INFORMAL HOUSING - A SYSTEMIC HOUSING HYBRID IN TIJUANA
A Thesis Presented to the Faculty of NewSchool of Architecture & Design
In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Architecture
by Ted J. Sheils - San Diego, 2010
I
INFORMAL HOUSING - A SYSTEMIC HOUSING HYBRID IN TIJUANA
A Thesis Presented to the Faculty of NewSchool of Architecture & Design
In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Architecture
by Ted J. Sheils - San Diego, 2010
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© 2010 Ted J. Sheils ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
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INFORMAL HOUSING
- A SYSTEMIC HOUSING HYBRID IN TIJUANA
By Ted Sheils NewSchool of Architecture & Design Committee Chair: Prof. Kurt C. Hunker This project will offer an affordable and safe housing alternative to the working-class and the poor of Tijuana. As cities worldwide continue to grow so do the informal squatter settlements located on their peripheries. Entire villages are constructed out of necessity without the assistance of the construction or design communities. The only option available offered to most is fully finished models, which come with a price tag that puts them just out of reach of those living on the margins worldwide. For those that cannot afford what is offered, they must build homes themselves, often on land that is deemed too risky or undesirable to build on by the rest of society. Such pieces of land are usually dangerously steep and located far from jobs and available utilities. Many homes built hastily by developers in Tijuana are cheap and as a result actually depreciate in value, becoming burdensome to owners. In Tijuana there is a need for a more feasible alternative - one that ensures minimum safety requirements are met as well as a base level of comfort and dignity in habitation. We can begin by carefully locating such an alternative near the benefits of infrastructure offered just within the
city grid, including access to utilities and ease of access. Such interventions need to be minimal to avoid raising costs any more than necessary, if at all, and to maintain the emergent and self-ordering nature of informal housing. A systematic approach can standardize the process providing both adequate responsiveness to the needs of inhabitants and economy of production. A two-pronged design approach will merge the nonsite specific with the highly site-specific involving 1. the development of a flexible component-based building system and 2. design interventions which are highly site specific meant to engage the context of the site while adding value to the surrounding area. The poor and under priveleged of Tijuana build what and when they can afford to. It is important that time is incorporated as a design factor - a phasing of the design process will allow for incremental construction responding to changing needs and dissipating construction costs over time. Some construction can be completed by the inhabitants VII
themselves to suit their specific needs. The initial phase of construction involves the deployment of a framework and component based materials will suggest a way to build and ensure certain minimum standards are met but will not dictate future articulation. Once the framework has been set it can be infilled creating dwellings that are tailored to and by users - the final product will emerge. The framework will provide structural stability and consolidation of utilities but will not dictate how users must build – it will suggest an approach, well aware that mutations will occur as seen fit by residents. To quote Stan Allen from Points + Lines, “form is reconceptualized as a condition conducive to certain outcomes, certain possibilities of activity and habitation. Form is an instigator of performances and responses, a frame that suggests rather than fixes, that maps or diagrams possibilities that will be realized only partially at any one time� (p. 5). Such a systematic approach is suited for the conditions of Tijuana and can be adapted, in theory, to any given site within the city. By changing a few of the base parameters that are city-specific it can be applied to a variety of environments.
INFORMAL HOUSING - A SYSTEMIC HOUSING HYBRID NewSchool of Architecture & Design by Ted J. Sheils
Approved by:
Kurt C. Hunker, Thesis Chair
Vuslat Demircay, Ph.D., Thesis Advisor
Marcel Sanchez, Faculty Advisor
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In dedication to the loved ones who patiently waited for me to finish this project. Mom Dad Jill
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To the instructors that have had a profound impact on my architectural education and to the peers that have changed the course of my project. Thank you. Marcel Sanchez Adriana Cuellar Jeremy Joyce Shawn Benson Ryan Hardin
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44 47 48 52
68
90
104 105
2.3 SCOPE CHAPTER 3 - DESIGN RESEARCH & ANALYSIS 3.1 RATIONALE & GOALS 3.2 TYPOLOGY
3.3 SITE ANALYSIS
3.4 SITE NARRATIVE
3.5 SUMMARY OF SPACES 3.6 PROGRAM NARRATIVE
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2.2 THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK
8
1.3 BACKGROUND OF THE PROBLEM
23 24
4 5
1.1 GENERAL DESCRIPTION 1.2 STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM
CHAPTER 2 - THESIS 2.1 THESIS STATEMENT
1
CHAPTER 1 - INRTODUCTION
TABLE OF CONENTS
XIV
XV
vii
xi
xxi
APPENDIX 3 CODE ANALYSIS
APPENDIX 4 COST ANALYSIS
205 i APPENDICES APPENDIX 1 BLOGUMENTATION APPENDIX 2 DEFINITIONS
199
146
4.3 DESIGN DEVELOPMENT
WORKS CITED
120
4.2 SCHEMATIC DESIGN
193 194 195 196
111 112
CHAPTER 4 - DESIGN PROCESS 4.1 CONCEPTUALIZATION
CHAPTER 5 - CONCLUSION 5.1 SUMMARY 5.2 LIMITATIONS OF THE STUDY 5.3 RECOMMENDATIONS
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3.7 ADJACENCIES
LIST OF FIGURES Figure
Title
Source
Page
* unless noted otherwise all images are produced by author. 1-1
Manila Slum
www.electricscotland.com/thomson/images/11.3%Manila slums.jpg
4
1-2
Hurricane Katrina
6
http://nocureforthat.files.wordpress.com/2009/12/hurricanekatrina-victims.jpg
1-3
Precarious Nature
http://fiftycrows.files.wordpress.com/2009/10/11_11.jpg
7
1-4
Landslide
http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2010/04/07/article-126414609072E81000005DC-318_634x646.jpg
7
1-5
Tijuana McMansion
http://canopycanopycanopy.com/static/7/learning_from_ti-
11
juana/mcmansion.jpg 1-6
Traffic Jam
http://farm1.static.flickr.com/229/451921217_8869e94bf3.jpg
13
1-7
Gatos
http://secret.ideacog.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/12 MG_2273.jpg
16
2-1
untitled
by author
26
2-2
Train Market
http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.guy-sports. com/fun_pictures/train_market_good.jpg
30
2-3
Brooklyn Pigeon Project
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3344/3510285649_7ba162e823_b. jpg
31
2-4
Darwin’s Finches
http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.nap.edu/ books/0309064066/xhtml/images/img00007.jpg
34
XVI
LIST OF FIGURES Figure
Title
Source
2-5
Diagrams of Field Conditions
http://27.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_kthdo5IpcM1qztueno1_500.jpg
35
2-6
Cellular Automata
http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2010/04/07/article-126414609072E81000005DC-318_634x646.jpg
38
Game of Life Iteration
http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.theverymany. net/uploaded_images/2d_life_rules-736575.gif
39
2-8
Algorithmic Research
http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.core.form-ula. com/wp-content/uploads/2009/05/core_blog_3.jpg
41
3-1
Rooftops
http://www.morphopedia.com/les/madrid-housing-photo-3
53
3-2
untitled
by author. Inspired by info from: http://www.morphopedia.com/ les/madrid-housing-diagram-unit-4
53
3-3
Massing
http://www.morphopedia.com/view/madrid-housing-diagram-unit-4
53
3-4
Units
http://www.morphopedia.com/projects/madrid-housing/gallery/ drawings/1/
54
3-5
Courtyard
http://www.morphopedia.com/les/madrid-housing-new-main-photo
54
3-6
Elevation
http://www.morphopedia.com/les/madrid-housing-photo-1
55
3-7
Entrance
http://www.archdaily.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/12/842801821 _quinta-monroy-iquique-c2a9cristobal-palma-tadeuz-jalocha.jpg
56
3-8
untitled
by author. Inspired by info from: 30-60 - Cuaderno Lationamericano de Arquitectura. Issue: Paisaje Urbano. p.55.
56
2-7
XVII
Page
LIST OF FIGURES Figure
Title
Source
Page
3-9,10,11
untitled
56, 57
3-12
Street View
by author. Inspired by info from: Ballesteros, Mario and Irene Hwang, eds. Verb: Crisis. Volume 6 of Actar’s architecture boogazine. 2008 Jodidio, Philip. Architecture Now! Houses. Los Angeles:Taschen 2008.
3-13
untitled
by author. Inspired by info from: Ballesteros, Mario and Irene Hwang, eds. Verb: Crisis. Volume 6 of Actar’s architecture boogazine. 2008.
58
3-14
Interior
Ballesteros, Mario and Irene Hwang, eds. Verb: Crisis. Volume 6 of Actar’s architecture boogazine. 2008.
58
3-15
Corner
http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://plusmood.com/ wp-content/uploads/2009/09/Celosia-Residence-_MVRDV_Blanca-Lle%C3%B3_plusMOOD-1.JPG
59
3-16, 17
untitled
by author. Inspired by info from: Ballesteros, Mario and Irene Hwang, eds. Verb: Crisis. Volume 6 of Actar’s architecture boogazine. 2008.
59, 60
3-18
Perspective
http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://thumb1.visualizeus.com/thumbs/09/07/03/architecture,mvrdv,open2e13bc7db98486bed16a9f61b30dabfe_m.jpg
60
3-19
untitled
by author. Inspired by info from: Ballesteros, Mario and Irene Hwang, eds. Verb: Crisis. Volume 6 of Actar’s architecture boogazine. 2008.
61
Aperture
http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.archthai. com/home/images/stories/celosia/EDF_CEL_BP13.jpg
61
3-20
XVIII
57
LIST OF FIGURES Figure
Title
Source
3-21
Tires
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_tEwpA8nFTxw/SSSWefgrWcI/ AAAAAAAAAmE/ls5aOTgDxzw/s400/Bdiscarded-tires.jpg
62
3-22
Manufactured Site
http://canopycanopycanopy.com/static/7/learning_from_tijuana/18_manufactured.jpg
62
Assemblage
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_tEwpA8nFTxw/SSSXNhNPmLI/ AAAAAAAAAm8/LJVJJcdgZ58/s400/Bmaterials-arrive.jpg
62
Sequence
Ballesteros, Mario and Irene Hwang, eds. Verb: Crisis. Volume 6 of Actar’s architecture boogazine. 2008
63
3-25
Arial
http://ergosfera.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/02/manufactured-sites.jpg
63
3-26
Frame
Ballesteros, Mario and Irene Hwang, eds. Verb: Crisis. Volume 6 of Actar’s architecture boogazine. 2008.
63
3-27,28,29,30
various
http://www.estudioteddycruz.com
64, 65
3-31
Exposed Section
http://calendar.walkerart.org/enlarge.wac?id=9280
65
3-32,33,34,35
various
http://www.estudioteddycruz.com
65, 66
3-36
Tijuana Streets
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2377/2112967597_c7a008cbdd_o. jpg
69
3-23
3-24
XIX
Page
LIST OF TABLES (con’d Title
Source
Page
3.1
Average monthy percipitation
http://www.met.utah.edu/jhorel/html/wx/climate/ normrain.html.
87
3.2
Average temperatures
http://www.weather.com/weather/wxclimatology/ monthly/graph/USCA0982.
88
Table
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“When you are looking for a solution that you have been told is an architectural problem remember the solution may not be a building.� - Mike Webb, Archigram
introduction chapter one
the problem intro “Tijuana grows by the size of Rosarito annually.”
“At the beginning of the 21st century Tijuana had a shortage of 60,000 houses. 17,000 are constructed annually.”
-National Home Ownership Chamber
“On average, builders erect structures of fewer than 30 square meters. The unit costs between 150,000 and 180,000 pesos. They will be inhabited by 4+ members. “With regard to what is called a dwelling, builders in Tijuana sell ‘dream houses’’ which, in general, turn into a debt by the buyer, because the developer doesn’t comply with what is offered or rather because the product is of poor quality.” -Zeta “Baja California is the Mexican State with the highest percentage of
urban population (91.6%). Tijuana, the city with the most urban population. Only 1.2% of its population lives in rural areas.”
“At least 50% of the residents in East Tijuana live in conditions of overcrowding, and as many as 80% lack sewage services and/or running water.” “To the question put to Carmen and Max Gonzalez as to why they had gone to Morales Park, they answered, ‘To take a break from our house.’” 2
the problem intro “According to the Secretary of Social Development there are more than 19,000 households living in a state of poverty in Tijuana.” “According to a 2000 census, Tijuana had a population of 1,210,820 that year. 18.4% survive on two or fewer minimum-wage salaries. 42.7% have an income of 3 or fewer minimum-wage salaries, ‘and if we take into account the whole of the population with 5 or fewer minimum-wage salaries, we find 69.3% of the population at this level, which means that 2/3 of the population is below one of the parameters of what is called the poverty line...a Tijuana family requires at least 6 minimum wage salaries to
satisfy its basic needs...’”
- Edgardo Contreras Rodrigues, “El voto de los pobres en Tijuana,” in El Bordo, magazine
“According to [researchers at Colef]...17.2% of households were on the threshold of developing capacity; and 34.5% on the threshold of developing the ability to have properties.”
“The reduction of living space from 72 to 27 square meters in popular housing causes physical and psychological changes in their occupants among them violence, specialists have assured.” - www.frontera.info *all information on these pages (Montezemolo, Here is Tijuana!) 3
general description
introduction general description
1.1
Even the cheapest housing models offered by the construction industry in Tijuana are priced out of the range of many working families and depreciate over time. The only alternative is to build housing that almost always begins as inadequate on even the most basic of levels on land that does not belong to them. Such bits of available land are undesirable by most since they are either prohibitively steep and therefore structurally unstable or they are located a burdensome distance from necessary resources including transportation, utilities, and places of work. An adequate and truly attainable model does not exist.
Figure 1-1: Manila slum
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statement of the problem
introduction statement of the problem
1.2
Infrastructure: One constant in shantytowns is that they seem to be lacking in basic infrastructure, which is the biggest challenge to improving the quality of life within their bounds. Traditionally planned developments or neighborhoods first lay down infrastructure (roads, sewage, electrical lines, etc.) and then introduce housing. Informal developments operate in the exact opposite order. They first build homes without any infrastructure in place, siphoning off of the infrastructure of other neighboring areas, until they are provided with their own (which typically only officially happens once they have developed over time and become assimilated into the existing urban fabric). Often ignored by governments, neighborhood associations develop to supplement the services not being provided, like mail service, land deeds, arbitration and public works but are painstaking to develop and are often inferior to their more formalized counterparts (Fabricius). Demographics: In Tijuana the margin between those living in informal settlements and those who are not is slim at best. For one, employment rates for both groups are nearly the same (Alegria). Personal income rates are similar also as the employed residents in squatter settlements receive on average 3.9 month-
ly minimum wages (MW) while the average for the rest of Tijuana is 4.3 MW (Alegria). About 59% of the employed in squatter settlements earn in the range of 2 – 5 MW while 19% actually earn more than 5 MW (Alegria). This means that there are a percentage of people living in squatter settlements who make more than the Tijuana average. The financial differences then between squatters and non-squatters are razor thin, so much so that even a minimal redirection of resources, financial or otherwise, will have a profound effect on where any given resident can afford to live. Periphery: Shantytowns are often on the urban periphery which means, by proximity, they are farther from jobs and services but closer to those in similar circumstances. Residents then must travel farther for most purposes. As Tito Alegria states in his article “The Solution Is Not Architectural,” “on average the number, length, and cost of trips are greater than those of other city inhabitants. Only because of the location of their housing, the poor become poorer and have less capacity to save money and spend on home improvements. When they achieve regularization of their land tenancy, they get running water, drainage to a public sewer system, and finally paved streets. The dignifying of their habitat always requires time and
5
introduction statement of the problem family effort and is generally subject to the local government’s will to assist. When neither the government nor the labor market makes resources available, their home improvement efforts slow down” (p. 66).
cases, the loss of lives” (Montezemolo, “Here...,” p. 153) Clearly this number represents a disproportionately large amount of shantytown dwellers.
By eliminating the inflated costs associated with traveling to/from the periphery, a large number of shantytown dwellers could reinvest that money into their housing. It is this difference that separates shantytown dwellers from the rest of the city.
Quality:
Accessibility: In addition to the problems of proximity to destinations is the problem of accessibility. There is a strong correlation between the distance housing is from the main road and the steeper the incline where it is located to the material quality. Simply put, the harder it is to get materials to a site, the lower the quality will be. This problem is exacerbated by lack of adequate road infrastructure and the inherent steep sites of shantytowns. Steepness is the number one enemy of shantytown housing. Obviously steep land is only available because others have deemed it hazardous or unbuildable. According to the Office of Civil Municipal Protection, a quarter of Tijuana’s “citizens would suffer from the devastation of sporadic, intense rains, from being stranded in cars, homes, to the destruction of their homes, walls collapsing or, in the worst of
Housing in shantytowns is often made from the cheapest materials available, discarded or recycled and fashioned to create a home. Such homes start off being of poor quality but as the homeowner becomes established and acquires savings and better materials the character of the home will change piece by piece until a decent physical house by most standards is developed. In shantytown settlements, the percentage of housing with precarious roofs is 73% (59% in the entire city), and the percentage of housing with precarious walls is 50% (38% in the entire city) (Alegria). It is therefore structurally impossible or ill-advised to build any higher than one or two stories in height for fear of collapse. This dilemma results in the horizontal sprawl representative of shantytowns and negates vertical structures. This further compounds the shortage of occupiable land. About 36% of the shantytown houses do not have running water and 33% do not have drainage to public sewers while respectively the percentages for the rest of the city are 27% and 24% (Alegria). The transition to housing of quality takes time, sometimes years and most never receive adequate infrastructure like 6
Figure 1-2: Hurricane Katrina
introduction statement of the problem plumbing and electricity. It is clear that people can build decent houses on their own, but it is also clear that to do so takes an exorbitant amount of time, where the interim product is barely tolerable. It is clear that they are almost always lacking in infrastructure. Structure: The precarious nature of these structures makes it clear that not only are the lacking in infrastructure, but also just structure. The builders are not trained how to build properly, nor are they held to any meaningful standards including safety or codes. The lack of structure makes it impossible to build upwards of two or three stories at most, negating any real vertical expansion. This is the reason that when we see aerial pictures of large shantytowns that they sprawl across a landscape – since they cannot build vertically they must, and do, build horizontally. This sprawl makes the delivery of infrastructure even more difficult and prevents the benefits associated with increased density within an urban setting. Population growth in poor cities manifests itself in a much more horizontal manner than cities that are wealthy enough to build upwards. In 1988, for example, Khartoum was 48 times larger in developed areas than in 1955 (Becker). This just further compounds the painful scarcity of land in already heavily populated cities.
