URBAN DESIGN
UPDATE
Newsletter of the Institute for Urban Design September/October 2004 Vol. 20 No. 5 FELLOWS PANEL TO INCLUDE MINNESOTA PUDS AS WELL AS FRESH KILLS Jackson Meadow
Jackson Meadow, a planned unit development, near Rochester Minnesota, now some seven years in the making, is being discussed by professionals as an open-space sensitive model for the building of new communities. The 145-acre open-field site connects a series of neighborhoods around a central public green. Homes are clustered on only 50 acres of the 145-acre site. The remaining 75 percent will remain farmland or open space. Front porches connect to an existing trail system in the William O’Brien State Park. Shane Coen, the landscape architect responsible for the master plan, receives a design award at the ASLA National Convention in Salt Lake City on October 30th. On October 28th Coen will participate in a Fellows panel in New York on Landscape Urbanism and will discuss Jackson Meadows as well as Mayo Woodlands. The award recognizes Coen & Partners for their site plan for Mayo Woodlands whose owners are from the family who pioneered the Mayo Clinic. Although the site had already been plotted according to conventional subdivision requirements, the designers introduced trees and fences to divide the development into three neighborhoods, distinguished by either forest, meadow or Woodside. After then covering the site with prairie grass, they divided it with fences or stonewalls as appropriate. Houses are sited into mowed cutouts. Altus Architects, together with Salmelia, are providing site-specific wood houses.
Mayo Woodlands Rochester, Minnesota
The Mayo Woodlands PUD reduces the impact of the platted circulation pattern. At the same time it links disparate cul-de-sac neighborhoods through footpaths. Scandinavian wooden vernacular architecture evokes the place from which Minnesotans have emigrated over the last 100 years. Together the two-projects represent landscape-based approach to housing not found in public transit-based models or in new urbanist models.
Fresh Kills Staten Island
James Corner will update the audience for the October 28th Fellows panel on Fresh Kills, Staten Island, the garbage collection facility said to be visible from outer space. The Corner Master Plan calls for 2,200 acres of landfill to be converted into an innovative, ecologically diverse and culturally active new parkland. The Master Plan in preparation for New York City Planning Department for three years is entering Phase 1 implementation. "Lifescape" was selected as the winning entry for the Fresh Kills landfill International Design Competition held by the City of New York in 2001. Field Operations, of which Corner is partner, was subsequently commissioned to lead a multi-disciplinary team through the master planning and design process. Nearly three times the size of Central park, the 2,200-acre site comprises over 1000 acres of closed landfill and 450 acres of creeks and wetland. The remaining 750 acres can support more active programs, such as a regional sports complex, active recreational spaces, markets, restaurants and public event spaces. Anticipated to be developed over the next 25 years, the Field Operations plan proposes a huge ecological restoration of the site, diversifying wetland, grassland and woodland habitats across the site. A major regional roadway is designed to work in harmony with the new parkland setting, and over 50 miles of new trails, bike paths and equestrian paths are proposed. Corner’s October 28 presentation will include a plan for the Highline as well as other current projects.
NEIGHBORHOODS
Atlantic Station Atlanta
Eco Village
Cleveland
Coney Island Brooklyn
Chinatown Manhattan
State Street Village Chicago
Xu Jai Hu Shanghai
Brownfield Reclamation / Eco-urbanism Among New Neighborhood Strategies The nation’s largest center city brownfield redevelopment on 138 acres in midtown Atlanta will provide residential neighborhoods for 10,000 people, reports Ron Harwick, whose firm, James, Harwick and Partners, Dallas, is designing Atlantic Station, a $2 billion reclamation of the former Atlantic Steel Mill site, purchased by Jacoby Development in 1997. The current transformation in midtown Atlanta will produce 12 million square feet of retail, office, residential and hotel space interconnected by 11 acres of public parks, bike paths and jogging trails. The redevelopment plan by Jacoby is based on three large mixed-use components: the district. the village and the commons, in which the first two residential neighborhoods are under construction by the Atlantabased multi-family residential developer, The Lane Company. Remediation of the site required removal of 160,000 tons of soil to regulated landfills. Among the 27 required zoning conditions, ambiguous and sometimes paradoxical language outlined the requirements for bike lanes, height restrictions, retail restrictions, cut-through traffic, open space, landscaping, public art utilities, people movers and alternative transportation, comments Harwick. Cleveland, which has just been cited as among the poorest U.S. cities, has announced a program of new public school investment, said to be their largest public investment. In addition, the city is developing Cleveland Eco Village, an experiment in following green building standards while building some 20 town houses. The program is a partnership between Detroit Shoreway Community Organization and Eco City Cleveland and