Masters Thesis | Armature Urbanism by Heide Martin

University of Washington Abstract Armature Urbanism: Trail Design in the Contours of Metropolitan Infrastructure Heide S. Martin Chair of the Supervisory Committee: Assistant Professor Thaïsa Way Department of Landscape Architecture ‘Vacant’ and interstitial lands are prevalent in cities across the nation and the globe. They lie within previously dense residential or commercial cores and at the edges of urban developments and infrastructural frameworks. They are deﬁned by patterns of hydrology, topography, and other systems which limit development. This thesis reassesses the meaning and value of such lands in Seattle and examines ways that they can and do serve social and ecological functions within the urban fabric. I am interested in the unique and sometimes odd landscapes that evolve between the dramatic, dynamic edges of infrastructure, the intimately scaled and inhabited spaces of our cities, and the urban ecologies that deﬁne the city. This project explores how minimal interventions and design can make these spaces accessible while retaining their inherent character and richness. I have focused on the potential of the path as a minimal move, a thread that weaves together spaces, making place, without erasing existing character and yet offering access of a kind. I propose a multi-use trail that will connect the existing spur of a bicycle path known as the Chief Sealth Trail into the South Seattle and Downtown Seattle trail networks. By exploring the idea of a path, the richness of edges, and the potential of interstitial/forgotten land, this project suggests investigations of sustainability at a series of scales. The framework of a trail pushes design into the broadest levels of regional connectivity, while also necessitating attention to moments, transitions, and narrative. This project questions how “high performance” network level landscapes can be designed to remain accessible, emotive, and grounded in the textures of place, and demands an urgent recognition of the popular imagination of complex, transitional landscapes as places of inspiration, freedom, and mystery.

Armature Urbanism trail design in the contours of metropolitan infrastructure

heide s martin

Armature Urbanism: Trail Design in the Contours of Metropolitan Infrastructure Heide S Martin A thesis submitted in partial fulďŹ llment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Landscape Architecture University of Washington 2010 Program Authorized to Offer Degree: Department of Landscape Architecture

TABLE OF CONTENTS

PREFACE

xiv

INTRODUCTION

03 03.01 03.02 03.03 03.04

THEORY + LITERATURE landscape urbanism and layered infrastructures potential of the void trail design: legibility, traces, and narratives reading a deep geography of the city: methods and tools of psychogeography

04 04.01 04.02

EXPERIENCE + CRITIQUE understanding pathways: walking the line understanding pathways: materials, movement, form

PRINCIPLES OF DESIGN

06 06.01 06.02

APPROACHING DESIGN ďŹ nding + understanding the path(s) design goals and strategies

07 07.01 07.02

DESIGNING THE THREAD design of a narrative design of a moment

REFLECTION

149

BIBLIOGRAPHY

155

APPENDIX

163

LIST OF FIGURES7

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figure 1. figure 2. figure 3. figure 4. figure 5. figure 6. figure 7. figure 8. figure 9. figure 10. figure 11. figure 12. figure 13. figure 14. figure 15. figure 16. figure 17. figure 18. figure 19. figure 20. figure 21. figure 22. figure 23. figure 24. figure 25. figure 26. figure 27. figure 28. figure 29. figure 30. figure 31. figure 32. figure 33.

Rhône River: prexisting vegetation languages Rhône River: design of viaduct route Pointe de Hourdel : design of quarry waterscape plan view of Trinitat Cloverleaf Park aerial view of Trinitat Cloverleaf Park model of Trinitat Cloverleaf Park view into the circulation of the Trinitat Cloverleaf Park proposed Blue Thread and bike lanes that overlap it screening and exposing at once character of a dense urban site at Queens Plaza the Fremont Troll: activating Seattle “voids” abandoned workshop as gallery, performance space elevated walkways at Natur-Park Südgelände civic influence in the upper level of the park horizontal surfaces in upper level of park ‘feral nature’ in the lower level of the park paving textures in the lower level of the park Richard Long: A Line Made By Walking 1967 example of paving scheme of Cardinal Greenway mile marker along Cardinal Greenway The High Line in winter of 2000 The High Line in summer of 2000 elevated urban oasis: Promenade Plantée advertising to the High Line: a sign of success? buildings straddle the High Line, not touching it promenade as program, as motivation path winding around Lake Uri repaired railing: new contrasting with the old cleaning the erratics Descombs’ belvedere example of the Situationists’ artistic detournement The Naked City, 1957 Guide Psychogéographique de Paris, 1956

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figure 34. figure 35. figure 36. figure 37. figure 38. figure 39. figure 40. figure 41. figure 42. figure 43. figure 44. figure 45. figure 46. figure 47. figure 48. figure 49. figure 50. figure 51. figure 52. figure 53. figure 54. figure 55. figure 56. figure 57. figure 58. figure 59. figure 60. figure 61. figure 62. figure 63. figure 64. figure 65. figure 66.

Detroit desire lines: evidence of alternatives mapping the Motor City imagining the architecture of a line Stockport mapping Stockport mapping: detail practice of sensory deprivation in Newham sensory deprivation map of Newham: detail powerful impression of movement, mass, and society the High Line in 2000, prior to design changing relationship and urgency: 2010 BP oil leak qualities of infrastructural form, pattern, rhythm coin-operated public lighting structures in Rotterdam bridge as temporary bar/gallery in Magdeburg, DE time and “personal imprints” in Prague, CZ walking across the Wenatchee allowing for small discoveries and mysteries standing inside decaying snow shed tunnel clear, deﬁned pathways typical of lower trail relics within walking path path cutting along top of high concrete wall with dramatic edge altered perceptions of stage, show, space parade mascot or accidental symbol? view into complex landscape of ferns and highway infrastructure boardwalk into blueberry patch extreme monotony and confusion: a sidewalk? trail? which direction is appropriate? materials found along trail and in site architecture narrow gravel pathway cut into grass in Japanese garden loose gravel pathway meanders through a meadow landscape stop-motion sequence over elevated nature-protection area walkway materials which ﬁt into surrounding scene broken horizontal plane pulling horizon into vertical plane view of pilotis and tree trunks v

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69figure 34. 70figure 35. 70figure 36. 71figure 37. 71figure 38. 71figure 39. 72figure 40. 72figure 41. 72figure 42. 73figure 43. 73figure 44. 77figure 45. 78figure 46. 79figure 47. 80figure 48. 81figure 49. 82figure 50. 82figure 51. 83figure 52. 83figure 53. 83figure 54. 83figure 55. 83figure 56. 84figure 57. 84figure 58. 85figure 59. 87figure 60. 89figure 61. 93figure 62. 93figure 63. 93figure 64. 94figure 65. 95figure 66.

Detroit desire lines:figure evidence 67. of alternatives markings on concrete walls visually pulls into forest mapping the Motorfigure City 68. detail of steel planter imagining the architecture figure 69.of a line steel frame as sculptural detail and trail node Stockport mappingfigure 70. pulling eye into scene, allowance of “historic” form Stockport mapping:figure detail71. overlap between “existing” and designed space practice of sensoryfigure deprivation 72. in Newham clearing the site for construction sensory deprivation figure map73. of Newham: detail contrast between path and landscape powerful impression figure of movement, 74. mass, pathand form society as wayfinding device the High Line in 2000, figureprior 75. to design multiple relationships of path to site and use changing relationship figure and76.urgency: 2010 cobblestones BP oil leakand cut granite pavers, Copenhagen DK qualities of infrastructural figure 77. form, pattern,desire rhythm lines and movement through site coin-operated public figure lighting 78. structuresmap in Rotterdam of vacant lands, site highlighted with yellow bridge as temporary figure bar/gallery 79. in Magdeburg, aerial overview DE of site, key areas highlighted time and “personalfigure imprints” 80. in Prague,seattle’s CZ big parks walking across thefigure Wenatchee 81. tying the loose ends allowing for small discoveries figure 82. and mysteries shifts of meaning standing inside decaying figure 83. snow shed tunnel frames of reference clear, defined pathways figure typical 84. of lowerframes trail of reference: detail relics within walking figure path85. buildings path cutting along figure top of 86. high concretetopography wall with dramatic edge altered perceptionsfigure of stage, 87. show, space landslides + steep slopes parade mascot or figure accidental 88. symbol? parcels view into complex figure landscape 89. of ferns and soilshighway infrastructure boardwalk into blueberry figure 90. patch activities extreme monotonyfigure and confusion: 91. a sidewalk? ecologiestrail? which direction is appropriate? materials found along figure trail 94.and in site architecture edges, speed, sound, time narrow gravel pathway figurecut 95.into grass inmapping Japanese measures, garden meaning loose gravel pathway figure meanders 96. through space a meadow and texture landscape #1 stop-motion sequence figureover 97. elevated nature-protection addition/subtraction area walkway materials which fit figure into surrounding 98. scene trace of movement broken horizontal plane figure 99. massive overlap pulling horizon intofigure vertical 100. plane models of trail design strategies view of pilotis and figure tree trunks 101. marking site over time: ferdinand p-patch on site

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figure 102. figure 103. figure 104. figure 105. figure 106. figure 107. figure 108. figure 109. figure 110. figure 111. figure 112. figure 113. figure 114. figure 115. figure 116. figure 117. figure 118. figure 119. figure 120. figure 121. figure 122. figure 123. figure 124. figure 125. figure 126. figure 127. figure 128. figure 129. figure 130. figure 131. figure 132. figure 133. figure 134.

armature of complexity the overpass: impressions the jungle: impressions the corridor: impressions the overpass: character in section the jungle: character in section the corridor: character in section trail design matrix emotive map of site interventions: full map emotive map of site interventions: detail emotive map of site interventions: north end emotive map of site interventions: south end finding meaning of site: at the overpass finding meaning of site: at ferdinand p-patch finding meaning of site: at the overlook the aesthetic of discovery “Queen of the Wheel” demonstrating pleasure of bicycle movement in 1897 rail reach: Tully’s rail reach: rail houses railroad intersection I-5 underpass cut highway berm perch stormwater stair stormwater stair: cross section stormwater stair: plan view rubble pond overlook earth berm pass earth berm pass: section earth berm pass: plan view hunting the light hunting the light: section hunting the light: plan view overlook vii

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137 figure 102. 138 figure 103. 139 figure 104. 141 figure 105. 143 figure 106. 145 figure 107. 147 figure 108. 151 figure 109. 162 figure 110. 164 figure 111. 164 figure 112. 165 figure 113. 166 figure 114. 167 figure 115. 168 figure 116. figure 117. figure 118. figure 119. figure 120. figure 121. figure 122. figure 123. figure 124. figure 125. figure 126. figure 127. figure 128. figure 129. figure 130. figure 131. figure 132. figure 133. figure 134.

armature of complexity figure 135. elbow pass and overlook: section the overpass: impressions figure 136. elbow pass and overlook: plan view the jungle: impressions figure 137. bunker installation the corridor: impressions figure 138. frontyard forest the overpass: character figure in 139. section power line arches the jungle: character figure in section 140. emergent wetland boardwalk the corridor: character figurein141. section power line alternatives trail design matrix figure 142. focus and extension emotive map of site figure interventions: 145. full map wild cherry tree in bloom emotive map of site figure interventions: 146. detail midreview boards emotive map of site figure interventions: 147. north final endreview boards emotive map of site figure interventions: 148. south exhibition end boards for Barcelona European Landscape Biennial (full series) finding meaning offigure site: at149. the overpassexhibition board for Barcelona European Landscape Biennial (1 of 3) finding meaning offigure site: at150. ferdinand p-patch exhibition board for Barcelona European Landscape Biennial (2 of 3) finding meaning offigure site: at151. the overlookexhibition board for Barcelona European Landscape Biennial (3 of 3) the aesthetic of discovery “Queen of the Wheel” demonstrating pleasure of bicycle movement in 1897 rail reach: Tully’s rail reach: rail houses railroad intersection I-5 underpass cut highway berm perch stormwater stair stormwater stair: cross section stormwater stair: plan view rubble pond overlook earth berm pass earth berm pass: section earth berm pass: plan view hunting the light hunting the light: section hunting the light: plan view overlook viii

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figure 135 figure 136 figure 137 figure 138 figure 139 figure 140 figure 141 figure 142 figure 145 figure 146 figure 147 figure 148 figure 149 figure 150 figure 151

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I would like to express my sincerest thanks to my advisory committee for their support throughout the process of writing this thesis: to ThaĂŻsa Way, for her inspiring insight, knowledge, and ability to always ask the most appropriate and difďŹ cult questions of me; to Ben Spencer, for his keen eye, poetic design language, and constructive criticism; and to Joel Loveland, for his unfailing support and kind humor. I must also extend a special thanks to Jennifer Dee and to Garrett Devier, whose enthusiasm for and interest in my work was a constant motivation throughout my design process. I would also like to thank my family, who supported my long journey of becoming a landscape architect with humor and grace.

DEDICATION

f端r Sieglinde und Gerhard

xii

01 PREFACE

A Walk in The Jungle November 22, 2009

I park my car near the end of the power line corridor, at its visual intersection with the freeway rushing below, just beyond the ridge. It is a sunny day, but the space feels vacant, wide, yawning. I walk up into the line of the transmission corridor, where it stabs into the surrounding neighborhoods. The void of the corridor seems to rise and fall indeﬁnitely, the topography of the transmission lines opening and closing onto the topography of the landscape itself – rising up to meet the pylons, falling down again, flattening, arching, stretching. The landscape exists like a series of plates below the power lines and the land appears to have been cut, flattened, and built up to meet the transmission pylons as needed. The buttressed slopes between the plates are often quite steep, nearly impossible to walk up. I have to climb on all fours. The houses which back up on or face onto the corridor do so awkwardly – they seem defenseless against the imposing scale and form of the high voltage structures, somehow appearing fragile and almost out of place. Some homeowners have reconciled themselves with the vast corridor by appropriating the space for their own use – gardens spill into it, challenging its anonymous presence. Here and there, desire lines exist as markers of daily routines, cutting across and through the transmission corridor. Their narrow curved lines are delicate and abstractly anonymous, like animal tracks in the forest. Who was here? Where were they going? When will they pass by again? I climb back down from the transmission line to the edge of the freeway that exists as a droning squeal beyond a fence and a mass of brambles. Heading north, parallel to the freeway corridor, I begin to walk down a sidewalk towards a dead end sign at the opening of a small residential street. The sidewalk, wide and flat at the start of my walk, deteriorates quickly as I walk toward the dead end. While the road is still clear, the sidewalk is slowly eroding from lack of use – moss, leaves, and clumps of grass eat away at its edges. Soon I have to step from the sidewalk altogether, as the overlay of mosses, wet leaves, shifting soil, and crumbling concrete make it too slippery and uneven, even for the hiking boots I am wearing. Walking along the narrow road I follow it until its end, where a steel fence carries another dead end sign as well as a sign warning against illegal dumping. An odd, dense tangle of vegetation lies beyond it. A battered pickup truck appearing to be held together with a series of bumper stickers (“I get paid weekly very weakly” “Obama 2008”) stands parked next to the fence and in front of the last house on the street. It gives me a moment of pause. Am I going to be alone past the fence? I reach into my coat pocket to make sure my cell phone is there. I pull my hat closer over my face, and then step around the gaping fence. My heart is pounding, though I am not sure why. From fear, anticipation, the transgression? The road erodes quickly as I walk into the dead end. Moss and leaves cover the asphalt, save for two parallel paths that look like they have been cut by automobile tires and, I guess, maintained by the steps of local dog walkers and hikers. The rush of the highway is still present, but is now punctuated periodically by the squawk and flutter of birds in the trees. As I walk along the eroded street, the contrast between the formal logic of the street grid is pressed upon xiv

everywhere by the chaotic flush of the emergent forest. I nearly stumble over a manhole cover, whose face has morphed with the additional layers of mosses and vegetation. A willow tree has forced its roots through the pavement, and the street bulges and buckles along its growth. Soon, the street disappears entirely, but the footpath continues ahead into the woods and undergrowth. The ground is soft as I step off of the crumbling street edge, and my feet sink into layers of vegetation and spongy forest decay. My own rustling steps are now clearly audible over the drone of the freeway, and I can no longer see even glimpses of the cars passing below the ridge. I follow the trail through the forest until it begins to fork and fade into the landscape. As the vegetation grows thicker around me, I suddenly remember the battered pickup again, and I am gripped by an oppressive sense of fear. A woman should not walk alone here, I have been told. I am surprised by the fear â&#x20AC;&#x201C; as someone who has traveled and lived alone often, I am used to overcoming fear so that it will not limit my freedom. Frustrated and annoyed, I turn to retrace my steps, walking quickly this time and not stopping to photograph or sketch. As I walk, I imagine what it would take to feel safe here, and how I could feel safe without detracting from the thrill of the fear itself. Was the fear oppressive now only because the unknown was so great? Was the fear based on my own solitude and my own vulnerability as a woman unarmed? Could the thrill of fear and the liberating sense of safety coexist here? Once I pass from the wooded trail onto the deteriorating stretch of road, my fear subsides considerably. The openness of the roadbed, however rough and uneven it is, allows for an overview that is calming. I can see ahead of me to the opening formed by the gate itself, and occasional breaks in the vegetation allow for views of the freeway passing below. The mix of fear and wonder the walk through the woods invoked was so distinct from the experience of walking under the powerful, anonymous power lines. My frustration of not being able to enjoy the woods simply because of my gender was both annoying and exhilarating. There are possibilities here. I will have to come back soon.

xvi

02 INTRODUCTION

What is to be done with these enormous voids, with their imprecise limits and vague deﬁnition? Art’s reaction . . . is to preserve these alternative, strange spaces. . . . Architecture’s destiny [by contrast] has always been colonization, the imposing of limits, order, and form, the introduction into strange space of the elements of identity necessary to make it recognizable, identical, universal. (Solà Morales-Rubió 1994) We saw the path was a way of researching the landscape, of experimenting with the alternatively big and little things with the often overlooked and neglected – blades of grass, flowers, stones, tree roots, small streams, and so on. I recognized that I could not carry out the practice of building I was accustomed to; this place demanded a totally different attitude. (Georges Descombes 1999)

I begin this work with two quotes that illustrate the complexity of the project I selected to explore in my thesis: the design of a trail network through a series of interstitial spaces located in the fringes of metropolitan-scaled infrastructure systems. The site I chose to address is complex and contradictory: it is brutal and loud, measured and amorphous, mysterious and abstract, legible and frightening. It is marked by a high tension power corridor, English ivy and Himalayan blackberry-choked forests, mounds of discarded concrete and twisted steel, shallowly buried gas lines, a silent rail freight spur, and an interstate highway system that stretches from Canada to Mexico. It is also defined by dramatic vistas and overlooks, tangled and carefully tended community gardens, rogue compost piles and bee hives, well-worn dog-walking paths, wild cherry trees, and a lusciously errant Camellia vine. More than any place I have studied or designed, this place has eluded definition, defied expectations, and conflated summations. The space demands design that is more art than architecture; it necessitates a practice of and attitude toward building that is able to stretch between its aggression and vulnerability. My program for this space – or better, for this series of overlapping spaces – also requires a distinct design approach. I propose a series of multi-use trails as such a program responds to these complicated splinters of land that stretch between and knit together densely urban and highly contradictory terrains. Commonly mapped as “vacant” and viewed as “voids,” these lands are often linear in nature and exist within the seams of cities, functioning as corridors, borders, and buffers. As a programmatic approach, a trail fits within the physical and geographical realities of these landscapes; as a conceptual framework, a trail, as a foot path, allows for an exploration of the corporal experience of moving through these complicated lands. Designing a trail necessitates a delicate balance of scales and an awareness of the relationships between these scales and the influences they can have on the experience of space. A trail is in many cases thought of as a line pulling together two unique points, as simply a way to move from one event to another within a sequence. And yet, as Descombes articulated during his design of a portion of the Swiss Way, a pathway is also a story of the landscape, a narrative of its histories and the depths of all things “big and little” found there. Pathways knit territory, measure scales of reference, and mark accretions of desire and motivation through time. I developed my topic of study and chose my site because trails are more than simple wayfinding tools, rather they offer unique design challenges and valuable, flexible public spaces. Interstitial lands are more than “enormous voids” within the city waiting to become legible, recognizable, and useful; I see these

landscapes as a form of fragile, rich public space. The relationship I find between these two topics – the trail as design typology, the interstitial space as site – is a relationship embedded in current urban evolutions and growth patterns, and one that is critical yet regrettably peripheral to our profession. Designers and urban planners are increasingly tasked to do very much with very little; we are carving public space from the existing framework of the city, and the reclaimed slivers are often those that are found in and along the thick edges and imprecise boundaries that Solà Morales-Rubió describes above. As we simultaneously change the way we move through cities and our transportation infrastructure becomes increasingly recognized as bloated and out of scale with urban life, those slivers take shape: they are found in the shadows of derelict viaducts, in the footprints of silent rail corridors, at the margins of oversized freeways, and in the right-of-ways of power and utility lines. These are often difficult spaces, mysterious relics or half-ruins that have complex ecological and cultural identities. Boston’s Central Artery, New York’s High Line, Philadelphia’s Reading Viaduct, and Seattle’s Alaskan Way Viaduct: through agonizingly slow and politically-fraught processes, many of these linear systems are being or have already been reclaimed as public space. Linear parks, greenways, and trail networks are becoming increasingly central as public space typologies, yet our profession is slow to engage in rigorous, spatially-conscious debate about how these spaces are understood, researched, and designed. The popularity of recent projects such as the High Line illustrate the potential of the pathway and the promenade to engage the public; minimally programmed and physically constrained, the High Line engages the visitor in movement through space, in the simple pleasure that can be found in moving through the city. As I was developing my thesis, I was introduced to the work of the Situationist International, a group of urban theorists and revolutionaries who in mid-century Paris studied how cities and urban life evolved with the advent of capitalism and the automobile. As popular culture begins to reevaluate our relationship with the automobile and questions the value of unbridled capitalism, the work of the Situationist International becomes increasingly salient; I found value in their theories for approaching the design of trails and design within interstitial spaces. The Situationists were searching for something beyond the spectacle and what they saw as the associated alienation of consumption and emptiness of the modern world. The Situationists were struggling for the Paris of the 1950s that was quickly disappearing under the thrust of redevelopment and “sanitation.” The Paris that they appreciated was the in-between Paris, the accidental Paris, the Paris of messy edges and “voids” exemplified by terrain vauge qualities and thrilling “sums of possibilities.” They conducted dérives of the urban fabric, purposeful wanderings that they argued had the potential to reveal the lived maps of the city, the informal pathways and networks that defined urban life. The dérive, unlike the blunt tools of the aerial photograph or cartographer’s map, would allow the participant to understand the true patterns of urban life that were experienced at a much finer grain, to understand the cities “psychogeographical relief” and the “constant currents, fixed points, and vortexes” of which it is composed. (Debord 22) I find value in these theories of the Situationist International in approaching the design of interstitial landscapes – in the network of the city, these spaces might be eddies, or tidal pools, among the “fixed vortexes and currents” of historical development. These spaces reflect the growth and change of the city and their marginalized condition measures the continual becoming of the city, our constant struggle to find a model of “sustainable development” that is driven by creativity, sensibility, and inspiration rather than responsibility, rationality, and guilt. Designing within these “in-between” spaces requires an intense sensitivity to their role in the defined, delineated city – these spaces have no prescribed meaning but possess instead imbedded, heterogeneous meaning that allow room to breathe, to grow, to question. In addressing trail design, the concept of the dérive intrigued me as a way to study the terrain and the way it is currently fits into the surrounding landscape and neighboring communities. The dérive

also presented a design challenge for me – how can you design a trail in a way that it feels as if it should be, while also giving people a sense of discovery and exploration? How can you mark a path that continues to be novel and surprising always, yet also consistently familiar and “right”? This thesis explores the design of trails and interstitial spaces through a process that is built on a theoretical base underpinned by walks and wanderings of trails and marginalized landscapes that are marked by the influence of infrastructure. I applied the knowledge gained through empirical and experimental research to articulate a set of design principles that can be used when approaching design in interstitial spaces. I also developed of a series of site-specific analytical tools and design methods that I employed in the design of a trail network in southeast Seattle. The design proposal that is presented in the final chapters of this thesis does not claim to be “finished”, nor do I desire it to be regarded as such. The design interventions I have proposed are necessarily ambiguous, transitory, and in flux; attempting to straddle art and architecture, discovery and design, memory and artifact.

03 THEORY + LITERATURE

In order to approach the design of a trail through urban interstitial land in Seattle, I developed a review of the literature that would allow me to address the site and to situate my design response within a theoretical framework. I decided to concentrate on interstitial spaces, speciﬁcally at the edge of urban infrastructure, because I was interested in exploring and expanding my own concept of what “sustainability” could mean in contemporary cities. I wanted to focus on the design of a trail because I feel that urban trail systems will be increasingly relevant as planners, designers, and urban inhabitants seek alternative ways to move through and experience cities in the post-auto era. Finally, I was interested in exploring alternative ideas of representation of site experience, analysis and design, and how these alternative representations might influence how a site is read or interpreted. These objectives have framed my research. In this review of the literature, I divided my research into four categories, and present each of these categories with an overall framework and a set of case studies. These four categories include: landscape urbanism and layered infrastructures; potential of the void; trail design: legibility, traces, and narratives; and, reading a deep geography of the city: methods and tools of psychogeography. Over the course of this project I have found these categories to be intensely overlapping and intertwined – a topic that I shall return to during my reflection on the design process.