Figure 1-4: Landslide
Figure 1-3: Precarious Nature
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background
background introduction of the problem
1.3
Need: If architects were to accept projects proportionally to need then over half of those projects throughout the world would address shantytown housing. By the year 2020 it is estimated that there will be an additional billion slum-dwellers worldwide, largely accumulating around urban centers (Saunders) (that’s in addition to the billion that exist today (Whitehouse)). By the year 2030 the number of slum-dwellers is expected to double again (Beardsley). Upwards of 90% of urbanites in places such as Ethiopia, Chad, Afghanistan, and Nepal, live in slum conditions (Beardsley). Currently it is estimated that at least 1/3 of all urban habitation consists of informal settlements (Fabricius). Slums have become the dominant urban land use in most of the developing world (Beardsley). As Mike Davis has pointed out in his book Planet of Slums we have now reached a “watershed in human history, comparable to the Neolithic or Industrial revolutions. For the first time the urban population will outnumber the rural” (p. 1). No one is certain but it may have happened already. Tijuana is especially representative of this condition. Here only 1.2% of its population lives in rural areas (Montezemolo). In Tijuana in 2000, non-formal settlements contained 53% of the population and 52% of the housing which are statistics similar to other large Latin American cities (Alegria).
This increased “urban” population may create a condition that is extra-urban, that is it will be urban but it will also be something else and change the very definition of what we know as urban. Instead of slum being a sub-category of urban the reverse may soon be true. Instead of some cities housing slums it may be that in the future some slums will house cities. “Globalization, it seems, is intensifying economic inequality, producing archipelagos of wealth in oceans of poverty - with potentially catastrophic consequences” (Beardsley, p. 1). Statements such as these are enough to make you start believing the title of Alegria’s article, “The Solution is Not Architectural.” We cannot solve the underlying problems through architecture, but we can alleviate the symptoms that manifest themselves in the built environment. To be clear this is a large and complex problem and one that should best be approached on a multidisciplinary level, meaning architects could not and should not do it alone. To put it in other words, “when architects engage topics that are seemingly outside of architecture’s historically defined scope - questions of economics or civic politics, for example - they do not engage those topics as experts on economics or civic politics but, rather, as experts on design and how design may affect economics or politics” (Somol, p. 28). Architects can attempt to solve greater problems of economic inequality and oppressive political 8
background introduction of the problem devices, but they will cease to be architects. So architects must do what they can and hope to affect change of these greater mechanisms through their projects. The slum phenomena is perhaps most troublesome because of the uncertainty that accompanies such an implication. We can already begin to see the unfortunate ramifications associated with a population that has outgrown its city (overcrowding, lack of resources, housing, sanitation, job shortages, etc.) but what we cannot accurately foresee, or expect to foresee, is what happens when these conditions are multiplied exponentially for any given city and then again when the number of cities affected is also multiplied exponentially - Tijuana itself grows three hectares daily and by the size of Rosarito annually (Montezemolo, “Tijuana...”). Just as the outcomes of the Industrial Revolution were unimaginable, so too might the outcomes of the era we have entered into of intense urban population, or the Urban Revolution as we could call it. It is possible that this new urban population “will not find its home inside cities, however but in horrific megaslums where masked riot police, food shortages, human sewage, toxic metal-plating industries, armed militias, and emerging diseases all violently coexist with literally billions of human beings” (Manaugh, p. 100). Perhaps this view of cities is pessimistic but perhaps it is also just as realistic. Given the current progression of affairs why would
we expect future urban mega-centers to evolve along any other trajectory. Mike Davis goes on to explain that this speculation “in a way, is the most interesting - and least-understood - dynamic of global urbanization...[I]t’s not well-studied. The census data and social statistics are notoriously incomplete” (Manaugh, p. 100). The informal trend is not only an occurrence unique to Tijuana, or to just Third World countries. With the gap between Third and First World countries closing rapidly this is a global trend that continues to compound exponentially around urban centers of both worlds, and those in between. Although Tijuana is not exempt from this global affliction, the manifestation of its specific maladies are unique to itself, just as no two cities are the same. If supply correlates to demand, adequate shantytown housing is the exception to the rule. There are few models available for the fastest growing and perhaps already most numerous dwellings in the history of human habitation. Architects have recently been estimated to only service a very small percentage of the population in the world. Of this percentage only a tiny fraction are in the demographic afflicted by the housing crisis referred to in this thesis. We need to start proposing solutions for the largest sector of people with the largest amount of need.
9
background introduction of the problem Ambiguous nature: These peripheral, informal developments defy clandestine categorization and are often absent from mechanisms of monitorization that more formal bodies employ. They are largely unknown to or uninvolved in recognized nation-state mechanisms of participation (land ownership, taxes, legitimate voting, etc.). “These non-hierarchical, labyrinthine peripheries are what many Pentagon thinkers have fastened onto as one of the most challenging terrains for future wars and other imperial projects...I think there’s a consensus, both on the left and the right, that it’s the slum peripheries of poor Third World cities that have become a decisive geopolitical space. That space is now a military challenge as much as it is an epistemological challenge, both for sociologists and for military planners” (Manaugh, p. 100).
To reincorporate such areas once they have essentially “gone off the grid” is equally problematic. As explained by Geoff Manaugh, “You’ll never reconquer these parts of the city simply through surveillance, or military invasion, or policing - you have to offer the people some way to reconnect with the world economy. Until you can provide resources, or jobs, the danger is that this will worsen” (p. 104). One of the many reasons that more projects do
not address interventions into slum-type housing is because of the lack of reliable information. The problems begin with defining what a shantytown actually is. Shantytowns are as much defined by their requisite cultural and aesthetic qualities (difficult, if not impossible to quantify) as they are by statistical or legal/illegal properties (which are typically quantifiable by nature) (Alegria). It would be a mistake and inaccurate to refer to shantytowns without references to both categories of classification. Officials in Rio de Janeiro, as established in a 1950 census, define a shantytown (or favela as they are known locally) as “’an abnormal agglomeration’…which includes, in addition to the criterion of size, the illegal settlement of land and a lack of public facilities (transportation, water, sewage, maintenance, and municipal trash collection)” (Fabricius, p. 6). But even by acknowledging all of the properties of a shantytown we still will not have a complete definition because shantytowns are also intrinsically defined by the systems that created them - by the city that has drawn them to its edge, by the undesirability of the land they settled on, by their incremental nature of development, etc. Not only is it difficult to collect data regarding shantytowns but the “indeterminacy of [existing] data on informality makes it particularly vulnerable to fabrication and manipulation” (Fabricius, p. 6). Census taking provides a representative example of 10
background introduction of the problem the difficulty of information gathering. Population estimates often vary widely with official census numbers differing distinctly from what the boroughs claim – a tactic often motivated by the possibility of political benefits associated with increased numbers of population (Fabricius). Such indeterminacy is tantamount to shooting a moving target - it is difficult to find an answer to an unknown question. Lack of a middle-ground: Builders historically have only offered fully finished structures to their clients – right down to the color of the carpets and the type of bathroom faucet fixture. In Third World (and to some in First World) countries some of these features could be considered a luxury – a luxury that comes with a higher price tag than a lesser alternative. Perhaps this model was promulgated in the United States and emulated by those to our south (just like the suburban United States model has become desirable by those in Tijuana) but there are those living in the margins in all societies who simply cannot afford the luxuries associated with a fully finished building. As a result they are faced with the next best alternative offered – no building at all. People have built their own homes by themselves out of necessity in Tijuana (and most other countries throughout the world), fully equipped with the problems previously talked about above. The
problem is that there is no affordable alternative offered by exactly those who have the knowledge, means and expertise of one. There is a real and urgent demand for minimally cheap housing that meets the most fundamental necessities of shelter but nothing more. The cheapest homes available in Tijuana, geared towards people earning less than two minimum wages, are entirely too small averaging thirty-eight square meters (409 square feet) (Alegria). Since builders are offering finished homes people simply can’t afford more square footage. Most buyers can only afford to purchase a home with the acquisition of a line of credit from the same developer who is selling them the house (Escobar). A closer look at the shortage of resources and the correlative abundance of poverty is even more troublesome when viewed statistically. According to a census taken in 2000, Tijuana had a population of 1,210,820 that year (Montezemolo, “Here...”). It was estimated that in order for a Tijuana family to satisfy its basic needs it needs to earn at least six minimum-wage salaries. Out of the 1,210,820, 42.7% have an income of three or fewer minimum-wage salaries and 18.4% have an income of two or fewer minimum wage salaries (Montezemolo, “Here...”). If considering the whole population with five or fewer minimum-wage salaries it would mean that more than two-thirds of the population is below one of the parameters of what is called the poverty line 11
Figure 1-5: Tijuana McMansion
background introduction of the problem (Montezemolo). According to the Tijuana Food Bank 260,00 people do not have enough to eat (Montezemolo). Researchers at Colef estimate that, again, in 2000 there were 466,800 people living in “conditions of poverty” - 13.2% of household were found in condition of poverty regarding food availability, 17.2% were “on the threshold of developing capacity” and 34.5% were “on the threshold of developing the ability to have properties” (Montezemolo, “Here...,” p. 55). Who can be concerned with owning over priced property when there is the very real danger of starving to death? There is little doubt that there is a strong correlation between poverty and lack of adequate housing. Tijuana can serve as yet another case study for such an occurrence. At the beginning of the twenty-first century, according to the National Home Ownership Chamber, Tijuana had a shortage of 60,000 houses...17,000 houses are constructed annually (Montezemolo) (although some estimates place this number around 12,000 units) (Escobar). Where are the remaining 43,000 houses coming from? Builders in Tijuana, on average, erect structures of fewer than 30 square meters that will be inhabited by families of four or more (Montezemolo). That means on average that for each person only 7.5 square meters are being built. The United Nations recommends dwellings should have at least 15 square meters per person (Montezemolo). Unfortunately there are no building or construction
laws that specify minimum standards in regards to minimum space allowances (Escobar). The reduction of living space in “popular housing causes physical and psychological changes in their occupants, among them violence” and “crowding is a risk factor that foregrounds tension” (Montezemolo, “Here...,” p. 135). Scarcity of space, whether within the home or outside of the home within a development makes places suitable for gathering or other recreational purposes few and far between. The “resulting delinquent behavior and vagrancy help contribute to the deterioration of the individual units and the developments. Within a short time, the inhabitants sell their homes or rent them to non-abiding citizens. Police receive daily reports of fights and delinquency in these recently created areas of the city” (Escobar). Ownership of the current standards of housing in Tijuana does not promote financial mobility but instead causes the opposite to happen. The weekly Zeta explains it this way: “With regard to what is called a dwelling, builders in Tijuana sell ‘dream houses’ which, in general, turn into a debt for the buyer, because the developer doesn’t comply with what is offered or rather because the product is of poor quality” (Montezemolo, “Here...,” p. 133). When a certain couple was asked one day why they had ventured out to Morales Park they answered, “To take a break from our house (Montezemolo, 12
background introduction of the problem “Here...,” p. 133). For many houses fail to appreciate in value but rather depreciate as time goes on and become burdensome for owners. Instead of simply being a machine for living the home should also be a machine for making money used as a tool to help families to survive (Becker). The growth of the city is largely determined by the developers of affordable housing. In the United States the government will extend infrastructure (sometimes with the help of subsidies provided by developers) so that developments can be built. In Tijuana the exact opposite order of operations is commonplace. Rather, developments are started and sometimes finished before the government will extend the infrastructure to these developments (Escobar). This is quite a gamble because the housing will exist whether or not the infrastructure arrives. So because of this backward nature there is no reasonable expectation to build within limits that can be sustained by existing, and future, infrastructure. Oftentimes infrastructure, most notable, roads will be woefully inadequate for the new developments. Not only this but private companies (the developers) are dictating the actions of the government. So there is no planner with the greater good of the city in mind, there is only the developer who is driven by his/her bottom line, making a profit. “The high cost of property obliges developers to obtain major revenues from the land, and offer houses on lots of minimum dimensions.
They provide services according to sellable land instead of calculating it to the number of units as for one of six hundred, if the sellable surface is equivalent” (Escobar). To some it might appear patronizing for planners and architects to intervene in the informal sectors but such interventions should be viewed by both agents more as symbiotic partnerships than patriarchal condescension. As put by Lebbeus Woods, “From the side of the slum dwellers, it might seem an unwelcome intrusion from outside, just another quick fix imposed by the economically advantaged on the desperately poor, serving the interests of the rich by transforming the slum according to their well intentioned but—to the slum dweller–necessarily opposed values. It is especially important, then, that the transformative capsule enables the slum-dwellers to achieve their goals, serving their values, and does not reduce them to subjects of its designers’ and makers’ will. Inevitably, the values, prejudices, perspectives and aspirations of the designers and makers will be imbedded in the capsule and what it does. Therefore the slum-dwellers should, in the first place, have the right of refusal. Also, they must have the right to modify the capsule and its effects as they see fit. It cannot be a locked system, capable of producing only a predetermined outcome. The implication of these freedoms is that the capsule, whatever its capabilities, could be used to work against the intentions of its designers and makers. Because the effects of the capsule would be powerfully transformative, its possession would involve risk for all the groups, and individu-
13
Figure 1-6: Traffic Jam
background introduction of the problem als, involved” (Becker).
It is clear that the current housing model is falling short of providing such basic necessities as are the models offered by the builders in Tijuana. There is no middle ground at the moment, and no site of one on the horizon either. Illegitimacy & Anemia: The definition of the very word shantytown is not static but has evolved since its inception. Shantytowns used to be squatter settlements that would normally be situated on land where they are not necessarily permitted so that they will not have to pay rent or taxes - such areas are almost always on the periphery of the city grid. According to the UN “illegal or informal land markets have provided the land sites for most additions to the housing stock in most cities of the South [including Mexico] over the last 30 or 40 years” (Davis, p. 17). Squatters therefore are not the exception to the rule defying the odds to subsist - they are the rule in many areas. Because residents are not permitted to live on the land there is no attempt for the city to introduce infrastructure that would fulfill the most basic requirements necessary for most dwellings. The squatter settlements were, and are, unequivocally illegal. However shantytowns have undergone a gradual transformation in order
to circumvent conventional prevention. Instead of being illegal by nature they have now become more “extra-legal.” That is, instead of simply squatting they have adopted an approach termed by Mike Davis as “pirate urbanization: settlements built without conformance to zoning or service regulations and enabled by bribes, populist governments, or property speculators who hope for eventual regularization and compensation for their investment” (Beardsley, p. 2). They are now using the indeterminacy of the law and the ambiguous nature of informality to their advantage. As observed by John Turner, an architect/anarchist, in “Housing is a verb”: “The urban poor have to solve a complex equation as they try to optimize housing cost, tenure security, quality of shelter, journey to work, and sometimes, personal safety. For some people, including many pavementdwellers, a location near a job - say, in a produce market or train station - is even more important than a roof. For others, free or nearly free land is worth epic commutes from the edge to the center. And for everyone the worst situation is a bad, expensive location without municipal services or security of tenure” (Davis, p. 27).