has been funded in part by a grant from The Gund Foundation. As Cleveland begins to regenerate its inner neighborhoods, this will be a model worth watching. Coney Island will soon have a new master plan reports Ken Greenberg, urban design consultant for the project together with J. Max Bond, Jr., Davis Brody Bond. The idea will be to maximize the role of the amusement park, boardwalks and sports facilities to make Coney Island a vacation destination for local citizens as well as far visitors from other cities. Josh Sirefman, CEO, NYC Economic Development Corp., is major sponsor for the plan. Washington Square Partners, whose Vice President, Terry Stanley, sits on the EDC board, may also be investing in the area. America’s Chinatown is going forward with a new plan reports John Shapiro, whose firm, Phillips Preiss Shapiro, is preparing it for the Rebuild Chinatown Initiative, a consortium of civic groups funded by Rockefeller Brothers Fund, The Carnegie Corporation and Deutsche Bank. A newly reprinted report stands as a model for 21st century planning practice documents. It highlights magnets (great restaurants) underlines the need for more affordable housing, proposes the creation of a business district and makes economic expansion the keystone goal. New for Chinatown will be an accessible waterfront. When fully developed, the plan should assure that second generation Chinese make Chinatown their home and that the economic base be expanded via jobs – fashion industry, East/West trade and tourism. State Street Village, created by Helmut Jahn to house 367 IIT students parallels the El that bisects the campus and resembles a train’s long rectangle as well as its metallic cladding. The campus in which the new dormatory sits is also the site of The McCormick Tribune Student Center by Koolhaas/OMA. Each addition articulates a different counterpart to the campus plan and buildings designed by Ludwig Mies Van der Rohe. At a moment when the Chinese government is cutting back on projects by overseas designers, Agrest and Gandelsonas continue to study Xu Jia Hu, a 5-square mile neighborhood in Shanghai for which they won a competition in 2003 reports Diana Agrest. Formerly part of the French Concession, the newly planned district is expected to absorb 1 million of Shanghai’s 16 million population. Working full time in China is Chris Choa, now completing more than two years in Shanghai, with a full-time office called HLW Shanghai. Bill Tung, working for Rockefeller Group Development Corp., most recently stopped in Hong Kong before moving on to Shanghai. He will return to New York later in the fall.
Greener Cities
Recycling of New York’s metal glass and plastic will go forward in a new facility in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, being designed by Weisz and Yoes for the Hugo Neu Corporation, which exports 3 million tons of steel scrap per year. Following 9/11 it became the principal recycler of steel debris from World Trade Center. Weisz and Yoes has recently designed a boathouse on the Bronx River and is exploring, with Signe Nielsen a greenway for the Bronx, reports Weisz & Yoes partner Claire Weisz.
PEOPLE ON THE MOVE
Mark Burstein has left Columbia to become Vice President for Administration at Princeton . . . Robert Geddes frequently leaves his Princeton base for Manhattan’s Newman Institute where he is collaborating on a far Westside alternative configuration for the Javits Center. Last spring he changed the name of his practice to Robert Geddes Urban Design . . . Marilyn Taylor flies to Israel in late October to attend opening of new airport for Tel Aviv designed by SOM . . . Lance Brown went to Cornell last August to receive the AIA New York State President’s Award for outstanding contributions especially in nontraditional areas.
EDUCATION
Real Estate and Urban Planning is the name of a new certificate program at Steven L. Newman Real Estate Institute. The program is being offered in collaboration with Department of Urban Affairs and Planning, Hunter College. The new program is being launched in September and coordinated by Lee Chong, Center for Community Development: lee.chong@att.net. Syracuse University is launching a new Masters Program in Arts Journalism to provide a trained cadre of reporters for what appears to be an expanding field ranging from architecture through environmental policy to urban design. Called the Goldring Arts Journalism Program, it will provide a one year 36 credit program at a tuition of $31,392. It will differ from Columbia School of Journalism Arts program, offered for mid-career practitioners and also from NYU’s Arts Journalism program, aimed at undergraduates. The program is being launched with a $1 million gift to the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communication from Lola Goldring, who hopes to encourage more critics of the built environment as well as of the arts. Dean Johanna Keller will direct the program, which will offer a specialized curriculum in film, fine arts, theatre, music and architecture. Each will have an advisor with newly appointed Architecture Dean Mark Robbins, advising for architecture. New York University, which offers undergraduate training in Arts Journalism, also offers a class in criticism taught by former Wall Street Journal critic Ellen Posner, now at CUNY’s Newman Institute for Real Estate. And CUNY has announced an upcoming School of Journalism to be housed in the former Herald Tribune building.