03.01 landscape urbanism and layered infrastructures

Over the past decade or so, the development of both theory and practice in landscape architecture have signaled changes in the way we, as designers, understand the role of the profession, particularly in its relation to infrastructure and the larger urban framework. The work of landscape architects is increasingly devoted to the exploration of the processes that shape the function and evolution of a site and its networks, not just the ﬁnal “product” or design. These changes relate to and reflect evolutions of thought and practice concerned with what constitutes “good” planning and design in highly livable cities. The failures and unfortunate miscalculations of modernist urban planning and design have been criticized by urban theorists and designers for decades. In the 1960s, the discipline came under ﬁre from those who argued for more vibrant, flexible cities, such as urban theorist Jane Jacobs, who critiqued the stifling, deadening realities that resulted from modernist and City Beautiful planning practices. Jacobs was particularly critical of the compartmentalized view modern planning took to city organization, a separation of uses that led to dangerously dead zones within the urban fabric. Landscape architect and educator James Corner has argued that the discipline of landscape architecture has much to offer urban theory and that “thematics of organization, dynamic interaction, ecology, and technique” make possible “a looser, emergent urbanism, more akin to the real complexity of cities and offering an alternative to the rigid mechanisms of centralist planning.”(Corner, “Terra Fluxus” 23) Chris Waldheim, current chair of the landscape architecture department at the Harvard Graduate School of Design and editor of The Landscape Urbanism Reader, considers one of the primary advantages of landscape urbanism to be found in “the conflation, integration, and fluid exchange between (natural) environmental and (engineered) infrastructural systems.” (Waldheim 43) Landscape urbanism offers a “lens” though which to view the city, an understanding of metabolic patterns that “emulate natural systems.” (Waldheim 43) This “integration” and “fluid exchange” has inspired increasing numbers of designers, including West 8, Field Operations, DIRT Studio, and Hargreaves Associates, as well as architects including Bernard Tschumi and Rem Koolhaus. Early precedents for this integrated, matrix-oriented thought can be found in the work of French landscape team Desvigne & Dalnoky, who in the 1980s developed works that strove for authenticity in form and function: “Building a ‘pretty’ land would be very strange,” observed Desvigne. (Delluc 14) Projects for the Thom-

son Factory, the Rhône River rail viaducts (figures 1 & 2), and the Pointe de Hourdel quarries (figure 3) are examples of “landscape manifestos” that aim to work with and through the aesthetics and form of infrastructure frames to create systems that are dynamic and flexible, rooted in an awareness of time and history: of memory.1 Philosopher Sébastien Marot has commented that the work of the French design team represents a shift in viewing the site as the material of design, rather than as a place for design – a moment where “the site is no longer considered merely the landing place for a project, but begins to take on the sense of being a departure point itself.”(Marot 7) To create dialogue that Waldheim describes – between an introduced design and a site’s existing set of systems and flows, whether manufactured or natural, infrastructural or biological – necessitates this first step of recognizing site as memory and root of design. Landscape designer and educator Elizabeth Mossop, in her contribution to Waldheim’s reader, Landscapes of Infrastructure, argues that landscape architects have an opportunity to address issues of urbanism within an ecological framework, a mindset that was advanced as early as Olmsted but thwarted by a divided theory of discourse. She points out that in landscape architecture the longstanding and opposing paradigms of the McHargian School and a narrowly design-focused practice have limited the profession. The two paradigms have divided themselves theoretically (ecology, sustainability, and science versus art, design, and development) and in terms of scale (large-scale environmental planning versus site-based design).(Mossop 169) Neither of these approaches has been able to “engage with urbanism” and truly find a balance between ecology and design. She argues that with the emergence of landscape urbanism, the lines between these two schools have begun to 1 It is interesting also to examine the graphic representation used by Desvigne & Dalnoky: complex, shifted mappings are typical of their site analysis and design diagrams. These recall recently popular graphic styles explored in design schools through examples of work by James Corner (see Taking Measures Across the American Landscape 1996) and Mathur and Cunha (see Mississippi Floods, 2001 and Deccan Traverses, 2006). Do the concepts of landscape urbanism require alternative languages of graphic and site exploration?

ﬁgure 1.

Rhône River: prexisting vegetation languages Desvigne & Dalnoky studio

ﬁgure 2.

Rhône River: design of viaduct route Desvigne & Dalnoky studio

become blurred with shifting understandings of the naturalness of “nature” and humans’ role in and relationship with it. Hybrid typologies have necessarily been developed, both for understanding nature and for deﬁning the role of designers. She urges an understanding of landscape as an infrastructure that underlies other urban and natural systems, revealing relationships between urban morphology, hydrology, and topography. Such an understanding, she argues, will enable us to make the necessary design shifts in the infrastructure of our cities. Mossop considers one of the biggest challenges and opportunities to be found in the relationship that our cities have with automobiles. A reexamination of infrastructural space involves the recognition that all types of space are valuable, not just the privileged spaces of more traditional parks and squares, and they must therefore be inhabitable in a meaningful way. (Mossop 174) She describes ways in that designers have been able to take a more “civilizing” approach to the development of freeways, road networks, and parking lots.(Mossop 173-176) Understanding these infrastructures as potentials for open spaces that allow for differing speeds of human motion can be seen reflected in the development of the linear park typology.

ﬁgure 3.

Pointe de Hourdel : design of quarry waterscape Desvigne & Dalnoky studio

In developing the contemporary interest in linear parks, designers can again look to the precedents set by Frederick Law Olmsted. Linear parks – boulevards, parkways, and greenways – were explored in the mid to late 1800s by Olmsted in cities including Seattle and Atlanta. Parkways were primarily shaped by the social and aesthetic concerns of the day, and were conceived of as a way to provide access to landscape parks bringing their influence into cities.(Hellmund & Smith) Olmsted’s later design of Boston’s Emerald Necklace (1878-1890), expanded upon these considerations to address issues of drainage, water quality, and patchwork linkages.(Ahern) This concept of a hybrid, multifunctional linear park saw resurgence in the late 1980s when professionals and academics began to explore what greenway and open space planner R.M Searns has called “Generation 3” greenways: multi-purpose networks that pursue objectives such as habitat protection, flood hazard reduction, water quality, historic preservation, education, and interpretation.2 2

R.M. Searns has classiﬁed three generations of greenways. Frederick Law Olm-

The meaning and function of these types of parks changed with the golden era of the automobile, when accommodations for the automobile began to upset balances of speed, scale, and efﬁciency in roadway design away from a scale that had been most sensitive to people. In the early 1990s, landscape architect Diana Balmori wrote about the ways in which the role of parks and open space was changing in America, and in this change she recognized the potential for a ‘new’ type of park, the linear park. These linear parks were distinct from those designed by Olmsted; in part because they were direct results of and responses to the ways that transportation infrastructure had shaped our cities over the past 100 years. Balmori introduces linear parks as representatives of a fourth type of narrative of the American landscape, a narrative that is able to “forecast change in the nature of national identity.”(Balmori 44) By changing the way we understand transportation, the linear park assumes the “narrative power” that once belonged to the railroad, then the automobile, and, most recently, the airplane.(Balmori 44) The contemporary linear parks envisaged and designed by Balmori and others are new hybrids which have to carve space out of fractured urban landscapes, often following the footprint of abandoned rail corridors, polluted and armored rivers, or bloated auto infrastructure. By occupying residual spaces inherently layered with patterns of the American relationship with the landscape, these types of parks provide opportunities for designers to explore “the conflation, integration, and fluid exchange between (natural) environmental and (engineered) infrastructural systems” that are characteristic of landscape urbanism.(Waldheim 43) The case studies that follow were selected as they demonstrate ways which designers have sought to reinterpret this relationship of exchange.

sted is generally credited with developing the ﬁrst predecessors to the modern US greenway in the early 1860s, the leisure parkway (Generation 1 greenways). 1965 to 1985 saw the rapid development of Generation 2 greenways, which were guided primarily by goals of recreation and human access to “nature”, rather than principles of ecological health. Generation 3 greenways are the hybrid, multifunctional landscape discussed above, which were developed in response to a rising national interest in open space protection, as well an increase in popular consciousness regarding issues related to degrading natural habitat, increasing pollution, and threatened water quality.

ﬁgure 4.

plan view of Trinitat Cloverleaf Park www.demakerealestate.blogspot.com

ﬁgure 5.

aerial view of Trinitat Cloverleaf Park www.demakerealestate.blogspot.com

Trinitat Cloverleaf Park and the Cinturón Ring Road, Barcelona Enric Batle, Joan Roig; Oriol Bohigas

ﬁgure 6.

ﬁgure 7.

model of Trinitat Cloverleaf Park www.vulgare.net

view into the circulation of the Trinitat Cloverleaf Park www.demakerealestate.blogspot.com

One of the most oft-cited examples of landscape urbanism as conceptualized on a city-wide scale is that of Barcelona. Barcelona’s is a culturally unique situation – after the fall of Franco’s totalitarian government in 1975, director of culture Oriol Bohigas and his young hires at the city planning agencies were able to take lead and strongly influence the re-making of Barcelona until the mid 1990s.(Ingersoll 116) Bohigas intended to “interrupt the old and counterproductive dichotomy between urbanism and the politics of public works” and to “approach urbanism with the tools of public works; build an urbanism that is capable of uniting and harmonizing the projects of urbanization.”(Ingersoll 116) A city strongly influenced by the works of Antonio Gaudi and Joan Miró, every act of infrastructure was treated as an opportunity for art and social improvement, with many projects infused with a “mixture of abstraction and surrealism.”(Ingersoll 117) In 1992, the selection of Barcelona for the Olympics motivated a series of infrastructural improvements. The Cinturón ring road is well-known for the way that infrastructure is balanced with landscape, an effort that Waldheim notes as unique for the way it resulted in a “more complex synthesis of requirements” than traditional engineering projects, “in which neither civil engineering nor landscape dominate.”(Waldheim 45) This balance has led many critics to praise the highway project; architect and urban designer Jacqueline Tatom, in her essay Urban Highways and the Reluctant Public Realm, thanks the planners and designers for “picking up where Halprin left off” and “rediscovering a theoretical continuity in the concept of urban roadways as public space.”(Tatom 184) The highway is trenched and embedded in the landscape, and parks were introduced as “connective tissue where the road had caused a fracture.”(Ingersoll 120; Shannon 147) One such park, Trinitat Cloverleaf Park, was introduced at a dense freeway interchange, and the park master plan includes a small lake, tennis courts, playgrounds, and orchards (ﬁgure 4). The design follows the curves of the surrounding freeway, and a layered organization system makes it possible to ﬁt a large variety of

uses in a condensed space (ﬁgures 5, 6 & 7). Designed by Enric Batle and Joan Roig, the project is acknowledged by Tatom and others for its innovation, but on a practical level some claim that the experience of the park itself is lacking; architectural and urban design historian Richard Ingersoll writes that: “Despite the good intentions to create at La Trinitat a green ﬁlter for the ferocious interchange, the noise, speed and fumes are frankly overwhelming, and the park’s users are somewhat at risk even from the acoustic pollution.”(120-121) An early example of integrating infrastructure more deeply into the urban fabric, Trinitat is held up as a model project, one that is examined for its flaws and challenges as well as for its successes. While the case of Trinitat is interesting for its distillation of the concepts of landscape urbanism, it is somewhat limiting as a precedent for my work because it is an integrated project, conceived and developed in tandem with the highway itself, rather than as an insertion into an existing framework. The following case study provides such an example.

Queens Plaza Bicycle and Pedestrian Landscape Improvement Project, NYC WRT Design, Marpillero Pollak Architects, artist Michael Singe

Queens Plaza, located at the foot of the Queensboro Bridge linking Queens and Manhattan, is an area in New York City that has evolved over the last century to become one of the city’s most dense transportation hubs. It exists today as complex infrastructural web of layered streets, bridges, subways, and elevated train lines that serve thousands of pedestrians, bikers, drivers, and mass transit riders every day. In 2001, the NYC Planning Department designated the area a new Central Business District, which in turn led to the development of an international design competition that asked entrants to reinvent the Plaza “in ways that would improve its environmental integrity and embody the new economy of information and cultural exchange.”(“Van Alen Institute - Queens Plaza: An Open Ideas Competition”) Integration with the existing site infrastructure was a key for the design competition, and designers were challenged to embrace “the largest design questions of a society still relying on the old infrastructure of transport, even as it connect(s) to the new infrastructure of communication.” (Ford 90) Though the competition and winning design have faced criticism, particularly due to the low levels of input and influence from local residents, the winning design by WRT Design, Marpillero Pollak Architects, Margie Ruddick, and artist Michael Singe offers examples of how designers can work within complex, highly urban infrastructure landscapes. It is also the ﬁrst example of a design that has followed the High Performance Infrastructure Guidelines, a precedent-setting document that was published by the NYC Department of Design and Construction in October of 2005. The project is primarily a pedestrian and bicycle infrastructure improvement. The designers decided to work with the existing infrastructure of the site, to treat the rumbling of the trains and the scale of the structures as part of the palette they had to work with, rather than something that should be hidden or neutralized. In an interview, the designers spoke of the surprising fact that many of the design proposal graphics of other ﬁrms did not even include im-

ages of the elevated train structures that dominate the site.3 Designer Sandro Marpillero claims that the design attempts a take on sustainability that is based on an alternative to traditional historic preservation: “I think our attitude about recycling or salvage is much more about being able to see how existing pieces of our cities, of our buildings, can perform in relationship to new operational challenges. It’s not so much a matter of preserving and invoking the past as model, as of reframing the role that existing sites and buildings and infrastructures can have.”(“Urban Omnibus - Queens Plaza”)

ﬁgure 8.

proposed Blue Thread and bike lanes that overlap it www.urbanomnibus.com

The designers have proposed to introduce a stormwater treatment system they dub the “Blue Thread”, which runs from the plaza to the waterfront. The stormwater system is composed of a series of narrow vegetated “slivers” which filter and channel stormwater from the subway stations and the Queensboro Bridge. The “Blue Thread” supports a bike and pedestrian lane, and the vegetation serves to also buffer people from the noise and pollution of nearby auto traffic (figure 8). However, protection from infrastructure was not seen as a goal of the design, but rather one approach in a set of complementary strategies. At times the designers aimed to balance exposure to heighten the appreciation of the infrastructure itself (figure 9). For example, voids in the train trestle were highlighted with mesh screens and light, allowing the structure to become an “urban canopy” and a place, an action designed to allow “the imminent arrival of a train (to) become an event (and)…part of public space, not a noisome distraction from it.” (“Urban Omnibus - Queens Plaza”) The designers strove to create a design that could help create awareness “about the immense resource that a piece of infrastructure can be.” (“Urban Omnibus - Queens Plaza”) At the time of this writing, construction work on Queens Plaza is in its initial stages. It remains to be seen if the project will suffer the same criticism that has faced Trinitat, particularly in the balance the designers sought between exposure to and protection from the gritty, noisy qualities of the site. The

ﬁgure 9.

screening and exposing at once www.wrtdesign.com

3 The RFP was put out in 2002, and my guess that this balance of graphic and design strategies would be much different today.

designers at Queens have attempted to challenge the anticipated division between “natural” landscapes and manufactured or highly urbanized landscapes, and public reactions to the design itself have been mixed. It remains to be seen how far the balance lies within the hybrid.

ﬁgure 10.

character of a dense urban site at Queens Plaza www.urbanomnibus.com

03.02 potential of the void

As illustrated above, concepts of integrating interstitial spaces into a discussion of urban design and planning are closely related to discussions of the role of infrastructure within the contemporary city. One aspect of this relationship is the fact that, as discussed earlier, many interstitial spaces are formed by the edges and voids left by infrastructure development. Architectural theorist and author Grahame Shane, in his article The Emergence of Landscape Urbanism: Reflections on Stalking Detroit, discusses the potentials of landscape urbanism and it’s “openness to new combinations” in addressing vacant lots and other spaces where cities “shrink and die back into the landscape.”(Shane 2) Another aspect of the relationship is that both integrated infrastructures and interstitial spaces are characterized by gritty, wild aesthetics that challenge conventional concepts of beauty, order, and the “correct” organization of urban life as reflected in rational, modernist planning schemes so abhorred by theorists such as Jane Jacobs. Landscape designer and educator Christophe Girot writes about the possibilities and difficulties of “wastelands”, or “zones of conspicuous neglect” that emerge when nature meets the hard lines of city and industry; the mystery and inspiration that exists in this “other nature”, having inspired the likes of Pissaro, Henti Cartier Bresson, and Robert Doisneau.(Girot) This is not the manicured garden of the Italian baroque or the cultivated pastoral landscape, but rather a defiant symbol of the strength of beauty and nature over adversity. In the discussion of urban interstitial spaces, a question has remained central – how can these spaces be integrated into the larger urban fabric while still retaining their wild, independent, and oddly inspiring characteristics? Many theorists, designers, and individualist “urban pioneers” have struggled to define a balance. In the 1990s, architect, critic, and educator Ignaci de Solà-Morales Rubio began to use the term terrain vagues to describe urban interstitial spaces, and he explored their meaning and role in the city through his ‘Anyone’ series together with prominent contemporaries such as Rem Koolhaus, Peter Eisenman, and André Glucksman.(O’Loan) The French term has subtle duplicities of meaning: vague has carries the meaning of “vacant, void, devoid of activity, unproductive” as well as a sense of something that is “imprecise, undefined, without fixed limits, without a clear future.” (Ignasi Solà-Morales Rubió 23) Solà-Morales considered this term appropriate for landscapes that carry similarly contrasting meanings; these are landscapes that, in the words of photographer and artist Joan Fontcuberta, exist at “the intersection of two stages: the before and after, that which is still functional with that which is already useless, the exuberance of urban vitality [and] the melancholy of its humblest relic.”(Fontcuberta 267) Solà-Morales considers terrain vagues to be “spaces of freedom” that allow people contact with memories, histories, and possibilities, and in so doing act as an antidote to the “banal, productivist present” that was critiqued by Jacobs and others; he encourages a sensitive design approach to these values.(Ignasi Solà-Morales Rubió 23) Author and educator Tim Edensor refers this unique characteristic of terrain vagues (particularly in reference to brownfields and industrial relics) as a “modern gothic” that allows for a certain relationship with a disquieting sublime: “these pleasures are of a vicarious engagement with fear and a confrontation with the unspeakable and one’s own vulnerability and mortality, a diversion which is also a way of confronting death and danger and imagining it in order to disarm it, to name and articulate it in order to deal with it.”(Edensor 15) He argues that redevelopments of these spaces should not treat them as “wastelands”, but should rather respect the qualities that allow them to exist as alternatives to highly regulated urban spaces. Landscape architectural professors (University of Sheffield) and theorists Anna Jorgensen and Marian Tylecote have explored interstitial urban spaces through an examination of the cultural meanings of the spontaneous plant communities that develop in such landscapes. Their analysis is useful for under-

standing the human/nature duality of these spaces; a similar duality exists in what theorist Elizabeth Meyer and designer Julie Bargman have referred to as the often “dissonant beauty” of sites disturbed by the infrastructure needs of human settlement.(Meyer) Jorgensen and Tylecote argue that our historically separated concepts of the natural and the urban make the wilderness of interstitial spaces difﬁcult to culturally understand, but that it is precisely this cognitive break that creates the greatest value of these spaces and lessons for an urban planning and design status quo that needs to become more temporal, dynamic, and regenerative.(Jorgensen & Tylecote) Jorgensen and Tylecote argue that interstitial spaces, and particularly the spontaneous vegetation that often characterizes them, can be considered “obviously hybridized” spaces because they do not ﬁt our conceptions of the lines between humans and nature, between cities and wilderness.(Jorgensen & Tylecote 458) This hybrid identity necessitates viewing nature and urban environments as necessarily linked and interdependent, and it can make visible the active aspect of landscape, the identity of the landscape that James Corner has termed one of “time, network, event, and production.”(Corner, “The Obscene (American) Landscape” 12) The ‘wild’ characteristic of interstitial spaces and vacant lands that distinguishes them from the more rigidly programmed urban spaces lend them a flexibility of use and allows multiple meanings for different social groups. Architectural theorists Karen A. Franck and Quentin Stevens in their anthology Loose Space: Possibility and Diversity in Urban Life, describe “loose space” as occurring where “the assigned use for a landscape type ends” and new users are able to appropriate these spaces for new uses through “freedom of choice.”(Jorgensen & Tylecote 452) These sites then allow for “alternative ways of being and doing” that are not scripted or controlled by outside authority.(Imrie 1117) Gilbert has coined the term “urban commons” to describe this functioning of contemporary vacant lands, a phrase intended to invoke the tendency of “human ecology” to “opportunistically stake a claim to available territory.”(Jorgensen & Tylecote 455) These opportunistic alternatives can have surprising, creative results, as illustrated in the recent compilation

ﬁgure 11.

the Fremont Troll: activating Seattle “voids” author

published by the City of Berlin titled Urban Pioneers: Temporary Use and Urban Development in Berlin (2007). This book contains interviews with several prominent “pioneers” and urban designers, and includes profiles of projects that range from campgrounds, gardens, and horse pastures to skate parks, outdoor theatres, and even a ski run.(Senatsverwaltung für Stadtentwicklung (Berlin, Germany) 48-98) These projects are often approved by the local authorities – who typically own the land – through the granting of licenses needed to make the use legal and permissible, but the projects often come about quite organically as people move into underutilized spaces with the intention to carve out something new, something they are missing in the formal city. This tendency for people to appropriate underused spaces can help address problems that may not have been previously addressed or even recognized by city planners or designers. University of Washington professor Daniel Winterbottom explains this potential in the City of Seattle: In Seattle, the rediscovery of residual spaces is helping to address a number of problems. One is the fragmentation of neighborhoods through insensitive siting of arterials, bridges, freeway ramps and strip development. Another concern is that as infill housing projects are built, the amount of informal open space available to communities is decreasing. Meanwhile, budgets for public land acquisition are shrinking, and voters have proven less willing to fund parkland projects. (Winterbottom 40) Winterbottom recognizes that not only do these spaces allow people to recognize and fulfill needs within their neighborhoods, they also can act as agents of social development. Because they are often spaces where no immediate plan or use is foreseen, they can provide “reasonable and immediate opportunities for linkages and readaptive open space uses” for communities who take initiative (figure 11). (Winterbottom 41) The qualities of interstitial spaces or terrain vagues as discussed above – flexibility, wild beauty, layered meanings – are qualities that are often missing in the neat, prescribed uses of our cleanly zoned cities. Solà-Morales encour-

ages us to consider these qualities when addressing these lands, in order to allow for space within the city for openness, questions, for the development of new memories and the rising of old ones. Jorgensen and Tylecote write that these spaces allow us to ask questions of the “relentless production, reproduction, consumption (and destruction) of over-programmed urban environments” and they challenge us, as designers, to take risks in the development of approaches to these spaces.(Jorgensen & Tylecote 460) The following case studies explore how designers have addressed this challenge.

Natur-Park Südgelände, Berlin Andreas Langer, ÖkoCon & Planland

Natur-Park Südgelände, while relatively unknown to American audiences, has become well-known in Europe in recent years, and is considered by some to be “one of the most remarkable urban landscapes of the last decade” for its innovative implementation, design, and management strategies. (Hazendonk, Hendriks, & Venema 53) The park exists on a former railyard on the southern border of Berlin’s inner core, and is located in the district of Schöneberg-Templehof. Train service to the large railyard was discontinued in 1952, and although some of the repair shops remained in service, the majority of the 18 hectare site was slowly overtaken by natural plant succession. In 1981 and 1991, research by Berlin’s urban ecologists revealed that the “nature of the fourth kind” that had developed in the railyard was an incredibly species-rich mix of dry grasslands, tall herbs, shrub vegetation, and individual woodlands.(Kowarik & Langer 288) When a new railway station development was proposed in the area by the city in the early 1980s, local residents who had begun to think of the area as a local park protested with the argument that the city needed to protect the unique plant community that had taken over the abandoned site. Construction plans for the new rail station were halted, and in 1999, a portion of the site was recognized as a Naturschutzgebiet (nature protection area), becoming one of the ﬁst conservation areas in Germany where an urban-industrial landscape was protected and made accessible to the public.(Muller) Landscape architects working on the site saw themselves more as managers than designers, and conducted careful inventory of the plant and animal species in order to be able to enhance and support the natural evolution that had already begun.(Langer) Their research revealed a high level of biodiversity, including several rare and endangered species native to the area. A primary challenge for the designers was to conserve the naturally evolved landscape that existed on site while also allowing for access to the area by the public. They approached this challenge by basing the master plan on a

ﬁgure 12.

abandoned workshop as gallery, performance space author

model of “simultaneity of culture and wilderness, of distance and nearness to the visitor.”(Kowarik & Langer 291) This was achieved through instituting three types of ‘zones’ within the park as follows: “’”clearings” are to be kept free of shrubs over the long term; stands that are light and open are to be maintained as “groves”; in the “wild woods” the natural dynamics can proceed fully unfettered.”(Kowarik & Langer 296) For much of the park, people are able to move about freely amongst the vegetation and the paths that are formed by the old rail lines; one third of the park is designated as a nature protection area, and elevated translucent walkways were created in order to guide visitors through and protect the ecosystem (ﬁgure 13). A second challenge for designers was to balance nature and culture, and to allow the history and evolution of the site to become visible through change. Some railway relics were restored, including the water tower that continues to serve as a landmark of the area. The park designers collaborated with a group of artists to create art installations throughout the park, including the walkways in the nature protection area. The old buildings were either “surrendered to a controlled decay” or used for artists’ studios and exhibits (ﬁgure 12).(Kowarik & Langer 297) The approaches that designers took on this site, balancing redevelopment, preservation, and continual change and evolution, is a unique approach that has created a dynamic landscape that manages to preserve some of the characteristics of its time as a true terrain vague within the urban landscape, and in so doing has potentially increased awareness of the value of these spaces, both ecologically and culturally. As stated by the designers: “to wake Sleeping Beauty...means to open the urban wilderness to a multitude of visitors who did not have an inherent sympathy for the nature of abandoned areas.” (Kowarik & Langer 297)

ﬁgure 13.

elevated walkways at Natur-Park Südgelände author

Allegheny Riverfront Park, Pittsburg Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates

The Allegany Riverfront Park (ARP) is an example of a park that maximizes the potential of a seemingly unusable interstitial urban fragment. The park, completed in 2001, was commissioned by the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust, whose mission is to: “convert 14 contiguous blocks of the red-light district into the city’s Cultural District by restoring and rehabilitating old buildings into performing-arts venues and filling in with new buildings, parks, and plazas.”(Freeman) The multi-level park, squeezed between an armored river and a multiple-lane freeway, exemplifies the challenges of contemporary parks that are often carved out of dense, layered infrastructure networks. In discussing the first site visit, Michael Van Valkenburgh describes a forgotten, marginalized landscape: “We wandered around the dirty, gritty, noisy, impossibly thin reality of the site’s width. There was a six-lane highway on the upper level and a four-lane highway on the lower level with parking. … It was a piece of land that nobody would think twice about.”(Amidon 35) The designers, working together with artist Ann Hamilton, transformed this site into a community asset that makes maximum use of the marginalized space while attempting to remain honest to its intensely urban character.

