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REINVENTING MOBILITY IN BRISBANE Jackie Luk
The goal of the project is to increase the use of public transportation. The selected site, Toowong, is an important neighborhood midway between the Central Business District CBD and the University of Queensland—a very popular district inhabited largely by students. Only 24% of the population, however, use public transportation such as buses, ferries, and trains, while 46.7% use private transportation.
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The project looks at the elements of a typical travel journey and takes time of interchange as the premise of design. Operating at the scale of the city, removal/renewal of some of the existing physical and visual barriers and also insertion of new linkages are intended to create new connections between “home” and “station.” A typical journey is reformulated through the insertion of everyday activities and new activities such as exercising and swimming; the programmatic intervention will revitalize the existing transportation node and, in general, create a new image for the existing public-transportation system. 1 Typical Journey from Toowong to CBD 2 Site 3 Intervention at Toowong 4 Existing infrastructure at Toowong 5 Typical travel journey 6 Coronation Road 9:00 AM: before 7 New travel journey 8 Coronation Road 9:00 AM: after 9 Existing site section 10 Proposed site section 11 Circulation pattern at Toowong
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transforming a support into a column, a roof into a tympanum, before placing stone on stone, man placed the stone on the ground to recognize a site in the midst of an unknown universe; in order to take account of it and modify it.…” I have attempted to trace the recurrence of the megaform as a unifying environmental trope in 20th-century architecture and civic design in an effort to suggest that it may be one of the only formal legacies that remain available for the realistic mediation of the random megalopolis as an iterated form. Clearly not all the examples I have cited are pitched at the same scale or at an equal level of abstraction, nor do they possess the same potential feasibility, but despite these variations they all tend to blur in different ways the conventional differentiation between architecture and landscape. Like canals, railway cuttings, highways, dykes, and other artificial earthworks, they all have the potential of gathering up the contingent landscape around them by virtue of their anthrogeographic status, so much so that they may, at some juncture, appear to merge with the ground or alternatively to become, through their topographic presence, the status of being a landmark. A certain “kinetic horizontality” is almost a precondition for the emergence of such forms, and in this regard it is important to observe that free-standing high-rise structures, for all their rival potential as landmarks, do not attain the same anthrogeographic status, unless they happen to be of the same height and rhythmically linked in a compelling way at grade. While this may seem to be a prescription, verging on formalism, it should be evident that the arbitrary horizontal packaging of the program irrespective of content is not desirable. It is essential that our horizontal megaforms serve as civic microcosms, that they function as identifiable spaces of public appearance within the universal, everexpanding context of Melvin Webber’s “nonplace urban realm.” Hence it is not so difficult to adumbrate the programmatic types that seem to have the potential of engendering such forms. Aside from the unlikely prospect of being able achieve extended areas of low-rise, high-density housing, one thinks, in no particular order, of shopping malls, air terminals, transport interchanges, hospitals, hotels, sports facilities, and universities. A series of type-forms in fact that still have a certain currency, not to say urgency, within the ever-expanding domain of the megalopolis.
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PROPOSAL CU 115
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1 1 “arbor” sunshade 2 information panel 3 rail 4 bench
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2005 Toowong
TOP 50 COUNTRIES: GNI per capita 2003 Ranking Economy in US $ 1 / Bermuda / ..a 2 / Luxumborg / 43,940 3 / Norway / 43,350 4 / Switzerland / 39,880 5 / United States / 37,610 6 / Liechtenstein / ..a 7 / Japan / 34,510 8 / Denmark / 33,750 9 / Channel Islands / ..a 10 Iceland / 30,810 11 / Sweden / 28,840 12 / UK / 28,350 13 / Finland / 27,020 14 / Ireland / 26,960 15 / San Marino / ..a 16 / Austria / 26,720 17 / Cayman Islands / ..a 18 / Netherlands / 26,310 19 / Belgium / 25,820 20 / Monaco / ..a 21 / Hong Kong / 25,430 22 / Germany / 25,250 23 / France / 24,770 b 24 / Canada / 23,930 27 / Australia / 21,650
REINVENTING MOBILITY IN BRISBANE Jackie Luk
1 Modular units at the human scale MALE + FEMALE CHILD MALE FEMALE
2 Modular Arbor Unit 3 Modular Arbor Unit configurations 4 Threat: Affluent Death 5 Site section 6 Site section 7 Coronation Road 5:00PM: before 8 Coronation Road 5:00PM: after 4
TAMINg THE AUTOMObILE Sigurd Grava Among the many things that are common to Australians and Americans is not so much their affection for automobiles, because the desire to gain increased mobility has been the aspiration of every human being at all times, but rather the next step—the ability to acquire motor vehicles and to use them intensively in their daily lives. In Australia, there are 524 automobiles for each 1,000 residents (2003); in the United States, 465; in the United Kingdom, 451; and in Japan, 441 (2004). (World Road Statistics, 2006, International Road Federation.) Yet it is much safer to be on the road in Australia than in the United States. Traffic fatalities in 2005 per 100,000 population was 14 in the U.S., 8 in Australia, 7 in Japan, and 6 in Britain. (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, 2007.) Overview The development of the individually controlled, motorized, personal transportation device and its availability to a large portion of the population in advanced countries is one of the significant achievements of the 20th century. It has expanded the reach of its owners at least tenfold, and its attraction has been powerful enough for almost everybody to use it with no regrets. No other device has so changed the way people live, work, and spend their leisure time, or build their cities. Yet for much of the 20th century automobileowning societies have acted like overly doting parents of a child who don’t seeing the child’s shortcomings. There was an awakening starting in the late 1960s, and it became fashionable among the literati and scholars to condemn the vehicle and to envision settlements without cars—just smiling people strolling everywhere to accomplish their errands. The urban situation had, indeed, been brought to the edge of disaster, but the period that we have just lived through should be looked at as a transition phase during which we acquire understanding and learn to act rationally for the greater good.
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PROPOSAL CU 117
To consider banishing the car entirely or restricting its use severely over large areas is futile, because in a democratic society the people would not stand for it. It would be arrogant social engineering, because the overwhelming majority does not concur. To advocate the banning of cars may be somewhat analogous to advertising aromatherapy treatments—it makes for good copy and is probably harmless, but it may also divert a serious sufferer from seeking competent medical help. And to suppress car use severely even in cities would be wrong because the automobile is a splendid