According to Turner’s model (based on observation in Peru during the 60’s), migrants will first move to the city at any costs to find jobs. Any type of housing will suffice. Once employed they will then 14
background introduction of the problem move to the periphery of the city where the odds of land-ownership are greater (Davis). Ahmed Soliman, a housing expert, is able to expand on Turner’s observations and isolate 4 different housing types for the poor in Cairo (Davis). The first option is one in which proximity to a central job market is essential (not unlike Turner’s first observation). Such an alternative would most likely provide gainful employment but is also expensive and provides little to no hope of ownership. The second option is a “centrally located but informal shelter” (Davis, p. 29). Location again is important and rent is cheap or nonexistent but the quality is poor and there is still no hope of ownership. The third option is to illegally occupy public land which is free and introduces the hope of eventual ownership but proximity to the city center is poor and infrastructure is sparse if any (this is the predicament that most of the poor in Tijuana are faced with). The fourth option, preferred by most, is to buy a piece of land in a “semi-informal development” with legal tenure but without official authorization - a legal gray area where it is possible to plead ignorance (Davis, p. 29). Although far from the city center, it is possible that with appropriate community mobilization that municipal services could be granted and ownership is almost guaranteed (Davis). The concept of land ownership differs slightly in
Mexico. Although parties maintain legal rights over land, it is not uncommon for squatters to take control of land, at which point it becomes problematic to evict those squatters. In fact, if land appears unused and a group or individual occupies that land for a certain period of time, that land becomes theirs – which is not an uncommon tactic used by shantytown residents. But it is also this illegality that “makes access to land and housing possible. That is, regardless of its specific complexion, illegal occupation is both the only means of access to land for most citizens and, paradoxically, an illegality that initiates the legalization of property claims” (Holston, p. 22). Perhaps it would benefit the government and shantytown dwellers to adopt a hybridized concept of land-ownership. In fact it is probably even less desirable to legitimately occupy land through a rental agreement for several reasons. The first is that landlords, because of lack of regulations and scarcity of land can charge exorbitant rental fees. The second is that if you are renting land owned by another, you will of course not be occupying land owned by no one, which would allow one potential to be granted ownership of that land through land-titling programs (Beardsley). Although squatting is cheaper than many alternatives it is not without cost. Such occupants often must pay bribes to remain illegally, pay “informal” rents, trade votes in order to remain on public land, and pay for the cost of 15
background introduction of the problem being removed from desirable destinations or utilities. According to some studies then, squatting is oftentimes more expensive than buying a plot of land. The reason it is so appealing that the costs of living are diffused across a period of time instead of required up-front (Davis). A catch-22 exists in the peripheral areas of shantytowns– more formal neighborhoods avoid steep land because it undesirable so there is no need for infrastructure to extend to such areas. Land is available for shantytowns because it is undesirable for others so the only areas largely available for shantytowns development are areas that do not have infrastructure. This means that often shantytowns are not equipped to offer residents even the most basic of services. Because of the concentrated nature of shantytowns when they do begin to siphon infrastructure from neighboring legitimized developments, they place an inordinate amount of strain on those infrastructures. Such burdens would be more tolerable if they could be dissipated across the city fabric instead of impacted in specific areas. Speaking globally, “[i]ncreasingly, new arrivals in the city - the sons and daughters of the urban poor - are being pressed by tighter housing markets, and by the inability to find cheap [...] land. Where cheap land does exist, it only exists because the land is otherwise undevelopable. It’s too dangerous. You’re just waging on natural disaster” (Manaugh, p. 104). It is
possible that we have reached, or are very close to reaching, the end of the frontier of squattable land. Once shantytowns become established, and their need for infrastructure becomes clear, their demands for increased services still lack a certain legitimacy. Most families do not own the legal rights over their lands (about 65% in shantytown settlements do not) which also makes it difficult for them to receive loans from banks (Alegria). Ultimately most shantytown residents do not own the land they occupy, therefore they are not paying taxes on that land, which means they cannot reasonably expect benefits from a system to which they do not already contribute - to a system they are defying. In the past the government of Tijuana has been known to begrudgingly recognize the need for infrastructure in such neighborhoods and extend them the services they desire, but only if certain conditions are met. Mike Davis: “Organization in the slums is, of course, extraordinarily diverse. In the same city - for instance, in a large Latin American city - you’ll find everything from Pentecostal churches to Sendero Luminoso, to reformist organizations and neoliberal NGO’s [nongovernment organizations]. Over very short periods of time there are rapid swings in popularity from one to the other and back. It’s very difficult to find a directionality in that, or to predict where things might go. But what is clear, over the last decade, is that the poor - and not just the poor in
16
Figure 1-7 Gatos
background introduction of the problem classical urban neighborhoods, but the poor who, for a long time, have been organized in left-wing parties, or religious groups, or populist parties - this new poor, on the fringes of the city, have been organizing themselves massively over the last decade. You have to be struck by both the number and the political importance of some of these emerging movements, whether that’s Sadr, in Iraq, or an equivalent slum-based social movement in Buenos Aires. Clearly, in the last decade, there have been dramatic increases in the organization of the urban poor, who are making new and, in some cases, unprecedented demands for political and economic participation” (Manaugh, p. 102).
are highly connected to global networks but disconnected from their local regions (Abruzzo). This phenomena has been termed splintering urbanisms. This is counter-intuitive to our concepts of cities, which are physical things defined not only by their content but also by their context. Cities are less connected to those areas that are close in proximity because the wealth of the city cannot be sustained by those areas limited in scope, they must be more dependent upon mechanisms associated with global economies which cannot be rigidly defined in geographical terms.
Oftentimes the neighborhoods that receive such benefits are typically well organized, have strong leadership and maintain a high-profile in the city. As the saying goes, “the squeaky wheel gets the grease” and such is the case in Tijuana. It is problematic because not all shantytowns are large enough or privileged enough to benefit from strong leadership and so their demands fall on deaf ears.
Whereas the key distinction used to be made between the increasing inequalities of the urban and the countryside a new but similar distinction must be made between mega-cities (over 8 million inhabitants) and supporting, but still second-tier, metropolises (Davis). “If mega cities are the brightest stars in the urban firmament, three-quarters of the burden of the future world population growth will be borne by faintly visible second-tier cities and smaller urban areas: places where, as UN researchers emphasize, ‘there is little or no planning to accommodate these people or provide them with services’” (Davis, p. 7). It is not enough for economist, politicians and planners to focus their efforts where the problems are manifest but also where they might occur less obviously but with equal ramifications. The countrysides are not simply rendered anemic from the exodus of capital and labor
Economic deficiencies: In this world of increasing globalism cities become increasing connected to the global but at the cost of becoming less locally connected. “Globalism creates a by-pass urbanism in which the territories around global city nodes are increasingly subordinate and peripheralized: urban business centers
17
background introduction of the problem but are undergoing a form of parallel urbanization of a different sort from neighboring urban centers. In China for example, “‘[v]illages become more like market and xiang towns, and county towns and small cities become more like large cities.’ Indeed, in many cases, rural people no longer have to migrate to the city; it migrates to them” (Davis, p. 9). The problem is not urban but affects the suburban and rural as well. Unabated growth is not necessarily a problem. It is when that growth outstrips its supportive resources that is problematic. A reality that has been unearthed by recent research is that the informal economies are simply not generating job ladders. The world’s urban workforce has more than doubled since the 1980’s (Davis). Just as urban populations are exploding the same economies are shrinking concocting a dangerous cocktail (Beardsley). Since the middle of the 1980’s notoriously productive industrial cities (Bombay, Johannesburg, Buenos Aires, São Paulo, etc.) have all experienced a period of deindustrialization that has counter-intuitively correlated with an increase in size and population (Davis). Not only is this recent era of urbanization displacing its predecessing Industrial Age but it is reversing it as well. Perhaps the modern trend of “silicon capitalism” simply requires the physical employment of less people and this implication is being seen worldwide. Another theory is that the loss of jobs in Third World countries may be a political
product, but I will not go into depth on this topic. Throughout the 80’s and 90’s Third World growth continued unchecked and generally at alarming rates “in spite of falling real wages, soaring prices, and skyrocketing urban unemployment” (Davis, p. 14). This means that people will continue to flock to the cities despite economic deterrents. There appears to be little if any meaningful relationship between urbanization and economic resilience. “Rather than the classical stereotype of the labor-intensive countryside and the capital-intensive industrial metropolis, the Third World now contains many examples of capital-intensive countrysides and labor-intensive deindustrialized cities. ’Overurbanization,’ in other words, is driven by the reproduction of poverty, not by the supply of jobs” (Davis, p. 16). The problems that at one time were driving people from the countrysides and to the cities have just been redistributed and aggregated in the cities. Tijuana is no exception to this rule. Employment opportunities often exist in the margins, or on the coattails, of a more robust, global job market. Inefficiencies and gaps are filled informally (perhaps a vendor will rummage through the trash and sell trinkets they have salvaged). This type of economic activity, also known as the “popular economy”, is cooperative and/or independent from other sectors of the economy (Enriquez, p. 1). The popular economy is at first a “survival strategy by the excluded parts of the population. Afterwards, 18
background introduction of the problem it can become a ‘savoir-faire’ and is often justified by its defendants on social grounds in spite of its‘ illegal or extralegal components” (Enriquez, p. 9). The problem here is that these jobs do not create additional jobs, and depend on the prosperity of more traditional job markets, which afford people the ability to acquire goods - the goods that end up discarded and can be resold. In other words, “some microentrepreneurs go on to become minientrepreneurs - but the larger fact is you’re just subdividing poverty. You’re getting more and more people competing, trying to pursue the same survival strategies in the same place” (Manaugh, p. 104). Simply put, this model is not self-sustainable and can quickly become exhausted. “What the World Bank, what the NGO’s, what all the apostles of neo-liberal self-help depend on is the availability of cheap, squattable land, and the existence of entrepreneurial opportunities in the informal sector. If you exhaust those two, people will be driven to the wall - and then the safety valves won’t work. Then the urban poor will run out of resources for miracles” (Manaugh, p. 104). Past interventions: In the past the government of Tijuana has attempted to relocate portions of shantytowns where extension of services would be too problematic and/or expensive. The alternative is to locate them within
the city grid so they will have sufficient access to infrastructure and just give them ownership over the land. Although the relocation areas have infrastructure (utilities, roads, etc.) and are generally on flat land, they are still lacking a certain element of desirability. They remain on the fringes which does not alleviate the problem of proximity to destinations, namely proximity to places of work. Some of the relocated residents actually sold their land to developers, kept the money, and moved back to their original shantytown, but this time with more money. So land that was once owned by the government fell into the hands of developers with no compensation afforded to the government. It seems clear that in order for such relocations to work the tenants need to want to stay so something needs to be done to increase that factor of desirability. Land titling reforms have often been looked to worldwide to alleviate illegitimacy and the associated burdens produced by land-squatting. However, unfortunately, research has shown that the act of defining, or redefining, property rights is problematic: there are often many property rights systems in operation in any given city and the ambiguity of such situations can cause conflict and even violence (Paavo). In Tijuana alone there are six different land regularization agencies with poorly defined roles - one federal, three state, and two municipal 19
background introduction of the problem (Paavo). Such agencies have attempted to regularize more than 160,000 lots in Tijuana since the 1970’s, a city that in 2000 had just 270,000 households (Paavo). This statistic underlies the larger problem in Tijuana - that there were at least 160,000 lots available to regularize, that is they were previously irregular which is typically how the city has come to operate. In fact more than half of the area of the city of Tijuana was developed irregularly (Paavo). What is even more shocking in the lack of cooperation/participation by the inhabitants of the irregular settlements, the same people who seemingly have the most to gain from the retitling of such properties. Of the 160,000 lots previously mentioned less than 40% of those have been granted titles since the 1970’s (Paavo). Either the fundamental precepts of the land titling process are horribly flawed and/or ineffective or the implications of receiving titleship are not as attractive as it might seem. A new typology: It has been historically shown in Tijuana that slums will turn into productive parts of the city, but it takes time, sometimes within ten or so years, sometimes longer and sometimes never. The challenge is figuring out how to lessen the length of this period of assimilation. There is no doubt that shantytowns are some of the most economi-
cally sensitive developments produced. They exist because they are economical. To add any amount of infrastructure will decrease the economy of the shantytowns, at least in a financial sense – that is they will cease to be as cheap as possible. It is not rare to see formalized buildings and it is not rare to see informal buildings but it is rare to see a project that hybridizes both. Architects like Alejandro Aravena (Chile) and Teddy Cruz (Mexico, US) have begun such explorations but they often land on the more formal side of the equation. Perhaps the problem lies in one of the fundamental precepts of shantytown housing: is a shantytown still a shantytown without the “town” or the aggregate nature of these developments? Is there a point at which you modify the characteristics of a shantytown so much that it ceases to be a shantytown? Can the government ever reasonably expect to collect land taxes from shantytown dwellers and for that reason invest in their development? Should we make a distinct departure from inherent characteristics of a shantytown and create a hybridized typology absent of the endemic problems of the traditional shantytown?
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“He let his mind drift as he stared at the city, half slum, half paradise. How could a place be so ugly and violent yet beautiful at the same time?� - Chris Abani, Graceland
thesis chapter
two
thesis statement
thesis statement
2.1
By introducing limited formalized elements into the building of informal settlements the standards of living can be increased disproportionately. Such interventions will suggest methods of assembly that acknowledge the incremental nature of shantytown housing and respond to highly localized conditions. Introduction: Such a system mentioned above can be applied, in theory, to undetermined sites of undetermined scale. A relatively simple singular system can be used to produce a number of distinctly diverse and complex results and do so effectively, each responding to unique and localized conditions. The benefits of such a system are not only related to the efficiency of a single plan of action but are also created by the greater contextual relevancy that different physical manifestations of such a system will create. Although each component is primarily influenced by localized conditions a ripple effect will occur (a change in A incurs a result in B, the change in B incurs a result in C, the change in C incurs a result in D, etc.) affecting the entire system. In this way loops of feedback are created that allow for increased adaptiveness. Such an approach can result in an emergent phenomenon where the value of the final product exceeds the value of the sum of individual parts used to create that
same product. The system is simplified by relying on the repetition of similar components (modular) arranged in such a manner that provides for diverse and adaptive relationships. It is also very clear that if modular units or components are used to create a structure or series of structures that those geometries must be performative. That requires the acknowledgement that certain geometries have different inherent traits that lend themselves towards assemblage and certain efficiencies, or lack thereof (nature seems to provide the best examples of such geometries). Components may only be concerned with interactions that occur in their own sub-strata. Possible arrangements will be proscribed/defined by the system – in a sense these arrangements become the system. This type of approach can be most effectively applied to the shantytown developments that have been increasing exponentially in number, popularity and scale as societies continue to develop in and around urban centers. Shantytowns are created on an incremental basis and as a result are constantly changing. An initial core grouping will be continually added on until it can no longer sustain itself at which time infrastructure (albeit informal and sometimes inadequate) must be added so that it can continue to grow. The initial core may be reinforced with a more substantial material so that it can support additional developments. Dwellings are added wherever there is space to do so until cer24
thesis statement tain thresholds are met and exceeded at which time infrastructure must be added. Such infrastructure is entirely informal and thresholds are not defined, rather they too are created and executed according to localized conditions. Shantytowns then are one of the few truly emergent building types that exist. Dwellings are created only with concerns for localized conditions – at no point are inhabitants concerned with the impact that they will have on the “fabric” of their shanty – they are inflicted with nearsightedness. It is no doubt that there is room for improvement upon the conditions of shantytowns, we have all seen Slumdog Millionaire right? Is it not possible to introduce formalized elements (although not traditionally formal but making a clear departure from the informal) into shantytowns while at the same time preserving the largely emergent nature of such structures. If a minimal framework can be introduced that guides development along certain sets of conditions (or more accurately prevents certain sets of condition), inhabitants would still be free to make localized decisions as they wish. A simple framework can ensure the minimum conditions necessary for comfortable and respectable survival.
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e le typ of sca logy s l typo f leve o bility flexi eters param ative transform
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if/then statements
Figure 2-1
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decentralization els sed mod agent-ba m-up botto ns cisio e d s lized rule loca sis ene ty g i xi ep ple tal m co men ing re ck inc flo
sim
theoretical framework
thesis theoretical framework
26
thesis theoretical framework In search of new models: Current urban models are failing us. Nowhere is this more evident than in the unintended proliferation of shantytowns and the correlative housing deficit. Michael Batty, Director of the Center for Advanced Spatial Analysis (CASA) at the Bartlett and author of Cities and Complexity, states: “[J]ust as our images of the city are still conditioned by the idea that the city is a self-sustaining, closed system, the urban theories and models that are currently available to explain spatial structure are still wedded to the notion of a strong central focus. Around this, everything else has to be explained, despite occasional attempts to relax the effect of distance in these models and to take account of cities with many foci. This monocentric model, as it is called, has provided the basis for most attempts at explaining urban spatial structure over the last 150 years; yet it is now clearly inadequate...” (Batty, p. 19).
The shortfall thus far is ultimately not the answers we have been able to formulate in response to the global housing deficit, it is our fundamental approach of the issues, our existent models, that are flawed. If we are asking the wrong questions even the most brilliant solutions will be ineffective in resolving the real issues at hand. Perhaps we can liken our current period of reassessment and doubt to that when Jane Jacobs realized that the widely accepted tenets of urbanism and city
planning, the very models that were accepted as truth, were really assumptions limping along left unchecked and untested. Only when she was able to question their legitimacy was she able to get closer to the truth and change the trajectory of her profession - undoubtedly a scary proposition but a necessary growing pain in a world that was changing so rapidly. We have been afflicted for too long by the tendency to think in binary - in black and white, when the real world is never black and white but is rather composed of the millions of shades of gray in between. Not only have many of the informal developments in South America not even been considered as an after-though by planners or those in the professional arena, they have been considered more accurately in the “non-thought” capacity. They are omitted from local maps and ignored en masse. “[T]he archetype of the Latin American megacity, represents a new confluence of the physical/spatial, social, psychological and economic and that this, in turn, requires new ways of conceiving and articulating the hitherto unacknowledged categories of urbanism. The binary thinking inherent in contemporary concepts of urbanism – conventions of danger vs. safety, primitive vs. modern, poverty vs. wealth – is simply inadequate to capture these newly emerging forms” (Brillembourge, p. 22).
The age of binary thinking is over. In this global27
thesis theoretical framework ized hyper-connected world of non-equilibrium it is just unrealistic to speak in terms of definites. Polarizing terms are references stemming from dysfunctional models and do not account for the messiness of reality. Such transitionary conditions are the products of the clash between bottom-up and top-down principles of organization. Our most popular models are top-down, the incompatibilities of which are realized when confronted with the face of a world that is undeniably bottom-up in many regards. Such loose systems already exist in the “informal” cities – the slums of our world. In a sense our models and requisite terminology are not flexible enough. “Flexibility is the common ground among [successful] approaches, a model of organic development that challenges the assumption of traditional Western planning that man controls his surroundings. In contrast, the patterns of development evident in informal settlements […] are ‘emergent’, which assumes the absence of an identifiable author or agent; creation is either entirely spontaneous or generated by many convergent factors” (Brillembourge, p. 43).