ﬁgure 14.

civic influence in the upper level of the park Jane Amidon

ﬁgure 15.

horizontal surfaces in upper level of park Jane Amidon

The MVVA design team recognized three landscape paradigms that existed on the site and that they wanted to reveal and enhance in the ﬁnal site design. These include: the infrastructural, deﬁned by the highway and its ramps, bridges, and abutments; the natural, dominated by the river and its floodplain; and, the civic, due to the strong presence of existing cultural district at the upper edge of the park (Amidon 53). They also had to creatively work with the narrow, vertical nature of the site, thus it exists as a set of scissoring, layered landscapes –an upper level reflects the civic character of the site, and a lower level concedes to and is consumed by the river and its floods. To reveal the desired characteristics, the design team employed a strategy they dubbed “hypernature,” where they exaggerated the natural palette found on site in order to compensate for the limited scale of the narrow strips

of land. The plants and materiality of the upper and lower levels differ substantially, but complement one another well. Figures 14 and 15 show the ‘civic’ character of the upper site – an orderly plantation of London Plane trees and ﬁnely ordered slabs of native bluestone paving. The lower level is characterized by more ‘wild’ plantings that evolve through the influences of the river’s freezes and floods, and roughly textured concrete paving shaped by the impressions of bull rushes (ﬁgures 16 & 17).

ﬁgure 16.

‘feral nature’ in the lower level of the park Jane Amidon

ﬁgure 17.

paving textures in the lower level of the park Jane Amidon

The case study of the Allegheny Riverfront Park differs dramatically from Natur-Park Südgelände. There is far less ambiguity and flexibility in the ﬁnal design, which is due in part to the more highly urban nature of the site. However, both studies demonstrate approaches within the spectrum of urban interstitial space design, and both employ sensitive and site-relevant design strategies. While the Allegheny Riverfront Park is arguably quite “neat” and “clean,” subtle design decisions succeed in lending the site a mystery and ambiguity that references the transitional nature of the space. The two parks may appeal to different audiences, but I feel that their deeper intentions and impacts remain quite similar.

03.03 trail design: legibility, traces, and narratives

In discussions of landscape urbanism, as in those concerning terrain vagues, questions of reading the underlying landscape patterns and site histories often arise. How can design communicate and make legible the history of a place, expose the forces that have and will continue to shape it? How can the often rich palimpsest of urban sites be revealed in a way that allows for mystery, new memories and inspired questions of: what is this place? As we strive to shape the relics of our aggressive industrial processes into new, healthy, and relevant landscapes, it may be difficult to resist the impulse to create a tabula rasa – easy, uncomplicated, clean. But in that way we lose the richness of the story, and eliminate the memory of what got us here. “Restoring a landscape does not mean putting it back into its original state,” declares critic and educator Melanie Hauxner, “but making the processes that shaped it become visible, making it understandable.” (Hauxner) The design of trails and trail networks presents an interesting overlap with the questions of exposing narratives, histories, and site trajectories over time. The linear nature of trails creates a narrative structure that is both physical and experiential – the experience of moving along a trail or path is an experience of site that by definition has a beginning, middle, and end. Trails demand that a designer understands and forms a relatively narrow experience of place over time that is primarily understood as the body moves through a series of spaces. While landscape design demands that a designer shapes movement through space and considers how this movement will be appreciated and experienced, trail design can be thought of as an extreme distillation of this aspect of design. The narrow nature of trails limits elements of physical design to an extremely confined amount of space, while the linear, A-to-B aspect of trails affords the designer an uncommon amount of control in the way people move through and experience site narrative and sequencing. Furthermore, many trails have extreme control over access, and the designer determines the exact moments of entry and exit, and by extension also strongly impacts the amount of time that is actually spent on the trail. The amount of control a designer has over the sequence and scope of experience in trail design can be creatively and playfully manipulated to allow for rich and varied experiences, but also can have a deadening, limiting effect when seen as a strictly linear, singular narrative. Because of the control afforded the designer in influencing sequencing and narrative, there seems to be a temptation to design for a single beginning, middle, and end of the story, as if all users would experience and read the site(s) the same way. Both approaches will be discussed here. Through the process of conducting a review of the literature discussing trails, it became clear that there is a relative lack of research and critical review of trail creation as a matter of design, rather than one of planning. An illustration of this can be seen in the results of an Avery Index search for articles with “trails” or “trail design” as keywords. In the periodical of the American Society of Landscape Architects, Landscape Architecture Magazine (LAM), 34 articles mention “trails” or “trail design” from 1925 to the present. Of these only 16 deal with the planning or design of trails themselves, and of this number only a handful address the physical , experiential aspects of trail design. One of these articles, titled Winning with Rail Trails carries the byline “award winters suggest guidelines for trail planning and design.” The guidelines are presented along with examples of case studies; the guidelines include: practice responsible environmental design; create transit links; consider rails with trails; rehabilitate and reuse historic infrastructure; aim for interest and variety; design to reflect community character (Donovan). The last category, design to reflect community character, focuses specifically on design in detail. The case study used for this example is the Cardinal Greenway in Indiana, designed by Claire Bennett Associates and recipient of the Rails-to-Trails Conservancy “Innovative Design Incorporating Community Character” award (figures 19 & 20) (“National Planning Awards 2006”). In this example, the designers studied local vernacular

Ahern, Jack. “Greenways in the USA.” Ecological networks and greenways : concept, design, implementation. Ed. R Jongman. Cambridge UK ;;New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004. Print.

Amidon, Jane. Michael Van Valkenburgh Allegheny Riverfront Park. 1st ed. New York NY: Princeton Architectural Press, 2005. Print.

Balmori, Diana. “A New Kind of Park.” Landscape transformed. Ed. Academy Editions. London ;Lanham Md.: Academy Editions ;;Distributed to

architecture in order to create a design language they applied to “seating, fencing, pavement treatments, signage, lighting, bridges, interpretive areas, markers, and trash receptacles” along the greenway’s 60 mile length (Donovan 79). According the LAM article, the design features are unified along the length of the trail, but in order to respond to the variety of communities the trail passes through “each county has its own color scheme for local identification” (emphasis added)(Donovan 79). Without studying the trail’s design in detail it is impossible to make a qualitative evaluation of the trail’s quality and uniqueness, but it is possible to criticize the LAM article for highlighting a color scheme as benchmark strategy for site-sensitive, relevant trail design. It is difficult to imagine that the same standard of evaluation would be applied to the design concept of a park, public plaza, or campus. Another example of this disregard for the importance of design and materiality in trail construction can be seen in a second LAM article titled The Subtle Side of Texas, with the byline “In a state where constant driving makes one oblivious to the nuances of landscape, a new trail system says, “Slow down and look” (Chusid)”. Despite the language used in the title and byline of this article, there is no mention of which aspects of the trail’s design will inspire people to “slow down” or “look” at this new side of Texas the trail is providing access to. The only mention of the materiality of the 91.5 mile trail is in the description of the “four types of trail” that will comprise the system, such as the “12-foot wide concrete trail [which] marks the primary loops and their connections to regional trails (Chusid 56).” Again, it is difficult to imagine that a similarly static reportage of any other significant public space could be considered a comprehensive and adequate level of description.

the trade in the USA by National Book Network, 1996. 44-47. Print.

Bowring, Jacky. “Lament for a Lost Landscape: The ﬁgure 18.

Richard Long: A Line Made By Walking 1967 High Line Is Missing Its Melancholy Richard Long

Beauty..”

Interest in trails and trail design has ebbed and flowed over the last century or so, and is closely linked to the popularity and design of greenways and linear parks. Why is there historically so little discussion of the design of trails, particularly of design with a capital “D”? I believe this is in part due to the massive planning efforts that trails require, particularly those which cross through a number of municipalities, cities, or even countries. The scale characteristic of trails seems to set them more ﬁrmly within the realm of the

planning profession. I also feel that the narrow, somewhat limiting nature of trails as a surface for manipulation, as a plane upon which to place a “Design” is another reason trail design has long existed at the edge between the planning and design professions. Trails typically do not lend themselves well to abstract design statements – oftentimes they are secondary to the scenes to which they pass through, or are regulated to exist as a line connecting two more impressive dots. Yet it is encouraging to see that interest in trails and linear parks has risen significantly in the last few years – specifically, there has been a rising appreciation of the value of design in the creation of narratives and sequential trail experiences. This rise in the design of linear networks parallels with a rising interest in repurposing and reinterpreting spaces at the edges of infrastructure, sometimes in the very footprint of obsolete structures (Boston’s Big Dig, NYC’s High Line). (Gisolfi) The rise in interest among designers and planners may be primarily due to several recent, high profile projects in the United States and internationally. In the United States, New York City’s High Line, Atlanta’s Ring Road, and Houston’s Buffalo Bayou Promenade are projects that have raised interest among designers and the public alike. Internationally, the most significant project of the last decade may be Norway’s National Tourist Routes, a massive county-wide trail project that will be completed in 2015. The High Line will be explored here in detail; additionally, I will discuss the design of The Swiss Way, a Swiss project that earned similar levels of recognition amongst designers and theorists when it was designed in the 1980s, and which can still be held as a standard for relevant and sensitive trail design today.

ﬁgure 19.

example of paving scheme of Cardinal Greenway www.cbastudios.net

ﬁgure 20.

mile marker along Cardinal Greenway www.cbastudios.net

The High Line, NYC James Corner Field Operations, with Diller Scoﬁdio + Renfro

ﬁgure 21.

ﬁgure 22.

The High Line in winter of 2000 John Sternﬁeld

The High Line in summer of 2000 John Sternﬁeld

The High Line is arguably the most highly publicized work of landscape architecture of the last decade, perhaps even of the last half century. In an era of quickly traded opinions, news, and images, the story of the High Line as crumbling rail trestle turned glimmering urban boardwalk is a compelling one, and one that has managed to capture the attention of designers and critics as well as the imagination of the public. The High Line provides an interesting precedent for trail design because in many ways the image of this narrow, cleanly detailed public park is very different than the image most people think of when they imagine a “trail.” Yet the park is in its most simple form a pedestrian-only promenade, an urban trail design typology that has all but disappeared in American cities with the advent of the automobile. For my own purposes, the High Line is also an interesting precedent because it demonstrates an example of repurposing an infrastructural relic for public use, and the complex balance that exists when introducing a design to such a site while attempting to retain its pre-design character and mystery. There has been so much written about the High Line in journals, magazines, blogs, and newspapers that it is difficult to imagine that my readers would not be familiar with the basic history of the project, so only a brief introduction will be outlined here. This park is built upon the structure of an elevated rail trestle that cuts through twenty-two blocks of the West Side of Manhattan, in New York’s Chelsea neighborhood. The rail trestle was constructed in the 1930s with the purpose of moving freight quickly through the city; by the 1980s the line was no longer in use and the structure had fallen into disuse and disrepair, a useless liability in the eyes of many developers and city officials. Yet in the years after the trains stopped running the High Line also began to evolve into a landscape of the sort that had inspired Cartier Bresson and Doisneau – it had grown into a hybrid wilderness, clinging to and pulling at the edges of what we see as “natural” and what we see as “cultural”, denying the divide and pricking at the imagination. Celebrated photographer John Sternfield published a collection of stunning images that highlighted the

melancholy of the High Line and the emergent prairie ecosystems that flourished there, seemingly oblivious to the stark history of the land they inhabited (figures 21 & 22). The release of John Sternfield’s images closely paralleled with the founding of Friends of the High Line, a grassroots organization that was created in 1999 by tech consultant Robert Hammond and travel writer Joshua David with the ambitious aim of preserving the structure from demolition and inspiring future uses for it. The organization quickly gained political and public support for their goals as interest in the High Line grew, and in 2003 an open international design competition was launched by the Friends with an RFP that drew 720 entries from over 30 countries. The entries were imaginative and varied; extreme concepts included a design for a miles-long public swimming pool (Nathalie Rinne; Vienna, Austria) and an undisturbed nature preserve (Matthew Greer and Karin Taylor; New York, New York). It can be surmised that the majority of the design teams studied and drew from the example of the High Lines’ most obvious and prominent predecessor, Paris’ elevated Promenade Plantée (figure 23). The winning entry by James Corner Field Operations with Diller Scofidio + Renfro directly referenced and was inspired by the existing character of the site that had been captured by Sternfield. The design team statement from the competition brief reflects the language often used to describe Sternfield’s photos: Inspired by the melancholic, unruly beauty of the High Line, where nature has reclaimed a once-vital piece of urban infrastructure, the team retools this industrial conveyance into a post-industrial instrument of leisure, life, and growth. By changing the rules of engagement between plant life and pedestrians, our strategy of agri-tecture combines organic and building materials into a blend of changing proportions that accommodates the wild, the cultivated, the intimate, and the hyper-social. In stark contrast to the speed of Hudson River Park, this parallel linear experience is marked by slowness, distraction and an other-worldliness that preserves the strange character of the High Line. Providing flexibility and responsiveness to the changing needs, opportunities, and desires of the dynamic context, our proposal is designed to remain perpetually unfinished, sustaining emergent growth and

ﬁgure 23.

elevated urban oasis: Promenade Plantée www.mirevistadeviajes.wordpress.com

change over time. The first segment of the High Line opened in June 2009 and the reactions by critics and the public has been largely positive, though there is much debate as to whether or not the Field Operations team managed to retain the “other-worldliness” of the rail trestle as it existed prior to development. There was little retained from the existing site, which was essentially stripped to the base of the rail structure before being reconstructed. The custom furniture is crisp and modern, referencing the rail infrastructure that once existed but built from entirely new materials and introduced forms. The paving is constructed from a series of interlocking planks that recall the proportions of the rail line, and that pull the materials from the city into the surface of the park. Some critics have commented that the results are too neat and simple, lacking the complexity of the systems it replaced; Professor Julie Bowring (Lincoln University) describes the design with an aggravated sense of loss: The graffiti is painted over, the entire infrastructure of rails and ballast is new, the old material was stripped out, the structure relined, and sections of rails returned as representative fragments. The vegetation is a “corrected” version of nature, removing the plants that had slowly formed a secret wilderness, and the site furniture is highly refined and sophisticated, as far from a ruin as one could imagine. There is something cadaverous in all of this – like landscape taxidermy, the wild landscape is hunted, killed, stuffed, and then given the semblance of life, but with glassy eyes and groomed fur. (127-128) Other critics are far more forgiving about the results. Journalist Alex Ulan, in a lengthy article appearing in Landscape Architecture Magazine, praises the balance between “wild” and more traditional aspects of the design: Nature appears in a seemingly random and untamed fashion on the High Line…In some areas, wild grasses and flowering plants grow up through the cracks between the planks in a fashion that is reminiscent of the former railway landscape, and in other places the walkway opens up completely to reveal sections of the structure’s original rail tracks over grown with plantings.

Nothing is typical up here…Along with the innovative planking system and the custom-made furnishings that provide a coherent identity for the promenade, a series of distinctive environments that look like nothing you have ever seen in a park before waits to be discovered. (94) The delirious enthusiasm expressed by Ulan is not atypical of the comments that have been made about the High Line since its construction, yet there are a near equal number of comments that carry Bowring’s tone. These widely contrasting opinions of the design’s effectiveness at communicating the “original” nature of the site highlight the complexity of working on sites such as the High Line, and indicate the cultural and emotional charge that these types of sites can have. In a decade or so the thought that the High Line was ever a novel concept will have faded, and we can assume that these types of projects will become much more commonplace. As the design of the park matures, and as it is reflected in projects yet unbuilt, it will be interesting to see how the reactions to it also evolve. Will it become a benchmark for how interstitial spaces are designed, how the “void” is “reclaimed”? Or will it become a marker of a time when we did not yet understand the potential and vulnerability of the unruly, unordered, and illegible corners of our cities? As mentioned earlier, another aspect of the High Line has motivated me to use it as a case study here – it’s identity as an urban promenade. Another series of future questions tie to its form as an urban promenade, as a narrow linear park that perches prettily upon a powerful relic of a time past – will the High Line revive the importance of the promenade and urban trail system in the American city? Will its popularity invigorate the desires and rights of the walking citizen over the automobiles, buses, and other machines that move us through yet divide us from the life of the city? Unlike most parks, the High Line has nearly no programming – there is no jungle gym, no tennis court, no picnic tables, no rose beds, no band shell. It is also unlike pedestrianized streets through New York or any other major city today – there are no shop windows, no vendors, no trafﬁc lights, and no interaction with cars or other

vehicles. And unlike other urban trail systems, the design is not conducive to the recreation typically valued on trails, namely biking and jogging. The High Line is, essentially, a slow path through the city; it is a sequence of spaces to move through while being alternately exposed to and sheltered from the city and its trafﬁc, noise, and human complexity. It is a place to view the city, to view others, a place to stroll or to sit alone or with others. Is this enough? Since its opening the park has proved to be enormously popular among native New Yorkers and tourists alike, with volunteers having to limit access during peak hours. Yet there are those who doubt that its popularity will outlive its novelty; Ethan Kent, president of the Project for Public Spaces, has questioned if the park can exist simply and solely as a promenade – without the typical amenities and programming of a contemporary urban park, he asks, “will people go back and ﬁnd regular reasons to be there?”(Ulam & Cantor, Steven L. 96) It remains to be seen if enthusiasm for the High Line will mature into a lasting appreciation for it as it exists today, or if it will indeed need to evolve and provide the visitor with “something to do” in the future. The billboards that have begun to speckle its edges are unique evidence of its popularity and of its role as an urban pathway that – save these billboards – is relatively free from the consumptive spectacle of the modern city. The continued success of this elevated parkway could provide a strong argument for the importance to again prioritize the movement of people through our cities, and highlight the pleasure that can be found in simply moving through space – anticipating a view, a moment, a passing. The High Line has gained attention and praise for its once-innovative use of an infrastructural frame, but I anticipate that it is a re-appreciation for the grateful simplicity and liveliness of the promenade, a re-discovery of the adventure of the path, that will have the most lasting influence on our profession and our cities.

ﬁgure 24.

advertising to the High Line: a sign of success? www.c-monster.net

ﬁgure 25.

buildings straddle the High Line, not touching it Matthew Mcdermott

ﬁgure 26.

promenade as program, as motivation Steven L. Cantor

The Swiss Way, Brunnen to Morschach, Switzerland Georges Descombes, Richard Long, Max Neuhaus, Carmen Perrin, et al.

In a search for literature discussing theories of design behind trails and walkways, it quickly became apparent that the only project about which any significant scholarly research and criticism has been written is the Swiss Way. The footpath winds twenty-one miles around Lake Uri and was designed in 1986 to commemorate the 700th anniversary of the Swiss confederation (figure 27). The concept behind the trail is to represent the diversity and variety of the twenty-six Swiss cantons in a sequential experience that leads from the oldest members of the confederation (Uri, Schwyz and Unterwalden) to the most recent (Jura). The length of each section of the trail is proportional to its population, and these range from four miles dedicated to Zurich to only 233 feet representing the sparsely populated canton of Appenzell. Each canton was responsible for commissioning artists, architects, landscape architects, and planners to design their portion of the trail through an open ideas competition. The concept behind this idea for a trail is quite interesting, if not altogether unique. What is significant about the trail is the design of the mile and a half portion that leads from Morschach to Brunnen. This section of the pathway represents Geneva, and was designed by landscape architect Georges Descombes in collaboration with artists Richard Long, Max Neuhaus, and Carmen Perrin. The designers were supported and informed by a larger team of scientists, botanists, ecologists, historians, and geographers.

ﬁgure 27.

path winding around Lake Uri www.weg-der-schweiz.ch

The goal of the design team in creating the footpath was to work lightly on the landscape, not creating anything new but instead allowing its history and character to be discovered by the walker. They did not aim to instruct the visitor or to provide a prescribed itinerary, but to rather “stir the emotions of people who use it” and to allow “passers-by to be attracted by the [existing] things themselves, not by particular lessons.”(Morin & Petrilli, Amedeo 15) Three principles guided the design: (1) Add nothing new to the existing confusion of the site (2) Amplify certain potentials of the place, and (3) Respond economically to functional requirements (ie, guaranteed route, views, and

safety). (Descombes, “Shifting Sites: The Swiss Way, Geneva” 83) This set of principles led the designers to highlight their intervention on the landscape as something distinct from the landscape itself, which already had a history as a walking path whose framework was fading and nearly forgotten. Where an original wood railing had rotted, it was replaced with a length of steel tubing; where a stone step had eroded, it was replaced with a metal tread (ﬁgure 28). The path allows the visitor to discover this history of terrain when moving through it; the design pushes and pulls the attention of the walker between the immediate and historic details of the trail, the path surfaces itself, and the wider landscape beyond. The experience of the trail as described by critic and historian Marc Treib:

ﬁgure 28.

repaired railing: new contrasting with the old Morin & Petrilli

The principle idea, Descombes once said, was to use a broom. The design of the walk would be less a totally new creation than a revelation of that which had once been, in this case an early nineteenth-century Napoleonic road long derelict and almost invisible. The strategy would be more about replacement and emplacement than about displacement. Using the “broom” the design team swept away accumulations of vegetation and earth. Where the road needed to be reestablished, small concrete blocks provided support and marked the edge. Where surface drainage threatened erosion, open tracks of stainless steel accommodated the safe passage of water. There the terrain was too steep, or where the revised pathways created new intersections, the land was stepped directly and functionally to allow the transition…. Because the work extends for a mile and a half, the visitor encounters the landscape sequentially. But this is not a linear landscape as in the ribbon of a road or a single wire. A better reference would be a frayed cable with multiple twisted strands, some of them creating gaps or causing impulses along its length. At certain points the way is physically challenging, causing the visitor to heed the act of walking. In other places, where the slop flattens or a gap in the forest reveals a vista, the event rather than the path controls perception. Underlying the entirety of this episodic path and movement is the micro-scale or earth, flowers, and shrubs.” (Treib 164-165)

ﬁgure 29.

cleaning the erratics Morin & Petrilli

The interventions of artists Max Neuheus and Carmen Perrin followed this logic of adding little in order to expose visitors to “the music which already ex-

ﬁgure 30.

Descombs’ belvedere Morin & Petrilli

ists” along the pathway. (Morin & Petrilli, Amedeo 19) Perrin’s approach was to literally uncover what was already there: she scraped a series of glacial erratics clean of accumulated moss and vegetation, allowing the white boulders to gleam within the forest, their nakedness highlighting their strangeness, reminding one of their journeys to the site (figure 29). She has written that these stones become, in their whiteness, evidences of the lines drawn by the glacier so long ago, tying us to their monumentality and the deep time they represent: “We are also points of invisible and shifting lines, with the knowledge of a world scale that stretches more and more between the infinitely large and the infinitely small. We invent other kinds of monuments, imagining that the duration of their presence before our eyes may correspond to that which is our own condition. They are never the same men who watch the same things and live with them.” (Descombes, De Morschach à Brunnen 44)4 The most significant introduced piece along the trail may be the large mesh lookout platform designed by Descombes, the Chanzeli belvedere (figure 30). The belvedere is a large circular structure constructed of two translucent mesh panels that nest into each other while leaving a void between them. The structure itself is visually light, though the voids allow plants to grow into it and great the experience of a “green room” perched above the view that unfolds beneath it. One of the “walls” has a rectangular window cut from it, framing the view of the landscape beyond: in the words of collaborator André Corboz, the structure becomes “a place where you come and verify that the landscape really looks like a postcard.” (Descombes, “Shifting Sites: The Swiss Way, Geneva” 84) Another collaborator, François-Yves Morin, has criticized that, at over 50 feet in diameter, the belvedere is out of scale as it emerges abruptly from the landscape to provide views into the lake valley below. In response to both of these comments, Descombes has said that the large structure is intentionally out of place within the scene of the footpath, and that the objectification of the landscape is an argument for the philosophy behind the design: “it’s the architectural object that’s most clearly 4

Translation from the French by Cindie Bordeleau Young.

artiﬁcial and that best sums up our relationship to the territory which is made up of attention to things – an attention that is conscious of being a point of view, an ideological position with respect to the landscape.” (Morin & Petrilli, Amedeo 21) To extend the reach of the path and the concept behind its design, the group published a small book titled Voie Suisse: l’itinéraire genevois - e Morschach à Brunnen that includes maps, text, and photographs. Descombes sees the potential of this book to support and expand the influence of the path: “I would love for this book to become a mille-feuille of emotions. Both the actual path and the book would function in the same way, using different materials.” (Descombes, “Shifting Sites: The Swiss Way, Geneva” 85) The path and the design for it center on minimal intervention that highlights movement and gives attention to space and history. The trail is an introduction to the experience of the landscape, but is also an object itself; the design acts upon the space and has a body that is present and marked in time. The key instrument of the belvedere summarizes this object-moment relationship – it fetishises the scene below, but also calls attention to the relationship of the viewer with that scene.

