Elaine Stokes
Harvard Graduate School of Design Master of Landscape Architecture Candidate 2015 Portfolio
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Content Tuning : Landscape Core III Studio
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East New York Produce Loop : Open Space Option Studio
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Restructuring Deconstruction : Thesis [in progress]
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Tuning
Landscape Core III Studio : CityFLUX Professor : Chris Reed Partner : Christianna Bennett Site : Jamaica Bay, Brooklyn, New York Spring 2015 Tuning considers Broad Channel Island in Jamaica Bay as a site of transition and inversion. Faced with frequent threats of flooding, experienced most recently as a result of Hurricane Sandy, the island community presents an unique opportunity to develop alternative relationships between land and water in the bay by channeling sedimentation, currents, and tidal flux. Through an intervention utilizing a piling system to encourage sediment buildup and resculpting of the bay’s bathymetry, Tuning creates a bay-scape where land provides fortification for occupiable water-based communities. The flexibility of this system allows for movable structures and pathways that can adapt to seasonal weather conditions and can quickly be sheltered in the event of a storm surge and subsequently be quickly reconstructed. By working with the ecological patterns of Jamaica Bay rather than resisting them, Tuning establishes an innovative community where residents are intimately attuned to their surrounding environment.
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Opposite: Studies of Jamaica Bay, including historic dredge and sediment flow patterns, provided the foundation for specific sites of intervention. Right: A detail plan of the piling system, which provides the base for additional construction of pathways and frameworks for residential construction. Drumlins and small islands serve as wave breaks to protect occupied waters.
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Landform
Remediative Planting
Fluid Interface
Structure
As a method for categorizing the potential for various methods of intervention, Broad Channel Island and its surrounding waters were surveyed for existing conditions.
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Intersecting Forces : Landform & Remediative Plants
Merged Typologies Combined Interventions
D
1 : 300
Specific Typologies
B - Structures, 2 - Landform 1 light surface treatment paved lands, dynamic shorelands
A
1 : 25,000
B
Landform & Remediative Plants C - Plant, 2 - Landform 4 mild-high contamination and saltwater, open water
C
1 : 25,000
B - Structures, 2 - Landform 1 light surface treatment paved lands, dynamic shorelands
1 : 10,000
Structure Scale :
High density development
Plant Scale :
Open water
Low density development No runoff or salinity
Paved Impermeable / Coast Adjacent
Pond / Marsh Low Runoff & Salinity
Open water Mid Runoff & Salinity
Open field Intense Runoff & Salinity
Landform & Structure A - Plant, 3 - Landform, 5 mild contamination, open fields
B - Plant, 4 - Landform 1 contamination and saltwater, dynamic shorelands
C - Plant, 2 - Landform 4 mild-high contamination and saltwater, open water
A - Structures, 0 - Landform, 5 no structures, open fields
D - Plant 3 - Landform 1 mild contamination, dynamic shorelands
A - Fluid, 1 - Landform, 5 intense slope, open fields
Landform & Fluid Interface
Then, by overlaying the opportunity for each type of intervention (i.e. landform intensity and need for remediative plants, as seen on the above) initial prototypes for occupation were designed (at right).
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B - Fluid, 4 - Landform 1 coast, low density development
Additional prototypes were developed in the form of a catalog, providing a range of occupiable spaces with various densities across the bay. These interventions were also tested through physical model.
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More detailed prototypes were developed to demonstrate the interaction of the various elements designed in the landform and built form catalogs. Ultimately, these prototypes were combined to create a robust yet flexible water-based community, in tune with the hydrologic cycles of Jamaica Bay.
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East New York Produce Loop Brooklyn Open Space Studio Professor : Ken Smith Site : East New York, Brooklyn, New York Fall 2015
In addition to being a food desert, dozens of acres within the manufacturing district of East New York are covered with parking lots for school bus parking. This project redefines the manufacturing zone by changing its focus to food production. By converting over 40 acres of parking lots and vacant property to urban agricultural production and establishing interior agriculture and food packaging facilities in the adjacent warehouses, East New York has the potential to become a new food port for Brooklyn. Specifically, by converting school bus parking lots into agricultural land, this district can continue to serve East New York schools, albeit in a more productive way: providing an abundant supply of locally grown produce for school lunches. Additionally, the gray water output from the manufacturing district will be channeled into an extended bioswale for filtration, terminating in a retention pond that will provide water for the irrigation of nearby produce. Ultimately, this network of agricultural land and water filtration provides a new type of open space for the residents of East New York, where recreation, transportation, and production overlap to create a dynamic shared community space.
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Analysis of existing unoccupied land, focusing specifically on the Van Sinderen corridor along the West side of East New York, as well as the productivity of vegetable plants that grow in the New York area, served as the first steps towards understanding the volume of produce that could be expected to be generated through this network.