It would be misleading and an oversimplification to view the relationship between social realities and the ideals of formalized planning as staunchly oppositional. More accurately it is much more dynamic and adversarial than that. “There is both
a struggle and a synergy [between the two]: each influences, constructs, and deconstructs the other” (Brillembourge, p. 275). To view it in any other terms would simply be binary thinking. Even the use of the words “formal” and ”informal” are inadequate in revealing the true identities of any settlement. FORMAL, in the sense of development, is defined as “pertaining to customary forms; lacking in ease or freedom of outline or arrangement” (Brillembourge, p. 18). INFORMAL is defined as “not done or made according to a recognized or prescribe form; not according to order; unofficial, disorderly” (Brillembourge, p. 18). These terms are polar opposites yet we continuously categorize settlements as one or the other. Neither term is inherently good or bad and it is unlikely that either exists without traits of the other. They just are and we must accept their existence. We know that in order for something that is living, organic, volatile and complicated to truly function successfully it must contain a delicate combination of traits describe by both terms above. New solutions must be self-organizing. They must be systems that provide solutions tailored to what people can do and where they are to respond to present conditions. This is the arena where the waste of Koolhaas’ generic cities and our junk spaces become adapted and assimilated to provide resilient spaces that truly provide for the livelihood of the popu28
thesis theoretical framework lous therein.
Emergence:
“If the economic consequences of sweeping public works were, for many administrations, ruinous, the objective of imposing order on cities has also largely not been realized. The planned city can neither eliminate nor subsume the informal qualities and practices of its inhabitants. The informal persists; its inherent strengths resist and defeat efforts to impose order. The totally planned city is, therefore, a myth” (Brillembourge, p. 19).
The following is a statement made by physician Lewis Thomas, known as the father of modern immunology and experimental pathology, in 1973.
We are in need of a model that bridges the gap and addresses reality in all its messiness.
“Most of all, we need to preserve the absolute unpredictability and total improbability of our connected minds. That way we can keep open all the options, as we have in the past. It would be nice to have better ways of monitoring what we’re up to so that we could recognize change while it is occurring....Maybe computers can be used to help in this, although I rather doubt it. You can make simulation models of cities, but what you learn is that they seem to be beyond the reach of intelligent analysis....This is interesting, since a city is the most concentrated aggregation of humans, all exerting whatever influence they can bring to bear. The city seems to have a life of its own. If we cannot understand how this works, we are not likely to get very far with human society at large. Still, you’d think there would be some way in. Joined together, the great mass of human minds around the earth seems to behave like a coherent, living system. The trouble is that the flow of information is mostly one-way. We are all obsessed by the need to feed information in, as fast as we can, but we lack sensing mechanisms for getting anything much back. I will confess that I have no more sense of what goes on in the mind of mankind than I have for the mind of an ant. Come to think of it, this might be a good place to start” (Johnson, p. 9).
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thesis theoretical framework Such is the quandary of modern times and even more relevant and compounded in the “information age.” Lewis Thomas, is representative of a handful of forward-thinking professionals, each in diverse fields, who recognized the inescapable interconnectedness of any number of things that were not formally identified as such, however the correlations were undeniable (hence the seemingly random compilation of terms referred to in the title of Steven Johnson’s book, Emergence: the Connected Lives of Ants, Brains, Cities, and Software). More recently such phenomenon are generally referred to as, “emergent.” Emergent systems exist in many different forms in many different fields from genetic makeup, to tensegrity structures, to computer science and urban planning. One commonality of emergence is that it can be defined in several ways using different criteria. One constant that seems to be agreed upon is that emergent systems are created by simple interactions between simple components that incrementally create complexity. Actors in emergent systems make a series of localized decisions and the total value of the result can actually exceed the addition of the worth of each individual decision or outcome. In a complex system “the whole is more than the sum of the parts not in an ultimate, metaphysical sense, but in the important pragmatic sense that, given the properties of the parts and the laws of
their interaction, it is not a trivial matter to infer the properties of the whole” (Batty, p. v). The notion sounds counter-intuitive but ant colonies are created in much the same way – individual ants are dumb, but they create extremely intricate colonies that are characterized by patterns of increasing complexity. One would think that the result of whole colony of actors acting “dumbly” could not possibly produce something of a more transcendent quality yet they do, they create “smart” and intricate colonies. Emergent systems are systems that build from the bottom-up, unlike most systems of organization today which are top-down. Agents make a series of localized decisions, the total value of which can actually exceed the addition of the worth of the actions of each agent. There is no acknowledged greater plan that determines the actions of individual agents. Cities operate this way. We can understand a city by looking at individuals of that city. Individuals move to cities for reasons that are mostly self-motivated – they are looking for a job, they want to be closer to the downtown, they want to be closer to their families, etc. At no point are individuals acting according to what is best for the collective good of the city. They spend money, they get jobs, they fix-up buildings - the aggregate effect of which benefits the city. By each individual acting according to their own interests a thriving and diverse city is created. 30
Figure 2-2: Train Market
thesis theoretical framework Top-down processes are complicated and can be overwhelming because actors are operating to accomplish a goal that is the result of many smaller decisions, not all of which they can be conscious or aware of (and honestly need not be aware of). Emergent systems are valuable because they can produce effective results with minimal localized decisions – in other words when a project becomes overly complicated by countless different factors (which can be paralyzing), some even unrealizable, desirable results can still be attained by actors making simple decisions based on factors that can be comprehended fully. In fact actors not need even be conscious or living - they can be cogs, units, molecules, people, cars, etc. Models that rely on the use of actors can be considered agentbased models. They can be used to simulate dynamic systems that develop over a period of time. Equally important is that agent-based models also describe the relationships, and sometimes possible relationships, between agents. Agent-based models rely on relatively simple syntax-based rules of operation so that parameters are defined through a language that is common to all actors (Felsen, p. 166). We can easily equate this occurence with to a very popular example of the emergent system, flocking. In Pamphlet Architecture 27: Tooling, Aranda and Lasch introduce a “recipe” for flocking. The recipe
is as follows: For each agent, a. b. c.
Figure 2-3: Brooklyn Pigeon Project
for each increment of time: Avoid crowding local flockmates. Steer to keep a minimum distance between each agent and the ones around it. Align towards the average heading of local flockmates. Coherence to the flock, move toward the center mass of the local flockmates (p. 65).
Each member or component need only follow a very standard set of simple rules that apply to themselves but are really reactions to localized behavior. In a footnote to the above recipe, Aranda and Lasch explain, “in flocking models, a boid” (a computer simulated bird) “reacts only to flockmates within a certain neighborhood around itself; there is no global steering intelligence” (p. 65). Flocking, undoubtedly a complex and seemingly random phenomenon, can be sorted out by the simplest of rules. To speak of emergence in architecture produces yet another point of departure from any singular definition of emergence. As explained by Tom Wiscombe, the founder of a website called EMERGENT, “the animated beauty of emergent organizations, such as in swarms or hives, points to a range of 31
thesis theoretical framework real architectural potentials where components are always linked and always exchanging information, and above all, where architectural wholes exceed the sum of their parts.” Through an emergent approach we can “move beyond categorical thinking and the stratification of building systems toward a more integrated future. This involves a re-examination of assumed hierarchies and discreetness of systems toward coherent yet heterogeneous organizations” (Wiscombe, website). The complicatedness of top-down systems especially in complex systems like urban planning makes effective action cryptic and sometimes counterintuitive because of the overwhelming amount of information to synthesize. Emergence makes seemingly impossibly complicated systems digestible because there is no top-down objective to be pursued. Emergent systems are valuable because they can produce effective results through minimal and relatively simple decision-making processes – the results of which can be fully comprehended or quantified (as opposed to more complicated topdown organizations). According to the Metapolis Dictionary of Advanced Architecture, in emergent systems, “[E]ach agent has a limited point of view. Complex-
ity of behaviour, emotion, and thought emerge from the interplay of their opposing views, from their interactions and negotiations.[...] Emergent [Artificial Intelligence] depends on the way local interactions among decentralised components can lead to overall patterns. So does the working of ant colonies and the immune system, the pileup of cars in a traffic jam, and the motion of a flock of birds. The result is a perfectly coordinated and graceful dance” (Gausa).
This quote succinctly captures the dualistic, and seemingly contradictory, nature of emergent systems: they are both simple and complex and always captivating to witness unfold. Epigenesis: The logic of emergent systems depends on a nonlinear feedback system where the parts can influence the whole and where parts can influence other parts. Architecturally speaking this concept can be demonstrated through the space-frames of Buckminster Fuller. The loads of any given member are transferred radially throughout the entire structure to other members so that a shift or even failure of one member will change the role, the identity, of every other member. But in order to understand the loads of any given member we only need to know the loads exerted on it by its immediate neighbors, the ones physically touching 32
thesis theoretical framework the member. In other words, context counts and it is one’s proximity to the collective, one’s relationships, that can define and continuously redefine oneself. This idea of a non-static (non-predetermined) identity is known as epigenesis. Epigenesis literally means “upon formation” and has been a term of discussion since Aristotle’s time but is now used mostly in reference to biological systems. It means that the physical microenvironments of cells can be altered to affect the genome (collection of cells) over time (Jones, p. 35) so that the environment can be thought of as an extension of the genome. The most relevant and probably timely example is stem cells. Stem cells reside within “specialized tissue microenvironments” and when the nature of their surrounding ecologies change so to do the cells they produce - it is as if the stem cells are waiting for directions from their environments (Jones, p. 35). This makes sense in the built environment as well. Just Like Aravena’s Quinta Monroy units they all begin with the same genetic makeup - they are all built the same way. However their identities are changed by occupants and the specificities of their locations so that they evolve and manifest differently.
Adaptability: The term adaptable is often used when speaking of systems and refers to the ability of responding to changing conditions. Adaptability by its very nature automatically implicates time as a variable. Use of the term adaptability does not necessarily imply “moveable architecture” but could manifest itself through the passage of thresholds or the phasing of a project. A threshold is a level, point, or value above which something is true or will take place and below which it is not or will not (Felsen). “When feedback is particularly intense it has the capability of propelling a system toward a critical threshold…and entering a different state of behavior” (‘Threshold’). A phase is a particular appearance or state in a regularly occurring cycle of changes (‘Phase’). Emergent systems are also sufficiently adaptable. An adequate system must be able to produce a number of distinctly diverse results, and do so effectively, while responding to unique conditions. “A good strategy is a highly organized plan (spatial, programmatic, or logistical) that is at the same time flexible and structurally capable of significant adapta-
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thesis theoretical framework tion in response to changing circumstances. Too rigid a strategy will succumb to a surprise or to logic other than that for which it was designed, and too loose a strategy will succumb to anything more complex or to anything more highly organized and better coordinated” (Corner, p. 89).
Adaptability may refer to the flexibility of the typology of a building component. “This requires a reevaluation of each type within a range of flexibility and transformative possibilities” (Reiser, p. 67). Deployment of type allows for the selection of a range, not a fixed model (‘Phase’). The same priniciple applies in evolution. Darwin’s finches (Fig. 2-4) have evolved into a range of types all within the same species each defined by specialized characteristics. “Without precluding mutability and nuance, we limit the model working within by selecting certain parameters” (Reiser, p. 67). “The selection of typology now leads to a process within a limited range of constraints roughly set by type. DeLanda calls these ‘proscriptive constraints.’ Based on assumptions of what a type cannot – or will not – do, they leave open limits on what it necessarily can do or will do: ‘not what to do, but what to avoid doing.’ Typology is, thus, less a classification or codification than it is the basis for a process of constrained material expressions. Selection is an element of the generative, of the field of forces that contribute to the instantiation of architecture” (Reiser, p. 67).
Smooth & Striated: Network theorists are concerned in figuring out “how units of interconnected systems can be represented spatially in relation to one another” (Furjan, p. 52). They are not concerned with the physical but rather with the relative relationship between parts. Such theorist depend heavily on a branch of mathematics known as graph theory. “Graphs are a mathematical means of describing particular kinds of geometries - topologies, or geometries of positions” (Furjan, p. 52). Such theory is not concerned with scalar relationships defined by actual distances but rather but rather through relative strengths of relationships. In this sense such components and relationships are not represented in map form but rather in diagrammatic form. Such an interpretation of the environment parallels very closely the way that Deleuze and Guattari view space: as smooth and striated. Striated space in this sense can be equated to the type represented by the map. Striated space is essentially, “Cartesian space - the space of the grid, of the point and line, of dimensions and extension; a territorialization concerned with property, organization, form and place....[it is] closed, contracted, discrete, it is the space of order and control, and of exclusivity” (Furjan, p. 52). Here space and form can still be represented in a sca34
Figure 2-4: Darwin’s Finches
thesis theoretical framework lar sense and is based largely on a regular grid system which can be eroded in parts but remains physically defined. Smooth space, as opposed to striated, is “temporal, contingent and dynamic; it is the geometry of the C19th open grid, an organization that understood the urban as a system - a process rather than a plan. The open urban grid had an inherent ability to generate spatial systems of infinite complexity: it was a nonhierarchical network producing open, multiplicitous patterns of movement of flow” (Furjan, p. 52). The main distinction to be realized is that striated space is defined and “closed” whereas smooth space is diagrammatic and “open” - it acknowledges the importance and strength of relationships instead of form. In a diagrammatic sense we don’t need to know specificies of individual forms, all we need to concern ourselves with is the quality of certain relationship. Smooth space represents a system that in non-linear and non-discriminating and can remain fluid even where striated space cannot. Field Conditions: Field conditions also deal with the recognition of the individual and the collective and all values in between. What is important is not the material but the condition between the material. “To generalized, a field condition can be any formal or spatial matrix capable of unifying diverse elements while respecting the identity of each...Overall shape and
extent are highly fluid and less important than the internal relationship of parts, which determine the behavior of the field” (Allen, p. 92). When Stan Allen speaks of field conditions he would claim that he is not describing a model for a theoretical model “anticipates its own irrelevance when faced with the realities of practice” (Allen, p. 92). Rather these conditions can be described as rooted in reality and only validated through that which exists (Allen). The conditions are real but not concrete. The relevance of the field conditions is that beings are defined not by themselves alone but rather by their interstitial relevance and/or proximities to others. “Form matters, but not so much the forms of things as the forms between things” (Allen, p. 92). Content and context become synonymous. Notes on the Synthesis of Form: In 1964 Christopher Alexander, influenced by his connections with programmers at MIT, wrote Notes on the Synthesis of Form. In this work he proposed a system of “cybernetic automation” that was essentially architect-free (speaking not of the profession per se but any controlling entity) and instead relied on self-sustaining feedback loops for direction (Furjan, p. 55). Feedback loops consisted 35
Figure 2-5: Diagrams of Field Conditions
thesis theoretical framework of “environmental data input into a system according to the principle of ‘good fit’ produce patterns as output” (Furjan, p. 55). The architect’s role was to design the network and set it in motion not to control its development, which is also known as a zero-user system. This system was an approach meant to combat the complexity of environmental design in a sense that was manageable by systematically addressing a finite set of parameters. The relevant parameters are inter-linked and are only useful as they relate to the group or certain sub-systems each being dependent on others and obsolete individually. Alexander noted, “[t]he intuitive resolution of contemporary design problems simply lies beyond a single individual’s grasp” (p. 5). So his introduction of cybernetic automation was really a coping mechanism to make problems manageable. Alexander realized that relationships between parameters would be constantly changing so it was meant to evolve over time and he also realized that such changes would manifest themselves through recognizable patterns. The behavior of the network would then be defined by the aggregate nature of relationships between organisms and not by the actions of organisms independently (Furjan, p. 56). Such complex systems evolve over time because they are structured to respond to change and those structures are also capable of reconfiguring themselves in order to better respond
to change. Changes are spurred by environmental fluctuations and fitness. Fitness is defined as “adaptive feedback loops that are not simply reactive but a combination of learning and creativity, processing information about the environment into a model which uses interpolation and extrapolation to make predictions and develop modifications” (Furjan, p. 56). Such intuitiveness is tantamount to a very rudimentary form of artificial intelligence - the system actually evolves without the presence of consciousness. What is perhaps most interesting is that such smart systems are largely unpredictable, which makes sense because if we could predict the outcomes we could plan accordingly, thus negating the need for an adaptive system. In order for systems that are sufficiently complex (like most urban networks) to be successful they must maintain a certain “softness.” Soft systems are “fluid, pliant, adaptive fields that responsive and evolving” and have “the capacity to absorb, transform, and exchange information with [their] surroundings” (Corner, p. 63). Whereas in the past urban issues were treated almost exclusively in a top-down manner the non-linearity of the bottomup approach allows for a much greater degree of responsiveness and flexibility.
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thesis theoretical framework Cellular Automata: It has been noted by Batty that, “cities are not simple but complex; likewise they are complex not complicated” (p. 2). Complicated infers a certain difficulty, perhaps unnecessarily so, in understanding or comprehension whereas complexity refers to a whole made up of a number of parts, parts that are ultimately individually digestible. However in complex systems there is always uncertainty about the outcomes they produce - they are never wholly predictable. This represents a shift in methodology from top-down approaches which assumed that all things about a given system were knowable and ultimately predictable. We can no longer feign such ignorance. It is Batty’s belief that adequate models should provide “information rather than solutions” (Batty, p. xx). According to Warren Weaver in 1948, who is thought to have strongly influenced Jane Jacobs theories, These problems - and a wide range of similar problems in the biological, medical, psychological, economic and political sciences - are just too complicated to yield to the old nineteenth-century techniques which were so dramatically successful on two-, three-, and four-variable problems of simplicity. These new problems, moreover, cannot be handled with the statistical techniques so effective in describing average behavior in problems of
disorganized complexity....Science must, over the next 50 years, learn to deal with these problems of organized complexity (Batty, p. xxvii).