03.04 reading a deep geography of the city: methods and tools of psychogeography

As noted earlier, I explored the work of the Situationist International (SI), in particular their writings and theories concerning movement and mapping through space, spatial ordering and understanding of the city, and the role of “other” urban spaces or terrain vagues in cities that feel alive, inhabitable, and humane. I have an interest in how people move through and experience space, and how the form and composition of the built environment impacts the meaning and quality of this movement, and a great deal of the graphical and physical experimentations of the SI seek to define this relationship. The Situationist International also wrote a great deal about the dulling impacts of the static, auto-centric “labyrinth” of the contemporary city, and sought ways to bring wonder, adventure, and love into the experience of urban form. Through my research, my intent was to use the theoretical underpinnings of the SI’s work to support and strengthen my own approach to design; what I have found upon reflection is that the research and reading I did also influenced how I looked at and moved through space. A collection of philosophical tools was developed (discovered) by the Situationists to address the complex and abstract reality they sought to upturn; these approaches include theories of unitary urbanism, psychogeography and detournement, as well as the practice of the dérive. These theories are described in the following review of the literature, as well as through a selected set of contemporary case studies that have used SI’s methods and theories for design inspiration. To combat the meaningless, gridded labyrinth, Situationist International and the group’s philosophical leader, Guy Ernest Debord, advocated for an urban lifestyle that would bring primacy to the value of individual pleasure, dethroning a functionalist approach to urban development that was quickly ceding to the domination of the automobile and the accompanying modes of rigidly controlled circulation that it required. As Debord wrote, the movement of the human in the modern city has become “something to be consumed and deprived of its temporal aspect.”(Debord, The society of the spectacle 126) Unitary urbanism is a social philosophy; reframing the city as a social space, and not having a society centered on work, home, and the transport between the two. In reclaiming the city from rigid, auto-centric circulation, the SI sought to open the city to people as a place of pleasure by turning into a sort of playground that would engage citizens and enable active participation in the urban environment. As described by Debord: …The underground should be opened at night, after the trains have stopped running. The passageways and platforms should be poorly lit with dim, blinking lights….The rooftops of Paris should be opened to pedestrian traffic by means of modification to fire escape ladders and construction of catwalks where necessary….Public gardens should remain open at night, unlit (in some cases, dim lighting might be justified on psychogeographical grounds)….All streetlamps should be equipped with switches; lighting should be for public use….Everyone should have free access to prisons. They should be available as tourist destinations, with no distinction between visitors and inmates… (Situacionistas 56-57) In contrast to ridged and defined structures of power and the built forms in which this power manifested itself, the “playground city” would be shaped by its users and thus be constantly changing and surprising; novel and familial within the same moment. Urban elements would allow themselves to be subjected to random detournement or reorganization by urban dwellers (figure 31).

Psychogeography, as developed in the mid-20th century by the Situationist International and Debord, was an attempt to rescue the city from the clean, rational approach of urban planning that imposed forms and relationships upon those who ultimately had to live with the irrationality of these ideas as they manifested themselves in lived space. Defined by the SI, psychogeography includes “the study of the precise laws and specific effects of the geographical environment, consciously organized or not, on the emotions and behavior of individuals,” and the role of the psychogeographer is to “explore and report on psychogeographical phenomena.”(Knabb 45) The SI believed that each city had a “psychogeographic relief” that could not be understood through conventional theories of geography that relied on tools such as aerial analysis and codified generalizations. The city had to be understood as it was lived: by the people who moved through it and inhabited it.

ﬁgure 31.

example of the Situationists’ artistic detournement Situacionistas

Historians and theorists have drawn lines and comparisons between Debord’s theories and the goals of other stems of geography as a discipline. Theorist, eduator, and historian Tom McDonough, in his essay Situationist Space, draws parallels between psychogeography and the foundations of social geography developed by Elisée Reclus, who coined the term suggesting that geography “is not an immutable thing. It is made, remade, every day; at each instant, it is modiﬁed by men’s actions.”(McDonough 250) Much like Reclus, Debord understood that geography was socially produced and constantly evolving and mutating according to vantage point, memory, disposition, and - perhaps most critically for the development of his research - the understanding of the psychogeographer: “the research that we are thus led to undertake…entails bold hypotheses that must constantly be corrected in the light of experience, by critique and self-critique.”(Debord, “Introduction to a Critique of Urban Geography” 20) The reality of the psychogeographer, as deﬁned by Chetcheglov, was an attempt to reconcile lived space with living history within the urban fabric – “all cities are geological, you cannot take three steps without encountering ghosts bearing all the prestige of their legends. We move within a closed landscape whose landmarks constantly draw us toward the past. Certain shifting angles, certain receding perspectives,

allow us to glimpse original conceptions of space, but this vision remains fragmentary.”(Hussey 82) One essential tool for glimpsing these “original conceptions of space” became known as the dérive, or drift. Described by Debord as “a technique of transient passage through various ambiances,” the dérive is a process that enables the participant to understand the “psychogeographical relief” of the terrain being traversed, and the “constant currents, ﬁxed points, and vortexes” that guide the walker’s experience of the city.(Situacionistas 22) The dérive, in essence, sought to “fracture the seamlessness of the spectacle” and in so doing discover a truer lived experience. These drifts were not aimless wanderings of chance, nor were they conducted with the erotic, observing detachment of the flâneur: the dérive disrupted and engaged the city as it expressed “not subordination to randomness, but complete insubordinations to habitual influences.”(McDonough 255; Debord, “Theory of the Dérive” 25) The practice of the dérive separated the SI from the tradition of geography in bringing the geographer much closer to the life of the city, into the “murky, intertwining behaviors” that other disciplines kept at arms’ length. Debord distanced himself from the tools used by social geographers such as Chombart de Lauwe, who praised the value of the aerial photo when analyzing the urban form and thus took the position of an omnipotent sociologist-voyeur. Chombart de Lauwe would use aerial images to read the urban structure that was present in different types of districts, and thus inferring what was happening there and how life was lived based on the analysis of order and disorder found in the built form. (McDonough 255) The psychogeographer, in contrast, would submit to certain ignorance, a blindness that was determined by the visibility afforded in space, within the urban environment. Unlike the detached flâneur, the gaze of the Situationist is politicized, and the dérive is a “political act” that aims to “reinstate lived experience as the true map of the city.”(Hussey 218) In Theory of the Dérive, Debord deﬁned two types of dérive that were undertaken while keeping in mind the two dimensions of this goal; various other texts describe the ways and means that the Situationist would conduct their

ﬁgure 32.

The Naked City, 1957 www.intelligentagent.com

ﬁgure 33.

Guide Psychogéographique de Paris, 1956 www.intelligentagent.com

dérives. The first type of dérive was internal: conducting a dérive in order to achieve personal emotional disorientation, to take a trip outside one’s familiar surroundings. For this type of dérive, Situationists sometimes relied on the aimless use of taxis – a resource that they sought to make affordable to all citizens, in order to free them of the prescribed order of buses and the predictability of the automobile. (Debord 24) This type of dérive could be instigated through the development of anonymous and unpredictable “possible rendezvous”, during which the participant would head to a certain part of town at a prescribed time to wait for a rendezvous with an anonymous individual who may or may not arrive. This type of situation pushed the individual outside their own comfort zone, forced them to interact with passerby, and generally allowed them to open themselves up to chance. (Debord 26) The second type of dérive is one in which the individual would engage in a more engrossed study of the terrain, “concentrating primarily on research for a psychogeographical urbanism.” (Debord 22) In this type of dérive, it was advisable to travel in small groups of 3 to 4 individuals so that an individual did not risk being set unto a specific “physiological axis” that may impede the clarity of observation and scope of experience.(Debord 23) The alternative analytical tool of the dérive required the development of a technique by which to translate SI findings into more than just the written word. Traditional maps would not communicate the emotive and spatial details that the Situationists were exploring, and Debord declared that a “renovated cartography” should be immediately be employed to serve the psychogeographer. (Debord, “Theory of the Dérive” 20) This cartography would flow along lines of emotion and experience. As author and educator Simon Sadler has noted, “situationist cartography admitted that its overview of the city was constructed in the imagination” and that their aim was to “piece together an experience of space that was actually terrestrial, fragmented, subjective, temporal, cultural.”(Sadler 82) This cartography would not be subject to spatial realities; rather, it would express lived distances, boundaries, and districts. As wrote Debord: “one measures the distances that effectively separate two regions of a city, distances that may have little relation with

the physical distance between them.”(Debord, “Theory of the Dérive”) The most notable maps produced by the situations include the 1956 Guide Psychogéographique de Paris and the 1957 The Naked City (ﬁgures 32 & 33). The most well-known and analyzed of these two maps is The Naked City. Created by Debord and Asger Jorn5, the map consists of a page of the 1951 Guide Taride de Paris depicting the 1st Arronndissement which has been sliced into 19 segments and rearranged with a series of purposeful, dark red arrows. These arrows guide, return, double back, crossing between the scraps of the city: lengthening distances, intensifying relationships, guiding the reader to and away from segments of the city. (Sadler 91) The streets and nodes become plaques tournantes, or turntables of the kind that are found in railway or metro stations, offering invitation to journeys throughout the city.(Hussey 83) These plaques tournantes represent “psychogeographical pivotal points” uncovered through the process of the dérive, when the actor comes to “perceive their principal axes of passages, their exits and their defenses.”(Debord 26) The dérive begins to uncover these sites of engagement as well as the paths that exist outside of the formal structure of the city (ﬁgure 34). The maps describe the sought-for freedoms of unitary urbanism, an “urban navigational system that operated independent of Paris’s dominant patterns of circulation.”(Sadler 88) Contemporary designers and cartographers have continued to explore the methods and theories of the Situationist International; as an alternative or supplement to traditional methods of mapping and analysis, psychogeography can act as a tool for building a deeper reading of place. For my thesis project, I was interested in exploring the work of the Situationist International to help me understand the role of vacant and interstitial lands in Seattle, Washington, and in proposing ways in which these sites could be designed and repurposed without losing their terrain vague qualities. As spaces within the city that are in some ways be free from the “spectacle” and sterile homo5 Asger Jorn (1914-1973) was the founder of the group Imaginist Bauhaus (19541957), and a cofounder of the Situationist International. He also collaborated with Debord on the publication of two books: Fin de Copenhagen (1957) and Mémoires (1959).

geneity of the planned city, how can designs for these spaces allow for continued appropriation by the people who use them? While thinking of unitary urbanismsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; goals for self-realization, communication, and participation in the playful city, how can I read and interpret the site in a way that will allow it to have multiple meanings, multiple future and past histories? Below I explore how other designers have been inspired by the work of the SI, through the description of two very different examples of contemporary psychogeographical mapping: Line Frustration and Bio-Mapping.

ďŹ gure 34.

Detroit desire lines: evidence of alternatives www.sweetjuniper.com

Line Frustration, Detroit Jennifer Burke, Matt MacDonoch-Dumler, Joe Meppelink, Jason Young

The project Line Frustration can be found in the anthology titled Stalking Detroit, which investigates the role, meaning, and future of Detroit in respect to the lives of its inhabitants. It is a multidisciplinary anthology that reflects upon architecture, economy, culture, and art in Detroit through the 1990s, focusing on Detroit because it is “modern in the sense that this city has exemplified the assumptions of enlightened modernity like no other.” (Daskalakis, Waldheim, & Young 10) The authors discuss the city’s “disappearance into the landscape” and explore research and design solutions to the oppressive omnipresence of vacant lands and bloated infrastructure systems.(Shane 2) In Line Frustration a group of architects and urbanists (Jennifer Burke, Matt MacDonoch-Dumler, Joe Meppelink, Jason Young) sought to reclaim the city from the image of itself, an image that had been built, in part, by the local media and a “broadcasting [of] nostalgia.”(Daskalakis, Waldheim, & Young 132) These urbanists found inspiration for their “wanderings” in the texts and experiments of the Situationist International conducted forty years earlier, particularly in the practice of the dérive. The authors begin their essay with a description of how Detroit has become a spectacle to itself, as disinvestment of the urban center has led to devastating results within the central core and those who fled the city for the suburbs have come to know it only through sensationalized television reporting. This gap between lived reality and dramatized existence has been heightened by the media into a hyper-nostalgia for a city that may never have even existed, distorting the meaning of even the decline itself. The drama of decline is so intense, in fact, that its very collapse is twisted into an asset: “the urban landscape was more valuable empty and mystified than developed [due to the fact that]…Emptiness in the city carried an indirect televisual value.” (Burke et al. 133) figure 35.

mapping the Motor City Stalking Detroit

The crisis of Detroit has other values, being namely the fact that its crisis was so extreme that it warranted both outside attention and outside assistance.

In the 1990s, Mayor Dennis Archer delineated a federally funded Empowerment Zone that represented, through an official and distanced lens, the “worst of the worst.” This was the area of 18.35 square miles with a 47% poverty level and unemployment levels topping at 29%.(Burke et al. 145) The authors argue that line was drawn, essentially, in the sand – “dividing this from more of this” – and that this line, if it recognizes its own “ambitions and intentions” will in fact become a zone of demarcation in the city, will in fact “become legible (Burke et al.).” The authors of Line Frustration seek to use the tool of the dérive as the Situationists did, to understand this new urban line and “to reappropriate public space from the realm of myth, restoring it to its fullness, its richness, and its history.” (McDonough 261) The authors explored the mark of the “Empowerment Zone” by conducting a dérive along its boundaries to understand where “this” could be separated from “that.” They chose 3 segments of the line (through unnamed “artistic” motivations) and each was “explored for its slack rather than its linearity.”(Burke et al. 137) The goal was to understand the true weight and nature of these lines, and to record their character with photographic essays and psychogeographic maps that would help in understanding the line as a “volume of varying intensity.” (figure 35) (Burke et al. 137) The resulting maps push at the edges of the urban fabric, stretch its seams. There is a feeling to the maps of Line Frustration that the Sanbourn Fire Insurance maps used as a base have been imbued a deeper meaning in the most literal sense of the word.6 The architectural concepts that result from this emotive mapping process imagine the line of the Empowerment Zone as a “line of scrimmage,” and the buildings that exist upon the line straddle it in an attempts to “hurl the benefits” from the ‘right’ side of the line to the ’wrong’ side (figure 36). Whether or not the models produced belie the sensitivity of analysis that was undertaken or not remains to question; what they do demonstrate, however, is an intense, terse self-awareness that seems to stem from having wandered the “slackness” of the line. 6

to imbue: 1 : to permeate or influence as if by dyeing; 2 : to tinge or dye deeply

ﬁgure 36.

imagining the architecture of a line Stalking Detroit

Biomapping, various locations Christian Nord

An alternative example of psychogeographic mapping to that undertaken in the Detroit Line Frustration can be found in the work of artist and urban theorist Christian Nord, in his development of Bio-Mapping, or Emotional Cartography. More of a planning tool than an outlet for architectural expression, the work of Nord is notable for the ways in that he attempts to aggregate the impressions of individuals for the purposes of allowing planners and designers to better understand how people live and move through the city. Rather than reading the city themselves, the urbanists must read the reactions of others, an approach that has strength in highlighting multiplicities of meaning, but can also possibly falter under false or incomplete interpretations. Two mapping examples will be explored here.

ﬁgure 37.

ﬁgure 38.

Stockport mapping www.softhook.com

Stockport mapping: detail www.softhook.com

The first is a project undertaken by Nord in Stockport, UK. This is one of his first Bio-Mapping experiments, and indeed the graphic results are somehow very different than those that he presents in later iterations of his technique. Nord spent two months in Stockport in 2007, working with over 200 people in six public events to record their interpretations and understandings of the city. He employed two techniques of data collection – the first, called Drawing Provocations, recorded and made available peoples’ impressions, experiences, and lived interpretations of the city (figures 37 & 38). The second, called Emotion Mapping, is a physiographic mapping of peoples’ physical arousal as they experience the city – whether positive or negative. Nord has developed and patented a device that measures physical arousal in the wearer through measurements of blood flow and rate – clipped to the participant’s finger, the device acts as the silent observer of the bodily reactions to noises, emotions, experiences, etc. By overlaying the two methods of recording, Nord produced maps from which he made a series of recommendations to the planning authorities in Stockport. The resulting map, though it is somewhat difficult to read and interpret through a quick overview, provides a rich layering of meanings that sometimes overlap, converge, and contradict each other. The city is more than its buildings, its roadways – we can see glimpses

Cigarette smell.. man I am stressed out! I need a biri.... I had to stop there because my legs where gone and I had about two Rubber smells of tyres like my nose are burning I felt scared because my friends bumped into me Mmm yum yum - my chicken ‘n’ chip shop I bet you 39 wall. It was smooth and hard at the same time e holes in the I smelled someone's perfume and it had a nice smooth smell I touched a tree and it feels very hard and rough Smell petrol Chicken & chips it smells spicy and hot Chickensmells of the playground that the SI sought, and perhaps alsonice cluesand as tohot how to Felt hungry because I could smell chips Smells of carpet,bin, Pizza, sweet onions, cheesy, sweetcorn, oil make this playground more accessible and visible. dirty rubbish Smells of gas Smelt rubbish I could smell chips and it smelled really d Petrol - it made me feel dizzy I heard birds singing and it sounded very peaceful Smells of tyres. I can't breath Smelt perfume The second mapping exercise takes a slightly different perspective on peoI fell walking on the grass I can feel the pavement Strong rubbish smells Chicken chips! mmmm very mmm Strong smells of leaves ple’s reactions to urban space. In 2007, Nord worked with thirty-four students Was scared that my mascara and eye liner were going to me of car fumes of fresh air Tyres,smell Shar ers from thefrom trees Sixth Form CollegeSmells in Newham, UK to study the impacts of sensoryof rubber Smell of petrol made me feel like throwing up Tyres,smells Cars roaring Hurt my hand while feeling the wall stimuli on people’s experience urban space. He participants, and college Dustbin Cigarette sme I gotofterrorised by paired my friends outside Bus smell hot breeze oneItstudent had their senses of sight and hearing removed through a blindwas scary as there was clear air and a lot of Fresh air, nice and cool breeze Ambulance sirens H foldspace and earwhen muffs, while the to second acted as for a safety guidetoand recorder, I tried reach out things feel S Felt ok because I trusted the person who was guiding me Walked Feltthe weird because I waswho told were jotting down reactions of the student waspeople experiencing thelooking city with curiously Floor is bumpy Car fumes I heard a door ba On our way stopped andthat asked us what this is about only theirback senseto of college,someone smell and touch (figure 39). The maps were created Smelt the fresh leaves Engine rattling Felt lost canwere smell the petrol Strong petrol smell and I am through this exercise (figure 40)Toilet illustratesmell pathways through the cityI that Brakes I felt fresh cool on my right hand s Very bad smell of shaped by senses that planners and designers often ignoreof– smoke senses that It felt windy at this point The smell I can smell cigarettes leaves and trees Stepped into puddles but I did not know th are tightly and deeply linked to memory and emotion – and in this way prowas strong really bad Crossed the road with difficulty Fresh air Getting happy because I was finishing the journe duce an interesting layer onto the “hidden” networks sought out by the SI. By Smelly disgusting stink of leaves could hear lots of noise around me like car sirens figure 39. practice of sensoryI deprivation in Newham ugh, bumpy depriving and hard participants of the privileged senses of sight and hearing, Nord is I hurt my hand by scratching it against the www.softhook.com Smelt poo, it was a Could hear people ger when I felt Fast cars and buses zooming past Poo able toittrigger and record reactions that in some waysand are more primordial, nasty smell I didn't walking past Glad to be back at Newvic. Horrible Smell, Dusty, more personal than those recorded inlike his other maps – “I felt the sun on me. it one little bit I felt the sun and the cars on my right hand side It felt like paper burning.” “I could smell fresh air” “Still raining. It felt sparkly.” Heard a lot of buses, road sounds very busy and loud ass and it felt nice windy, after and weird.” Went to the shop, it was scary becaus “Burning, I feel very quiet and tense he poo and the smoke. Bad smell of over grown plants Walking back to college, it really stunk outside college grass made me feel better I felt shade and it was windy on my right ha The terrain explored by Nord in both examples presented here are a practiBus engine rattling Traffic, cars roaring pass Feel fresh air, breeze cal interpretation of the values of psychogeographic mapping, and indeed I can smell trees and grasses it smells rea This is our starting point the dérive itself. By inserting and overlaying the more traditional urban planIt smelt very bad here as it was raining a Starting Point ning approaches – such as community asset mapping – with physiological We crossed the road to go to the shop, I CAR PARK Scary feeling reactions to space, Nord’s maps seem to hold significant potential to expand Echoing of aeroplane engines Normal traditional toolkits, the same time not straying very car far from whatbecause is Feltwhile veryatuncomfortable near the park of the foam from cars Fresh in the Rain the “comfort zone” of many urban planners.I felt the sun on me. It felt like paper was burning Spray I can smell chicken and chips It was hard and rough and the bits were coming off I could smell the chicken and chips I could feel the breeze on my hand

Sixth llege

efore crossing the road

Outside Newvic car park Generous

Warm sunny street small leaves, hard sharp edges, spiralling railings, rough tress

The trees were smelly

Bumped into an empty phone box and g Tickly plant smell Familiar but strange Burning ﬁgure 40. sensory deprivation map of Newham: detail Tango, I touch the box www.softhook.com The pavement feels crackly and wobbly Car horn made me jump lol Still raining - it felt sparkly I can smell leaves, fresh smell Calm Tree smell, log smell in the tree Started to get mad feelings, start shouting, feeling hungry couldn't help it

The literature and case studies presented built a foundation and framework for my research and design process. The literature addressed the potential layers of meaning, experience, and complexity of the selected site and project. A review of the theories and evidences of landscape urbanism provided a framework from which to design a shifting, layered site that is defined by metropolitan-scaled infrastructure systems, suggesting ways that these influences can be mediated, expanded upon, and abstracted for significant qualities. The inquiry into the complex meanings of urban interstitial landscapes helped me better understand my own reactions to these places and to structure design methods that would allow me to remain sensitive to and aware of their inherent potentials; researching how other designers have approached these types of landscapes gave me insight to the myriad design approaches that can be taken and provided me with a context to evaluate my own design. My study of pathways and trails as a topic for and focus of design revealed to me how little our field yet understands about the complexity and potential of trails; the precedents I studied underscore the diverse value of trails, both as a public space typology and as a rigorous, challenging design exercise. Finally, an investigation into the theories and graphic practice of the Situationist International and those whose design thinking they have influenced pulled together my other topics of study and provided me with a theoretical underpinning to my explorations and representation of site and site design. The knowledge and information gathered through my literature review is expanded in breadth and depth in the chapter that follows, Experience and Critique, where I explore with greater intensity the structure and materiality of trails through my lived experience of walking them; both portions of this research shaped my approach to design that is presented in chapter five, Principles of Design.

04 EXPERIENCE + CRITIQUE

A portion of the research for this thesis consisted in experiencing pathways and trails in order to understand their composition, perceived meaning, and elements of planning and design. In my review of the literature I found very little critical analysis of trail design, and this chapter of my thesis is a first step toward filling this void. The first section which follows here, Walking the Line, describes pathways I walked in order to study their experience and to identify how design can that shape that experience. This section is followed by a supplementary section, Materials, Movement, Form, which summarizes five prevalent trail design strategies through the use of selected trails that were analyzed through images and/or site experience.

04.01 understanding pathways: walking the line

The following pages present a selected series of paths I visited in the summer and early fall of 2009. Each walk is described through a short text that is accompanied by a set of images recorded on the trail during my visit. I describe the experience of each trail individually, and then in the conclusion of this chapter I summarize the overarching design lessons. The case studies presented here are a sampling of the trails and paths I have visited over the course of this thesis exploration, and were selected to represent the spectrum of my experiences. They vary in their location, their level of detail in design, their scale and scope, and in the way in which I experienced and/or recorded them. These trails cut through varied landscape types, and some are much more rural or much more intensely urban than the site I chose for my own ﬁnal design. I recorded my observations and impressions shortly after my site visits, but it was not until the process of reflection and writing of my thesis that the design value and character of each path became apparent to me - speciﬁcally, their relevance to and impact on my own design process and design language.

Old Pipeline Bed Leavenworth, Washington walked on 06.13.2009 This hiking trail is a successful example of a minimal design approach that is able to retain unique and odd characteristics of a landscape while also making it accessible and navigable for a range of people. There are a few key features of the trail’s composition and placement that help to achieve this effect. First of all, there is no signage. This is unique for a publically open and advertised trail as this one, with a small dedicated parking lot and outhouses at the trail head. There is is in fact a fence with a “road closed” sign blocking the trail entrance from the parking lot, with a well-worn track skirting it. Secondly, inconvenient relics and remnants dot the trail. The trail designers did not remove relics of this site’s infrastructural past (as an old pipeline bed), nor did they overly reshape these relics to meet the recreational needs of the trail. The trail head features a bridge that is the bottom half of the original pipeline whose raggedly cut edges tilt dizzingly over the rapids of the Wenatchee River (ﬁgure 41). Along the trail itself, there is a scattering of odd relics whose original function is sometimes hard to decipher – such as a series of thick bolts jutting out of the trail’s floor, and a rusty, nail-studded sheet of metal wrapped tightly around a small boulder. Stone walls occasionally line the path, and their vernacular character indicates they may be remnants from the area’s former use. A line of crooked, skinny old telephone poles weave in and out of the trail’s path, creating an interesting visual pull. Finally, there is looseness to the levels of perceived safety in the design. Creek crossings are achieved by fallen logs wedged between boulders, and rusted nails and angled metal protrude from the path (ﬁgure 42). While much of the trail is broad and flat, the end of the trail fades without notice to a narrow ledge cut into a sheer, nearly vertical rock face.

