it’s also a self-exploring process in which I found the architecture world of myself. Prof. Charlie Hailey has led me to see architecture in diferent and unique ways, truly opening my eyes to a world of inspiration. My deepest gratitude to him for his dedication and oversight while completing my MRP. Special thanks to University of Florida CityLab-Orlando, which will always be a second home to me. It is here where I met my mentor, Prof. Bosworth. He has become a very inluential and important person in my life. The wisdom and knowledge he has imparted to me has helped guide me toward fulilling my dream. I ofer my unwavering gratitude and appreciation to him and he will always be my life mentor. Special thanks to Prof. Stephen Bender for his incredible passion and endless well of knowledge. Also I want to thank my parents for their everlasting support in my path pursuing my life goals. Thanks to all the friends and fellows at UF CityLab-Orlando. You have become my family during these years, and I am grateful for all the moments we have shared together while working toward our dreams. Finally I would like to remind myself to be proud of my accomplishment, for never giving up despite hardships and for persevering to the inish line of my goals.

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ABSTRACT

The American Dream is grounded in home ownership, speciically the fantasy of owning a piece of land and building a house. The suburbs attest to this dream; they were built on abundance. The American Dream illustrates the relationship between Americans and their land. The abundant land became not just a physical attachment, but a daydreaming shelter for imagination. The American land becomes the shelter for such a dream, and the dream shaped American life and impacted how American cities, towns and suburbs were developed. However, the current suburban development, a direct product of the American Dream is losing its quality and meaning in the problematic relationship between humans and resources. It has caused suburban sprawl, land exploitation, ineicient energy and resource consumption. It shaped the American Landscape with a single language boldly and controversially. The dwelling units simply became objects of subdivision. Therefore the Suburbs that symbolized the American Dream now invade the American Landscape. Dwelling has simply lost its poetic aspect.

for daydreaming within the American dream. The poetic suburb is designed by inding rhythm in public spaces and private spaces, and organizing ownership within a public realm. Sun and light intervene in daily life and engage the suburb with a poetic and ecological holistic approach. The new idea of the American Suburb is making poetry, and a set of poems of sun and dreams become connections among the intimacy of land, the American Dream, and the human being. The design methodology is a holistic approach that engages holistic landscape with a community that is self-sustained with energy lows as a whole ecological system through each part. The essential energy resource is sun. The design philosophy is to ind and strengthen a relationship between human, dwelling, and sun, spiritually and ritually, creating a poetic narrative to shelter the American Dream and the daily life of human dwelling. This is the Poetic Urbanism.

This project explores American identity and strengthens the uniqueness of the American Dream through the idea of Poetic Urbanism in exurban situations, in order to provide an alternative vision for America’s suburbs and, in the process, reframe the American Dream. The project poetically transforms the American suburb into a holistic ecological landscape — an integration of total landscape that creates an alternative urban plan for the suburbs. A poetic focus on sun and light, addresses design elements such as sun rise horizontal edges, temperature, zones, materiality, sun path, shadows, public and private land, and a solar energy plant, which is interpreted as public and sacred. The new systems work together transforming the land into shelter

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MANIFESTO OF A NEW VISION

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Introduction American Dream and the Vision of Poetic Dream

The American dream was created by pioneers who came to the new land to explore the new order and new world. This dream which was originally merged from the declaration of American Independence (Fig. 1, 2) simply appeared as a dream of equality. This initial American dream revealed European settlers’ dream for freedom and equality between human beings. It’s a dream of weakening. The new land thus became not just a physical attachment, but a daydreaming shelter1 for imagination. The American land becomes the shelter for such a dream, and the dream shaped the American life and impacted how the American cities, towns and suburbs were developed.

The American unique character has been shaped fundamentally by the sheer abundance of land and resources that met the European colonist, that met the westwardmoving settlers during the Homestead Act, and that still appears to meet the American suburbanite pressing into exurb.2 Such abundant American land, if it’s not the whole reason but contributed in creating a relationship between ownership and the American dream.

James Truslaw Adams gave a more precise and convinced deinition in his book The Epic of American. He concludes that the American dream is that dream of a land in which life should be better and richer and fuller for everyone, it provides equal opportunities for everyone regardless of the background of such person. The dream is not merely about automobiles and wealthy life, but a dream of social order with equality.3 This Masters Research Project tends to ind the obscure phenomenological imagination traces in the American dream that shaped the land in the nation and links the

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notion of poetic to the American dream to reframe a new vision for American.

1, 2 Independence Declaration; The signing of the Declaration of Independence

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American Land - Ownership and Abundance

Abundant land underlaid the possibilities of ownership, and became the catalyst that transferred the interpretation of the American dream mainly into owning a piece of land.

During 1812 British War, the American government paid soldiers land for volunteering the army against the British.