Previous top-down models isolated aggregate patterns and offered explanations using variables at proportional levels. The operational scale was too large to identify realities and instead was based upon blanket assumptions. The micro remained hidden. Such assumptions stood in the way of progress and today we can begin to comprehend this oversight. For complex subjects we typically need models that do not attempt to impose a “state of equilibrium” but rather respond dynamically in a non-linear fashion (Kilian, p. 213). It is clear that modern cities are decentralized in nature and so we must address them as such. A key mechanism in modeling cities are is to identifying tipping points. “Cities evolve to fill their space to a critical threshold beyond which they evolve to states that have a different kind of order” (Furjan, p. 58). Certain incremental changes are inconsequential, but it is the accumulation of such incremental changes, tipping points, that we should be concerned with. A tipping point is a threshold that, once reached, causes changes to happen quickly. The time it takes in order to reach such a reaction is disproportionate to the amount of time in which the new changes happen. So in this sense tipping-points 37
thesis theoretical framework are considered non-linear. “Instead of progressive stages of development, a phase transition causes a system to leap forward” (Felsen, p. 168). Momentous tipping-points in history include the Industrial Revolution, the discovery of cholera transmitted via water sources, and the introduction of the internet to name a few. Batty has also noted that urban networks are structured through the hierarchy of smaller subsystems. The partitioning of urban networks into smaller components requires the assumption that components and the larger systems they compose are scalar in nature, that is they have similar characteristics but at varying scales (Abruzzo). A modular hierarchical network model holds that specific subgroups (modules) are defined “according to multiple, independent social dimensions” and that modularity is a defining characteristic of most systems (Furjan, p. 59). Similarly, discrete modular organization is also the division of a system into smaller groups but each grouping possesses specialized characteristics that are each responsible for completing different tasks but inherently connected to the others (Furjan, p. 59). Each group is free to evolve independently from other groups. Such models recognize the utility of analyzing the individual and now with the advent of recent computer programming developments we are capable of computing the results of very complex models. In
addition we can test such models with information provided by many different entities that are becoming increasingly capable of doing in the digital age. “There is now the prospect that such models might be fitted against data and that the processes they embrace will genuinely capture the way spatial structures actually form, emerge, and develop” (Batty, p. 1). Cellular Automata (CA) relies on the existence of two basic elements: cells and agents. Cells represents the physical, spatial structures of cities and agents represent the animate (human and social) actors that operate the city. Cells are represented within a standardized two-dimensional grid and each cell has a finite number of states, either “off” or “on.” Cells can be thought of as areas where activities take place, either inhabited with agents or not. The actions that take place within each cell affects its neighborhood (the cells that directly border it). An initial state is determined by selecting a state for each cell within the grid (where time = 0). As time is advanced by a set increment (time = 1,2,3...etc.) fixed rules are applied (sometimes a mathematical function) based on the current state of each cell and it neighbors to determine its new state. Such advances of time and subsequent state changes occur simultaneously and are referred to as a generation. The rules governing each cell are typically uniform throughout the system and do not change over time. 38
Figure 2-6: Cellular Automata
thesis theoretical framework “Local action generates spatial order at more global scales. These structures are able to simulate the kinds of dynamics that characterize the growth of cities through spatial diffusion in the manner of epidemics, where activities influence only those next to or adjacent to them” (Batty, p. 2).
Cells are fixed whereas agents are not. Agents can move freely across cells and are embedded with the characteristics of the environment - so agents can be viewed essentially as mobile cells (Batty). Agents need not represent individuals but typically represent autonomous entities (people, companies, agencies, etc.). CA can apply across disciplines and has been used in such fields like mathematics, physics, theoretical biology, and urban planning. Figure 2-6 is an example of CA space-time evolution from one seed utilizing 2048 cells and just as many generations. Four themes are recurrent throughout the CA models produced by Batty: 1) dynamics generate both continous and discontinuous change, 2) random processes, when constrained by geometry, lead to explicit patterns and ordered forms, 3) a range of spatial processes exist, from one-off spatial events to recurring routine urban development across many spatial scales, and 4) effect of local repetitive actions build up through feedback to create structures with global organization (Batty).
Figure 2-7: Game of Life Iteration
Game of Life: The most popular and easily understood example of CA is the Game of Life developed by mathematician John Conway in 1970 (Gardner). This game is a zero-player game which means the player need only set up the initial configuration and it will evolve based on established rules without any further input from the player. The player is reduced to an observatory role and the system is essentially self-propelled. This is also known as a seed system where the initial configuration serves as the seed which will spawn all the configurations of the game. All the necessary information is embedded in that seed. The game, just like other forms of CA, consists of a theoretically infinite orthogonal two-dimensional grid composed of cells. To make the number of cells finite but movement infinite the grid can be warped so that each edge connects with another forming a torus (donut shape). Each cell may have two possible states at any given time, “alive” or “dead.” The neighborhood of each cell consists of all of the cells directly bordering it, so each cell has eight neighbors and the neighborhood consists of all eight neighbors and itself. If each cell can have two possible states and there are nine cells in a neighborhood then each neighborhood can have 39
thesis theoretical framework 512 (2 to the 9th power) different possible configurations. The implications get much more complex when we understand that cells can be parts of different neighborhoods and different neighborhoods can have effects on other neighborhoods. Rules are applied simultaneously at each interval of time (or tick). The rules are as follows for each tick: 1. Any live cell with fewer than two live neighbors dies, as if caused by underpopulation. 2. Any live cell with more than three live neighbors dies, as if by overcrowding. 3. Any live cell with two or three live neighbors lives on to the next generation. 4. Any dead cell with exactly three live neighbors becomes a live cell. Conway was very deliberate in choosing rules that would meet three different criteria: 1. There should be no initial pattern for which there is a simple proof that the population can grow without limit. 2. There should be initial patterns that apparently do grow without limit. 3. There should be simple initial patterns that grow and change for a considerable period of time before coming to an end in the following possible ways:
a. Fading away completely (from overcrowd ing or becoming too sparse), or b. Settling into a stable configuration that remains unchanged thereafter, or c. Entering an oscillating phase in which they endlessly repeat a cycle of two or more periods.
Although the seed configuration can be completely random, complex patterns will eventually develop and stabilize often resulting in symmetry. Some of the patterns that are recurrent and have been identified include three general categories: still live, oscillators, and spaceships (‘Census...’). Most initial patterns however will eventually cease, resulting in either stable configuration of patterns that oscillate indefinitely between two or more states. Although this is a game it is also a dynamic model that simulates population growth and self-organization and has spawned models used by biologists, mathematicians, economists, philosophers and others. “The game can also serve as a didactic analogy, used to convey the somewhat counterintuitive notion that ‘design’ and ‘organization’ can spontaneously emerge in the absence of a designer” (Dennett). Algorithms: According to Kostas Terzidis, author of Algorithmic 40
thesis theoretical framework Architecture, “[a]n algorithm is a process of addressing a problem in a finite number of steps. It is an articulation of either a strategic plan for solving a known problem or a stochastic search towards possible solutions to a partially known problem. In doing so, it serves as a codification of the problem through a series of finite, consistent, and rational steps. While most algorithms are designed with a specific solution in mind for a problem, there are some problems whose solution is unknown, vague, or ill-defined. In the latter case, algorithms become the means for exploring possible paths that may lead to potential solutions” (Terzidis, p. 15).
Although computers are useful for this type of computation, they are not necessary – algorithms were around long before computers. Most instructions, commands, or rules are in a sense basic algorithms. Some problems (involving heaving computation that could take a prohibitively long time to execute) however, can only be solved with the use of the computer. The use of the algorithm is essentially a way to manage a problem and/or a solution that is complex enough that it would be beneficial to approach it on an incremental level. Algorithms are not purely mathematical functions but rather systematic approaches used in solving a variety of different types of problems, mathematical and otherwise. In more literal terms an algorithm serves as a language between two parties,
in some cases used to describe a problem from one person to another, or from one person to a computer. In order to begin to solve a problem the solver must know at least the demands of such a problem. The algorithm mediates between the creative mind of the human and the raw processing power of the computer. The communication paths between the human and the computer is not monodirectional - we can rely on the output of the computer to inform our thought processes and even to help us conceived of the previously inconceivable. “[A]long the lines of homo faber homo fabricatus (i.e. we make a tool and the tool makes us), algorithms can be seen as design tools that lead towards the production of novel concepts, ideas, or forms, which, in turn, have an effect in the way designers think thereafter” (Terzidis, p. 20). Simply put, it is just another tool to be used by the designer, but a potentially powerful one. “Because design is a way of thinking intrinsically weaved with the most existential human characteristics, that of logic, artificiality, creativity, and identity, algorithms serves as the means to explore beyond, in parallel, or in lieu of traditional established ways of thinking. The notion of addressability versus solvability is important in design because it allows the algorithms to address a problem offering hints, suggestions, or alternatives which may have never occurred to the human designer. In such a synergistic relationship the unpredictable, impossible, or unknown are not factors of fear but rather invitations for exploration” (Terzidis, p. 38).
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Figure 2-8: Algorithmic Research
thesis theoretical framework Algorithms use numbers as a language to express problems. Numbers are considered “discrete quantitative units” (Terzidis, p. 38) that can be used to give value to something in rational terms negating degrees of subjectivity and ambiguity. Numbers can be used in any series of configurations to address a truly infinite number of different conditions, therefore simple characters (numbers) can address and describe infinite levels of complexity, in a manner understood by computers (this is the concept behind terms like constants, variables, procedures, classes, etc.) (Terzidis). The problem arises when humans cease to harness the potentiality of digital design and only feed information into the system in a deterministic way instead of extracting creative elements. Digital modeling techniques, similar to physical modeling techniques, have their own underlying material properties based on the “systemic logics governing their behavior” (Snooks, p. 96). “The nature of the relationship between behavior and character is dependent upon the modeling technique: explicit or generative. Explicit techniques establish a deterministic relationship between behavior and character; generative techniques allow for architectural characteristics to emerge” (Snooks, p. 96). By reducing systems down to the simplest generative logics and divorcing them from concrete indexical relationships we can identify and re-appropriate
their relationships (Snooks). The usefulness of models and metaphors: The overuse of the metaphor is nothing new in architecture. We automatically cringe at its very mention but it is the abuse of the metaphor that has caused us to be disenchanted with what it can potentially represent. However, not all metaphors are evil - the model is a metaphor. The mistake occurs when models are applied literally, explicitly and the basic organizing relations of the original reference is supplanted by something more literal, something more deterministic. We must extract the relationships, the operations, of what is inherently “good” about the reference and apply it in the appropriate manner so it is no longer recognizable, recontextualized in its new home. “[R]ule based systems replace the more subjectively biased, whimsical, and mannered modes of anticipating the appearance of nature, for instance, and shift the emphasis on the processes by which [...] systems gain their appearances. Most importantly the rules allow for an organic, instrumental interpretation of the metaphors, thus transforming the metaphors into tools” (Ellingsen, p. 218).
As said by Michel de Certeau, “metaphors are meant to be treated like public transportation. You can 42
thesis theoretical framework hop on or off at any corner because metaphors run all times of the day,” (Ellingsen, p. 217) but they are never the destination. They are spring boards for something more meaningful. “The modeler is informed by the processes through which the metaphor physically acquired its formal characteristics and from those processes extract rule sets. Abstract rules are analytical devices providing the parameters by which the modeler moves between the metaphor and the model. These rules are the metalogic base of the system, through which the modeler apprehends, interprets and intuits the original system; harnessing the force behind the method” (Ellingsen, p. 219).
What is most crucial in the use of the metaphor is to understand that the rules of such are process oriented and not appearance oriented (Ellingsen). Architects create output in the physical world and as such are concerned with appearances. It becomes too easy to be fixated with the appearances, the physical manifestations, of the rules instead of the more abstract logics responsible for their production. When taken out of context the appearances do not translate but the rules do (Ellingsen).
Supplemental Information: Critical Infrastructure: The term infrastructure has dualistic meanings: 1) the basic structure or features of a system or organization and/or 2) the stock of basic facilities and equipment needed for the functioning of an area (‘Infrastructure’). In order to apply either of the two above theories (emergent phenomena and adaptability) there must be set parameters – there must be constants. The infrastructure is the constant. Firstly, the presence of certain basic, critical infrastructure in the traditional sense (plumbing, sewage, electricity, etc.) is necessary to meet certain minimum standards necessary in any housing project. Secondly, since the project will proceed over time or in phases a certain framework will need to be established from the onset. This framework need not be structural or physical but can be. Framework could be any systemic approach typically involving “if/then” statements – i.e. if x and y occur simultaneously then z should happen. The critical infrastructure will mediate relationships between the transformative and the static. It will establish a behavioral typology. A behavioral 43
typology “involves the extraction or creation of the emergent behavior of a system, rather than the direct application of a known procedure or recipe” (Snooks, p. 100). In addition, “the importance of the distinction between an active analogy and an emergent behavioral typology lies in the ability of a behavioral algorithm to transcend its own logic and for a singularity to emerge – an identity beyond its own indexical character” (Snooks, p. 100).
scope
scope of thesis study
2.3
The lack of affordable (affordable in the global sense) housing that also meets at least minimal standards of quality is a truly global problem - and a problem that is growing exponentially every day. Therefore it is necessary to define the scope of a localized solution. By proposing a typology that can be applied to certain identifiable trends allows that typology to be applied, in theory, to any locale where those trends hold true. Since this project proposing housing alternatives in the city of Tijuana, those trends will remain unique largely to Tijuana, although it will also be true that some of those trends will apply to areas outside of Tijuana and perhaps on a nearly universal level. This project is using a two-pronged approach to the problem of design, each targeting a different scale/ scope. The first step is to identify a system that will define the articulations of a housing typology unique to the conditions of Tijuana (that is steep topography is troublesome in Tijuana, therefore steep topography will be avoided at all costs - this is a problem that may not apply in a location such as Ghana where it is largely a flat terrain). The people of Tijuana share many things in common with the people of shantytowns across the world but the difference is that they never share everything in common. That is there are similarities but there are also differences. Shantytown dwellers in Tijuana are generally poor or underpaid and therefore salvage or repurpose material to build their homes.
This is also true of most, if not all, shantytown dwellers. So by designing a system for those in Tijuana, there is a likelihood that that system will have larger applications. The system must be specific to those in Tijuana and by default will be specific to all those who have similar residential requirements. The second step of the design approach is highly site-specific. That is design interventions are introduced according to the specificities of specific neighborhoods, contexts, and demographics. These design interventions can be used to tailor the articulation of the structures to conditions that are perhaps not considered in the non-site specific phases of the design approach. Such interventions are free of any logic occurring in the previous step and can tailor the final product to the specific setting to which it is created. So such an approach can be used with any site within Tijuana and a few modifications to the parameters or reassessments of localized needs can allow a similar approach to be used in many area of the world. However, the final product will be sitespecific - it was created according to the specificities of only the chosen site.