ďŹ gure 41.

walking across the Wenatchee author

ďŹ gure 42.

allowing for small discoveries and mysteries author

Iron Goat: Lower Grade Wellington, Washington walked on 06.14.2009 The Iron Goat is hiking trail that I found to be quite interesting because it is in essence a set of two very different trails that move through one landscape. This trail lies in the path of the Great Northern Railway, and the two trails – the “upper grade” and “lower grade” trails – are defined by the railroad lines that had once ran these routes. The two grades were originally designed to support rapid and efficient rail transport through this part of Washington State, and in the design of the current trailway the two grades are managed in such a way as to create two very distinct trail experiences. Both trail portions are defined by historic snowshed structures which dramatically dot the pathway and lend the trail a sense of drama by demarcating its original scale and importance as a heavily engineered rail passage through a difficult mountain range. The lower grade trail passes by a series of railway tunnels, unpassable due to their decayed state. Many of the tunnels are full of collapsed remnants of their original timber frames – huge, rotting beams whose pungently wet smells seems to indicate that they are on the brink of further collapse. Constructed trail boardwalks or stepping stones lead you into the mouth of these tunnels, where it is interesting to contemplate the “please do not enter tunnel!!” signs while standing some 10 yards into them (figure 43). The lower trail is directly linked to the visitor parking lot and is maintained at an even grade. It is a wide, groomed trail, and a large amount of signage exists to tell the visitor about the history of the railroads and the structures found along the trail. Original railway mile markers, freshly painted in an austere white, act as sculptural elements in the landscape. Historic carvings, marking the date of construction for the many railway tunnels, are maintained so that they are clear of any moss or other vegetation. Swampy or wet areas are made more passable through the construction of narrow boardwalks, and the occasional bench or trash bin add additional comforts for the trail-goer.

figure 43. standing inside decaying snow shed tunnel author

figure 44. clear, defined pathways typical of lower trail author

Iron Goat: Upper Grade Wellington, Washington walked on 06.14.2009 From the lower grade to the upper grade one needs to follow signs for something called the “Corea Crossover.” This turn off of the lower grade cuts immediately up a steep, narrow path that falls steeply off to one side. Along this part of the trail, all interpretive and directional signage disappears, save the historic mile and date markers found on the lower grade. The constructed crossings over swampy areas all but disappear, and trail designers instead relied on the framework left by the railway supports and massive snow shed walls. This portion of the trail cuts across the top of the snow sheds whose base forms the frame of the lower grade trail. It is beautiful but sometimes unnerving to walk across the mossy cusp of a snow shed wall with the forest dropping some 20 to 30 feet to one side (figure 46). The trail often narrows to a width that is intimate and comfortable, and with the snow shed walls rising to one side you can feel like you are surrounded by the forest landscape. The trail is often dotted with relics of the former role of the trail, though on the upper grade these are not explained or modified to allow for easier passage, as can be seen in figure 45, where a rusted steel plate with sharply angled edges creates a potential tripping hazard along the ledge of a snow shed.

figure 45. relics within walking path author

figure 46. path cutting along top of high concrete wall with dramatic edge author

Seattle Parade: MOORE INSIDE|OUT Seattle, Washington experienced on 06.20.2009 As part of my trail research, I looked beyond the typical concept of a “trail” as a fixed trajectory through space with some sort of definable beginning and end, and explored ideas that lie slightly beyond this concept to include experiences that can be defined more loosely and ephemerally, or from different vantage points (are you sitting, standing, lying, observing, participating, remembering, imagining?). As a part of these explorations, I took part in an event at the historic Seattle Moore Theatre, where the theatre was momentarily turned “inside-out” and the backstage became seating, the amphitheater a walkway, and the bathrooms art galleries (figure 47). An important part of this event is a procession that led us from this inside-out stage through the darkened streets of the Belltown neighborhood. The parade began with a vague announcement in the event flier (”join us….”) and was catalyzed by a shouted call on stage to “follow the band!” The band, in this case, was a troupe of some 12 horn and percussion players, dressed head to toe in dazzlingly white suits, belting out an instrumental blend of Balkan-inspired dance music. This band was going to take us somewhere, but it did not matter where. We were Going Somewhere. The parade itself was confusing and wonderfully chaotic, and unlike any other I have experienced (figures 48). This was a different type of parade – we had true purpose, no defined trail, and left behind nothing more than a few popped balloons and perhaps a discarded pizza box. What was unique about this parade experience for me is the way it turned an ordinary walk into a defined and shared memory. Would walking that pathway feel quite the same for any of the participants? The next time I walk down First Avenue, will I remember the way a crowd of men carrying brass instruments and wearing white suits jaywalked in front of a fire truck That Saturday Night? I think so. This parade created a trail by experience, by memory, by remembered palimpsest.

figure 47. altered perceptions of stage, show, space author

figure 48. parade mascot or accidental symbol? author

Mercer Slough Periphery Loop Bellevue, Washington biked on 06.24.2009 Located in Bellevue Washington, north of downtown Seattle, Mercer Slough is a 320 acre park that helps preserve Lake Washington’s last remaining wetland. The Periphery Loop trail is described on the guide map as a way to “experience this remarkable 320-acre park on a primarily hard surface trails and sidewalks, ideal for bikes and strollers.” I have to argue that this trail does not give any significant “experience” of the park, and it’s most significant lesson for trail design is the difficulty in stitching together multiple landscape types and infrastructure frames into a trail experience that is varied yet also coherent and legible. The majority of the trail passes along existing sidewalks and roads, and it is very difficult to follow the designed pathway because of the lack of any markings or signage in the vertical or horizontal plane. There are a few portions of the trail where designers did a good job on capturing the qualities of the surrounding landscape in the siting of the trail. As the trail skirts the southern edge of the park, the tangled interchanges and elevated lanes of I-90 pass over and along the trail with amazing proximity. Figure 49 illustrates the features of this interesting and oddly beautiful portion of the trail. The contrast in this scene highlights the fragility and fragmentation of this “natural” area. At another point the trail ducks into the historic Mercer Slough Blueberry farm, where a wooden boardwalk affords views while still preserving the integrity of the agricultural soils and historic crops (figure 50). For the most part, however, the trail passes along the outskirts of the park, dense vegetation blocks any views into the park itself, and the rush of traffic is a constant presence. Much of the length of the trail looked like the photo in figure 51, wedged onto a sidewalk between a four-lane road and a series of businesses, office parks, and even busy a park-and-ride lot. I found the majority of the trail unpleasant and even at times stressful to navigate and experience.

ﬁgure 49.

view into complex landscape of ferns and highway infrastructure author

ﬁgure 50.

boardwalk into blueberry patch author

ﬁgure 51.

extreme monotony and confusion: a sidewalk? trail? which direction is appropriate? author

Mercer Slough: Environmental Education Trail Bellevue, Washington walked on 06.24.2009 After ending the rather unspectacular bike loop trail, I decided to walk the tiny trail that passed along the Mercer Slough Environmental Education Center and the Heritage Loop Trail, which passed both the Winters homestead and the historic blueberry farm. I thought that the trail would give a good impression of the ethics and goals of the Environmental Education Center, because it provides the closest and most immediate access for youth into the Mercer Slough ‘wilderness’. I found this trail to be quite pleasant and intimate, providing views up to the cantilevered architecture of the center, designed by local Seattle ﬁrm Jones & Jones. I actually feel that this trail provides one of the best experiences of Jones & Jones’ design intentions on site: the stilt-like supports of the buildings rise parallel to the tree trunks and allow light and air to circulate on the site. I imagine that the shady steel-and-earth crevices the design has created are enticing and interesting for children to explore, perhaps even more so than the sunny decks and walkways above. One thing I noticed in particular – after my experience of the somewhat chaotic Mercer Slough Periphery Loop – was the details. I tried to record the textures and details of this trail, as can be seen in the images to the right. The patterns and details of the trail – ground cover, edge treatment, views, and transitions – were echoed in the character of the architecture. There is no signage to speak of, the trailheads are simple and undramatic; rather than detract from the appeal of this short trail, these characteristics bind trail and site more closely together. The trail is part of the architecture, the architecture part of the landscape, and the whole site part of one experience: an introduction to the wilderness at its edge.

figure 52. materials found along trail and in site architecture author

Bloedel Reserve Bainbridge Island, Washington walked on 07.18.2009 Boedel Reserve is a 150 acre estate parkland located on Bainbridge Island, a short ferry ride from downtown Seattle. The reserve is comprised of a series of landscape types, including wild woodlands, meadows and a series of carefully maintained gardens. There is a trail that loops through these diverse landscapes, and each portion of the trail responds to and reinforces the unique attributes of each area while maintaining a sense of a continuity and sequencing. It is the balance between complex variety and clear continuity that I find most intriguing about the experience of Bloedel Reserve’s trail. A very clear framing and opening of views as one walks along the pathway is a part of what I think makes the continuity of the experience so successful. When moving from one type of landscape into another, visual pulls help to carry the experience over these different landscape types. A rather restrained palette of materials was used to form the surfaces of the trail itself, and the materials often overlap – for example, a wooden bridge transitions to a gravel path lined by wood planks or railings, which then transitions to another gravel path flanked only by grasses and groundcover. It is also possible to see how slight variations to a trail material combined with unique edge and body treatment can result in a very distinct trail experience. The images of gravel trails in a meadow (figure 54) and in a Japanese garden (figure 53) illustrate the effect of this design strategy. The dark color of the gravel in the garden, combined with the firmly sweeping formal lawn which frames it, creates a dramatic mood and a rich overall color palette that pulls your eye along the path and the views which it frames. In contrast, the pale colored gravel and irregular edges of the meadow pathway allow it to almost disappear into the surrounding landscape, drawing your eye horizontally over the scene and increasing the sense of openness and light.

ďŹ gure 53.

narrow gravel pathway cut into grass in Japanese garden author

ďŹ gure 54.

loose gravel pathway meanders through a meadow landscape author

Natur-Park Südgelände Berlin, Germany walked on 09.22.2009 One case study in my literature review, Natur-Park Südgelände (see pages 17-18) is a park I visited primarily to better understand it’s composition and management strategies, but on my visit I also found that the composition of the pathways through the park was of interest to me. As explained earlier, the designers of this park made use of a large amount of the existing infrastructure on site on this abandoned railyard, a strategy which allowed them to retain much of the atmosphere and character of the area. In some portions of the park, however, it was necessary to introduce new elements to either improve the accessibility or to meet strategies for the preservation of the existing plant communities. The photo sequences presented here illustrate these two strategies: the top images show an introduced steel staircase that makes an original brick pathway accessible; the lower images show an elevated pathway through a nature protection area as it meets an at-grade path set in an original rail bed. The transitions between old and new are handled with a subtle and restrained hand, and the introduced pieces seem to emerge from the old, rather than appearing to be “tacked on” to the original structure of the site. This approach is distinct from that employed by Descombes for a portion of the Swiss Way (see pages 28-30), where the introduced pieces of the trail were designed to be deliberately foreign to the scene. The site that Descombes was working with was far more natural than the conditions found at NaturPark Südgelände, however; the marks along the Swiss Way of past human intervention are faint and almost delicate when contrasted with the almost brutal dominance of the railway infrastructure seen at Südgelände. The difference in the strategies reflects upon the existing site conditions and the way in which the site influenced the design approach employed.

figure 55. stop-motion sequence over elevated nature-protection area walkway author

04.02 understanding pathways: materials, movement, form

My walks and experiences of trails in Washington state and Germany provided a rich base understanding of sequencing and the development and interpretation of narrative in trail design, and my literature case studies provided me with a theoretical framework with which to approach trail design and design in interstitial spaces; however, I felt that I needed to develop a broader depth of understanding of the materiality of trails, and the ways in which trail structures and design strategies can create experiences of movement and form. This section describes this exploration, and includes case studies that again broaden the concept of what a “trail” means in design. I identiﬁed ﬁve major strategies in trail design though my walks and those are presented here; they are explored through case studies that were chosen because they represent a clear manifestation of each strategy.

Consistent Horizontal Plane Punta Pite, Teresa Moller, Chile

ﬁgure 56.

materials which ﬁt into surrounding scene www.pruned.blogspot.com

ﬁgure 57.

broken horizontal plane www.pruned.blogspot.com

ﬁgure 58.

pulling horizon into vertical plane www.pruned.blogspot.com

Punta Pite is a trail system designed for a housing development along the Pacific coast of Chile by landscape architect Teresa Moller. This is a dramatic trail defined by steep cliffs, narrow staircases, and impressively articulate levels of material detailing and design. A beautiful trail, it is designed in such a way that it appears to be cut out of the existing cliffs and stone formations, an impression that is heightened by the rigid geometry of the trail itself as it contrasts with the organic forms of the natural topography. One of the most successful aspects of this trail design lies in the tension between the consistent horizontal plane and the surrounding stone (figures 56 & 57). Moller heightened this relationship by allowing the stone to break the line of the trail bed on occasion, and by restraining the shape of the trail bed with a tight geometric language. When the trail moves in the vertical plane, narrowing staircases respond the surrounding form of the landscape while reinforcing the geometry of the ground plane in perspective (figure 58).

Consistent Vertical Element Sohlbergplassen, Carl-Viggo Hölmebakk, Christine Petersen, Norway

In contrast to the consistent horizontal plane found at Punta Pinte, the example of Sohlbergplassen relies on consistent vertical elements to respond to site conditions while creating visual tension. Designed by Carl-Viggo Hölmebakk and Christine Petersen in Rondane, Norway, this lookout point is a part of the Norwegian National Tourist Route. The designers created an elevated platform that flows through the surrounding forest and is occasionally punctured by trees rising through it. The platform sits on narrow concrete pilotis that are the same diameter as the surrounding tree trunks, a strategy that adds a visual lightness and fluidity to a structure that is otherwise relatively significant and dense (figure 59). The platform is surrounded by an undulating cast-in-place concrete wall that bears rough vertical and consistently spaced circular form markings. The form markings, while they are a subtle design strategy, tie the concrete wall visually deeper into the surrounding forest while pulling the eye up into the canopy of the trees (figure 60). The markings also increase the play of light across what could otherwise be a rather dull and monotonous surface. The combination of the two strategies of pilotis and form markings as vertical detailing in design, while subtle, serve to set the lookout point into the landscape in a way that draws focus over the form and into the landscape beyond. The concrete material of the structure, while foreign to the scene, is treated and shaped in such a way that it highlights the qualities of the surroundings while calling minimal attention to itself, despite its dramatic form and scale.

ﬁgure 59.

view of pilotis and tree trunks Hilde Berit Evensen

ﬁgure 60.

markings on concrete walls visually pulls into forest Hilde Berit Evensen

Material Repetition Natur-Park Südgelände, Andreas Langer, ÖkoCon & Planland, Germany

ﬁgure 61.

detail of steel planter author

Once again the Natur-Park Südgelände was an important place of exploration; a series of trails run through the park, and each is distinct its form, relationship with the landscape, and detailing (see pages 17-18 and 65-66). There is coherence to each of these trails as belonging to a larger whole; this continuity is rooted in the material palette chosen by the designers. Because the park is built on the site of a former rail yard, the site’s existing material palette is dominated by steel, brick, stone, and wood. The designers utilized much of the former materials on site – building trails within rail beds, for example – and then allowed this existing material palette to dictate the detailing of introduced structures. This material repetition extends beyond the trail surface itself, and may actually be more apparent in the structures and support elements that dot the trail – lookout towers, benches, signage, planters, etc (ﬁgures 61 & 62).Many of these details were not designed by the landscape architects, and there are a number of elements that were designed by open competitions for artists and sculptors. The introduced elements designed through these competitions are overwhelmingly constructed of Cor-ten steel, which is a possible weakness of the park’s design. While the steel elements are beautiful, there is such an abundance of them that I feel the material loses its uniqueness and reference to its relative rarity and high cost. The other original materials – bricks, cut stone, and weathered wood planks (not soaked in creosote as is prevalent in the United States) – are rarely introduced into the detailing of the trail and trail features, though the few places they are introduced it is done so beautifully and with a subtle hand. These trails highlight the potential of material repetition to act as a unifying element, and also demonstrate the ﬁne line that exists between subtle continuity and an overuse that can stifle variety and interest.

ﬁgure 62.

steel frame as sculptural detail and trail node author

Form/Texture Repetition The High Line, Field Operations, USA

The High Line, as previously discussed, is a well-known linear park that is built along an abandoned elevated rail trestle (see pages 24-27). Similarly to Südgelände, the High Line site was rich with rail history and its accompanying materiality, meaning, and patterns. The approach to this history by Field Operations was distinct from that of Andreas Langer, however, and is reflected in the dominant design strategy. At Südgelände the existing built framework and vegetation was maintained with only subtle additions and subtractions; the High Line, in contrast, was essentially stripped to its bones before being rebuilt, replanted, and redesigned (figure 65). While the designers of NaturPark Südgelände relied on a language of material repetition to fit into a richly textured historic framework, the High Line – built on a quasi tabula rasa – instead echoes the form and textures that existed pre-construction to heighten the sense and experience of the site’s history. The benches, lighting, and concrete planks that make up the majority of the walking paths are designed with proportions that recall the proportions of the rail bed, tracks, and wooden sleepers. The concrete planks gap open and fade into the planting beds: these gaps fit the dimensions of the former rail lines, which were numbered, disassembled, and reassembled with new wooden sleepers. The planking system introduces an entirely new material into the historical framework, but its proportions and overlap with the historic rail lines and create an overall experience that is integrated and historically relevant, if not historically accurate. I have the impression that the introduction of new materials that echo historic textures and form creates an interesting tension between the historic and introduced elements of the design. The orientation of the planking system – parallel to the rail bed and the form of the trestle – pulls the eye into and along the pathways, while the path meanders add interest and variety to the overall experience (figures 63 & 64).

ﬁgure 63.

pulling eye into scene, allowance of “historic” form ﬁeld operations

ﬁgure 64.

overlap between “existing” and designed space ﬁeld operations

ﬁgure 65.

clearing the site for construction ﬁeld operations

Strong Deﬁning Element Qinhuangdao Red Ribbon Park, Turenscape, China

ﬁgure 66.

contrast between path and landscape turenscape

ﬁgure 67.

path form as wayﬁnding device turenscape

ﬁgure 68.

multiple relationships of path to site and use turenscape

The Qinhuangdao Red Ribbon Park relies on a design strategy that is more explicit than any of the others studied here, and the results of this strategy lead to a pathway that is dominant within and set apart from its natural setting. The Red Ribbon Park is located at the outskirts of Qinhuangdao City, on a narrow strip of land that runs along a biologically diverse river corridor that was treated as a dumping ground and “leftover” space for decades. The site was largely regarded as unsafe, unkempt, and difficult to navigate or understand before the park was completed in 2008. The strong element of the “red ribbon” stretches for 500 meters through the park, and acts as seating, planter, light source, nature protection barrier, and wayfinding device (figures 66, 67 & 68). While the ribbon itself is overly dominant within the landscape, it does create a strong visual interest for the park, and I feel that it succeeds at lending the park a distinctly urban feel. The strategy of the red ribbon creates a strong pull through the landscape, and gives the impression that the trail itself is a continuous, collective experience that is shared by those who move along it. There is also a subtle yet distinct message about the way people should behave on this trail that is resultant of the trail’s composition. The surface of the trail that runs along the ribbon is a elevated wooden planking system that lifts the user over the wetlands that run on either side of the trail, which creates the sense of being separated from the landscape: the visitors are a part of the “urban” portion of the park, and should not disturb or interfere with the “natural” elements.

ďŹ gure 70.

desire lines and movement through site author

The experience of trails and critique of trail design strategies expanded on the theoretical knowledge I gained through my review of the literature. My records of trails as lived experiences were essential for my understanding of the nuanced approaches taken in the design and planning of trails. I gained a better understanding of the roles pathways themselves play in the experience of the spaces being moved through. I found two basic, alternating trail design concepts: creating a “thin” trail, where a path sits in the landscape and exists as part of it, or a designing a “thick” trail, where the bed of the path is set above and over the landscape. These strategies have distinct effects on the experience of the trail: is the trail a place in and of itself? Or is the trail an introduction the scene beyond, to the place you are moving toward? At which points along a path is it desirable to “thicken” the language of the trail, and what impact does this have on the experience of space? Recognizing this distinction between thick and thin trails was an essential turning point in the development of my design process and my appreciation for the power of minimal design moves within the trail design. To complement my experiences walking and to further explore the design language of trails, I identiﬁed ﬁve distinct design strategies I found in my walks and then researched trails that present these design strategies in their distilled, even extreme forms. The trails I analyzed for this second portion of my exploratory research were in general thick trails, in which the structure and materiality of the trail is in tension with the surrounding landscape, pushing and pulling the eye between surface and space. I was not able to visit all of the trails I examined for this study of design strategies; however, I feel that this distance provided a certain level of objectivity for evaluating their structures, form, and materiality. This portion of my research, informed by my review of theory and literature, gave me the grounding I needed to develop my own design principles and design goals which are presented in the two chapters which follow here.

05 PRINCIPLES OF DESIGN

This chapter and the one that follows describe the framework I built within which to approach the design of my chosen site. In this chapter I outline a set of basic overarching principles that define my ethic toward the design of trails and design within interstitial landscapes. In the following chapter, Approaching Design, I introduce the site and describe the strategies I developed to recognize my guiding principles on-site. First, I describe a series of site-specific design goals that respond to the principles in the context of my chosen site; finally, I identify a series of site-specific design strategies that are drawn from my research of trails, and which I developed in order to recognize my overarching principles and design goals. Based on my review of the literature and on my experiences of and attitudes towards interstitial landscape types, I recognized that it was possible to articulate a number of design principles that would guide my design and make my intentions clear to those who would later interpret my work. The principles that are introduced on these pages are not site-specific; they form the outline of an overarching philosophy that guided how I approached the site I later chose to design. Because I was interested in working within the margins of infrastructural frameworks, I was dealing with a very specific type of terrain vagues that were unlike those that had been explored by the Situationists and Solà-Morales. However, these theories and the case studies I had explored helped me form the groundwork of my own design approach for these spaces. I will revisit this design framework in my conclusion, and will discuss how my own designs and design processes reflected or contradicted these initial grounding principles.

Shape a site experience allowing for multiple histories and interpretations This first approach to design is overarching, and influences the others that follow here. A thread that cut through much of the reading I have done is an appreciation for value of urban spaces that allow for multiple histories to be read and multiple interpretations of site to be formed. The sanitized New York boroughs and brutally uniform housing projects criticized by Jane Jacobs were places that forced a singular narrative on the urban fabric that she argued asphyxiated the life of the city; the re-conquest of mid-century Paris was similarly dangerous in the eyes of the Situationist International, with spaces newly designed for cars and for circulation limiting the random playfulness of the historic city. Both Jacobs and the SI argued against the formally “rational” city for one that was more organic, accessible, and carried multiple meanings for a diversity of people. There is much written of the failure of sanitary, statically designed spaces and cities to become meaningful, loved, and identified with. There is much written about the “wrong” way to approach design, and there are also multiple theories that attempt to articulate the “right” way. I feel that a key to responsive, multiple design is rooted in the first stages of a design, in an ethic of how to approach a place. Grant Jones (Jones & Jones) asks himself three questions when approaching a site: Where am I? What can I do to strengthen the health of this place? How can I connect people to it so that they will fall in love with it? To me this suite of questions suggests an approach to design that is unique not for the way design solutions are found, but rather in the way that the design questions are formed by how a site is understood through initial analysis and experience of place. My own approach to the site I chose was shaped by a similar ethic, shaped by my initial experiences and lasting impressions of the landscape. Suggest minimal interventions that maintain and engage current meanings and developments As a part of my desire to respond the existing qualities of the site and to create an experience that would not speak a singular or overbearing narrative,

ﬁgure 71.

powerful impression of movement, mass, and society author

I decided early on that I would strive to keep my interventions as minimal as possible. This minimalism does not refer solely to a visual minimalism, which also played a role in my design, but a minimalism that I would eventually apply to multiple aspects and layers of the design, from the choice of materials to the width of the trail to the route the trail would take across the landscape. I felt that this level of minimalism was important because of the nature of the spaces I had chosen to design – fragile yet brutal spaces whose role in the city is ambiguous, fluid, and constantly shifting. Any permanent installation would necessarily mark the space with a deﬁned attitude, deﬁnition, and point in time, but to maintain a certain level of minimalism would potentially allow the meanings and understandings of the site to continue to shift and flow and to hold meaning for multiple audiences.