(Fig. 3) Abundant land allowed the young American federal government to court the scattering settlers with liberal land distribution policies. It started with cheap land and inally, in 1862, free land through the Homestead Act.4 The Homestead Acts, signed into law by President Abraham Lincoln on May 20, 1862, (Fig. 4) formed several United States federal laws that gave an applicant ownership of land, typically called a “homestead”, at little or no cost. It encouraged Western migration by providing settlers 160 acres of public land. In exchange, homesteaders paid a small iling fee and were required to complete ive years of continuous residence before receiving ownership of the land. The Homestead Act led to the distribution of 80 million acres of public land by 1900. (Fig. 5, 6) This original land policy enticed Americans to move west, develop lands, and pursue the American dream, thus strengthening their tenacity to live with nature.

Prior to the act, the U.S. government auctioned or sold public land in large lots that ordinary citizens could not aford to buy or manage. The Homestead Act ambitiously shifted land ownership and development towards average American citizens.5 The early American federal administrations budgeted heavily to protect settlers’ as they swept over Native American homelands. The army founded by the early Federal government “Army on the Frontier” was formed to protect and aid the settlement of the West, further explore the West, and construct roads. They also de-

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fended the overland trails, water routes and later telegraph and railroad lines. The American right to enterprise was well secured even before the American Industrial Revolution gave enterprise its more modern connotations.6

3, 4 Bounty-Land; Homestead Act Certiicate

5, 6 A family Poses With the Wagon; Homestead Act Poster

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The Suburban Sprawl: Single-family Home

The American suburb is the direct product of the dream for a better, more comfortable life among upper, middle and middle classes. After world war two, government subsides poured into the marketplace with the passage of Federal Highway Act of 1956 and intense lobbying by the National Association of Realtors.7 The home ownership was once again strengthened again by the massive road way expansion development. The American middle classes pictured another “dreaming shelter” for themselves which is where life can be pictured as a picturesque painting and individual fantasies can be fulilled. This America’s democratic attitudes that were founded on the belief that there can be enough for all, translated into a political preference for strong individual rights.8 The cities in America declined during the Post-War Suburban development. The cold war tension (Fig. 7) terriied people who were living in cities. They worried about nuclear war and the population being wiped out. In 1962, the Cuban Missile Crisis (Fig. 8) solidiied fears that communism could prevail over capitalism if the Soviets continued to target American cities. The middle classes led for the suburbs that their dream could be protected.

Single-family home underlied the dream of the suburban life, fueled by automobile dreams and Federal Highway Act, the suburban development started with Levittown, soon rapidly transformed American landscape.

Track housing, inconsistent commercial strips along highway became American current suburb model. (Fig. 9, 10, 11 and 12) The same models have been copied over and over again around the nation’s exurban. Developers simply purchase a vast amount of open land and artiicially design a community with curved roads and low sustained single-

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family homes. While newly constructed homes have nearly doubled in size since 1960, the total number of people per house has steadily decreased. Larger, more ineicient homes are now occupied by fewer people.9 This is a projection of an increasing overwhelmed individual ego, and misleading to an unbalanced relationship between ownership and the American dream. A question emerged from this: What will be the future for a middle class single family home?

7 Cold War Propaganda

8 Cuban Missile Crisis

9, 10, 11, 12 Suburban Sprawl

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Failure of the American Dream

Current suburban development will not meet the future needs growth from the population, the resources, and the public responsibility. The single-family home model society that is currently based on automobile dependency will dramatically increase the gasoline price in the future with the rapid population growth. As a result, this will decrease the amount of freedom individual has for driving. This is a paradoxical question. The current housing development in suburbs is very unsustainable. It would become a fatal issue globally when we include global warming, human resources into consideration. This overwhelming American dream will lead to the death of the dream itself as the public realm collapses due to the irresponsible individual’s behavior and the lack of notion of community. Alexis de Tocqueville, a French political thinker wrote in his book “Democracy in America” after his observation tour in American during 1831, “individualism, at irst, only saps the virtues of public life; but in the long run it attacks and destroys all others and is at length absorbed in downright selishness”.10 Such suburban sprawl will eventually end the American dream.

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Project Statement

The current suburban development, a direct product of the American Dream is losing its quality and meaning in the problematic relationship between humans and resources.

This project explores American identity and strengthens the uniqueness of the American Dream through the idea of Poetic Urbanism in exurban situations, in order to provide an alternative vision for America’s suburbs and, in the process, reframing the American Dream.

The project poetically transforms the American suburb into a holistic ecological landscape — an integration of total landscape that creates an alternative urban plan for the suburbs. A poetic focus on sun and light addresses design elements such as sun rise horizontal edges, temperature, zones, materiality, sun path, shadows, public and private land, and a solar energy plant, which is interpreted as public and sacred. The new systems work together transforming the land into shelter for daydreaming within the American dream. The poetic suburb is designed by inding rhythm in public spaces and private spaces, and organizing ownership within a public realm. Sun and light intervene in daily life and engage the suburb with a poetic and ecological holistic approach. The new idea of the American Suburb is making poetry, and a set of poems of sun and dreams become connections among the intimacy of land, the American Dream, and the human being. The design methodology is a holistic approach that engages holistic landscape with a community that is self-sustained with energy lows as a whole ecological system through each part.