Atlantic
Varieties
Sutter
Phaseolus vulgaris Glycine max
Beta vulgaris
Brassica oleracea var. gemmifera
Brassica oleracea var. capitata
Yield per Acre (1,000’s of pounds) Yield per Student (supplying 5,000, or ~25%) Spacing
Livonia
Max Height Root Depth
w Ne
ts
Lo
Sites of Production : ENY BID School ENY BID Manufacturing Open Land -- Agricultural Production Manufacturing Building -- Interior Agriculture / Greenhouse 1 : 5,000
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Seasonality
290 green beans
4-8” x 24-36”
6.4 beets
4-6” x 22”
11.7 cups brussel sprouts 12-24” square
6 cabbages
15-18” x 30-36”
Daucus carota subsp. sativus
37.6 carrots
12-18” b/w rows
Brassica oleracea var. botrytis
2.5 heads cauliflower 18-24” x 36”
Zea mays L.
2.7 ears sweet corn
Brassica oleracea var. sabellica
32.5 cups kale
30” b/w rows
8-12” spacing
January
Allium porrum
Rubus L.
8.8 cups blackberries
16.1 leeks
16” x 36”
February
Allium cepa
36.6 onions
2-4’ - 4-10’
March
Capsicum anuum
16.5 peppers
16” x 36”
April
May
Solanum tuberosum
26.7 potatoes
12-18” spacing
June
Raphanus sativus
121.2 radishes
12 x 12-18”
July
1” x 12”
August
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Cucurbita pepo
September
Ipomoea batatas
6 squash
14.8 sweet potatoes
3-6’ spacing
12-18” x 36”
October
November
Solanum lycopersicum
48 tomatoes
36” x 48-60”
December
Malus domestica
12 apples 35’ square
To maximize food production, vertical and suspended growing is encouraged on paved lots, which also generates innovative growing practices within the Van Sinderen corridor.
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The retention pond serves a second purpose as an engaging public space, increasing public awareness of water treatment processes. By focusing development adjacent to the L subway stops, these public spaces are accessible to the local community and to visitors alike.
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Restructuring Deconstruction Thesis [in progress] Advisors : Jill Desimini, Rosetta Elkin, Gareth Doherty Site : Hodiamont Right-of-Way, St. Louis, MO Fall 2015
This thesis tests the interactions between ownership and occupation across boundaries in the urban landscape. While landscape architecture does not fill the role of the developer nor the politician, design proposals can operate across political lines and ownership boundaries, creating openings that might otherwise be considered closed or fixed. While boundaries may be necessary for society “to have its own individuality,” as J.B. Jackson declares, this does not imply that boundaries must continue to imitate their historical precedents. Rather, the boundary should become a prototype that responds to the unique characteristics of a particular place. In certain contexts, the boundary should not be fixed; instead, the flexibility of boundaries as used to describe plant communities and cultural regions can become the new precedent for land ownership boundaries in cities with an abundance of vacant land. This thesis operates at the neighborhood scale, considering it as a local region with loose edges that has the ability to impact its adjacencies. St. Louis will serve as the site of investigation, as the city itself sits at the intersection of a multitude of cultural and ecological regions. Considered as part of the Breadbasket, the Foundry, the Midlands, the South, the Rust Belt, and the Mississippi River Corridor, the city presents a rich context for study of cultural identity. At the same time, the evolution of St. Louis City’s social and political relationships with St. Louis County, expressed explicitly through the redrawing of municipal boundaries, adds another area for inquiry. Currently, the high proportion of vacant land provides the opening for landscape design to catalyze a shift in land ownership practices within the city. By focusing on the Hodiamont Right-of-Way, a site that bridges many soical and cultural zones, this thesis will develop a prototype for a landscape system where a mingling of new edge typologies will sculpt an alternative method of ownership and occupation of vacant land.
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An initial interest in Rust Belt cities and their trends of vacancy and waste recycling industries prompted the studies of several cities. Next, inspired by the notion that cultural regions, such as the Rust Belt (seen opposite) have flexible, evolving boundaries, research and readings focused on the way infrastructure and vacant space require new interpretations that allow for flexible and adaptable operations in cities with low population density.
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Left: The Hodiamont Right-of-Way adjacent to Gwen B. Giles Park, looking East. Visiting the site to capture video footage was a critical step in analyzing the site. Opposite: Organizing significant literature related to the thesis by lens and topic revealed links between seemingly disparate authors.
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Above: Land owned by the Land Reutilization Authority and vacant lots will serve as the initial sites of investigation and intervention. When considered as a network rather than a multitude of disparate parts, the Hodiamont Right-of-Way and its adjacent parcels have the potential to dramatically augment the social and ecological activity of its adjacent neighborhoods. Opposite: Potential partners, both public and private, are identified, considering their annual budgets and areas of focus in relation to operations along the Hodiamont.
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These prototypes explore initial methods to intervene within, across, and between parcel boundaries. Planting strategies that subvert edges are considered, as well as legal techniques for increasing shared ownership and occupation of land. Given these processes, certain maintenance strategies and local industries are proposed to be distributed along the Hodiamont Right-of-Way.
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