44
“One of the problems is that we prefer the familiar, the concrete. I had to become confident in what at first looked strange, because abstractness is strange. To find something abstract and virtual, and treat it like a material, like a dough you can work with, is not easy. It comes with practice...I used an algorithmic system and was stunned by it; it gave me total conviction that if I kept moving with the abstract sources, things would happen that I could not imagine. But if I had started from a rationalistic departure point, let’s take everything I know and work from there, I wouldn’t go as far on those paths. That realization was very important to me. Fundamentally, I am totally convinced that if I take everything I know, and try to mold and draw it, it might be interesting but it will probably be sentimental. With the algorithms I can go further into new territory of the unknown.” - Cecil Balmond, Survival Patterns
design research & analysis chapter three
rationale & goals
design research & analysis rationale & goals
3.1
Site-building vs. Urban Planning: To this point we are familiar with conventional approaches to city-building. On the micro-scale of city building (referred to as) site-building is the development of a single piece of land which is most likely devoted towards a single project, whether that project is a structure devoted to a singular purpose (a single-family house) or a project larger in scope which can consist of several typologies on a singular piece of land. What is more important than the result is that the project occurs on a singular plot or contiguous plots. Projects are developed autonomously plot by plot with no real concern where those projects fall on a singular timeline. A client will announce a project when they have the means to do so (capital being the most important factor) and an architect will correspondingly accept that project if they are able. Projects are typically completed in an expedient nature but the actual execution of the project is not subject to a more comprehensive master plan in terms of timing – rather the project becomes vulnerable to conditions that have a seemingly arbitrariness towards the real value of the project, on a larger level. In other words a project will be executed when the means are available not when it has been determined that the introduction of the same project will provide the greatest utility for the area. Now the two are not mutually exclusive
– an owner will typically not commission an apartment building if they do not think, at least economically, it will succeed. We can also assume that if it succeeds economically it is at least fulfilling its most basic purpose (providing people a place to live) so in that sense the time and place of the building do correlate to larger mechanisms of the city that sustain it and thus in some way the apartment building will add value to the city. But still such an approach is lacking a truly comprehensive view of its impacts within its context. Another more obvious method of city building is urban planning. As we are aware urban planning is concerned with the more general progressive direction of the city addressing larger areas of action that are always larger than a single plot, not slightly larger, but significantly larger. Urban planning can of course involve subsections that address areas that may fulfill the parameters of an area that may be considered “in-between” in scale. Such sub-plans however may proscribe general plans of action but they almost never (to my knowledge never) provide specifics for such a plan, the specifics necessary to actually build such a project – the specifics involved in the former type of site-building mentioned in the paragraph above. So on one hand the former type cannot “see” beyond itself and on the other hand the latter cannot “see” within itself to become realized. 48
design research & analysis rationale & goals Such differences in scale produce an important distinction between the two approaches. In sitebuilding there are concerns for immediate adjacencies, existing demographics, and current infrastructure but how often is the context really evaluated beyond that immediate perimeter immediate adjacencies or other mechanisms associated with standard site analysis? Socio-demographic conditions may be assessed that involve a broader spectrum but it is used to validate or negate the success of the specific type of project (Can it be sustained?...Will it be popular?) and does not involve any physical/material adaptations to remain flexible. Here site-building involves a bit of urban planning to ensure success of a certain type of project but is not used to determine anything more than just the type. “Can the area sustain another hotel here?...Yes, then we will build a hotel, any hotel - the specifics involve no real assesments. Urban planning by nature happens at a glacial speed in comparison to site-building. Urban planning takes place according to phases and sometimes just one summarily described phase which can span ten or twenty years or longer. Plans by nature involve some connection with the future. However, when a plan spans a twenty year period what was once the future upon its inception quickly becomes the present and then the past. The longer the time span of a plan the harder it is to anticipate conditions that should create changes/adjustments
to such a plan if not even render it obsolete or even harmful to its intended purpose. Urban planning is not capable of determining the specific date of any given project but can only provide a timeframe in which projects can occur. Urban planning cannot do so because it cannot be concerned with the minutia of such projects nor is it able to predict anything with exactness. Both approaches, site-building and urban planning, are useful approaches; this is how we build cities. But what happens if we introduce a city-building that bridges the gaps or at least becomes a supplemental intermediary between the two approaches? Such an approach could fill the gaps between the incongruencies between urban planning and site-building. There are already such mechanisms but they have not been explored with the same determination and vigorousness that have been afforded to site-building and city planning. Such an approach, may be emergent in nature, but regardless needs to constantly respond to changing conditions along different scales identifying trends. Such a system could be emergent and/or take on a “viral� identity - the efficiency and effectiveness with which a virus will mutate, spread, evolve, mutate, spread, evolve, etc. is admirable. It deploys and is set in motion and assumes many forms to ensure its survival. Each individual virus reacts to local conditions and as a result the strain evolves 49
design research & analysis rationale & goals and flourishes. The challenge of creating a viral or emergent building type is to make it sufficiently responsive to changing conditions yet do so through controlled points of intervention to standardize constructability and maintain predictable outcomes. We must define the parameters of a system that we can deploy on largely undefined sites of undefined scale. In order to be sufficiently adaptable such a system should 1) accommodate the changing needs of inhabitants and 2) adapt to changing site conditions. Economy: By establishing singular systems to be deployed we are increasing the economy with which typical projects in developed countries can be realized. To use one system (system is different from physical manifestation) to develop four different projects you are acting considerably more efficiently that if you were to use four different systems to develop four different plots – not only from a construction standpoint but you have to strategize, produce, and execute four different systems, a time consuming venture. There is no doubt that shantytowns are the most economically sensitive projects produced. Keeping
costs low is of the utmost importance. However with the most minimal introduction of the most basic infrastructure, costs will increase at a certain rate but that rate will be far and away exceeded by the benefits associated with the correlative quality of life. It is not rare to see formalized buildings and it is not rare to see informal buildings but it is rare to see a project that hybridizes both. Local architects like Alejandro Aravena and Teddy Cruz have begun such explorations but they often land on the more formal side of the equation. Whereas they introduce informal characteristics to the formal I wish to introduce formal characteristics to the informal. Goals: One goal is to increase the efficiency of the execution of such a project. Another is to increase the relevancy and utility of such a project. Simply put the main goal is to make sure certain standards are met - structural integrity and the presence of needed utilities - all while achieving a certain diginity associated with habitation. Ultimately any successful project will need, among other things, to create spaces that are enjoyable, pleasing and functional. If this is not achieved then the approach, process, efficiency and relevan50
design research & analysis rationale & goals cy of the project are futile exercises that at best can serve as a useful example for future projects of a similar nature. As stated in The Atlas of Novel Tectonics by Reiser & Umemoto, “the success or failure of architecture rests finally on its specificity, and no account of circumstances will ever account for the work as such” (p.18). The intended result of the process is to, in the words of Wiscombe again, to begin to “move beyond categorical thinking and the stratification of building systems toward a more integrated future. This involves a re-examination of assumed hierarchies and discreetness of systems toward coherent yet heterogeneous organizations.” It is hard to imagine that if such coherence is produced that the intended results will not create desirable results for users. So by challenging assumed stratifications within buildings we can also redefine some of the conditions produced by those stratifications.
51
typology
designtypology research & analysis
3.2
Expectations: - A typological analysis is one method used to define the project’s program. - A typological approach offers a systematic way to study precedent and learn from it. - Select examples of projects that exhibit a program consistent with your own project type. - Document the basic, objective data on each project. - Create analytical drawings that exhibit key points about the project. - Draw a series of conclusions about the projects studied. Explain what the relevance is.
52
design research & analysis typology
Madrid Housing morphosis
Calle de los Morales 25 . Figure 3-1: Rooftops
Madrid . Spain
Organizational Strategy The Madrid Housing project provides an alternative to the traditional anonymous housing blocks and injects porosity to facilitate social functions and recognizes the necessity for creating a sense of place. “Landscape and village” topologies are integrated to provide low-income families with amenities that are rarely found in such a project: loggias, green spaces, and “domestically scaled massings” (Morphopedia). The primary parti for the housing units is an extruded “J” shape which form a low-rise village bordered by a multi-level bar to the north and a shorter one to the south. Three different types of open spaces are created as a result: small patios that occur within the interior of the units, mid-sized public courtyards that are interspersed throughout the low-rise areas and a large, landscaped public area known as the paseo (Morphopedia).
134 families per hectare
Basic component
1 74%, covered area floor area
25%, covered area roads
landscaped/pedestrian
primary unit -
2
extruded “J” parti
Figure 3-2 Architect - Morphosis Year - 2006 Client - City of Madrid Size - 236,800 gross sq/ft Program - public housing Units - 141 two/three/four bedroom
3
Figure 3-3: Massing
53
design research & analysis typology Figure 3-5: Courtyard
Figure 3-4: Units
54
design research & analysis typology
Madrid Housing morphosis
Calle de los Morales 25 . Madrid . Spain Lessons Learned From the exterior the structure appears regular throughout but different configurations of similar components create diversity of interior spaces.
green spaces
The massing is populated primarily by a series of self-similar units but through various arrangments of these units numerous conditions are created. The results exceed the complexity of the components.
private loggias
Modularity is not only reserved for units pergolas and trellises are also modularized and used to provide distinction among self-similar modular units. The scale of modularity changes.
circulation ground level
A hierarchy of negative spaces between units public circulation corridors, private loggias and green spaces - contextualize different areas of the massing.
Architect - Morphosis Year - 2006 Client - City of Madrid Size - 236,800 gross sq/ft Program - public housing Units - 141 two/three/four bedroom
N
6
Figure 3-6: Elevation
55
design research & analysis typology
Quinta Monroy alejandro arevena
Iquique . Chile Figure 3-7: Entrance
Organizational Strategy Alejandro Arevena and his firm Elemental strive to “initiate large-scale housing projects and public infrastructure...to encourage social development and fight the cycle of poverty in Chilean cities� (Trans_Formation, p. 17). Quinta Monroy is meant to introduce housing that will increase in value overtime, reversing the trend of most public housing structures which depreciate. Public housing subsidies in Chile provide $7,500 that is meant to cover the cost of land, construction and infrastructure per family which usually results in about 30 square meters of space - the same budget was stretched to 70 meters of space for this project (Trans_Formation).
93 families per hectare
Basic component apartment
voids
Figure 3-82 1 51%, covered area floor area
44%, covered area roads
5%
landscaped/pedestrian
Architect Architect -- Alejandro Alejandro Aravena Aravena Year Year -- 2004 2004 Client Client -- Chilean Chilean Ministry Ministry of of Housing Housing Size -- 3348 3348 m m2 2 Size Program -- low/mid-level low/mid-income housing Program income housing Units -- 93 93 Units Cost -- $$7500 Cost 7500 per unit
3
Figure 3-9
56
house
design research & analysis typology
Quinta Monroy alejandro arevena
Iquique . Chile Figure 3-12
Massing Strategy On this given site, given the previous standards, only 60 families were able to be accomodated on this site but the program called for accomadtions for 100. Aravena rewrote the equation - instead of building the best possible unit for $7,500 x 100 families that $750,000 was used to create the best possible building of accomodating 100 families (Trans_ Formation). High buildings do not allow for expansion because only the top and ground floors have the room to grow. So all of the middle floors were eliminated from this project. “Parallel Building� provides a house on the ground floor with an apartment on top of it. Now two families live on one lot and each has room to expand in the future. Apartments can expand on the second floor while homes can expand on the ground floor. On the second floor every other half of a plot is left open and on the ground floor every third half is also open.
How not to build
a
b
Figure 3-11 How to build
h
4
1 house = 1 lot
a=b
h>2
isolated house, inefficient land use
row house, overcrowding
multi-story building, does not allow for crowding expansions
Figure 3-10
5
Architect - Alejandro Aravena Year - 2004 Client - Chilean Ministry of Housing Size - 3348 m 2 Program - low/mid-level income housing Units - 93 Cost - $ 7500 per unit
57
h=2
2 houses = 1 lot
build 50%
since ground and top floors can always expand, all other floors are eliminated
house with an apartment on top allows 2 families per plot
by building every other unit a framework is set for expansion
design research & analysis typology
Quinta Monroy alejandro arevena
Iquique . Chile
Because the necessity for functionality at low costs was so high spaces that were not termed “shelter” remain mostly neglected. Most of the surfaces are paved for automobile access and/or parking. Green space is lacking. However communal spaces are informally created and take place despite the lack of spaces provided solely for this purpose. People congregate under and on front steps and in or between parking spaces. Four parking areas are created in the courtyards surrounded by the units and all are accessed via roadways on either side of the block. Each of the four groupings remains independent from others in terms of access and structure, with the exception of backyard spaces that abut each other.
Lessons Learned By building half of the structure it allows people to buy units for only $7500. By providing the infrastructure for future development allows relatively predictable and safe construction results but also allows for customization. “Parallel building” maximizes opportunity for expansion and culls types of units that cannot be added on to. Building a house and an apartment on the same plot allows for self-sufficiency within each unit but cuts costs greatly. This project allows housing to appreciate in value as opposed to other housing projects which typically depreciate in value.
N
6 Figure 3-13
Architect - Alejandro Aravena Year - 2004 Client - Chilean Ministry of Housing Size - 3348 m2 Program - low/mid-level income housing Units - 93 Cost - $ 7500 per unit
7
Figure 3-14: Interior
58
design research & analysis typology
Celosia Quinta Monroy mvrdv & blanca lleo alejandro arevena
Madrid Iquique . Spain Chile Figure 3-15: Corner
Organizational Strategy Celosia is a social housing project by MVRDV and is one of several projects constructed on the periphery of Madrid that departs from the uniformity and introverted nature of the typical “sea of six-story-high blocks� (Ballesteros, p. 1 221). Celosia, with a courtyard at its center, is a perforated block that creates openings at all levels of the building. Views are maintained with the surrounding areas and natural light and ventialation is afforded to each unit. Each unit is exposed on to the exterior on a minimum of 2 sides and sometimes 3. The basic building blocks in most prefabricated projects is usually a single unit. In Celosia the basic building block is a group of 6 units on two different levels and a stairwell shaft.
146 families
Basic component 2
upper level
1 43%, covered area
2%
floor area
roads
3
1
65% landscaped/pedestrian
stair
main block 6 units + stairwell
5 6
Architect & Blanco Lleo Architect -- MVRDV Alejandro Aravena Year Year -- 2009 2004 Client Client -- EMVS Chilean Ministry of Housing Size -- 21,552 3348 mm2 2 Size Program -- low/mid-level low/mid-income housing Program income housing Units -- 146 93 Units Cost -- $$7500 per unit Cost 86,300 per unit
lower level 4
2
Figure 3-16
59
stair
design research & analysis typology
Celosia mvrdv & blanca lleo
Madrid . Spain
Blocks Housing
Shops
Total
Total Area
L
7
5
12
5665 m 2
M
7
1
8
3577 m
2
S
16
0
16
6489 m
2
Total
30
6
36
14487 m
axon
A 2
3
Figure 3-17
Massing Strategy voids
massing
B 4
Figure 3-18: Perspective The massing consists of blocks of six prefabricated housing units separated from one another at regular intervals allowing for communal terraces.
A
Six blocks and their subsequent six courtyards form a level and each level is staggered in a checkerboard pattern so that units 2 are positioned next-to and on-top-of each other (Ballesteros). The floorplans have little variance from block to block so in a way each block is self-sufficient and relationships among units are predetermined and tested. The blocks could have been arranged in any number of ways determined by the needs of the project withouth changing the relationships of the uni ts within each block.
B
Architect - MVRDV & Blanc Lleo Year - 2009 Client - EMVS Size - 21,552 m 2 Program - low/mid-level income housing Units - 146 Cost - $ 86,300 per unit
A
60
design research & analysis typology
Celosia mvrdv & blanca lleo
Madrid . Spain Lessons Learned The basic building blocks in most prefabricated projects is usually a single unit. In Celosia the basic building block is a group of 6 units. Atypical component scale.
Figure 3-19
3 units share each courtyard & stairwell
The floorplans have little variance from block to block so in a way each block is self-sufficient and relationships among units are predetermined and tested.
1 2
The blocks could have been arranged in any number of ways determined by the needs of the project without changing the relationships of the units within each block.
3
Prefabrication on two different scales - the individual units and their configuration within each block - allows costs to remain relatively low - low enough to provide affordable social
courtyard Common areas stairwell
Architect - MVRDV & Blanca Lleo Year - 2009 Client - EMVS Size - 21,552 m2 Program - low/mid-level income housing Units - 146 Cost - $ 86,300 per unit
N
6 5
Figure 3-20: Aperture
61
design research & analysis typology
Manufactured Sites teddy cruz
Figure 3-21: Tires
Tijuana . Baja California . Mexico
Figure 3-22: Manufactured Site
Organizational Strategy The structural frame proposed would be supplied by the maquiladoras in Tijuana to ensure that they contribute resources to the development of even a minimal infrastructure in the neighborhoods surrounding them which also supplies their workers.
3 : # of major parts
The frame would be produced on the assembly line of the factories and transported to nearby developments. Residents can incorporate the easily assembleable into existing or future building projects. The frame is made of discarded materials and is sturdy enough to support an existing structure freeing up the ground plane. The basic component ships flat and takes the form of an upside-down “U� shape.
1
Basic component
2 50%, covered area floor area
0% roads
50%, covered area landscaped/pedestrian
Architect - Estudio Teddy Cruz Year - not built Client - the poor Size of average unit - small Cost per unit - cheap
3
Figure 3-23 Assemblage
62
design research & analysis typology
Manufactured teddySites cruz
Tijuana . Baja California . Mexico Figure 3-25: Arial
Massing Strategy The frame is proposed to “emerge out of its own material systems and processes of production” and adapt to a variety of positions and housing scenarios. It is equipped with preassembled footings that can hook into existing rubber-tire retaining walls that are so common in Tijuana. The bracing systems supports a plastic water pouch that contains a two-week supply (Ballesteros, p. 275). In Tijuana the “notion of prefabrication depends on a triangulation of human material resources, agencies and institutions” that is the relationship produced by community-based activists in charge of distributing the frame, the community’s participation is building their own habitations, the architects role in designing and facilitating the process, the municipalities efforts in negotiating between the maquiladora and the informal sector and the factory’s willingness to provide the infrastructure (Ballesteros, p. 276).
4
Figure 3-24: Sequence
creation of third floor
6
surface applied to framework secondary structures infill frames creation of second floor full deployment
1
2
3
4
4
Architect - Estudio Teddy Cruz Year - not built Client - the poor Size of average unit - small Cost per unit - cheap
Figure 3-26: Frame5
63
design research & analysis typology
Casa Familiar teddy cruz
San Ysidro . California Figure 3-28: Casa Familiar
Figure 3-27: Top View
Organizational Strategy Casa Familiar is a high density, mixed use, hybridized neighborhood development located in San Ysidro that is designed for low-income immigrant families. The project is conceived in stages and based on an autonomous and capable demographic. The project is designed to grow with the users needs and respond to many programmatic needs of everyday life, not just a place to live. Concrete frames built early on serves as a framework for affordable housing units built at a later time. Infill is a technique used to lower costs, using time as a design parameter. The basic module of the framework is a f-shaped piece that can be built on or around and interlocks with other pieces.
5 -12 : number of units
1
2 55%, covered area floor area
1 7% roads
38%, covered area
3 Figure 3-29: Model Perspective
Basic component
landscaped/pedestrian
Architect - Estudio Teddy Cruz Year - 2005 Client - Casa Familiar, Inc. Size - 18,828 gross sq/ft Size of average unit - 1,000 sq. ft. Cost per unit - $60 - $70
4
Figure 3-30: Schematic Plan
64
design research & analysis typology
Casa Familiar teddy cruz
San Ysidro . California Figure 3-31: Exposed Section
Massing Strategy The first stage construction involves the renovation of a church into a community center, public gardens and offices for Casa Familiar. The second phase involves the erection of a concrete arbor to create open-air rooms and a provisional market for inhabitants. The third phase involves the infill of the housing units meant to be occupied by multi-generational households of extended families. The units are designed to be customizable and highly flexible. Although illegal according to code, larger units are designed to be subdivided into smaller units share some amenities. This is Cruz’s way of protesting the inflexible zoning codes of San Diego that prohibit low-income housing.
3 official units by zoning
+2 negotiated units given by city for low income housing status & pedestrian corridor enhancement
2 negotiated units generate 2 illegal units by sharing their kitchens.