The essential energy resource is the sun. The design philosophy is to ind and strengthen a relationship between human, dwelling, and sun, spiritually and ritually, creating a poetic narrative to shelter the American Dream and the daily life of human dwelling. This is the Poetic Urbanism.

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Sketches of Envisioned Solar Tower and Holistic System

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Precedent Study and Literature Review

Torsted Vest Torsted Vest is a 55-hectare site in Southwestern Horsens where a new experimental district of 900 dwellings is being developed in accordance with ecological and community principles. The new district is laid out as a series of neighborhoods organized around a sequence of public squares which are linked by streets and paths. Grey-water recycling is integrated into each dwelling in a very simple and efective way. The design emphasizes the social, personal, biology and physical aspect. (Fig. 13)

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13 Master Plan of Torsted Vest

Williamsburg New Town A balanced community concept is both the point of departure and the kernel of the proposal. “Balance� is understood here in the widest sense of the term: balanced population (age, social groups, and ethnicity), balanced uses, balanced transportation, balance energy and resource usage; balance in sum, conceived as a designed and sustainable equilibrium among the multiple variables that conigure a healthy, diverse human community. (Fig. 14, and 15)

14, 15 Diagram; Plan for Flexibility

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Solar City Linz Individual solar houses and urban neighborhoods are developed in this solar city. The buildings have a variety of types and orientation to maximize solar gain in winter. A wide and diversiied range of building typologies have been developed, broadening the topical scope of standard approaches to solar architecture. (Fig. 16, 17)

16, 17 Dwelling Units Solar Scale; Solar City Plan

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Deserted Golf Greens into Solar Power Plants This is an abandoned golf course near Kyoto. It is being converted to the area’s largest solar energy-generating facility. Solar power production represents an ideal type of landscape reuse in this context for many reasons: expansive areas with little shade and high sun exposure are perfect for laying out panels for maximum efect and eficiency. Developed by Kyocera, “the plant will generate an estimated 26,312 megawatt hours (MWh) per year — enough electricity to power approximately 8,100 typical local households.”

The solar panel were put as a landscape making process to ill in this golf course. This is a process of poetic transformation. (Fig. 18)

18 Deserted Golf Greens into Solar Power Plants

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Broadacre City and Chinese Garden - Landscape Dwelling Broadacre City was an urban development concept proposed by Frank Lloyd Wright throughout most of his lifetime. He proposed an urban plan that emphasized his idea of “disappearing city”. In this urban proposal, he suggested both a planning statement and a social-political scheme by which each U.S. family would be given a one acre plot of land from the federal lands reserves, and each family would have their own 1 acre land to dwell. The utopian agrarian society that Wright imagined decentralizes the city and creates an open space and landscape urban area.

The poetic meaning in this urban planning from one point of view is the contradictory ideal of self-sustained agrarian culture, a structure which has been applied in ancient Chinese social structure for thousands of years untill the destruction brought by the modern industrial revolution and the British invasion. This poetic meaning is the idea of being individual and being inside – living as inside a shell.

Chinese cities were planned based on a module and order.

If you compare it with the Broadacre city, there are lots of similarities. Each ward of the Chinese ancient city can be seen as a mile section of Broadacre city which is a selfsustained residential community or service-function ward.

Among all the wards, the principle roads are designed for wagons and horses which in Broadacre city are designed for automobiles. There are no human scale roads or pedestrian at this level. Inside each ward, which in Broadacre city can be seen as each mile section, individual residential family is ofered an acre with a house and gardens. Similarly, in Chinese ancient city planning, within each square ward were similar dwelling module displayed evenly. Since traditional Chinese dwellings are gardens and houses intertwined and integrated based on modules and orders, it’s quite simple to distribute in the square module. Some

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wealthy family might own the whole ward, having thousands of gardens and houses. The only pedestrians are designed inside the wards and residential area. Though in China urban planning, there is no one ever mentioned garden city concept, this could be seen as a precedent of ancient garden city planning. The only diference in the Broadacre city is there aren’t any walls separate the sections and acres anymore.

The prerequisite for this urban planning in China is the very low density in ancient China due to low population and vast lands. At the time, China was the most powerful and wealthiest country in the world, thus the economy could support the vast open landscape urban planning.

Similarly, American had low population and vast lands. The wealthy super power nation could aford this low density development during the post-war period of time. That’s why Wright’s proposal was somehow a reasonable vision for America; but obviously it was not a lasting ideal planning. (Fig. 19, 20, 21, 22 and 23) 19 Broadacre City

20 Broadacre City Illustrations by Fred Koetter & Ed Mitchell

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21 Autumn Colors along Rivers and Mountains (Zhao Boju, Chinese Painter, Song Dynasty, 960-1279) - Handscroll Section, ink and color on silk, 55.6 x 323.2 cm, Palace Museum, Beijing

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22, 23 China Tang Dynasty Chang’an Planning and Residential Wards and City Grid

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Jackson Meadow Jackson Meadow, a residential planned unit development in Marine on St. Croix, Minnesota was designed with the goal to develop community in a physical and social sense, preserving the village practice while protecting valued open space. Homes are clustered on just forty acres, leaving over 75 percent of the site as dedicated open space.