ﬁgure 72.

the High Line in 2000, prior to design Joel Sternfeld

ﬁgure 73.

changing relationship and urgency: 2010 BP oil leak www. heatingoil.com

Respond to and enhance the qualities of existing “infrastructural natures” Paralleling my principal of minimalism in design is one which defines a design approach that responds to the existing qualities of the “infrastructural natures.” This is a phrase I use to refer to the unique landscape types that evolve along with the infrastructure of urban powerlines, freeways, and other metropolitan level systems (figure 71). Because infrastructural systems are often not designed for how they are experienced by humans “on the ground”, they often have supranatural scales and frames of reference, and unruly, thick edges when they meet with other urban spaces. These types of spaces can have unique effects on human emotion and imagination, balanced as they are between known human systems and their sometimes unexpected real and aesthetic impacts on the world around us. These interstitial spaces can sometimes develop some of the qualities of terrain vagues, and can in this way take hold on human imagination (figure 72). Changing cultural aesthetics and attitudes towards “nature” in cities, combined with shifting social awareness of the impacts of an auto and electricity-driven world order has created unique conditions for designing with and within infrastructure. How infrastructure relates to our cities and our lives is increasingly seen as a decision that lies solely in the hand of government and big business, but one that touches us each personally, and is thus experienced personally (figure

73). Some of the projects I researched as case studies, such as New York’s popular and highly acclaimed High Line, have been criticized for not being able to maintain the mystery, oddness, and unique draw of these “forgotten” interstitial spaces once they have been designed, and it is easy to claim that this may actually be impossible. I suggest that the designers of the High Line did make an effort to maintain the character through their design language, however, and reactions to the space will shift as it ages and reflects a more complete picture of the design intent of the space. The High Line highlights the challenge of ﬁnding a balance when designing in unique interstitial spaces – a balance that lies between knowing and questioning, legibility and mystery, rationality and fear. Allow for exposure to and shelter from infrastructural forces When approaching design in the shadow of infrastructure, it is desirable to pay attention to the levels to which people are exposed to the noise, heat, scale, and drama of these spaces. This is based on recognition of the positive and negative impacts that these spaces can have on people. A freeway overpass, for example, can be uncomfortable for those who are sensitive to noise or dust and the space may be inappropriate for certain types of activities or interactions. This same overpass can be inspiring for its powerful display of sound and speed, with massive columnar structures that hold unique visual rhythm (ﬁgure 74). Viewing this overpass from different vantage points or times of day will also influence how it is perceived – as seen from above on a dark night, for example, or from below during a thunderstorm. This example of the varied influences of a freeway overpass lies at the basis of this approach to design in these types of spaces – varying the levels of protection and exposure to the sensory influences of these spaces heightens the experience of them. As demonstrated by the designers at Queens Plaza (pages 11-13), this type of contrast can also lead people to appreciate the oddly moving and powerful qualities that these spaces have, while simultaneously confronting their negative aspects.

ﬁgure 74.

qualities of infrastructural form, pattern, rhythm author

Shape designs that allow for varied engagement/appropriation by users Drawing from my case studies and own experiences of sites, one way to allow people to create their own experience of a place is to allow for varying degrees of involvement in a site. This can be as simple as allowing for different ways to move through a space (see pages 53-56, Iron Goat Trail) or as sophisticated as creating an interactive element that can be controlled by the public (Shouwburgplien light fixtures, West 8) (figure 75). One of the values of urban interstitial spaces when they exist as “undesigned” spaces is that they allow for great flexibility of use and creativity in the way people choose to interact with them and impose meaning upon them (figure 76). Any attempt to design these spaces must recognize and value this quality, and make every attempt to maintain or increase the ways in which people can express themselves through their experience of the space.

ﬁgure 75.

coin-operated public lighting structures in Rotterdam www.flickr.com

ﬁgure 76.

bridge as temporary bar/gallery in Magdeburg, DE www.iba-stadtumbau.de

Identify flexible uses that respond to changes in use over time(s) Another oft-stated quality of urban interstitial spaces is the way in which, as spaces that are not controlled by any one narrator or owner, they can act as markers of time and urban palimpsest (ﬁgure 77). Kevin Lynch, in his reader What Time is This Place?, discusses the value of “time-deep” spaces for a city, stating that “the contrast of old and new, the accumulated concentration of the most signiﬁcant elements of the various periods done by…will in time produce a landscape whose depth no one period can equal” (Lynch 57). Lynch also notes that personal connection to site and time is strongest when “personal imprints” are made on the environment, marks that allow people

to feel that they have participated in a scene, but also allow others to perceive that they share the experience of a place with others who have passed before them. In the site I ultimately chose for my design, it was possible to observe “imprints” left by a multitude of users over time, from a ribbon on a tree branch to a community vegetable garden under a power line to massive piles of concrete and steel rubble. Each of these markings indicates ways the site had been used by people over time, and I decided that my design should allow these types of markings to continue to shape and enrich the site over time. In addition to the goal of allowing the site to mark how it has been experienced over time, I also feel that a work of landscape architecture should reflect the passing of the cycles of time – seasons and associated cycles of growth, death and decay. Because much infrastructure seemingly operates on cycles that contrast with or deny natural processes, reflecting these natural cycles seems to be particularly salient when designing in such a context. The overlap, tension, and potential symbiosis become apparent.

ﬁgure 77.

time and “personal imprints” in Prague, CZ author

The principles of design I have outlined here were useful touchstones for me as I developed my design goals and program for my chosen site, and as I moved forward with my designs. They allowed me to remain sensitive to the character of the site I was designing in, and to carefully weigh the impacts of my design decisions. These six overlapping principles became questions I could ask myself: Does this intervention allow for multiple meanings? Is it minimal and sitespeciďŹ c? Does it respond to the features and character of the site? In this space, should I provide exposure and shelter? Will this design engage people at a variety of levels? Will it reflect the passage of time? All six principals reflect my ethics in the design of public space, as well as my sensitivity to sites of the kind I was approaching in my thesis. These design principles articulate recognition of the unique value of these spaces, which is based in part on their looseness, multiplicity of meaning, and ambiguity of ownership, regulation, and rules. Articulating these values early on was useful to my design process, not in the least because it helped when I was presenting my work to others. When presenting before a panel, it was useful to articulate my design principles as I was introducing my topic and the site I chose to design. It then became possible to evaluate whether my site analysis and design were reflecting what I saw in these spaces, and if my designs were carrying in them the values that I was bringing with me. I also was able to shape a set of design goals and design strategies within the framework of this overarching approach to design, in which I brought these ideas to the lived experience of my site. These are presented in the chapter which follows, Approaching Design.

06 APPROACHING DESIGN

06.01 finding + understanding the path

In order to choose a site for exploration I began with an analytical mapping exercise focused on lands in Seattle that are formally defined as “vacant” or that emerge as interstitial through spatial analysis (figure 78). I visited a number of sites with adjacencies and aggregate size that would afford the opportunity to examine the potential of interstitial lands at a series of scales. Ideally, I was looking for a set of interstitial sites that would carry at least one of the following five characteristics: comprised of a diversity of distinct landscape types; possessing adjacency to housing; located at the edge of a major infrastructure system; relatively linear in aggregate form; and, adjacent to a work of architecture or landscape architecture that is known as “sustainable” in form and/or function. I realized that finding all of these characteristics would be difficult or perhaps impossible; however, I was thrilled to find all five of them in a series of spaces located just south of Seattle’s downtown. My first experience of the area I chose to design left a strong impression on me – as noted in the narrative on pages xiv-xvi and the collages in figures 94 and 95. The site chosen for the design is comprised of a series of interwoven, overlapping, but very distinct terrains. Geographically it lies at the western edge of the largely residential Beacon Hill neighborhood and at the southern edge of SoDo, a warehouse and manufacturing district that is seeing a rise in alternative residential, commercial, and arts-based development. The proposed trail corridor has its southern trail head at the existing Chief Sealth bike trail, a trail spur the city plans to extend when funds become available. At this end the trail crosses through the Seattle City Light transmission line corridor, which cuts through Beacon Hill at a north-west diagonal before meeting Interstate 5, multi-lane freeway that runs north-south through Seattle and limits the city’s eastwest connectivity. The trail bends north when it meets the steep edge of the freeway embankment, following its eastern edge and traversing 10th Avenue, a residential street that was paved and parceled for development two decades ago before being abandoned because of the risks associated with deforestation and associated slope destabilization. The crumbling end of 10th Avenue fades into an area known as “The Jungle” – a disturbed and odd forest interrupted by massive mounds of construction rubble and populated by early successional Northwest species that are choked by invasive Rubus armeniacus (Himalayan Blackberry) and Hedera helix (English Ivy). The trail moves through “The Jungle” to emerge next to the freeway at a point where it is elevated and arches over what I propose might become Seattle’s only at-grade east-west connection along the I-5 corridor and a link between the SoDo district and Beacon Hill neighborhood. The trail then follows an abandoned north-south rail line to bring people north into Seattle’s downtown or south to the neighborhood of Georgetown, all the while flanked by the towering columns and frames of the interstate. In its totality, the proposed trail corridor covers approximately 2.5 miles of terrain. The diversity of landscape types is part of what drew me to choose this corridor as a design project, and it quickly became apparent to me that my site analysis of the area was going to necessarily be complex. The following images summarize this analysis; the graphics necessarily move across scales, medium, and shifting frames of reference.

y Park s

buildings

Washington Park Arboretum 207 acres

West Seattle Rec Center 205 acres

Woodland Park 188 acres

landslides

Armature Urbanism 184 acres Magnuson Park 182 acres

Carkeek Park 166 acres

topography

Lincoln Park 125 acres Westcrest Park 94 acres

soils

map of vacant lands, site highlighted with yellow author ďŹ gure 78.

Seward Park 210 acres

Green Lake Park 64 acres

Spokane Street Viaduct West Duwamish Greenbelt

Interstate 5

SoDo

Seattle City Light Corridor

Beacon Hill ďŹ gure 79.

aerial overview of site, key areas highlighted author

Chief Sealth Trail

SEATTLE’S BIG PARKS

Discovery Park 604 acres

ﬁgure 80.

Seward Park 210 acres

Washington Park Arboretum 207 acres

West Seattle Rec Center 205 acres

Woodland Park 188 acres

seattle’s big parks

This graphic depicts Seattle’s 10 largest parks* and compares the size of these parks to the combined acreage of the southeast Seattle City Light Corridor and the “Jungle” or West Duwamish Greenbelt. The social and ecological signiﬁcance of these two undervalued green corridors becomes apparent in this simple image. *Golf courses were eliminated from this study, including Jackson Park Golf Course (160 acres) and Jefferson Park Golf Course (137 acres). author

Armature Urbanism 184 acres

Magnuson Park 182 acres

Carkeek Park 166 acres

Lincoln Park 125 acres

Westcrest Park 94 acres

Green Lake Park 64 acres

TYING THE LOOSE ENDS

ﬁgure 81.

tying the loose ends

This graphic depicts the southeast Seattle City Light Corridor and the “Jungle” or West Duwamish Greenbelt, highlighting how these corridors fit into the larger Seattle network of green spaces. The social and ecological significance of these two undervalued green corridors becomes apparent here. This graphic also illustrates the value of further research to find pathways over and under the Interstate 5, running along the western edge of the larger green network. author

SHIFTS OF MEANING

ďŹ gure 82.

shifts of meaning

This graphic depicts the location of the power line corridor within its larger spatial and economic context. Limitations in seeing the site as a piece, as a number, or as a void are explored in this image. author

FRAMES OF REFERENCE

ďŹ gure 83.

frames of reference

This model examines the spatial qualities of the three major influences on the site: the freeway, the wild hillside, and the power line corridor. The materials chosen to represent each of these spaces and the way in which these materials interface with each other reflect these qualities: the wild hillside is tangled with the water and industrial relics that weave through it; pinned lightly to the ground surface. The power line corridor is a dominant slash through the neighborhoods, imprinting the vertical and horizontal planes, yet remaining essentially transparent. The highway is dark and heavy, nailed in with strong by strong but rusting nails, not sitting directly on the ground surface. author

ďŹ gure 84.

frames of reference: detail author

SEEING THE SEAM

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ﬁgure 85.

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buildings author

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ﬁgure 86.

topography author

ﬁgure 87.

landslides + steep slopes author

ﬁgure 88.

The infrastrucutural frames of the Interstate 5 and the Seattle City Light Corridor can be clearly seen as seams within the urban fabric at multiple scales and through multiple land use lenses. As can be seen in the maps of land uses, the greenbelt corridor is clearly legible within nearly every land use type. Interestingly, the land use type where the greenbelt becomes most difﬁcult to read is within the patterns of the land use parcels. The land is parcelled into patterns that match those of the surrounding residential land uses, patterns which are impossible and irrelevant when experienced on the site.

parcels author

ﬁgure 89.

soils author

CLOSE PATTERNS AND SHAPES 75

+ +

drink coﬀee LISTEN TO MUSIC

watch trains drive into hill

climb on rail car watch mural artist

collect rocks watch work crews

78 84

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move through

gaze into distance

watch and wonder

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sing

+ +

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discover relics

WATCH and LISTEN relax

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watch hawks 72

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Open Grasslands Productive Garden Sunny and Open Views Seasonal Wetlands Standing Water Invasive Species/Woodland Mix Maintained Plant Communities

ild

ﬁgure 91.

activities author

ﬁgure 93.

ecologies author

This set of maps charts a process of reading the site through walking, observations, and community input and discussion. These maps mark key influences of the site(s) in an attempt to begin to see patterns and overlays that reflect and enrich those observations at larger and more abstract scales of reference. These maps point to the importance of designing the trail as a network, an experience, a place.

ﬁgure 90.

sound author

EDGES, SPEED, SOUND, TIME

ﬁgure 94.

edges, speed, sound, time

This collage expresses some of my ﬁrst impressions of the site, speciﬁcally the junction between the power line corridor, the freeway, the edge of The Jungle. The graphic is an attempt to capture the sensory experience of this node, particularly the vastness of the pylons and the void of the power line corridor within the neighborhood. The decay of the jungle and the auditory presence of the highway are also depicted here. Throughout the design process, this graphic remained a touchstone to these early impressions and their implications for design. author

MAPPING MEASURES, MEANING

ﬁgure 95.

mapping measures, meaning

This collage examines the multiple meanings of the power line corridor through lenses of ownership, time, and vantage point. A section, maps, aerial photographs, parcel data, and images are overlaid in order to explore this relationship in a two-dimensional image. A lot deﬁned as “vacant” becomes a community garden, becomes a tightening of the corridor, becomes an overlook. No hierarchies are established here, rather information is collected, organized, and offered for interpretation. author

SPACE AND TEXTURE

ďŹ gure 96.

space and texture #1

On multiple visits to the site(s), I documented the character of the space through photography and artifact collection, trying to understand the very different characteristics of the power line corridor, the greenbelt, and the area underneath the I-5 overpass as they appear in materials, colors, and textures. This set of photographs express the characteristics I experienced most strongly within these distinct spaces and landscape types. author

06.02 design goals + strategies

Based on my site analysis, informed by my case studies and literature review, and guided by my principles of design toward interstitial landscapes, I set a framework in which to develop my design proposal. Moving between scales of analysis, design, and experiential mapping revealed layers of potentials, meanings, and histories of the lands traversed by this proposed urban trail system. Aerial and experienced mapping revealed ways in which this site could fit into the existing network of open spaces in Seattle, serving as an essential cord behaving much in the way the Olmsted Brothers’ plan for the city had envisioned its preserved boulevards and greenways. Site visits and cataloguing revealed to me the material and experienced nature of each portion of the trail, the characteristics of the unique lands which it traverses. The framework which emerged through my explorations is described in the following text, and includes site-specific design goals and design strategies. This section provides an introduction to my design, a description of which is provided in the following chapter. DESIGN GOALS + DESIGN INTENT In the previous chapter of the thesis, I articulated a set of design principles that helped guide and inform my design approach to urban interstitial spaces (see pages 67-74). These principles are an underlying ethic that I take to any interstitial site; once I had chosen the site that is introduced in the preceding pages, I used these design principles and my experience of the site to define a series of specific goals for the program and design of the site. The proposed trail is intended to serve multiple users – bike commuters, hikers, dog-walkers, pleasure bikers, neighbors, visitors, etc. The course and shape of the trail were designed to serve these multiple stakeholders, yet no one group holds priority along the trail – rather, the trail is shaped in a way that minimizes disturbance and disruption to the existing landscape character for the benefit of all users and for the long-term sustainability of the design. For example, when grading the trail to meet the requirements of bike commuters would have necessitated dramatic cut and fill and subsequent disturbance of the natural slopes and plant communities, the decision was made to introduce stairs or ramps that would require a cyclist to dismount and would inspire all users to recognize the scale and shape of the landscape. I introduce these goals here in the context of my design so that my reader can consider these goals while examining my proposal. These goals include: Enable spaces for active, loose, engaging play and wonder This design goal is motivated by my readings of the Situationist International and their critique of the deadening effects of static, homogeneous urban planning strategies. The playful city is heterogeneous and always unexpected; my trail design allows for exploration of the unique and puzzling attributes of the landscapes through which the trail passes without prescribing the intensity or level of this exploration. Small spur trails follow in the marks of existing desire lines, vistas open and close to offer exploration and mystique, and portions of the trail are marked and defined by users over time. Compose sensitive and supportive responses to natural processes which invoke curiosity/confusion This second goal parallels with the first, and can alternately be described as a playful approach to urban sustainability and green infrastructure development. The trail is inserted within landscapes that are inherently confusing and richly juxtaposed; my approach to stormwater treatment, slope stabilization, native plant restoration, and invasive species control are similarly unexpected and perplexing. Slopes are stabilized in a way that highlights their own fragility and continual movement, and stormwater is allowed to selectively flood the trail bed: these design moves are an effort to highlight natural processes and the “unnaturalness” of their functioning in an urban context.

Provide for seamless yet richly varied movements through space, over time In my research of trail design, I found there to be a fine line between trails that are monotonously uniform and those that feel confusingly piecemeal. In my own design I strove for a balance between continuity and surprise, with the goal of creating a trail that could be experienced as a complete entity but also as a series of unique and distinctive moments. In this way, portions of the trail could be experienced individually and appreciated for their individual characteristics, while also engendering awareness that they are part of a larger network of linked territories. Support and provide local community gathering spaces A critical aspect of my attitude toward the design of the trail was a consciousness of the existing qualities of the terrains through which my trail was passing. Visits to the site and participation in a local community meeting revealed that the lands were already defined by pathways and gathering areas, and that portions had been reappropiated through official or informal means. I chose to support existing uses in my design for the trail – in its location, alignment, and size and scope of nodes. Provide through-ways for interurban bicycle commuters A final goal for my trail is linked to its potential role within the city’s bicycle network. Although I was very interested in creating a trail that could be used by a variety of users moving at varying speeds, I recognized that its larger meaning and utility were dependent on its capacity to support bicycle commuters. As outlined earlier, however, I did not want to let the needs of this user group to dictate the form and path of the trail, as I feel is too often the case in urban trail networks. Several of these programmatic design goals would be considered typical of any trail project, such as provide through-ways for interurban bicycle commuters and perhaps support and provide local community gathering spaces.

However, the ﬁrst three goals I articulate above are unique and speciﬁc to my proposal, and are informed by my study of trails as experienced and through my research of interstitial space design via the theories of the Situationist International and the principles of landscape urbanism. These goals address those experiential and material design manifestations that I have found to be lacking in current trail design practice, and those that are emerging in design of interstitial spaces located at the fringes of urban infrastructure. These goals provide a reference point and a touchstone of a design that rotates around several basic but essential questions, including: How can this trail become more than just a line connecting a series of spaces? How can a trail become a place in its own right? How can the experience of infrastructure be expressed and heightened through design? How can the character of a site be retained and allowed to evolve through design? The design strategies which follow explain the tools and materials I employed to address these questions and realize my programmatic design goals.

Positive/Negative Addition/Subtraction

LANGUAGES OF INTERVENTION 93

Positive/Negative Addition/Subtraction

DESIGN STRATEGIES Throughout my research I examined the development of trails on a number of levels, including: materiality; movement; narrative; form; and, design philosophy as discussed through my design precedents. This study was supplemented by an analysis of designs that shape and occupy urban interstitial spaces. I pulled from this research a set of strategies that I found appropriate for the sites and program I have chosen to design. These include: Addition/Subtraction This strategy is based in the use of and response to existing materiality and actual materials found on site. My case studies illustrated for me the delicate balance that is needed with this approach. I strove to reference the site’s character and set it into the site without overwhelming the existing materiality or history through repetition or fetishism. Addition, in this strategy, sometimes refers to a reorganization of found materials, rearranging them to ﬁt program and aesthetic goals (ﬁgure 97).

Blurred Edges Massive Overlap

ﬁgure 97.

addition/subtraction

Blurred Edges author Massive Overlap

Trace of Movement Measure of Time

LANGUAGES OF INTERVENTION Positive/Negative Addition/Subtraction

Trace of Movement Fitting with earlier goals of wanting to allow people to make their own imprint on the landscape and the trail itself, there are areas of the trail where the material design allows for the trace of movement, marks of time and people passing (figure 98). I primarily used this strategy within The Jungle– the area which currently bears the strongest marks of time and incidental use. Blurred Edges/Massive Overlap Finally, I selectively relied on a strategy of blurred edges or massive overlap in places where I felt it was appropriate to set the trail deep into its surroundings (figure 99). This strategy is linked to the first of addition/subtraction as the blurred edges rely on the trail blending into the existing landscape and the materials that are already found there. I primarily used this strategy under the overpass, where the sound, light, and massive structures can be disorienting. I felt that pushing, pulling, “owning” the ground plane could temper this sensation while highlighting the human touch on the space.

Trace of Movement Measure of Time

ﬁgure 98.

trace of movement author

Blurred Edges Massive Overlap

ﬁgure 99.

massive overlap author

Trace of Movement Measure of Time

Repetitive, referenced pattern To give the site continuity through the very distinct landscape types, I searched for a pattern or form that I could subtly repeat in a diversity of shapes, situations, and levels of design. I found a repeated linear metric along the site’s vertical planes and horizons– the pylons, freeway columns, ivy-covered trees, and fences; the power lines, freeway lights, and roads that cut the power line corridor. This linear metric appears in the design of the trail in a number of ways – the vertical slatting of a bench, the horizontal slab of a trail element, the detailed edge of the trail, the shape of a stair riser. Study models of possibilities can be seen in ﬁgure 100. Unique edge/body relationship A second strategy I developed to give continuity to the trail while allowing its materiality, shape, and width to vary is to design the trail with a consistently unique edge/body relationship. Case studies such as Bloedel Reserve revealed the potential of this design strategy. While the materials of the trail shoulder and trail body change along the course of the trail, these parts of the trail bed are always distinct from each other. Sometimes overlapping and sometimes very subtle, the unique edge/body relationship sets the trail apart from the surrounding materials and pathways such as sidewalks, roads, and drives. The matrix on pages 103-104 catalogues and illustrates this strategy.

ﬁgure 100. models of trail design strategies author

ďŹ gure 101. marking site over time: ferdinand p-patch on site author

This chapter has introduced a site that is layered, complex, and continually shifting in meaning. I have described my impressions through text and graphic exploration, and have overlaid my personal experiences with measured interpretations of the siteâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s form, context, history, and evolution. These records were followed by a presentation of a series of design goals and strategies I developed in reaction to the site and in context of the overarching principles I introduced in the preceding chapter, Principles of Design. In summary, the design goals aim to create a site that is engaging and varied, legible yet surprising, and supportive of local community activities while strengthening regional bicycle network connectivity. The design strategies are pulled from my research and critique of trail design; while the list I have compiled is not exhaustive, it summarizes strategies that have the potential to realize my programmatic goals through the choice and arrangement of materials and forms. The chapter which follows, Designing the Thread, outlines my ďŹ nal design proposal for the trail and describes my interventions as sequences within a larger narrative, as well as independent moments unique in themselves.

07 DESIGNING THE THREAD

07.01 design of a narrative

With the principles, goals, and design strategies in hand, I began to interpret my site analysis and develop design proposals for the site. My intention was to introduce a trail that would act as a catalyst for growth, change, and exploration – a trail as an “armature” for the future and existent life that grows around it (figure 102). The intention of the design was not to introduce a new language to the site as it existed, but to give people the opportunity to read what was already there and to then find ways to build upon and translate this narrative into something that could be personal, intimate, and surprising. Through my design, I had no desire to “tell” the story of this landscape, but rather, I hoped to make its story available to those who sought it out. The proposed trail crosses through multiple landscape types that I referenced earlier as “infrastructural natures.” These landscapes provided inspiration for, and limitations to, the design languages and interventions I am introduced along the trail. Three primary overlapping “infrastructural natures” can be found along the trail: the Overpass; the Jungle; and, the (power line) Corridor. My desire was to highlight the characteristics of these natures through my design, while allowing them to continue to grow and evolve over time. The following text and images describe the characteristics of the three major segments of the trail, defined by their dominating structures, patterns, and other elements. Cross sections of each portion of the trail communicate the scale and associated spatial qualities of each of these segments (figures 106, 107 & 108). A trail design matrix follows, which outlines the measured experiences of the trail: width, light, plant strategies, and the materiality of the trail body and trail shoulder (figure 109). The measured moments are referenced to a longitudinal section that represents the trail in its entirety, pulled straight into a single line and marked with the locations of my design interventions. This matrix can be read as a series of moments, snapshots of the site at a given locale; or as continuum, read along the distance of the trail to interpret the changing experience of moving through space. The design matrix is followed by an emotive map that in traditional terms may be described as a “master plan” but which does not function as a master plan graphically, nor is the intention of its making; it may be considered the emotional equivalent of the matrix seen on the preceding pages (figure 110). The design matrix measures and defines the scope of the trail as a path through space, while the emotive map marks intensity, mood, directionality, and emotion. Because this project was a design thesis, I present my concluding ideas visually in the following pages, having articulated the groundwork and research through the text of the preceding chapters.