5
church’s classrooms will become 2 illegal transitional housing units sharing the community center’s kitchen
each official 2 bedroom unit can be divided into 2 smaller 1 bedroom units with a common kitchen
6 Architect - Estudio Teddy Cruz Year - 2005 Client - Casa Familiar, Inc. Size - 18,828 gross sq/ft Size of average unit - 1,000 sq. ft. Cost per unit - $60 - $70
lower level concrete frames are built first
remaining areas are infilled in and around structural frames
Figure 3-32: Schematic Section
65
design research & analysis typology
Casa Familiar teddy cruz
San Ysidro . California Figure 3-33: Isometric Views
Lessons Learned
8
5
10 4
3 6
2 7
4
4 5 2
6
1
phase one
the primary module is generally the same shape but varies to allow for a certain level of flexibility.
2 1
1
9
7
to keep costs low not all construction is done at the same time - but rather is approached on an as-need basis. Time becomes a design parameter.
12
phase two
a fair number of constructed spaces are not enclosed but rather have a degree of openness which allows for less construction and hence cheaper costs.
phase three
codes are a challenge to be negotiated, not blindly accepted.
8 Figure 3-34: Sequential Views
1. existing church 2. terrace garden 3. parking 4. garden corridor 5. concrete arbor 6. church’s studio units 7. community center kitchen
8. link to existing senior housing and garden 9. link to existing park 10. alley 11. street 12. affordable housing 13. market
Architect - Estudio Teddy Cruz Year - 2005 Client - Casa Familiar, Inc. Size - 18,828 gross sq/ft Size of average unit - 1,000 sq. ft. Cost per unit - $60 - $70
9
Figure 3-35: Render 6
66
site analysis SITE
designsite research & analysis analysis
3.3
Expectations:
- study chosen site and, by extension, the environment around it.* - gather data and analyze findings to uncover the opportunities and constraints that will help to define the eventual design. - explore concepts and strategies about the site and project. - present a progress report and discoveries thus far.
68
designsite research & analysis analysis
tijuana
SITE
*Alternative Approaches:
- the assumption for the Expectation for the site analysis was to 1. choose a site and 2. study that site - in that order. - the preferred approach was to isolate some variables and then looking at the entire city, working backwards and eliminate areas that did not meet my criterion. This approach seems far less arbi= trary and subjective than choosing a site on a whim. - using GIS one can analyze large areas of the city cross-referencing several variable in situ. - the traditional analysis was used as well, moving first from the macro to the micro and then from the micro to the macro. Such a dualistic approach can uncover information that may be overlooked given only one of the approaches alone. Figure 3-36: Tijuana Streets
o
o
o
o
32 30’ 52.32 N 116 56’ 55.63 W 69
designsite research & analysis analysis chronological development of shantytowns 1950’s
1960’s
1970’s
- created in the ‘50s
- created in the ‘60s
historical areas of shantytown development (tijuana)
- area of all shantytowns over time
70
- created in the ‘70s
designsite research & analysis analysis 1980’s
2000’s
1990’s
- created in the ‘80s
- created in the ‘00s
- created in the ‘90s
other
Informal developments: Informal developments form a large part of the identity of Tijuana as a city. Shantytowns in Tijuana are often viewed as nuisances upon their inception and soon thereafter but they eventually form productive sectors of the city. As you can tell from the images above, nearly half of the city began as an informal shantytown development. Overtime shantytowns progress and eventually become incorporated into the city structure - such is the global nature of shantytowns. The government of Tijuana creates task forces that are meant to help facilitate this process so that the city can begin to reap the benefits of more productive members of the city.
71
- no data gathered
designsite research & analysis analysis SITE ONE: Site Selection Parameters (in order of importance): 1. low land value 2. residential land use 3. proximity to utilities 4. flat topography 5. high density 6. low crime rates 7. proximity to drinkable water 8. near trashdumps
73
designsite research & analysis analysis
utilities
drainage
water
telephone
presence of specific utility the darker the gradient of blue, the more commercial establishments are present
all utilities
SITE
land use
agriculture/industry agriculture intensive green area uncultivated commercial/services bodies of water standard equipment residential residential-camping industry
indicates presence of all utilities the darker the gradient of blue, the more commercial establishments are present
74
designsite research & analysis analysis
land uses
gas
streetlights
commercial
electricity
residential
industrial
0-5 occupants 6-25 26-45 46-70 71-100
public A. desirable areas
residential + all utilities
75
designsite research & analysis analysis
resources
treatment stations
possibly compromised quality
water well
trash collection areas
trash collection available
informal trash dumps
water
water well risky quality treatment station
one mile radius
76
designsite research & analysis analysis
land uses
land value
density
top 1/3 density range
8 8
9 7 2 1
6 4
5
3
0 - 172 units 173 - 381 382 - 669 670 - 969 970 - 1302 1303 - 1667 1668 - 2009 2010 - 2390 2391 - 2883 2884 - 3616
1 - 10 occupants 11 - 20 21 - 30 31 - 60 61 - 90 91 - 120 121 - 467
bottom 1/3 value range
B. desirable areas
proximity to trash dumps + water + high density + low value
77
designsite research & analysis analysis
avoidance
high crime rates
compromised topography
Logic: Locate a site that can sustain this type of project. There are a number of parameters that need to be present, the absence of any one of those parameters renders the site inadequate. Once the parameters are set, map them one by one eliminating areas that were missing the desired conditions. The map at the top of the next page shows the two areas that possessed all desirable parameters. When choosing a site one can control and avoid any unnecessary limiations by being well informed about the larger context of the site.
C. desirable areas
78
designsite research & analysis analysis
desirability
resultant overlapping desirable areas (A-B-C)
B. desirable areas
A. desirable areas
B. desirable areas
79
designsite research & analysis analysis
natural features
streets 20 20 15 10 5
5 minute walking zone markers
topography
slope
waterways
elevation 60 80
120 100
40
40 60
80 street grid topography
slope street grid topography
100 slope street grid
80
primary secondary teritiary
designsite research & analysis analysis
transportation routes
calafia routes
taxi routes
calafia = large taxi in tijuana calafias follow set routes much like buses
most taxis follow set routes much like buses
bus routes
81
designsite research & analysis analysis
adjacent developments
formal/informal development
tarp structures informal housing formalized housing
blue tarps
tarp structures
informal developments
informal housing
formal developments
formalized housing
82
designsite research & analysis analysis
context
densities
land uses
land values
agriculture/industry agriculture intensive green area uncultivated commercial/services bodies of water standard equipment residential residential-camping industry
1-10 occupants 11-20 21-30 31-60 61-90 91-120 120-467
nonresidential
0 - 172 173 - 381 382 - 669 670 - 969 970 - 1302 1303 - 1667 1668 - 2009 2010 - 2390 2391 - 2883 2884 - 3616
composite
tarp structures informal housing formalized housing industrial storage school green areas mixed use
83
designsite research & analysis analysis
site features
surface drainage
runoff on compacted surfaces
vehicle paths
two-way paved road two-way unpaved road
pedestrian paths
vehicular access into site
paved walkway unpaved walkway
two-way paved road two-way unpaved road
84
primary access secondary access
designsite research & analysis analysis
circulation
area suitable for building
all of site is suitable (no obstructions, noteable vegetation, or steep topography)
pedestrian access into site
paved walkway unpaved walkway
existing barriers
existing foliage
notable vegetation
fencing area used by neighbor as a driveway
parking
primary access secondary access tertiary access
paved parking unpaved parking
85
designsite research & analysis analysis
adjacency interactions
existing informal structures
existing permanent structures
substantial structures
makeshift housing
topography
potential for development
vacant areas
views into site
view corridors into site from neighboring buildings
noise into/out of site
primary source - roadway/sidewalk secondary source - alleyway tertiary source - neighbors
86
designsite research & analysis analysis
climate data
equinox sunpath
summer solstice sunpath
winter solstice sunpath
N
N
N
SUNSET SUNSET
SUNRISE
SUNRISE
W
W
E
3pm
E
3pm
9am
W
E
SUNSET
SUNRISE 3pm
9am
9am
NOON
NOON
NOON
S
S
S
average monthly percipitation
solar altitude & azimuth - summer solstice
4.5
NOON
4.0 3.5 inches
3.0 2.5
2.5
2.3
east 90
2.5
SUNRISE
2.0 1.5 1.0 0.5 0
1.2
0.8 0.3 jan
feb
mar
apr
may
0.1 jun
0.1
0.1
jul
aug
Table 3.1
87
0.3 sep
north 0 nov
south 180 81
o
29
o
1.4
0.5 oct
o
dec
o
SUNSET
west 270
o
o
designsite research & analysis analysis
climate data
average temperatures
temperature (F)
90 67
70 50
67 44
30
jan
45
feb
46
mar
49
apr
may
61
57
53
jun
average high
82
81
76
72
70
67
81 62
jul
aug
77 61
sep
72 55
oct
68 48
nov
43 dec
average low
Table 3.2
shadow study - summer solstice
solar altitude & azimuth - winter solstice
shadow study - winter solstice
NOON 12:00 east 90
o
SUNRISE
34
o
south 180
12:00 15:00
9:00 29 north 0
o
o
SUNSET west 270
9:00
o
o
88
15:00
site one
designsite research & analysis analysis
conclusions
The area where the site is located is not the typical place one could expect to find a shantytown in Tijuana. For one shantytowns are normally situated on public land where they are not necessarily permitted so that they will not have to pay rent or taxes - such areas are on the periphery of the city grid. Because residents are not permitted to live on the land there is no attempt for the city to introduce infrastructure that would fulfill the most basic requirements necessary for most dwellings. This site is within the city grid which also means the area is equipped to offer residents those basic services. The key was to find a site that can offer those things but still be cheap, near places of work AND populated with informal residences so that the area could absorb the ramifications of supporting a shantytown. The neighborhood exhibits a fair amount of informal behavior so it would be a natural fit to support informal housing. The demand for informal housing is high - there are huge shantytowns all over the world. It seems logical that in order to meet such demand the project should be placed where there are currently shantytowns that are growing in size. But that model seems broken in a way. Shantytowns can only siphon so much off of surrounding areas before they can be sustained any longer. Maybe we need to speed up the rate at which shantytowns
are incorporated into the city and this can be done by fracturing the shantytowns so that they can be more readily dissolved into the productive city. It seems reasonable that the strain on any one part of the city can be lessened when shantytowns are decentralized. By placing such an informal project within a more structured context it could be more desirable to inhabitants if costs are kept as low as possible - so that the benefits outweigh the costs. Hopefully this could help to return profitablility to the land by mediating some sort of nominal taxation system. It has been historically shown in Tijuana that slums will turn into productive parts of they city, but it takes time. Perhaps we can speed up this process to shorten the curve that it takes slums to convert. It need not happen over night but perhaps by adding formalized elements to shantytowns (or adding shantytowns to formalized elements) we can speed this process up by 1/2 or even 1/4. Setting parameters for the development of such a project has led to a site within the city grid. This approach has caused a reevaluation of the traditional nature of shantytown locations and has raised the question, “Why it is conditions remain so poor for so long?” Why can’t we upgrade them to at least “low-cost” housing instead of living in poverty. Perhaps the problem lies in one of the fundamental precepts of shantytown housing. 89
The question then becomes this: is a shantytown still a shantytown without the “town”? Can you remove the shanty from land that is illegally occupied and still maintain the identity of the thing we know as a a shantytown?
site narrative
designsite research & analysis analysis
3.4
Since the project is set in Tijuana it was about time to take a visit to see what the city is all about. Admittedly, its probably not the safest time to go to Tijuana but it looks like its not going to get much better any time soon. It was fortunate that a former teacher who is from Tijuana offered to be a tour guide, to give a local’s perspective. The difference between the United States and Mexico is immediately visible as soon as you get 10 feet across the border. You see huge, bright billboards everywhere and everything looks less clinical and there is hardly any vegetation anywhere. You would be hard pressed to try to categorize any one building according to a certain style. Buildings are constructed out of necessity, not style, so they are more likely to look like a random compilation of different parts. The whole city is a bit of a stimulus overload....lots of traffic, lots of color, lots of people, lots of action and you get the distinct feeling that the city operates on a more informal level with little if any formal planning happening. Anything goes. We went all around the city, starting by going West to the beach right at the border. It’s strange because unlike San Diego there is no appeal to living on or near the beach. It was sparsely populated along the parts of the coast saw and a lot of the buildings were vacant or falling down. One gets the impression that everything done in Tijuana is
done out of necessity. We associate recreation with the beach in San Diego which may explain why there is no real “water culture” in TJ - because its more of a lifestyle of luxury than necessity. We then went south to see some of the newer, sprawling developments which developers do not even try to disguise as unique. Each unit is EXACTLY the same as the next. It’s clear that the infrastructure of Tijuana can’t support such areas of mass density. The roadways are too few and too narrow to get people to and from the new developments so we spent a lot of the time sitting in traffic and in some places the highways were only one lane wide in each direction. The infrastructure follows the houses - adequate highways are built after, not before, the new communities and malls situate themselves next to existing developments. Not only do they have security at the entrance of each new community but then each road had a security gate for residents. One new community that was a few years old was right next to another newer community that was only a few months old. Despite probably looking identical upon construction the older of the two had distinct marks left by the owners. There were makeshift additions, customized colors/materials, modified fences, etc. which embodies the “do-it-yourself” construction attitude in those areas. There are shantytowns along every major road which barely seem livable but actually account for over 50% of the housing in Tijuana. As 90
designsite research & analysis analysis unappealing as the suburban sprawl model seems here, the reality is is that it can provide at least a minimum of living conditions at a relatively cheap level that the shantys don’t. Most shantys are built on unused land, land that is too steep for others, and so when it rains its a common problem for shanty homes to wash away and families get displaced. We went farther northeast where the industrial districts are. This is where the oversized maquiladoras are located and the infrastructure is a little bit more built up here. This is where one of the potential sites is located but it is clear that this area is already highly developed so any project would have less of an impact on the surroundings in this type of area as opposed to an area that is still in the development stages. It seems like Tijuana has been expanding as quickly as possible in every possible direction but in a relatively inefficient manner. Infrastructure lags behind development but also many interstitial spaces are overlooked and so there is opportunity to backtrack and infill those areas that were neglected the first time around.... which leads to the second potential site. The second site is in Los Alamos along the canal just after the point where it splits. It is right next to the Universidad Xochicalco overlooking the canal. This is one of those spots that has a lot of potential for development because its largely
unpopulated other than an outcropping of existing shanty structures. There is a huge vacant field next to the sports fields and a fair amount of people walk (and apparently dump trash there) along the edge of the canal to the neighborhood behind it. You need to take dirt roads to get there but a main road is slated to be built along the edge so it could be a highly desirable area. So unlike the other site, a new development could have a huge potential to effect future building. Just across from the site is a makeshift tire bridge that people use to cross the canal and save themselves a car trip. As the guide pointed out, the only green spaces are in the middle of the looping on/off ramps of the highway. Apparently groups sponsor these areas, much like people sponsor part of the highways in the US. It dawned on me that there are no green public spaces in the city. This explains a woman was sitting on a blanket reading a book in the middle of what was essentially a lawn covered median, because there are so few spaces to do that sort of thing outside. Also, it is not uncommon when a couple gets married in Tijuana to get their pictures taken next to the highway and on the medians where it appears green and scenic. For as hectic as the city seems that is probably also its most endearing feature. It is bustling and full of life and barely under control but you can 91
sense a certain vibrancy that doesn’t exist in San Diego. The source of its problems are also probably the source of its best features.
designsite research & analysis analysis SITE TWO: Site Selection Parameters (in order of importance): 1. low slope 2. proximity to industrial sectors (places of work) 3. proximity to public transportation (mobility) 4. proximity to major intersections (nodes) 5. accessibility to points of entry (border crossings) 6. low land value
92
designsite research & analysis analysis
land uses
density (percentage based) strong presence
commercial
weak presence
industrial
industrial
residential
public
93
designsite research & analysis analysis
desirablility
nodes - busy intersections
bus routes
industrial sites
94
designsite research & analysis analysis calafia routes
taxi routes
The priorites of parameters from Site One to Site Two has shifted given conversations with some locals and a trip to Tijuana. Proximity to places of work, mobility, and flat land are the most important factors. The dark magenta areas indicate close proximity to certain subjects throughout most of Tijuana. The shades become lighter as they become farther away from the subject. The darker areas are considered more desirable. The current site is located in all highly desirable areas.