There was a large emphasis on the community process that lead to over forty public meetings.

24 Aerial Map of Jason Meadow

The site is a 145-acre area of high ground in open ields and wooded hills overlooking the St. Croix River Valley. The development is organized topographically, with a series of neighborhoods connected by a loop road and pedestrian corridors around a central public green. Included in the site are 220 acres of land in a conservation easement. All homes in the community are accessible from the open space corridors. Front porches connect directly to a trail system that links over 350 acres, connecting Jackson Meadow to William O’Brien State Park, adjacent neighborhoods, and downtown Marine on St. Croix. Coen + Partners’ role in the master plan process included lead site design, site layout, automobile and pedestrian circulation, and open space connections. Coen + Partners also provides custom site design for each new home in the community. This landscape and dwellings are integrated as picturesque paintings. Poetic meaning is illustrated from the sense of space, people dwelling in the holistic landscape and residential space instead of singularly occupied in objects within the ield. (Fig. 24, 25)

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25 Jason Meadow

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POETIC URBANISM

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Urban in Suburb - A Design of Integration

The methodology is to practice urban design strategy in suburbs, creating an urban suburban environment.

The project proposes that the suburb becomes a holistic ecological landscape. Dwellings as shelter for protecting American dream and American life, designed through a high performance energy assessment by focusing on sun and light. The variety prototype and a range of variety density of housing will be introduced and integrated within the whole eco-system. Dwelling and nature are integrated with this system as part of energy exchange entities in this whole system. A concept of public realm with proposed program creates communication between neighborhood and people within the project and connects itself to urban environment, breaking the isolation between current suburbs and cities. Sun and light is the main approach to poetic, a proposal that transfer the solar energy plant into a public space and also increase its scared sense as a “religious� spatial planning among ancient cities planning is also a poetic transformation that will deine the poetic urbanism.

The integration is the formula of poetic, the way that thinking suburban condition with urban design strategy deine the urbanism. The poetic urbanism explores a middle ground between urban and suburban, trying to give an alternative vision for suburban design and reframe the deinition of American dream.

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Holistic Ecological Landscape

Human habitation have been always integrated into natural ecosystem since the beginning. We created habitation space based on our religion and the objects we worshipped. We’ve been manipulate the nature in a way that people and nature are such wonderful rhythms from poem. We gather from mythology that their vast and somber wilderness was there before, like a precondition or matrix of civilization, or that – as the epigraph to this book suggest – forests were the irst.

Such holy space in our landscape that were integrated with our dwellings came from phenomenological imagination.

“They might have recalled how the hills of the imperial city were not so long ago still forested, and in their minds two images – forest and city – might have fused together to create an uncanny psychological efect.”

A holistic ecological landscape that intertwine landscape with dwelling is the large scale in poetic. Most other ecosystem deinitions emphasize its holistic nature as interacting systems between living organisms and their non-living environment.

Functional interacting systems, characterized for the low of energy, matter and information between organisms and their abiotic environment and a set of interlinked, diferent scale properties. As functional systems they are intangible with vaguely deined borders, lacking the two properties which have been recognized already by Aristotle as tangible things: these have to be occupying a certain (measurable) space (“Choros”) in a well deinable location (“Topos”).

In spite of the diferent interpretations of the semantic and

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epistemological meaning of landscape, it can be safely assumed that in clear contrast to the vaguely deined ecosystems as a scientiic object of study, landscapes are conceived by landscape ecologists as concrete pieces of land, or water or both, along diferent scales. However in contrast to the above-mentioned, mechanistic conception of landscapes as large-scale repeated ecosystem, we should recognize landscapes as tangible, spatially and temporally well-deined ecological systems of closely interwoven natural and cultural entities of our living space. Ranging from the smallest discernable landscape cell or ecotype to the global ecosphere landscape of they serve as the spatial matrix and as the living space for all organisms, including humans, their populations and their ecosystems.

The way of creating such landscape is a mean to deine the sense of a space, dwelling within space then becomes an image derives from a poem.

Solar Space: Spatial and Energy – A Poetic Transformation

Solar will have two meanings in the project: architecture ecological, technological sense, generating solar energy for the whole system; a poetic sense.

The poetic sense that deines solar power plant as a more sacred space and a public space, merges from tracing back from the history of worshiping the sun god to energy generation plant by solar power.