ﬁgure 102. armature of complexity author

The Overpass This portion of the trail is in dramatic proximity to the infrastructural forces of the freeway and is deﬁned by extremes of light, sound, vibration, and materials. When passing through this area the trail inverts and exposes these extremes and provides both exposure to and protection from them. Different vantage points are experienced, changing the bodily relationship with the freeway and thus the perception of it – one views the freeway from above as well as from below; one passes alongside it and also crosses it axially. The width of the trail varies between 6’ and 16’ here and is comprised of excavated slabs or crushed volumes of concrete and asphalt and existing railroad ties, and is flanked by colonies of English Ivy which climb the towering support pillars of the freeway along offset steel cables. An overlook exposes the vastness of the freeway exchange as it contrasts visually with dramatic views of the city and the water beyond. No lights are introduced in this section of the trail, allowing the patterns of the city and freeway to deﬁne the use of the area. The graphic to the right captures a moment when one is passing both underneath the freeway and alongside it. The landscape is steep and folds into itself; it is met by the drama of the freeway columns and their influence on light, air, and sound. The Overpass becomes a series of spaces that are intensely urban, experimental, and lending parallel and powerful sensations of isolation and community.

the overpass

ﬁgure 103. the overpass: impressions author

speed energy passing over cutting through indifference scale ordered chaos confusion aggressive contro commotion loss infinity distance lines order measure others urban "we have" excitement lights sound p invasion annonymous speed energy passing over cutting through indifference scale ordered chaos confusio control noise dust commotion loss infinity distance lines order measure others urban "we have" excitement pulse strength invasion annonymous speed energy passing over cutting through indifference scale ordered ch aggressive control noise dust commotion loss infinity distance lines order measure others urban "we hav lights sound pulse strength invasion annonymous speed energy passing over cutting through indifference chaos confusion aggressive control noise dust commotion loss infinity distance lines order measure othe have" excitement lights sound pulse strength invasion annonymous speed energy passing over cu indifference scale ordered chaos confusion aggressive control noise dust commotion loss infinity distanc measure others urban "we have" excitement lights sound pulse strength invasion annonymous speed en over cutting through indifference scale ordered chaos confusion aggressive control noise dust commotion distance lines order measure others urban "we have" excitement lights sound pulse strength invasion annon energy passing over cutting through indifference scale ordered chaos confusion aggressive control noise dus loss infinity distance lines order measure others urban "we have" excitement lights sound pulse stren annonymous

designing the thread : 100 100

The Jungle The vegetation, rubble, and steep topography of The Jungle’s forested slopes create alternating experiences of enclosure and openness, simplicity and complexity, growth and decay. The topography of the forest is in part deﬁned by its existence on a steep slope and in part by flat plateaus that were cut into the landscape when it was graded to support the development of houses and roads. Throughout The Jungle the trail has a width of 6’, with a set of spur trails narrowing to 2.5’ or 3’. The surface of the trail is crushed concrete with steel and wood shoulders, interrupted at times by slatted steel beams that serve as bridges and slatted steel walls that support shifting earth berms both above and below the trail body. A wooden staircase cuts up a small transmission line clearing to provide access to the neighborhood streets above; an inset steel runnel provides stormwater conveyance as well as track for bicycle hauling. The path through The Jungle is lit by gradually dimming motion-activated lights that are sensitive to levels of moonlight or other ambient light. The existing forest is dominated by invasive species, and the plant strategy is one of experimentation and flexibility deﬁned by subtraction and microclimate creation. The graphic to the right depicts The Jungle as it exists today, with powerfully invasive colonies of English ivy creating eerie columns within the forest. Construction rubble creates small mounds and steep ravines of moss-covered concrete and twisted steel. The Jungle is a space for solitary yet playful contemplation, exploration, and observation.

ﬁgure 104. the jungle: impressions author

the jungle

unknown fearful odd inexplicable vague illegible change + flux "i am" solitude insignificance melody sound questions self ground noise chaos history time decay excess loss layers water damp seeping carving through unknown fearful odd inexplicable vague illegible change + flux "i am" solitude insignificance melody sound questions self ground noise chaos history time decay excess loss layers water damp seeping carving through unknown fearful odd inexplicable vague illegible change + flux "i am" solitude insignificance melody sound questions self ground noise chaos history time decay excess loss layers water damp seeping carving through unknown fearful odd inexplicable vague illegible change + flux "i am" solitude insignificance melody sound questions self ground noise chaos history time decay excess loss layers water damp seeping carving through unknown fearful odd inexplicable vague illegible change + flux "i am" solitude insignificance melody sound questions self ground noise chaos history time decay excess loss layers water damp seeping carving through unknown fearful odd inexplicable vague illegible change + flux "i am" solitude insignificance melody sound questions self ground noise chaos history time decay excess loss layers water damp seeping carving through unknown fearful odd inexplicable vague illegible change + flux "i am" solitude insignificance melody sound questions self ground noise chaos history time decay excess loss layers water damp seeping carving through

101

The Corridor The transmission line corridor is characterized by openness, wide vistas, exposure, and intense contrasts between the intimate nature of the houses and yards that flank the corridor and the dramatic high tension power lines and pylons. This portion of the trail links to the existing Chief Sealth trail, and the design palette references and expands upon its materiality – 8’ wide permeable asphalt trail body, crushed concrete shoulders, ribbed concrete intersections, wide graze-maintained wildflower and grass plantings, and slatted wood vertical detailing. The trail sometimes passes beneath the pylons, highlighting their scale and placement in the landscape. A series of motion sensitive lights begin at the northern-most end of The Corridor, as the trail cuts north into The Jungle. The image to the right highlights the power pylons and transmission lines that are the dominant features of The Corridor. These structures pull one visually up into the strong horizontality of the power lines, and the detailing of the trail surface and features allow the space to contrast with the inﬁnite and wide views. The design and materiality create a set of spaces meant for casual interaction, movement, exchange, and neighborhood access.

ﬁgure 105. the corridor: impressions author

the corridor

open community production wind sky air silence clear wide backyard/frontyard permanent crisp unquestioned stillness civic "we are" responsive rhythm other folding open pattern metric hum crossing passing forgetting open community production wind sky air silence clear wide backyard/frontyard permanent crisp unquestioned stillness civic "we are" responsive rhythm other folding open pattern metric hum crossing passing forgetting open community production wind sky air silence clear wide backyard/frontyard permanent crisp unquestioned stillness civic "we are" responsive rhythm other folding open pattern metric hum crossing passing forgetting open community production wind sky air silence clear wide backyard/frontyard permanent crisp unquestioned stillness civic "we are" responsive rhythm other folding open pattern metric hum crossing passing forgetting open community production wind sky air silence clear wide backyard/frontyard permanent crisp unquestioned stillness civic "we are" responsive rhythm other folding open pattern metric hum crossing passing forgetting open community production wind sky air silence clear wide backyard/frontyard permanent crisp unquestioned stillness civic "we are" responsive rhythm other folding open pattern metric hum crossing passing forgetting

102

ﬁgure 106. the overpass: character in section author

ﬁgure 107. the jungle: character in section author

ﬁgure 108. the corridor: character in section author

LIGHT WIDTH

ASPH AS SPHAL PH P HALT ALLT CONC CO NC N CRE RETE R E ETE T TE WOOD W WO OOD OD O D GR RAVEL RAV A ELL AV ST STEEL TEE EL AS ASPHALT SPH HAL ALT T RE RECL RECLAIM CLLAI AM CONCRETE C CO NC N CRE RETE ETE TE R RECLAIM ECLA ECLA EC LAIM AIM M

BODY

CO CRE CONC RETE E WOOD WO OD D GR GRAV RAV AVEL ELL E PLAN PL ANTS AN S STEEL ST STEE T EL

SHOULDER

GRAZED GRAZ ED M MEA EADO DOWS WS GRAZ GR AZED ED G GRA RASS SSES ES S AS SE SEAS ASONAL SON ONAL AL WETLAND WET W ETLA LAND ND SHADE SHAD ADE DE CANO CANOPY OPY SUCC SU SUCCE CCES CC ESSION ON F FOREST ORES OR ST VINE VI NE C COLUMNS OLUM OL UMNS NS

PLANTS

0 10

STORMWATER STAIR

RUBBLE POND OVERLOOK

HIGHWAY BERM PERCH

I-5 UNDERPASS CUT

RAILROAD NTERSECTION

width in feet

RAIL REACHES

103

POWERLINE ALTERNATIVES

EMERGENT WETLAND BOARDWALK

POWERLINE ARCHES

FRONTYARD FOREST

BUNKER INSTALLATION

ELBOW PASS OVERLOOK

HUNTING THE LIGHT

EARTH BERM PASS

104

105

ďŹ gure 110. emotive map of site interventions: full map author

106

ďŹ gure 111. emotive map of site interventions: detail author

107

ďŹ gure 112. emotive map of site interventions: north end author

108

ďŹ gure 113. emotive map of site interventions: south end author

109

07.02 design of a moment I believe that we must vehemently resist any form of oversimplification of nature and landscape; our logic and imagining for future settlement cannot be allowed to be predetermined by the planners’ formulaic equations and their neatly packaged prototype solutions. As a participant in such resistance, I like the idea of discrete, tactical operations over the clumsy “totality” of the master plan. I believe that the largest of territories can be irreducibly restructured through small, laconic interventions as opposed to the unbearable excess of everything – objects, forms, materials. (Descombes 80) While I have presented not a master plan but a design matrix and emotive map in the preceding pages, it must be reiterated that for me the design of a trail is much more about unique moments than it is about the overarching logic or line that connects a sequence of similar spaces. I appreciate what George Descombes has written about the design of the Swiss Way, and I aimed to maintain a similar perspective throughout my own process (figures 114, 115 & 116). To employ such a fine-grained design strategy to something as sprawling and massive as a trail of several miles can be overwhelming, and I was sometimes tempted to revert to a more straightforward, “formulaic” strategy that could provide me with a clear logic and simple answers to design upon. I maintained a resistance to oversimplification, however, and found the process to be infinitely more rewarding and rich. The images and text which follow here present the design of the trail as a string of moments that flow into and follow each other as one moves through space. Perspectives, sections, and plans are accompanied by a narrative that describes the natural features of the trail and the way in which they are interpreted and supported through design. At times the narrative blurs the line between what was and what was introduced with the design; this strategy is intended to allow the reader to imagine the trail as something that is becoming rather than as a finished object, a completed “design” upon space. However, the images that accompany the narrative are not as subtle as the text in their distinction between the original site and the introduced design. A significant portion of this thesis has included an exploration of how to communicate, in graphic form, the unique aspects of trail design and the design of interstitial spaces at the edges of urban infrastructure. I had an interest in exploring how the peculiar characteristics of the site’s “infrastructural natures” could be referenced and in highlighting the ways in which I chose to represent the space. I was also interested in experimenting with different ways of communicating the experience of a site that was linear and extremely narrow while simultaneously layered, sinuous, and branching. Evidences of this exploration can be seen in some of the images presented on the preceding pages, particularly: Shifts of Meaning (figure 82), Frames of Reference (figure 83), Edges, Speed, Sound, Time (figure 94), and Mapping Measures, Meaning (figure 95), and the emotive map presented on page 103 (figure 110). The photo collages in the pages that follow are similarly exploratory, though somewhat more restrained in their abstraction of reality. The primary abstraction in my photo collages of site designs can be found in the figures that I have placed within the scenes. The historic characters found along the trail are pulled from another era; my logic for including them is based in a desire to construct multiple, contrasting frames of reference for the design. Georges Descombes has written of landscape design that: “It is not only terrain that changes with time but also the way that people perceive it. This is why design is about ideas as much as it is concerned with material and space.”(Descombes 80) The images I have created are just that: the graphic manifestation of a set of overlapping ideas about perception, design, and the histories of landscape and place. The characters found in my images recall times in history

110

ﬁgure 114. ﬁnding meaning of site: at the overpass author

ﬁgure 115. ﬁnding meaning of site: at ferdinand p-patch author

ﬁgure 116. ﬁnding meaning of site: at the overlook author

111

112

where the bicycle was seen as a novel contraption or as a welcome alternative to moving through and seeing space, not as an efficient way to move from point A to B or as a form of physical exercise (figure 118). My original motivation to use figures from the late 1800s and mid 1900s was to demonstrate my ethic toward trail design and the value of bicycle and pedestrian movement, but their use became just as much of a personal reflection on the popular perception of the landscape types that are found along the proposed trail. I do not see the designed photo collages as divided from present reality; I see them as a way to bind the sites with past and future realities and as a method to question current ways of being in and seeing these spaces. We cannot imagine ourselves occupying the marginalized, ivy-eaten forests of The Jungle, just as we cannot accept that a Victorian woman draped in silks would be found standing in this difficult, modern landscape. By using these figures I hope to highlight that I am exploring a wilderness that is in fact quite cultural, and one that we are only beginning to understand – the way the woman in a heavy silk gown once marveled at exotic hothouse plants imported from the “new world”, so are we beginning to explore and value the “new nature” that is tangled within the more familiar forms of our cities (figure 117). Because this book has a necessarily linear format, the trail is described as one would experience it if moving from north to south along its entire length, though it could be also be imagined as something one crosses over or through, not along; as a seam in the fabric of the city. I have included an appendix that can be found on pages 163-168 that includes images from my poster presentations. These presentations explored alternative ways to tell the story of my design and design process that cannot be explored in the format of this book.

ﬁgure 117. the aesthetic of discovery author ﬁgure 118. “Queen of the Wheel” demonstrating pleasure of bicycle movement in 1897 Rose Studio

113

RAIL REACHES: TULLYS AND RAIL HOUSES

An abandoned rail bed cuts under the shade of the freeway, and at the northernmost stretch of the proposed trail and it is possible to travel on a path set in the original rail lines that leads north into SoDo, or south into Georgetown. Art installations appear and disappear along the old rail bed, drawing visitors, artists, and explorers here. The rail extensions allow access along Airport Way without bikers needing to face the press of truck traffic. When passing over areas of asphalt or concrete, the material between the tracks is simply stained to demarcate it from the surrounding surfaces. When moving though areas where the rail bed had not already been altered or filled, the space between the tracks is replaced with densely packed, crushed aggregate with compaction levels that loosen as one moves south, away from the more intensely industrial northern end. In the southern rail reach, the rail bed skirts historic buildings that were designed to function with its alignment. Occasionally buildings push up against the path, activities spilling onto it. At other times the rail bed is oddly quiet, passing like a street in a sleepy town. The continuity of the trail’s experience is maintained through the materiality of the trail bed, which is modified to allow for access and to visually mark the path followed.

ﬁgure 119. rail reach: Tully’s author ﬁgure 120. rail reach: rail houses author

114

designing the thread : 114

115

RAILROAD INTERSECTION

The railroad tracks intersect with the northern leg of the trail network under the freeway interchange, where the Interstate 5 and adjacent roadbeds and bridges converge in an elevated tangle of concrete columns and arcs. The trail cuts away from the rail bed and is composed of existing slabs of concrete that have been reclaimed and reoriented. It is possible to observe columns of ivy that grow up on the freeway supports along offset steel cages. The columns become an odd forest over time, and they are a reminder of the intensity of the ivy plant, an invasive species in the Northwest that ﬁlls many of Seattle’s municipally-managed greenbelts. Here the ivy is controlled, but only loosely – it thrives in an environment that is challenging for humans as well as other plant species. ﬁgure 121. railroad intersection author

116

117

I-5 UNDERPASS CUT

Passing under the freeway is odd and always unexpected. The acoustic and visual intensities of the space vary unexpectedly, guided by patterns of movement along the transportation corridor. Views into the Washington Department of Transportation staging grounds allow observation of activities taking place there, and the space is full of unfamiliar life at odd hours of the day. WashDOT’s storage facilities ﬁt snuggly under the overpass, and the walls of the storage containers become canvases for local public artists. The highway is above the level of the path, and its noise is muffled and rhythmic. The concrete slabs that form the road bed overlap and gap more intensely here, highlighting the two layered ground planes.

ﬁgure 122. I-5 underpass cut author

118

119

HIGHWAY BERM PERCH

After passing under and along the freeway, the path slows at the foot of a steep, deep staircase that arches over an existing freeway berm. A steel gutter ribbons along its edge, allowing bicycles to be pushed along its contour. The views from the top of this staircase are wide and dramatic, and it is possible to observe the freeways and bridges from above, with views opening over the lights of the city, all the way to Puget Sound and the mountains beyond. At night the sensations of speed, light, and noise are dramatic here. Crossing over the southern end of the perch, one descends and the trail surface is level with that of the freeway for a short time. One moves through an undulating meadow punctuated by twisted wild cherry trees – views along and through them pull the eye into The Jungle that lies at the other edge of the open expanse. The wind and rush of the cars stands in contrast to views that open up into The Jungle; the light and speed is a contrast to the dense, steep darkness of the forest. After paralleling the freeway for a short while, the trail then cuts sharply east, toward the forest. The trail meets a steep grade that pulls up into The Jungle – along this portion of the path, tall, slender columns light slowly at their tips when activated by the motion of passing, softly signaling this arrival in the forest. The lights fade only long moments after motion has stilled, tracking movement over intervals of time. ﬁgure 123. highway berm perch author

120

121

STORMWATER STAIR

After passing up a steep rise into the Jungle, the trail arrives at the base of a gap in the tree canopy – a small power line cuts through this part of the forest. The clearing cuts a line across one of the steepest hillsides in The Jungle – the break in the treeline runs from the neighborhood above into the line of the I-5. The gap opens views over south downtown, west Seattle, and the sound. Dominant in the gap is a staircase that is cut by a narrow steel channel. At times it carries stormwater from the streets above, feeding the planting shells that jut out from the stair and are only partially visible above ground. Sunken wood slats form the risers of the stormwater stair, and earth and crushed rock form the treads. A steel runnel/bike track cuts through the center; a series of weirs slow water and direct it into overflow plant basins and to a flood basin at the foot of the stairs.

ﬁgure 124. stormwater stair author

122

123

ďŹ gure 125. stormwater stair: cross section author

124

to underpass

to rubble pond overlook stormwater runnel

soil + wood stairs overflow basin

to earth berm pass

ďŹ gure 126. stormwater stair: plan view author

stormwater shell planters

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RUBBLE POND OVERLOOK

Looking north from the base of the stormwater stair, it is possible to see a narrow spur trail that leads off into the forest beyond, and a geometric form in the distance draws attention. A walk onto an earthen pathway leads to an elevated walkway of wood and steel that arcs over the forest floor. The views are open, steep, and dramatic. An abrupt turn in the walkway leads to a jutting overlook onto a pond that sits in a steep bowl within the landscape. Looking closer, it is possible to see that what looks like moss-covered boulders is actually a mound of concrete and steel rubble. From where?

ďŹ gure 127. rubble pond overlook author

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127

EARTH BERM PASS

Moving south through The Jungle from the base of the stormwater stair, one moves along a densely packed gravel path that is elevated slightly above the forest bed by a thick edge. The other side of the path is flanked by a low wall made of steel slating: the earth pushes up against this wall, and plants grow around and through the voids. The earth lifting on the side closest to the freeway dampens the sound of the cars below, and along the other side of the trail the forest opens up into flat clearings; here it is possible to see and hear the forest life, even while walking above a freeway. Native trees have established here – alder, cherry, maple, weeping willow – their growth encouraged by the periodic control of the ivy and blackberry tangles. Moving south along this path, the edge of the forest gradually becomes visible, where it gaps open along the crumbling bed of 10th Avenue. The earth berm lowers back into the forest floor, and the freeway again becomes a louder, obvious presence. Steel slats begin to cut across the trail when reaching the point where the forest floor meets the road bed. They begin to group closer together, until a slightly arching steel bridge lifts from the forest floor, over the flooding end of 10th Avenue, and onto the decaying asphalt beyond.

ﬁgure 128. earth berm pass author

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ďŹ gure 129. earth berm pass: section author

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steel + gravel path

steel slatting

arch overwalk

ďŹ gure 130. earth berm pass: plan view author

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HUNTING THE LIGHT

Moving onto the end of 10th Avenue, the street is flooded with up to half a foot of water throughout much of the year, and is slowly being eaten away by the growth of wet-footed plants. An old ďŹ re hydrant is visible, as are decaying man-hole covers. After passing over the low steel bridge, one sees that here the asphalt is cut by metal slats which gathered to form the bridge. The path is split abruptly, broken by a gaping slit in the pavement where plants have begun to establish. This cut in the pavement allows the plants and moss to continue to grow and evolve, eventually pushing further into the street, turning this small stretch of the trail into a continually evolving, unpredictable balance between this forgotten street and the forest which pushes upon it. The walk is flanked on one side by short wooden electricity poles and on the other by tall metal poles topped with lights that glow when triggered by the motion of passing. Because the trail is open to the freeway here, the roar of the cars is loud at times and the forest has become an otherly presence. It can be observed, but somehow not participated in.

ďŹ gure 131. hunting the light author

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ďŹ gure 132. hunting the light: section author

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steel slatting

steel rill

asphalt split succesional planter

ďŹ gure 133. hunting the light: plan view author

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ELBOW PASS AND OVERLOOK

As the trail leaves the forest and enters the inhabited portion of 10th Avenue and the neighborhood that stretches out beyond it, the atmosphere changes quickly. The sky is broad overhead, the pylons and power lines dominant in the gap they occupy within the neighborhood. The trail follows the existing sidewalk, and the slender light poles begin to morph, lengthening in stages to become narrow, lit gateways that eventually widen and straddle the trail itself. The steel gates pull light from The Jungle edge into the shadow of the power lines, breaking and shrinking as they move into the forest to a series of overhead light poles that lead into The Jungle with the metric of the power line. This is a space of transition: the trail sweeps from one landscape type into another; moments are framed, lengthened, slowed, exaggerated. The point where the trail turns sharply to the south-east occurs at the moment where the power lines cut over I-5, tracing an impossibly long view into the city below. At this point there is a small wood and steel platform that juts out into this view. It curves with the curve of the trail, but is constructed of planks that pull directly into the view beyond. The lines of the overlook pull towards the view, with the power lines arcing deeply into the city below. At night, the platform is a shadow staged over a vast stretch of light. Leaving this lookout point, the path then continues under a series of steel frames before cutting directly under the last power line tower on this side of the Interstate 5. ďŹ gure 134. overlook author

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ďŹ gure 135. elbow pass and overlook: section author

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to jungle

gateway lights

wood + steel overlook

pylon gateways pylon underpass

ďŹ gure 136. elbow pass and overlook: plan view author

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BUNKER INSTALLATION

The trail moves up the steep buttressed slopes that support the pylons, and the perspective blocks the trail from view while revealing the extension of the power lines – the lines are the path, pulling up into the Beacon Hill neighborhood. Climbing into the power line corridor, views begin to open and close along its length, the land rising and falling within it. The path here is simple and fits the materiality of the Chief Sealth trail that will be met at the southern extent of the trail. A slow slope pulls up into the neighborhood to reach a small rise that affords views back to the city. On the base of this hill there stands a structure built of staggered concrete slabs. From it rises an oddly shaped tension power tower, stout and buzzing. In the evenings, columnar light fixtures glow from the ambient energy they pull from the air around the towers and light spills from the gaps between the concrete slabs. The abrupt presence of this building marks a change in the path – as it moves from a finely grained residential area, cut frequently by alleys and small roads, into a looser portion of the trail, where wide open, quiet spaces are more common. figure 137. bunker installation author

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FRONTYARD FOREST

From the bunker, as one moves into this more quietly residential area, it is possible to see down a steep hill into a loose stand of trees. The slope dips quickly into the forested area, and the air becomes damper, the overhead presence of the power lines and towers is momentarily blocked. The vegetation also block views of the houses flanking the power line â&#x20AC;&#x201C; this point along the trail is the only one where houses face the power line, rather than turning their back or side yards to it. The trail is edged with moss and groundcovers, and narrows slightly as it moves though the front yards of these houses.

ďŹ gure 138. frontyard forest author

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POWER LINE ARCHES

Leaving the forest, the trail once again climbs a gradual slope, where for the ďŹ rst time views are clear in both directions along the trail. Here the trail passes directly under one of the pylons. The trail sinks as it passes directly under one of these towers, heightening the scale of the tower itself and the expanse of the view â&#x20AC;&#x201C; the horizon falls sharply and frames the distant mountains. In the sunken area the trail is flanked by slatted wood walls that cut out over the ground plane. In the summer, the smell of the sun warming these wooden slats stands in contrast to the cold geometry of the towers themselves. Grazed meadow grasses stretch out on either side of the pylons, and the mix of plants reveals how this place changes and shifts through the seasons.

ďŹ gure 139. power line arches author

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EMERGENT WETLAND BOARDWALK

A very gentle slope moves from the power line arches down to the existing Ferdinand P-Patch. The jumbled profile of the p-patch contrasts the scale and shape of the pylons, and the vernacular of the fencing surrounding it echoes the slating found at the power line arches. Just past the community garden, the trail crosses a street and then becomes a narrow, slatted boardwalk that skims over the top of a slowly evolving wetland. Filled long ago and planted with a monoculture of grass, the wetland has continued to push back, and the area is currently flooded or damp for ten months of the year. As the control over the area loosens and traffic is lifted up and over it, the potential for growth slowly evolves through periodic plantings and maintenance. This is the last wide open area of the trail before it moves into the existing Chief Sealth. The sculpted hills of the existing Chief Sealth hide the drama of this scale, and here it is folded out into the horizon. The narrow bridge and evolving wetland slow people here, allowing appreciation of the open expanse. figure 140. emergent wetland boardwalk author

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POWER LINE ALTERNATIVES

Moving from the existing Chief Sealth Trail into the proposed extension is a transition that begins shortly before Beacon Avenue, where the power line corridor makes an abrupt turn to the west. The sculpted hills in this area of the power line corridor are used as an experimental staging ground for alternative plant management strategies that are used in the new trail and could be adopted along the existing Chief Sealth. These management strategies are designed to increase the value of the corridor as plant and wildlife habitat.