BOOKS
Vienna
Boston
Mall Maker: Victor Gruen, Architect of an American Dream. By M. Jeffrey Hardwick. Black/white photos. 273 pages. University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia. $29.95. Victor Gruen was one of the most talented of dozens of architects, including Bernard Rudofsky and Richard Neutra, who left Vienna in the 1930s for safety and a second chance in the United States. Before leaving he had experimented with storefront design in Vienna and upon arriving, he worked on Ciros and other stores as well as for the New York Worlds Fair of 1939. Following the end of the war, he went on to design the first successful enclosed malls. Better Places Better Lives: A Biography of James Rouse. By Joshua Olsen. Black/white illus. 442 pages. Urban Land Institute, Washington. $39.95. “There is no place as good as Cherry Court,” wrote James Rouse to Victor Gruen in June, 1963. “I have always felt you built it with your own hands.” Thus does the homegrown developer acknowledge the refugee architect who designed a prototype shopping mall. Rouse went on to serve as developer of Fannel Hall Market, the brainchild of Benjamin Thompson, originally in partnership with Gropius and later with Jane Thompson. Among their most successful later jobs was the Festival Market for Baltimore’s Inner Harbor.
BOOKS Savannah
Creating a Vibrant City: Urban Design and Regeneration Principles. By Cy Paumier. 433 color illus. 216 pages. Urban Land Institute. Washington, D.C. Paperback. $49.95. This book provides development guidelines as extrapolated from Cincinnati, Savannah and Chicago among some 50 case study cities. There is information on parking facilities as well as public transit. Streetscapes and successful marketing. Its lavish color illustrations and ambitions scope make it an attractive secondary text for real estate students. Extreme Sites: The Greening of Brownfield. Guest edited by Deborah Gans and Claire Weisz. Architectural Design, March/April 2004. Available Academy Press, London and available in U.S. from www.wiliey.com. $45.00.
Portland
Brownfield sites from Portland, Oregon to Genoa to the slums of Caracas and refugee camps of Africa is the subject of this timely issue of the long-admired British magazine, Architectural Design. Extreme sites, a term as if iterated from the now familiar term, extreme sports, deals with sites so contaminated that, until a decade ago, were left abandoned. Emsher Park, a formerly contaminated site in Germany’s Ruhr, is included as perhaps the earliest and most successful example of brownfield reclamation. Matthew Jellacic’s report on Portland, Oregon as a model for urban redevelopment is most relevant for urban designers. Deborah Gans’ report on refugee camps in Africa as springboards for new cities is the furthermost from conditions in Western countries - and therefore filled with freshest insights. Browning itself is depicted on a spread of maps that show the phenomenon as ongoing. Denise Hoffman Brandt and Deborah Gans show the effect of the world’s major dams. Graphic design detracts from the value of the reportage in this important publication. Color overlays make it impossible to read the names of the editors on the introductory page. For a refugee camp report black type on a yellow field works well. But a red overlay on the facing page makes text unreadable without a magnifying glass. The Sustainable City III: Urban Regeneration and Sustainability. N. Marcheltini and C.A. Brebbia, editors. Illus. 728 pages. WIT Press, Billerica, MA. www.witpress.com $419.00 This third volume on The Sustainable City is part of an “electronic library” of papers presented at a Wessix Institute of Technology gathering. Wessix Institute of Technology is located in Southampton (presumably U.K. not L.I.), but the press is located in Billenea, Massachusetts. The 16-man (no women?) editors’ board consists of scholars from Ljubljana, Budapest and Athens indicating that the compilation of data is particularly helpful in outer reaches of Europe. F. Gabriel, at Syracuse University, the only American editor, confirms the Euro-centric nature of this enterprise. Chair for the conference at which papers were delivered was Ilya Prigogine, Nobel Prize winner for his work on evaluating ecological systems.
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