The design methodology of the dwelling constitutes three major parts in terms of poetic. The house shelter the way of American life by means of emphasizing the function. The house is a shelter that protecting the memories and daydreaming. It becomes the oneirism entity. The second part is the phenomenological experience that the houses provide, the dwelling narrate a story of the worshiping solar energy. The poetic spatial phenomenological experiences is told by the relations between solar and human. The last one is understanding the house is a vertical being. A house is imagined as a vertical being. It rises upward. It diferentiates itself in terms of its verticality. It is one of the appeals to our consciousness of verticality. ‌ Verticality is ensured by the polarity of cellar and attic, the marks of which are so deep that, in a way, they open up two very diferent perspectives for a phenomenology of the imagination.

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SUBURB, POETRY AND THE SUN

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A Chinese Painting and A Vision

26 A Section of A Thousand Li of Rivers and Mountains, Wang Ximeng (1096–1119), Chinese Court Painter. Color on silk. Palace Museum, Beijing

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A New Vision by Author Ke(Edward) Sun. Color Pencil Drawing

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Wang Ximeng (1096–1119, Chinese Pinter) inished this long scroll Chinese painting A Thousand Li of Rivers and Mountains in 1113. (Fig. 26) A boundless view axonometric Chinese painting depicts the ininite space where human dwell and leaves the everlasting imagination. The painting presents a vast and majestic view of mountains, rivers and villages, creating a poetic universe. Chains of mountains, countless peaks and villages stand along the river, stretching and disappearing at the horizon. The landscape is a poetry making by elements such as waterfalls, pathways leading to the temples, manors, huts and tile-roofed houses with clusters of trees and bamboo. This was a real relection yet fantasy dream of landscape dwelling in China.

Chinese people dwell with nature and landscape and a narrative or portrait of this way of dwelling becomes poetry itself. Chinese see the outside world as necessary elements in the whole dwelling concept. The mountains, the sky, the birds, the river, the wind, the clouds and the houses, they are all intimate with the human within the whole system.

It’s where an internal world meets the external world and reaching a balance. Chinese painters see the world above the horizon, the world is not a single perspective view but a set of phenomenological experiences which are created into a scroll of scenes. It’s a phenomenological interpretation of daily life with nature and a memory recall from the intimacy between people and nature landscape. It’s poetic because it’s just like Chinese poems which is written in a way creating a set of feelings and scenes.

The poetry connected the people with the landscape and nature, the place was making by a poetic vision and fantasy. The daily life became a ritual that celebrated the harmony and peace. When human starts to embracing the

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universe rather than their own little world, the dwelling will suddenly has meaning. The other scroll drawing is the new vision for American suburb, it uses the same concept to demonstrate the idea of Poetic Urbanism. The boundless axonometric view includes the narrative of a poetry and ritual and a public space, the vertical, the horizon, the planes and lines. They all performed as the structure components of a poetic romantic landscape poetry. The making of the drawing tells a story of the place.

Site or Siteless

The site that was picked for the new vision is located in Meadow Woods, south of Downtown of Orlando, FL. This Masters Research Project gave an alternative solutions for American Suburb rather than focusing on retroitting an existing one. Hence the reasons of picking this site are based on some speciic criteria.

around metropolitan areas. Therefore the site in this particular design was merely an example and the vision tends to have the characteristic of being siteless.

The reasons that were taken into considerations are the transportation connection from city of Orlando, including Orange Avenue that runs north and south; the great amount of conservation lands, a potential of living with nature and being as a whole integrated eco-system; the adjacency to Lake Nona, a medical center serving central Florida which was already under development. The new vision suburb is a self-sustained community powered by solar energy with a multi-transportation grid and connects the city by proposed high-speed transportation, so the transportation connection gives it the potential to become a satellite suburb of the city. The almost 2 square mile Florida cypress and pine trees woods makes this site special for testing the idea of dwelling within landscape as an eco-organism. By creating cypress and pine trees woods that as an extension from the original conservation land illing in the whole site added a romantic rural site phenomenological experience.

The adjacency with a developing land brings population and the potential of expanding and growing.

The new vision suburb was a manifesto in both design and political ways. The process of rethinking and designing became a process of creating a place, by manipulating elements around the actual site, rather than being restricted.

The design and principles varies depending on diferent site, however the concept of the vision remains. This suburb city vision can be and should be tested in diferent sites

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Meadow Wodds, FL. Site Maps

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Meadow Wodds, FL. Site Aerial Maps Diagram

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A Realistic Utopia Principle

As shown from the diagram, the design was set under a series of principles. The principle has 3 major parts, components, ownership and density. On the land of “realistic utopia�, the components assemble the basic language and narrative, the density is a result factor and the ownership deines the manifesto. Current suburb development is the method of spreading private individual under subdivision land at a very low density. There is no public realm in the current suburban development.

The new idea reorganized land ownership and reinterpreted the public and private, distributing them into landscape and making a whole ecological system. The components are 16 acre residential module, solar tower, solstice public path, solar farm, roads and conservation lands. Residential modules have various ownership concepts.