ďŹ gure 141. power line alternatives author

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08 REFLECTION

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I chose to study trails and the design of interstitial spaces, in part, because this type of program and site are critical to our profession, and will continue to gather increasing importance in the coming decades. As our cities continue to densify and tighten their seams, the value of diverse, rich, and empowering public spaces will continue to gain increasing importance within the urban structure. We will be tasked to stitch together these spaces with pieces of our cities that are currently seen as “leftover” or “void”, but which in fact also currently provide necessary looseness, ambiguity, and room for imagination in the programmed city. These stitches will also often be linear in form, sitting in the footprints, seams, or edges of infrastructure networks; these “skinny parks” will need to be designed as trails, with attention to the moments they create as well as the qualities of the territories they stretch to and through. Recent successes of high-profile projects such as the High Line indicate that these linear networks can succeed without the excess of programming found in many parks and public spaces, highlighting the pleasures that can be found in simply moving through space, in the promenade. I do not presuppose that the research or design presented in this thesis is summations of the massive, interlinking topics I have explored over this last year. This work is only a beginning. The process of this thesis has given me the luxury to explore topics I find fascinating and central to not only our profession but to my own identity as a designer and as an individual. The reflection which follows summarizes both: the influence that I feel these topics can have on our profession, and the impact this process has had on my way of designing, thinking, and looking at trails and urban spaces. FROM STUDY TO DESIGN The trail design presented in this thesis is one that emerged through a year-long process of study: I researched trail design and design theory through literature, images, and sites; I examined theories relevant to the reading and design of interstitial spaces and layered, functioning landscapes; and I catalogued, mapped, and documented interstitial lands in Seattle. I was fortunate enough to discover a site in Seattle that would allow me to explore all I had studied through site analysis and design. This research led to the development of a series of design principles that framed my attitude towards interstitial landscape types, as well as a site-specific set of design goals and design principles. My design principles were summarized in the fifth chapter of my thesis, and include: Shape a site experience that allows for multiple histories and interpretations Suggest minimal interventions which maintain and engage current meanings and developments Respond to and enhance the qualities of existing “infrastructural natures” Allow for exposure to and shelter from infrastructure forces Shape experiences that allow for varied degrees of engagement/appropriation by users Identify flexible uses that respond to changes in use over time(s) When evaluating my final design for a reflection of these principles, they are reflected in the design decisions I made. When developing planting design strate-

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gies, I was very much influenced by the “infrastructural natures” of the site, and let them drive this aspect of the design: for example, I chose to retain the English ivy colonies under the overpass, providing offset cages on some freeway columns so that their growth would not be destructive but could also be monumental and contextual. I highlighted the meaning and implications of the power line corridor through a lighting installation that is lit solely by the ambient energy charge that the power currents leave in the air, a sculpture that has the potential to be beautiful yet disquieting, much like the power lines themselves. I also continually worked to bring flexibility and variety into my designs, creating interventions such as Stormwater Stair that would reflect the floods and droughts of the Pacific Northwest, and the lighting structures that pass from The Corridor through The Jungle that reflect patterns of use, movement, and atmospheric conditions. I designed the alignment of the trail with the aim of exposing people to the unsettling beauty created by the power lines, freeway, and rail corridor while also alternately providing shelter when it was necessary or when it could heighten the appreciation of the scene. Throughout the design process, I found it very challenging to develop interventions that could meet my second principle of design: to shape a site through minimal interventions. I constantly struggled with the impression that I was not proposing “enough” and that I should be introducing additional structures or forms to the landscape. I found that there was a very delicate balance between creating a design that was minimal enough to be sensitive and responsive to the site, and to create a project that was more than a “line” through space. On reflection, I am thankful that I resisted impulses to over-design the site, and that I spent as much time as I did on the selected erasure, subtraction, and distillation of my design ideas. I feel that one of the strengths of the final proposal is that it is bound to site and to context not through structure or literal references of form, but through subtle changes in the trail’s materiality, width, elevation, and placement in reference to the immediate and extended surroundings. While significant structures and strong forms do appear along the length of the trail, they are very carefully placed and shaped so as to emerge from the trail rather than sit upon it – more akin

ﬁgure 142. focus and extension author

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to the irregularities along a thread of yarn than to the beads of a necklace. Finding the “right” level of design is a common struggle among designers; in design school we are consistently implored to simplify and clarify our work, to do more with less. Designing a trail through a series of dramatic and dramatically distinct landscapes provided me with a very rigorous exercise in the challenges and values of minimal design. LIFE OF A TRAIL Throughout the development of this thesis, I came to recognize that there exists a limited breadth of research on trails. While much has been written on the planning of trail networks and the importance of linear open spaces as habitat corridors and recreational amenities, there is a dearth of literature on the full implications of trail design and the value of trails as public spaces. Through my work, I came to recognize a few key points that I find critical in the design of trails; for me, these characteristics of trails indicate that they are also extremely valuable design exercises, and push at the edges of what I have been taught through my formal education. These points are summarized here. The thread, the horizon, the link I found the research and development of my trail project to be very rewarding and challenging, particularly because the project forced me to think and design at extreme scales. With a background in regional planning and with an interest in the material detailing of design, this balance of scales fit exceptionally well with my interests and capabilities. As landscape architects we are often encouraged to consider both wide and minute frames of reference when developing a design proposal, but this project was the first that absolutely required that I do so. Because I was interested in exploring both the detailed and broad scales of trail design, I elected to develop a conceptual plan for the trail in its entirety, and then focus more closely on detailing design for a key portion of the trail, as can be seen in the plans and sections of: Stormwater Stair, Earth Berm Pass, Hunting the Light, and the Elbow Pass and Overlook (pages 119-136). I chose to detail this section because it is the moment when the trail sweeps north along the highway and moves from The Corridor into The Jungle: a critical portion of the trail that is extremely complex in its materiality as well as characterized by physical links to the surrounding landscape and infrastructural systems that pass through the site. The long, thin nature of trails implies that they can cross multiple territories and very distinct landscapes; their form also limits any physical intervention or placement of materials to an extremely confined space. The implications are clear: designing a space that is potentially several miles long and only a few feet wide requires a much more flexible and robust understanding of space than when designing a space that is contained within a singular, self-referencing plane. Because the surface of intervention is so minimal, trails are most often tied very closely to the surrounding landscape, highlighting vistas, enclosures, and relationships beyond the trail itself. Moreover, trails have the potential to be a physical link to those moments viewed on and beyond the horizon, allowing them to become part of a larger system, both literally and metaphorically. Even if an individual only crosses the trail at a moment or walks it for a very short distance, the awareness that the path threads on into the distance can be very powerful and compelling. Thickness of the line As mentioned earlier, in my review of trails I came to recognize two primary design strategies in the creation of trails: the “thick” trail, which has a strong pres-

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ence within the landscape and an identity unto itself that distinguishes it from its surroundings, and the “thin” trail, which sits in and close to the landscape, an invisible current that pulls and guides you through it without referencing itself. I should make it clear that when I speak of the “thickness” of the line I am not referring to its physical dimensions, but rather to the level of its self-awareness and the force of its presence within the landscape. These strategies can be found in alternation within any individual trail – as it momentarily thickens and then thins out again – or in alternation within a network of trails. This latter example can be found in the Iron Goat trail, which I visited as part of my study and detailed on pages 47-50. This trail has two levels: a “thick” lower trail, which is broad, flat, framed with a firm edge, and frequently marked by wooden walkways, interpretive signs, and structured overlooks; and a “thin” upper trail, which winds quietly through a thick forest of ferns and damp gullies, sometimes almost disappearing into the underbrush or beneath wide stretches of open sky. Walking along the lower pathway one clearly feels that there is a sequence to experience, that the trail bed itself contains much of what the designers want you to see; along the upper trail, the landscape itself is the only frame of reference and there is an ambiguity to the story that is being told, a looseness to the experience of the place. Complexity of communication During the process of developing and presenting my site analysis and design, I was confronted by an unexpected challenge: how does one graphically communicate the design or experience of a trail? I was continually asked by my advisors and panel members to develop a “master plan” of my proposal; this was something I resisted on a theoretical level, but also found to be extremely challenging on a practical level. I drafted a CAD document of my design as I would for any other project, drawing the pathway to scale down to the inch to demonstrate the relationship of the trail edge and body and detail the planking, markings, and lighting. The resultant drawing, when printed in its entirety at any reasonable scale, proved to be utterly useless for communicating my work with others, the details of the design dissolving into a line on a page. To overcome the sterility of the master plan while also communicating the details of the design, I developed two graphics that work in tandem: an emotive map of the terrains, movements, and flows (figure 110), and a measured matrix that provides continuous snapshots of moments along the trail, detailing their materiality, dimension, and planting and lighting strategies (figure 109). Unfortunately, these graphics were both developed after my last panel review, so I am uncertain of their effectiveness to stand alone and to communicate in the way I intended them to. The communication of the trail’s design proved to be an immensely challenging and vigorous graphic design problem, and one that I feel I have only begun to find solutions for. Through this process I was able to develop graphic design skills in a way I had not been forced to with any other studio project; this alone indicates that the design or communication of a trail would be a valuable and appropriate addition to any rigorous landscape design education. Trails as habits As a portion of my research, I attended a community meeting discussing the extension of the Chief Sealth further into the power line corridor (the concept for the Chief Sealth is to extend it all the way into SoDo, though the route has not been designed to date). What struck me at this public meeting was the disconnect between the trail route as proposed by the city and the route of the trail as imagined and lived by the residents who walked in the power line corridor each day. The residents told the trail planners about the ways the space was already being used, questioning why the chosen route often ignored these current patterns of use and at times even threatened to stymie them. They made suggestions to how the trail could be rerouted to recognize the way it was already being used today, and expressed desire for formal places to rest and gather along the trail – at moments where they already did so. I was thrilled and moved to see that my own concept for the trail and my intended route were nearly identical to the one chosen by the residents – a concept and route

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that I developed after studying the evidences and memories of use embodied in the landscape. My “purposeful wanderings” had been supplemented with more traditional tools of analysis and observation, and visits to the site at different times of day and year had revealed physical features and natural rhythms that guided my design. The experience at the public meeting led me to believe that trails can be found through site analysis and careful observation of the patterns and moments of the landscape and that they cannot and should not be created using only bluntly analytical tools such as GIS and aerial mapping. Trails are created through habits that become memories and marks upon space; to treat them as anything less abstract or more rational is to weaken their potential to incur further meaning. LOOKING FORWARD The research and design presented in this thesis do not suppose to provide a comprehensive or thorough review of the broad topics of trail design and the role of design in interstitial landscapes; these writings and design experiments suggest that there is an inspired relationship between the two topics that will play a critical role in the future of our profession and our cities, and they encourage the further exploration and evaluation of this relationship and the most inspiring, relevant, and sensitive ways to foster it. My own study of trail design and the role of design in spaces found the footprints and edges of infrastructure has pushed me to become a more flexible and sensitive designer, and has strengthened my ability to move between scales of design and understanding of site. These topics were a critical and urgently necessary addition to my own design education, and I have come to believe that trail design in particular is a multi-faceted design challenge that pushes at the seams of what it means to think and design as a landscape architect today. Trails push us as designers: to read the stories of the landscape, to recognize the marks that time has left, and to stretch our thoughts of what could be. Many footsteps mark this path: the footsteps of mysterious Celts in search of acorns or wild strawberries, the footsteps of Romans, shocked to ﬁnd themselves in this hostile world, footsteps of barbarians, Germans, or Swedes, who, according to legend, gave their name to Schwytz, or Switzerland…footsteps of shepherds, fruit pickers, hunters, maybe even of William Tell who arrived here following a deer, and picked a beautiful red apple. (Maurice Pianzola)

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09 BIBLIOGRAPHY

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Shannon. “From Theory to Resistance: Landscape urbanism in Europe.” The Landscape Urbanism Reader. 1st ed. Ed. Charles Waldheim. Princeton Architectural Press, 2006. 141-161. Print. Situacionistas: Arte, Política, Urbanismo = Situationists: Art, Politics, Urbanism. Barcelona: Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona, 1996. Print. Spirn, Anne Whiston. The Language of Landscape. New Haven [Conn.]: Yale University Press, 1998. Print. Tatom, Jacqueline. “Urban Highways and the Reluctant Public Realm.” The Landscape Urbanism Reader. 1st ed. Ed. Charles Waldheim. Princeton Architectural Press, 2006. 179-195. Print. Treib, Marc. Settings and Stray Paths : Writings on Landscapes and Gardens. London: Routledge, 2005. Ulam, Alex, and Cantor, Steven L. “Back on Track: Bold Design Moves Transform a Defunct Railroad into a 21st-Century Park [High Line, New York].” Landscape Architecture. 99.10 (200): 90-109. Print. “Urban Omnibus - Queens Plaza: Infrastructure Reframed.” 7 Dec. 2009. Web. “Van Alen Institute - Queens Plaza: An Open Ideas Competition.” 7 Dec. 2009. Web. Waldheim, Charles. “Landscape as Urbanism.” The Landscape Urbanism Reader. 1st ed. Ed. Charles Waldheim. Princeton Architectural Press, 2006. 35-53. Print. Winterbottom, Daniel. “Residual Space Re-evaluated.” Places. Massachusetts 13 (2000): 40-47. Print.

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THESIS STUDIES Bularca, Brandusa. Harbor Island Manufacturing Fields: Man-Making and Re-Making of Seattle Metropolitan Industries. Master of Architecture, University of Washington, 2009. Print. Cheung, Wai-Tung Phyllis. The Neglected Urban Landscape. Master of Landscape Architecture, University of Manitoba, 2000. PDF file. Collins, Kelly. Re-Envisioning Seattle’s Urban Edge: How Can an Elevated Road Become a Multi-Faceted and Multi-Functional Landscape? Master of Landscape Architecture, University of Washington, 2005. Print. Cragg, Amy M. A Study on the Design of Emptiness: An Open-Ended Pier Space on Seattle’s Central Waterfront. Master of Landscape Architecture, University of Washington, 2005. Print. Devier, Garrett A. Repacking Interpretive Trails: Landscape Design for Interpretive Experiences. Master of Landscape Architecture, University of Washington, 2007. Print. Faris, Dorothy. Healing the River: Designing to Reveal the Language of the Duwamish River. Master of Landscape Architecture, University of Washington, 2005. Print. Frank, Christina. Remanufacturing Ross Island : transforming a Portland, Oregon, mining site into a post-industrial ecological park. Master of Landscape Architecture, University of Washington, 2005. Print. Metzger, Rainer. OMOHAI: The Outdoor Museum of History and Industry. Master of Architecture, University of Washington, 2009. Print. O’Loan, Tim. Urban Yards: Terrains Vagues of Inner Northern Melbourne. Master of Landscape Architecture, RMIT University, 2006. PDF file. Soholt, Helle Lis. A Character of Openness: A Study of Urban Morphology in the American Grid City. Master of Architecture, University of Washington, 1999. Print. Umbanhowar, Elizabeth A. Reel to Real: Film and Landscape, Image and Experience. Master of Landscape Architecture, University of Washington, 2007. PDF file. Williams, Katherine. Action Potentials: Building an Urban Landscape through Discrete Moments. Masters of Architecture, Rice University, 2004. PDF file.

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OTHER RESOURCES Barbera, Mia Angela. The Official Rails-to-Trails: Washington & Oregon. 1st ed. Guilford, Conn: Globe Pequot Press, 2001. Print. Bartram, Michael. The Pre-Raphaelite Camera: Aspects of Victorian Photography. 1st ed. Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1985. Print. Busquets, Joan. New Orleans: Strategies for a City in Soft Land. Cambridge: Harvard University, Graduate School of Design, 2005. Print. Careri, Francesco. Walkscapes: El Andar Como Práctica Estética = Walking As an Aesthetic Practice. Barcelona: Gili, 2002. Print. Ernst, Max. Une Semaine De Bonté: A Surrealistic Novel in Collage. New York: Dover Publications, 1976. Print. Franck, Karen. Loose space : possibility and diversity in urban life. London; New York: Routledge, 2007. Print. Galí-Izard, Teresa. Los Mismos Paisajes: Ideas E Interpretaciones = The Same Landscapes: Ideas and Interpretations. Barcelona: G. Gili, 2005. Print. Gernsheim, Helmut. Masterpieces of Victorian Photography. London: Phaidon Press, 1951. Print. Girot, Christophe. “Four Trace Concepts in Landscape Architecture.” Recovering landscape: essays in contemporary landscape architecture. New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1999. Print. Herlihy, David V. Bicycle: The History. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004.Print. King County (Wash.). Urban Trails Plan. Seattle, 1971. Print.

Ruby, Ilka. Groundscapes: El Reencuentro Con El Suelo En La Arquitectura Contemporánea = the Rediscovery of the Ground in Contemporary Architecture. Barcelona: G. Gili, 2006. Print. Seattle (Wash.), and Seattle (Wash.). “Burke Gilman Trail.” 1995: n. pag. Print. Seattle City Light. “Seattle City Light’s Skagit Hydroelectric Project.” 1970: n. pag. Print.

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ďŹ gure 145. wild cherry tree in bloom author

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10 APPENDIX

164

ﬁgure 146. midreview boards February 9, 2010. These boards were the ﬁrst presentation of my thesis work before a review panel. Only a few weeks into design concepts, these work-in-progress boards focus on site analysis and initial design explorations. In order to reveal the design in stages, I decided to pin up my collages and perspectives as I spoke about them: the L-shaped aerial photograph to the far right of the photograph was hanging from the start of the presentation, and I proceeded to pin up each design concept/proposal as I spoke about it. This “unveiling” earned very positive reactions from the review panel. author

figure 147. final review boards March 16, 2010. These boards were the last presentation of my thesis work to a review panel. Though the scale is difficult to perceive here, this series of boards stretched across the presentation room for a length of nearly twelve feet. I presented the analysis of the site (upper row) together with perspective views of my design overlaid onto a longitudinal section of the entire trail (lower row). I also pinned up sketches of portions of the trail that I was planning to explore in further detail (left). Reactions from the review panel to the presentation style were largely positive; they particularly liked the scale and detail of the longitudinal section. author

165 heide s martin armature urbanism university of washington

trail design in the contours of metropolitan infrastructure

APPROACH TO DESIGN IN URBAN INTERSTITIAL SPACES

Shape a site experience that allows for multiple histories and interpretations Allow for exposure to and shelter from infrastructure forces Respond to and enhance the qualities of existing “infrastructural natures” Shape experiences that allow for varied degrees of engagement/appropriation by users Suggest minimal interventions that maintain and engage current meanings and developments Identify ﬂexible uses that respond to changes in use over time(s)

PROJECT DESIGN GOALS Enable spaces for active, loose, engaging play and wonder Provide for seamless yet richly varied movements through space, over time Compose sensitive and supportive responses to natural processes which invoke curiosity/confusion Support and provide local community gathering spaces Provide through-ways for bicycle commuters

THE SITE

POWERLINE ARCHES 7 looking north-west

SOUND

high decible low decible

WAIT FOR THE BUS commute to work lock up your bike

walk to the grocery

catch beetles

build a compost bin

tending PRODUCE meet your friend

start birdwatching

admire garden

nap in the shade

WALK DOG

pick wildflowers

WAIT FOR THE BUS

walk to school

climb hill

wait for school bus

MEET NEIGHBOR

dig a hole

WATCH

ride a bike

HOLD HANDS sing anticipate

relax

discover relics

watch hawks

WATCH and LISTEN

sing

gaze into distance

move through

watch and wonder

collect rocks watch work crews

climb on rail car watch mural artist

observed participated imagined

watch trains drive into tunnel

ACTIVITIES

ECOLOGIES

open grasslands productive garden sunny and open views seasonal wetland standing water invasive species/woodland mix maintained plant communities

drink coffee LISTEN TO MUSIC

MAPPING OBSERVATION + ANALYSIS

LOCATION Seattle, WA, USA SIZE 2.5 mile long corridor INTERSTICIAL LANDSCAPE TYPES poweline corridor successional/invasive species forest freeway underpass

heide s martin armature urbanism university of washington

RAILROAD INTERSECTION 1 looking north

I-5 UNDERPASS CUT 2 looking south

RUBBLE POND OVERLOOK 3 looking north

heide s martin armature urbanism university of washington

ﬁgure 148. exhibition boards for Barcelona European Landscape Biennial (full series) STORMWATER STAIR 4

EARTH BERM PASS 5

looking east

looking north

EARTH BERM PASS + HUNTING THE LIGHT

The asphalt of the eroding 10th Avenue is cut to allow the plants that push at it now to thicken and thrive. The asphalt is cut by metal slats which gather to form a low bridge that lifts slightly over the end of the street. The slightly arching steel bridge lifts you from the decaying asphalt onto the forest ﬂoor; the earth berm then pulls the forest up around you, mufﬂing the rush of the freeway.

LIGHT WIDTH

0 10

BODY

CO CRE CONC RETE E WOOD WO OD D GR GRAV RAV AVEL ELL E PLAN PL ANTS AN S ST EL ST STEE

SHOULDER

PLANTS

width in feet

POWERLINE ALTERNATIVES

EMERGENT WETLAND BOARDWALK

POWERLINE ARCHES

BUNKER INSTALLATION

ELBOW PASS OVERLOOK

EARTH BERM PASS

section looking north

HUNTING THE LIGHT

STORMWATER STAIR

RUBBLE POND OVERLOOK

HIGHWAY BERM PERCH

I-5 UNDERPASS CUT

RAILROAD NTERSECTION

RAIL REACHES

section looking north

FRONTYARD FOREST

section looking north

DESIGN + MATERIALS MAPPING

HUNTING THE LIGHT 6

looking south

STORMWATER STAIR

Sunken wood slats form the risers of the stormwater stair; earth and crushed rock form the treads. A steel runnel/bike track cuts through the center; a series of weirs slow water and direct it into overflow plant basins and to a flood basin at the foot of the stairs. In flood events, the base of the flood basin holds a shallow level water as the water is allowed in infiltrate the aggregate base.

June 17, 2010. This page and the following three pages depict boards that were created for exhibition for the International Exposition of University Projects in the Schools of Architecture and Landscape. The call for entries requested three landscape-oriented boards of DIN A3 format (approximately 11 in x 17 in) arranged vertically. These boards were to include minimal text, and were to incorporate: a site plan; a location key; process and analysis images; and, final design images. The format and size limitations presented a design challenge, but I feel that the final boards manage to fulfill the requirements while remaining true to the complexity of the design. author

166

heide s martin armature urbanism university of washington

trail design in the contours of metropolitan infrastructure

APPROACH TO DESIGN IN URBAN INTERSTITIAL SPACES

THE SITE

looking north-west

ﬁgure 149. exhibition board for Barcelona European Landscape Biennial (1 of 3) author

WAIT FOR THE BUS commute to work lock up your bike

walk to the grocery

build a compost bin

catch beetles

tending PRODUCE meet your friend

pick wildflowers

start birdwatching

admire garden

nap in the shade

WALK DOG

WAIT FOR THE BUS

walk to school

wait for school bus

MEET NEIGHBOR

dig a hole

climb hill

WATCH

ride a bike

HOLD HANDS sing anticipate

watch hawks

relax

discover relics

WATCH and LISTEN

sing

gaze into distance

watch and wonder

move through

collect rocks watch work crews

climb on rail car watch mural artist

watch trains drive into tunnel

observed participated imagined

drink coffee LISTEN TO MUSIC

ECOLOGIES

SOUND

open grasslands productive garden sunny and open views seasonal wetland standing water invasive species/woodland mix maintained plant communities

ACTIVITIES

high decible low decible

POWERLINE ARCHES 7

MAPPING OBSERVATION + ANALYSIS

LOCATION Seattle, WA, USA SIZE 2.5 mile long corridor INTERSTICIAL LANDSCAPE TYPES poweline corridor successional/invasive species forest freeway underpass

167

heide s martin armature urbanism university of washington

RAILROAD INTERSECTION 1 looking north

I-5 UNDERPASS CUT 2 looking south

RUBBLE POND OVERLOOK 3 looking north

ďŹ gure 150. exhibition board for Barcelona European Landscape Biennial (2 of 3) author

168

heide s martin armature urbanism university of washington

STORMWATER STAIR 4

EARTH BERM PASS 5

looking east

STORMWATER STAIR

BODY

CO CRE CONC RETE E WOOD WO OD D GR GRAV RAV AVEL ELL E PLAN PL ANTS AN S ST EL ST STEE

ﬁgure 151. exhibition board for Barcelona European Landscape Biennial (3 of 3) author

POWERLINE ALTERNATIVES

EMERGENT WETLAND BOARDWALK

POWERLINE ARCHES

BUNKER INSTALLATION

ELBOW PASS OVERLOOK

HUNTING THE LIGHT

section looking north

EARTH BERM PASS

STORMWATER STAIR

RUBBLE POND OVERLOOK

HIGHWAY BERM PERCH

I-5 UNDERPASS CUT

RAILROAD NTERSECTION

LIGHT WIDTH

SHOULDER

PLANTS

0 10

width in feet

RAIL REACHES

section looking north

FRONTYARD FOREST

section looking north

looking north

EARTH BERM PASS + HUNTING THE LIGHT

DESIGN + MATERIALS MAPPING

HUNTING THE LIGHT 6

looking south