The solar towers are owned privately by 2 type of residences in 2 diferent sub-modules, also the solar farms are owned by residences, however they are both run and performed by a corporation who rents them and pay rent to the owners. This is the electricity grid in this suburb, they powers the whole community and supports the city nearby by selling extra electricity. Besides this main grid, each household has their private access to solar energy, the electricity generated by their own solar panels is private owned property and power themselves. If they have extra electricity they can sell them to the community into the grid or if they don’t have enough, they can purchase the electricity needed from the grid.

Public spaces and Conservation lands are collectively owned by whole community, meaning they can take same amount of care for the property they owned and develop

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them in a collective way. According to this principle, this proposed new suburb aims to use half of the existing site and increase the density by multi-density housing planning.

The Holistic Ecological System and the Poetic Dwelling

sell sell

City of Orlando

electricity buy solar tower

solar farm

owner: 4+16 acre residents collective owned operator: corporations renting

pay percentage rent

A Realistic Utopia Principle Diagram - Holistic Ecology

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exsiting existing

proposal

7.5 Sq mi

3.75 Sq mi

population 25,558

population 60,000

density 3,407 per sq mi

density 16,000 per sq mi

The Holistic Ecological System and the Poetic Dwelling A Realistic Utopia Principle Diagram - Density

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units per acre

units per acre

1/4 acre land

DU/AC: 4

4 acre land

DU/AC: 60

1 acre land

DU/AC: 1

16 acre land

DU/AC: 120

The Relaistic Utopia Principles - A Manifesto Vision Components

Ownership

Ownership

1/4 acre resident

1/4 acre land

Plane

roads

“SUN CITY“ public owned

1 acre resident

4 acre

16 acre

1 acre

1/4 acre

1 acre land 16 acre residents collective owned

4 acre residents collective owned

Vertical

Honrizontal

4 acre land

solar tower 16 acre residents collective owned

16 acre land

Public Anti-Grid

4+16 acre residents collective owned

Edge Line

“SUN CITY“ public owned

conservation parks

solar farm land

solstice public path

“SUN CITY“ public owned

A Realistic Utopia Principle Diagram - Ownership

exsiting

proposal

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The Vision – A Narrative Path through the Grid

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Axonometric Section - One Acre Dwelling and Quater Acre Dwelling Section

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Axonometric Section - 4 Acre Dwelling and 16 Acre Dwelling Section

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Axonometric Section - Solstice Path Section

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Axonometric Section - Solar Tower and Wandering Section

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Poetry Vocabulary Plane – Residential Module

The basic residential module is a 16 acre module, the 16 acres land is owned collectively by the residences dwell in the 16 acre housing complex. Dividing the 16 acres land into 4 parts, each part is a 4 acre land which is another type of dwelling module, owned by residences dwelling in the 4 acre housing complex. The 4 acre land can also be divided into another 4 parts, then there are two diferent modules; the 1 acre land dwelling module and the quarter acre dwelling module which is divided again from some of the 1 acre lands. The 1 acre land is occupied by either one single family house or a multi-family house and they are owned by the residents. The quarter acre land is occupied by either an incremental house, or a single family house, which includes one with an accessory suite and one without. The quarter acre land is also owned by the resident who dwell there.

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Vertical – Solar Tower

The big solar tower is owned collectively by the 16 acre land dwellers, while the other smaller one is owned by 4 acre land dwellers. Solar towers are the vertical pieces that deines the end edge of the site and connects the land to the sun by a ritual and poetic way. It’s a public space, symbol of energy and ritual and a meaningful piece that connects human with the meaning of dwelling in the land and under the sky. It grew from the landscape and becomes an extraordinary climax of the poetry. One of them was designed at the east end point of the summer solstice angle and another smaller one was designed at the east end of the winter solstice angle path, where the sun rises every day. They remind people of the existence of intimacy between human and the sun, between the land they dwell and the ritual they do every day. The solar towers created a iction and fantasy yet rational space in this poetic urbanism movement.

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Horizon – Solar Farm

Solar farms deined the edges and the horizon of this place. They are collectively owned by the 16 and 4 acre land dwellers. And the energy they generates are used for powering the whole community. The old city generally had farming lands around the edges to deine place and space, the idea of solar farms became a poetic transformation of the old farming lands. The farming activity becomes directly conneted to the sun energy, it’s one of the poetic narrative in this land.

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Edge Line – Roads

The road system was designed based on sun light and solstice angles. Major roads connected to highways and major city roads from the city of Orlando. North and south road gird systems built the network for dwelling units and provided the best angles for sun light. Pedestrians system were designed inside the module. The diagonal roads system crossing the public path connected to the whole road system. It’s an integrated multi-system running diferent directions.

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Diagonal – Solstice Public Path

Along the solstice public path, there are diferent thresholds and diferent programs. Hence it was divided into 4 diferent sections, each sections tells a story. It’s a narrative of diferent intimacy between people and the sun and different rituals. It created many scenes, still and live, poetic and nostalgia, routine and sophisticated. It’s the climax of the poetry emerging from place.

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Fill – Conservation Land and Parks

Creating pine trees, oak trees, cypress trees and wood lands on the site, portrayed the transforming fabric from urban into rural. It artiicially created a relationship between the landscape and the human. The human’s behavior of dwelling became an appreciation of the nature and poetically.

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Soft – Water and Wind

Water is the soft element that balances this system. It is located at the northeast corner allowing the wind to low gracefully across the whole site. The water landscape also has an ecological impact on the site in addition to bringing a poetic component to the design as a whole.

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Materiality

Materiality Initial Concept Diagram

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Above Ground

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Poem of American Dream and Poetic Urbanism

Poem Folding Book - 12’’x12’’ Wood Hard Cover, Color Pencil on 80lbs Drawing Paper, All Poems and Drawings are the Work of the Author

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Poem of the American Dream A story my father told me, The land in the new world, has a diferent sun, the burning sun, harvest of my land, and me, dreaming in the old dream.

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Poem of Story 1 I dwell, one quarter acre land, I talk to it, I sing to it, just the tranquility of daily life and the sun.

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Poem of Story 2 I dwell, one acre land of my own, I watch the season, I listen to the time, the land shelters my dream.

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Poem of Story 3 I own the horizontal, piece of land, But I live vertically, I dwell, close to the sun.

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Poem of Story 4 City or Suburb, I dwell, with the others, we take care of our dream, together, it’s the land, that connect us, where we build our home called - America.

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Poem of End of the Horizon I stand in the vast land of harvest, I see the horizon, the sunset, at the end of the edge.

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Poem of Shadow and Light I walk on the street, between the shadow and light, to see and to be seen, the sun is in between.

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Poem of Ritual This is where the time begins, I read the sun, I know the time, the ritual of my life, the intimacy between me and the sun.

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Poem of Wandering I wander as the sun light, in the woods, there is the horizon and me, together.

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Poem of Verticality I stop wandering, I see a tower, so bright, no end, piercing the sky to the sun, rising, no end.

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REFRAMING THE NEW AMERICAN DREAM

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Poem of A Start

the land, I dwell, sheltering the dream the horizon, I wander, in the woods the vertical, I gaze, piercing the sky the ritual, I read, between me and the sun a daydream of intimacy and haziness a dream out of the old dream, the oblivious a life withdraw from the life, the trapped a story rewritten portrayed by the dwelling, the poetic the start of a new praying, understanding, interrelation and movement

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BIBLIOGRAPHY, NOTES AND ILLUSTRATION SOURCES

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Bibliography

1. Gaston Bachelard. The Poetics of Space. Beacon Press, 1994.

2. Robert Pogue Harrison. Forests: The Shadow of Civilization. University Of Chicago Press; 1 edition, March 1, 1993.

3. Yi-fu Tuan. Topophilia: A Study of Environmental Perception, Attitudes, and Values. Columbia University Press, 1974.

4. Martin Heidegger. “Building Dwelling Thinking.” in Poetry, Language, Thought, translated and introduction by Albert Hofstadter, edited by Martin Heidegger, Albert Hofstadter 141-159. HarperCollins Publishers Inc., 2001 5. Hardin, Garrett “The Tragedy of the Commons.” Science.

162(1968): 1243-1248.

6. Naveh, Zev “Ecosystem and Landscapes – A Critical Comparative Appraisal,” Journal of Landscape Ecology (2010), Vol: 3/No. 1 7. Adams, James Truslow. The Epic of America. Boston: Little, Brown, and Company, 1931.

8. Mackin, Anne. 2006. Americans and Their land: The House Built on Abundance. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.

9. Chakrabarti, Vishaan. A Country of Cities: A Manifesto for an Urban America. Metropolis Books, 2013.

10. McHarg, Ian L. Design with Nature. Garden City, N.Y.: Published for the American Museum of Natural History [by] the Natural History Press, 1969.

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11. Todd, Nancy Jack, and John Todd. From Eco-Cities to Living Machines: Principles of Ecological Design. Berkeley, Calif.: North Atlantic Books, 1994.

12. Butti, Ken, and John Perlin. A Golden Thread: 2500 Years of Solar Architecture and Technology. Palo Alto: Cheshire Books ;, 1980.

13. Maak, Niklas. Living Complex: From Zombie City to the New Communal. Munich: Hirmer, 2015.

14. Tocqueville, Alexis De, and Arthur Goldhammer. Democracy in America. New York: Library of America :, 2004.

15. Kunstler, James Howard. The Geography of Nowhere: The Rise and Decline of America’s Man-Made Landscape. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1993.

Notes

1. Daydreaming Shelter. Gaston Bachelard. The Poetics of Space. Beacon Press, 1994.

2. Mackin, Anne. 2006. Americans and Their land: The House Built on Abundance. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.

3. Adams, James Truslow. The Epic of America. Boston: Little, Brown, and Company, 1931.

4. (above 2) 5. (above 2) 6. (above 2) 7. Chakrabarti, Vishaan. A Country of Cities: A Manifesto for an Urban America. Metropolis Books, 2013 8. (above 2) 9. (above 7) 10. Tocqueville, Alexis De, and Arthur Goldhammer. Democracy in America. New York: Library of America, 2004.

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Illustration Sources

All illustrations, drawings, digital model renderings, diagrams and photographs not listed here are attributed to the author.

8. Cuban Missile Crisis. http://georgetownsecuritystudiesreview.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/cuban1.jpg 9. Suburban Sprawl. http://29.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_ l6yedpWEx71qzu4e6o1_500.jpg

1. Independence Declaration. https://mccallaamericanlit. iles.wordpress.com/2014/10/img_0369.jpg 2. The signing of the Declaration of Independence. https:// upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/15/Declaration_independence.jpg 3. Bounty-Land. http://genealogybybarry.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/Bounty-Land1.jpg 4. Homestead Act Certiicate. https://www.archives.gov/ education/lessons/homestead-act/images/homesteadcertiicate.jpg 5. A family Poses With the Wagon. http://3.bp.blogspot. com/-AC-Mv3uc3Ow/USWR07_vB9I/AAAAAAAADu8/ KTQu-0I-VhY/s400/Homestead.png 6. Homestead Act Poster. https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/236x/38/78/24/3878246b6605c459f9c84875d4 9e4f9e.jpg 7. Cold War Propaganda. https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/85/79/42/8579427c0b802ae7781febe2 bc496778.jpg

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10. Suburban Sprawl. https://sites.google.com/site/ m rd s p a l a ce / _ / r s rc / 1 4 1 9 2 1 5 3 1 8 8 2 0 / te s t / a r t i c l e 2615458-1D6D186700000578-248_964x769.jpg 11. Suburban Sprawl. http://www.classicmaz.com/uploads/4/7/4/5/4745535/4637870_orig.jpg 12. Suburban Sprawl. http://a4.iles.collegefashion.net/image/upload/c_fit,cs_srgb,dpr_1.0,h_1200,q_80,w_1200/ MTI4ODM2ODM1NjY4NjUyMDAy.jpg 13. Master Plan of Torsted Vest. Miguel Ruano. Eco Urbanism: Sustainable Human Settlements: 60 Case Studies. GG. 1999 14. Diagram. Miguel Ruano. Miguel Ruano. Eco Urbanism: Sustainable Human Settlements: 60 Case Studies. GG. 1999 15. Plan for Flexibility. Miguel Ruano. Eco Urbanism: Sustainable Human Settlements: 60 Case Studies. GG. 1999 16. Dwelling Units Solar Scale. Miguel Ruano. Eco Urbanism: Sustainable Human Settlements: 60 Case Studies. GG. 1999 17. Solar City Plan. Miguel Ruano. Eco Urbanism: Sustainable Human Settlements: 60 Case Studies. GG. 1999

18. Deserted Golf Greens into Solar Power Plants. http:// img.weburbanist.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/ green-goling-468x312.jpg

on silk. Palace Museum, Beijing. https://en.wikipedia.org/ wiki/Wang_Ximeng#/media/File:Wang_Ximeng_-_A_ Thousand_Li_of_River_(Bridge).jpg

19. Broadacre City, Frank Lloyd Wright. http://www.iconeye.com/images/2014/05/Frank-Lloyd-Wright.jpg 20. Broadacre City Illustrations by Fred Koetter & Ed Mitchell. http://cargocollective.com/dygg/Drawings 21. Autumn Colors along Rivers and Mountains (Zhao Boju, Chinese Painter, Song Dynasty, 960-1279) - Handscroll Section, ink and color on silk, 55.6 x 323.2 cm, Palace Museum, Beijing. https://upload.wikimedia.org/ wikipedia/commons/2/2b/Couleurs_d’automne_sur_les_ rivi%C3%A8res_et_montagnes_(d%C3%A9tail_1)_par_ Zhao_Boju.jpg 22. China Tang Dynasty Chang’an Planning. http://cdn2.gbtimes.com/cdn/farfuture/7FOXOARR29J7AOseeS3fEb5xH XFbw478ZD2wRhYfBjc/mtime:1398856514/sites/default/ files/styles/768_wide/public/2014/04/30/2014-04-28_ pdp_changan.jpg?itok=MT_phw-F 23. China Tang Dynasty Chang’an Residential Wards and City Grid. http://media-cdn.tripadvisor.com/media/daodao/photo-s/05/2a/0d/fa/caption.jpg 24. Aerial Map of Jason Meadow. Google Earth 25. Jason Meadow. http://www.jacksonmeadow.com/ 26. A Section of A Thousand Li of Rivers and Mountains, Wang Ximeng (1096–1119), Chinese Court Painter. Color

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