95
designsite research & analysis analysis
desirability
These diagrams synthesize the information from the previous two pages. Height in these diagrams correlate to closeness. The higher they are the closer they are to the subject. The magenta portions are the actual subjects. The site (the bull’s-eye) is located in areas of close proximity to all of the subjects. In the final diagram (proximity to public transportation) all of the means of public transportation (calafia, taxi, bus) are combined so the magenta represents the presence of all three.
proximity to busy intersections
96
designsite research & analysis analysis
proximity to industrial areas (places of employment) proximity to public transportation routes
97
designsite research & analysis analysis 6
7
site plan
2
3
site
5
98
designsite research & analysis analysis industrial storage canal tire bridges walking paths
1
mechanic/machinery plant nursery playing fields Universidad Xochilcalco parking lots proposed roadways
n
99
designsite research & analysis analysis
site pictures
1
2 100
designsite research & analysis analysis
3
4 101
designsite research & analysis analysis
roadways & border
crossings
infrastructure proposals
site
6 site
7 primary secondary border crossings
magenta = planned roadways
tertiary proposed
102
The site is located near several primary, secondary, and tertiary roadways indicating the potential for increased mobility. A proposed primary highway (top, right) is slated to be built just along the northern edge of the site. A mega-intersection is planned several hundred meters away from the site. Both infrastructural proposals will increase the potential of mobility. Normally, no one wants a highway in their backyard however, it is a welcome addition for such a project.
summary of spaces
designprogramming research & analysis
3.5
1. Single-family dwelling units @ 70 +/- square meters total (approximate to Quinta Monroy case study). - possibility to merge with one or more other single-family dwelling units. - the average household in Tijuana consists of 4 or more people. - the United Nations recommends at least 15 square meters of space per inhabitant (4 x 15 = 60 square meters) - such spaces would contain the following areas: a. Bedrooms - 2 or 3 @ 10 +/- square meters each. b. Common area @ 20 +/- square meters. c. Kitchen @ 10 +/- square meters. d. Bathroom @ 5 +/- square meters. e. Storage @ 5 +/- square meters. f. Outdoor space @ 5 +/- square meters (does not count towards 70 +/- square meters total) 2. Single-family live work units @ 85 +/- square meters total. - possibility to merge with one or more other single-family dwelling units or one or more other single-family live work units. - such spaces would differ from the standard single-family dwelling units in that they would also contain additional areas. - such spaces would contain the following areas: a. Bedrooms - 2 or 3 @ 10 +/- square meters each. b. Common area @ 20 +/- square meters. c. Kitchen @ 10 +/- square meters. d. Bathroom @ 5 +/- square meters. e. Storage @ 5 +/- square meters. f. Work area @ 15 +/- square meters. g. Outdoor space @ 5 +/- square meters (does not count towards 85 +/- square meters total) 3. Circulation @ 5 +/- square meters per unit (to be kept at an absolute minimum). 4. Outdoor gathering spaces - at a minimum there will be at least 5 square meters of space per family (assuming all spaces will not all be used at exactly the same time). - because of the economical nature of the interior spaces, some gathering areas will be provided for on the exterior (either on the ground and/or other areas within the structure). 104
program narrative
designprogramming research & analysis
3.6
1. Single-family dwelling units @ 70 +/- square meters: The entire purpose of each unit is to provide a safe, comfortable, and economical living environment. The nature of each unit will not have any luxu- ries (space, commodities or otherwise) and will serve to meet the requirement of everyday life, i.e., a place to sleep, basic utilities, and a roof over their head (which is more than most have currently). Surveys have established that normal dwellings typically accomodate at least 4 people and some times many more. It is common for those extended families to live together in Mexico and Tijuana. Unlike Americans, it is typical for many genera tions to live together. Because of the wide range of family size and often fluctuating numbers, it makes sense to make units able to convert or con nect with other units once a threshold is met or conversely revert to becoming self-sufficient. a. Bedrooms - 2 or 3 @ 10 +/- square meters each: It is assumed that bedrooms will be shared and it is probably the exception to the rule that one individual will have a bedroom all to themselves. The idea of bedroom in this case will serve more a more fluid room as that bedroom could be partitioned into smaller sleeping areas or even incorporated back into the common area if desired. It may make sense to use the room as sleeping during the night and a more constructive purpose during the day. The bedroom will need at least one window for escape in case of a fire and to introduce natural light into the space. b. Common area @ 20 +/- square meters: The term “common area� is used as a catch-all. The basic premise is that it is accessible to all. Considering that the needs of each family (and the needs of each member of those families) is considerable different this room may be used for many activities (socializing, working, eating, or even sleeping in some cases). Adjacency to the kitchen is important because most meals will be eaten in the com mon area. A source of natural light is important here because this space will be occupied most of the time. c. Kitchen @ 10 +/- square meters: The kitchen will have a minimum of modern appliances, if any, and more rudimentary cooking methods will be used. It is undeter mined at this point if ventilation for cooking fires will need to be provided - but more likely gas stoves/ranges will be used. Adjacency to the common area is important because most meals will be served there. d. Bathroom @ 5 +/- square meters: The bathrooms most important function is to provide plumbing and sewage, a feature that most shantys do not have access to. e. Storage @ 5+/- square meters: Tenants will need some place to put their possessions. This space does not require that it be adjacent to any other specific area, al105
designprogramming research & analysis though if it is used by all tenants within a unit it should probably be located off of the kitchen or common area. f. Outdoor space @ 5 +/- square meters: This square footage will not count towards the total square footage of each unit because it either may not even need to be construct ed or will simply be enclosed. Such a space would be most beneficial off of common areas of each unit to maximize accessibility. Such spaces could range from small courtyards to balconies to circulation. 2. Single-family live/work units @ 85 +/- square meters: The functions and requirement of a-e remain the same as above. The difference however is the addition of a live/work space. It will probably be used primarily as a place of work. In Tijuana the government has tried to move shantytown tenants to sites within the city grid. After being relocated ten ants would stay there temporarily and then sell the land and move back to their original shantytown. One way to make tenants want to stay in the new shantytowns is to make it sufficiently more desirable then previous conditions. The largest expense of shantytown workers are traveling expens es related to traveling to and from work. If we choose a destination that is in close proximity to places of work tenants will be more likely to want to live there. Better yet, if we allow some tenants to work where they live they will find such places even more desirable. g. Work area @ 15 +/- square meters: The work area would serve a number of functions. Although the area would primarily serve as a work space during times when it is not it could also be used as an extension of bedrooms, or in cases where it is on the ground level as a car garage. When serving as a work space it could be used to produce goods, as a shop that opens up to the rest of the building and perhaps a public area, as a type of office, a place to fabricate works of art or any number of functions. Since goods/equipment/products will need to be moved in and out accessibility is key - so live work areas should be located on the ground floor. Some sort of ventilation may be necessary depend ing on the use. 3. Circulation @ 5+/- square meters per unit: Circulation will be minimal and exterior where possible. The less infrastructure needed to create circulation the better. 4. Outdoor gathering spaces @ 5 +/- square meters per unit: The outdoor gathering spaces will largely be created in the voids of the structure. Most will be located on the ground level so they can be accessible to most and so that an additional surface will not need to be constructed. They will remain mostly informal with little infrastructure. Proximity to common areas is key to maximize the number of occupants who can have access to such areas. Outdoor spaces can be linked to kitchens or other gathering areas to expand square-footage of those spaces. Outdoor spaces can extend each room adjacent to it. 106
designprogramming research & analysis - Lot size = 5,742 square meters a) Case studies built on anywhere from 74% -43% of the lots. Since density is more economical than not, I am going to aim to build on ap proximately 70% of the footprint of the site. Therefore:
5,742/70% = 4,020 square meters of buildable area.
b) The structure will be no more than 4 stories high, assuming that any higher will require a disproportionate amount of structural infrastructure to do so. Much less than 4 stories would not be taking advantage of the density the site is capable of sustaining.
- Since live/work units should be situated on the ground floor then 1/4 of the structure will be live/work (85 square meters per unit) and the other 3/4 of the structure will be the typical single-family dwelling units (70 square meters per unit). Therefore:
4,020 square meters of buildable area divided by 85 square meters = 47.1 live/work units 4,020 square meters of buildable area divided by 70 square meters = 57.3 single-family units 57.3 single-family units x 3 levels = 172 units 171 units + 48 units = 219 units total spaces. Outdoor spaces can extend each room adjacent to it.
107
adjacencies
designprogramming research & analysis
3.7
bedroom 1
11 22
common area
11
kitchen
22
storage/bedroom work space/bedroom gathering areas
22 22 11
circulation
22 22 11 22 11 22
22 22 22 22 22
22 33 22 2
33 33 11
circulation live/work
33 22
22
2
bath
2
adjacency to circluation and common area - bathroom
1
1 2
2
bed 1
kitchen
1
1
outdoor space
common area
outdoor gathering area
storage
bed 2
circulation access to common space from outside circulation
Option One:
bath
common area
share plumbing
bed 1
kitchen and common space need to be adjacent
kitchen
each adjacent to “quiet� area outdoor gathering area
storage
storage accessed by all
bed 2
108
Option Two:
Adjacencies:
bedroom 2
desirable weak correlation undesirable
designprogramming research & analysis Programmatic Adjacencies:
2% 2%
mezzanines bathrooms kitchens common areas (inside units)
4% 10%
8%
market stalls
additive units (bedrooms/office/secondary gathering space)
additive units
market stalls
core unit
74%
Merging of Option 1 & Option 2 circulation outdoor
live/work
bath
common area
storage gathering area outdoor
bed 1
kitchen
common area bed 1 bath storage
kitchen
bed 2
adaptable
bed 2 static
109
“Never take the appropriate next step. Talk about Chinese urban design, the European space program, and landscape in the films of Alfred Hitchcock in the span of three sentences – because it’s fun, and the juxtapositions might take you somewhere. Most importantly, follow your lines of interest.”
- Geoff Manaugh, The BLDG BLOG Book
design process chapter four
conceptualization
design review conceptualization
4.1
Charrette One - Speculative Thinking & Drawing on Paper Expectations: - on paper and in graphite pencil (no color) and/or ink pen media only - utilize minimal written text - draw and employ by freehand only a range of exploratory drawings of sketch quality depicting thoughts, concepts and ideas, which provide insights into your selected thesis and your individual creative process.
112
design process conceptualization
A singular module (center of picture) is shown rotating through space from right to left, modifying its shape in response to the interation before it. Ripples radiate outwards suggesting a field of influence. The plan view of each module is under-layed below it. The top edges are defined and extruded downwards to form the boundary of a shantytown dwelling. The flock of birds on the left are a reference towards the emergent nature of such projects.
113
design process conceptualization Charette Two - Thinking Through Modeling Expectations: - based on analyses from the typological and site exercises. - develop at least three alternatives in model form. - document in 2-D each option in photographs and/or sketches as a record of work. - consider the broadest range of possibilities you can explore and develop within the time alotted. - present in studio the preferred option. - this single proposal should be a refined and improved version of previous models.
114
design process conceptualization
branching This model was conceived as a meta-model, letting the process inform the final product instead of starting with a predetermined outcome. The model started at a single point and branches in a linear direction into multiple trajectories.
115
design process conceptualization This model uses time as a design parameter, assuming the product will be built in phases. Phase one: introduce modular L-shaped framework. Phase two: infill in and around framework. The framework does not necessarily dictate the explicit outcome but suggests certain arrangements of framework and infill.
framework/infill
116
design process conceptualization A more speculative framework is introduced in this instance. Spokes are arranged along the coordinates of an imaginary cartesian grid. Undulating surfaces hinge around the spokes. The logic is this: when a surface reaches the spoke it must change trajectories. The framework is less structural and more of an operative guideline.
framework/hinging
117
design process conceptualization
+ This model builds on the framework of the last. The modulating surfaces are connected via triangulated members. The members can easily be converted into simple surfaces - without the triangulation such surfaces would remain relatively complex and unbuildable by those without the means. 118
framework/hinging + triangulation
schematic design
design schematic design process
4.2
DESIGN APPROACH: 1. non-site specific - system based on overreaching principles. 2. locale specific - edge conditions recurrent to Tijuana are identified and responded to. 3. site specific - design interventions based on specificity of unique site characteristics. TOP-DOWN MEETS BOTTOM-UP: - systematic framework arranged on site based on edge conditions. - framework suggests an organizational strategy but does not enforce it. - framework ensures a minimum standard of housing is met. - the articulation of the system will be highly dependent on the needs and preferences of the users (the system is a seed).
120
design schematic design process
Preferential Attachment: *closeness preferred A program called NetLogo to model “preferential attachment” to simulate how residents may tend to settle negotiating the benefit of sharing resources with that of maximizing personal space. In some networks, a few hubs have lots of connections while others may only have a few. This model shows one way such networks can arise. Using “preferential attachment,” new network members prefer to make a connection to the more popular existing members. The model starts with two nodes connected by an edge. At each step, a new node is added. A new node picks an existing node to connect to with randomly, but with some bias. A node’s chance of being selected is directly proportional to the number of connections. 121
systems
massings
linear longitutinal connectors
design schematic design process
unit can plug into any adjacent, open slot - attach in a linear fashion - respond to existing configurations grids aligned
variable
expansion/contraction
unit can plug into any adjacent slot or pair of slots - a single connection becomes a double and a double becomes single
122
design schematic design process systems
massings
units must hinge around vertical spokes - ensures some continuity among othewise independent unit arrangements. additional spaces are created when surfaces are lofted between the edges of units
hinging
grid replaced by hinge
overlappingoffset openings level floorplates
units span from one slot and connect two others - the increment is not the slot but the half slot. floor plates remain level - all variation happen horizontally
123
linear
offset
variable
hinging
124
deformation of standard grid
design schematic design process
design schematic design process edge corridors By expanding on the idea of edge conditions it is possible to develop a more meaningful and comprehensive massing strategy for any given site. Sites do not just interact with their surroundings at their edges, a 2-dimensional space, where they meet neighboring conditions. Those edges are accompanied by multiple layers, radiating 3-dimensionally from the edges, both deeper into the site and deeper into the non-site. An edge may border a grove of trees but the analysis should not stop here because equally relevant is the field behind those trees and the parking lot behind that field and the school behind that parking lot. The are all elements that contextualize the site and should not be ignored. Through the identification of such corridors massing responses can be developed giving greater relevancy to site interventions.
edge school
(4 stories)
site pathway grove field parking lot parking lot 125
design schematic design process massing model This is the first proposal for a site massing. It is based largely on the hinging strategy referred to on previous pages. Bars of building masses touch each other longitudinally extending in different directions - the only rule is that each row of bars must touch the “hinge.� The hinge is the constant while all else is the variable.
126
design schematic design process SCHEMATIC DESIGN REVIEW Expectations:
- the studio focus of this quarter is on schematic design work that will lead up and largely through design development. - the goal set for last quarter was to have established a design direction for the project that involved the following: 1. a workable concept or parti 2. solid decisions about plan (or master plan) and site 3. an understanding of the spatial/volu metric/formal requirements of the program 4. viable massing based on the program - as a continuation of the design process, the progress for this quarter at the schematic design level should exhibit a revised concept documented with drawings and models.
128
design schematic design process Exploration of the grid: - the grid need not be a static organizer. - any conceivable shape or form can be defined by a coordinate system - this is how all forms are defined in virtual space. - the grid is one such coordinate system that can be used to defined an infinite number of positions in 3-dimensional space - at no point should regularity or limits be assumed by the use of a grid. - the grid is not synonymous with rigid form or unimaginative fields * ANY imaginable shape/geometry conforms to some coordinate system
129
design schematic design process
Each cell within the structural grid is 5 meters by 5 meters and can be subdivided along 1 meter increments. Units span across grids but can extrude along any of the increments. Therefore extrusions need not be straight but can change trajectories in multiple slopes. The graphics below map all of the potential trajectories.
A primary module is needed to begin to develop a language for the units. This module is the most basic building block of the project. In the past it has become apparent that a module that is both simplistic, performative and flexible is of the utmost importance.
130
The graphics on the next page show the potential extrusions within a cell. Two surfaces intersect each other and divide the cell into 4 parts, each representing a room. The surfaces are then both repositioned along every possible position within the 5 meter by 5 meter coordinate system. Combinations that result in non-optimal spaces are eliminated.
design schematic design process y=5, slope=(-3)
y=5, slope=(-2)
y=5, slope=(-1)
y=5, slope=0
y=5, slope=1
y=4, slope=(-3)
y=4, slope=(-2)
y=4, slope=(-1)
y=4, slope=0
y=4, slope=1
x=5, slant=(-3)
y=5, slope=(-3)
y=5, slope=(-2)
y=5, slope=(-1)
y=5, slope=0
y=5, slope=1
y=4, slope=(-3)
y=4, slope=(-2)
y=4, slope=(-1)
y=4, slope=0
y=4, slope=1
x=4, slant=(-3)
y=5, slope=(-3)
y=5, slope=(-2)
y=5, slope=(-1)
y=5, slope=0
y=5, slope=1
y=4, slope=(-3)
y=4, slope=(-2)
y=4, slope=(-1)
y=4, slope=0
y=4, slope=1
x=3, slant=(-3)
y=4, slope=(-3)
y=4, slope=(-2)
y=4, slope=(-1)
y=3, slope=(-2)
y=3, slope=(-1)
y=4, slope=(-2)
y=4, slope=(-1)
y=3, slope=(-2)
y=3, slope=(-1)
x=4, slant=(-3) x=4, slant=(-3)
x=5, slant=(-3)
x=4, slant=(-3)
x=3, slant=(-3) y=3, slope=0
y=3, slope=1
y=3, slope=1 x=4, slant=(-3)
x=4, slant=(-3)
y=3, slope=(-3)
y=3, slope=(-2)
y=3, slope=(-1)
y=3, slope=0
y=3, slope=1
x=5, slant=(-3)
y=3, slope=(-3)
y=3, slope=(-2)
y=3, slope=(-1)
y=3, slope=0
y=3, slope=1
x=4, slant=(-3)
y=3, slope=(-3)
y=3, slope=(-2)
y=3, slope=(-1)
y=3, slope=0
y=3, slope=1
x=3, slant=(-3) y=2, slope=(-1)
y=2, slope=0
y=2, slope=1
x=4, slant=(-3) y=2, slope=(-3)
y=2, slope=(-2)
y=2, slope=(-1)
y=2, slope=0
y=2, slope=1
y=1, slope=(-3)
y=1, slope=(-2)
y=1, slope=(-1)
y=1, slope=0
y=1, slope=1
x=5, slant=(-3)
y=2, slope=(-3)
y=2, slope=(-2)
y=2, slope=(-1)
y=2, slope=0
y=2, slope=1
y=1, slope=(-3)
y=1, slope=(-2)
y=1, slope=(-1)
y=1, slope=0
y=1, slope=1
x=4, slant=(-3)
y=2, slope=(-3)
y=2, slope=(-2)
y=2, slope=(-1)
y=2, slope=0
y=2, slope=1
y=1, slope=(-3)
y=1, slope=(-2)
y=1, slope=(-1)
y=1, slope=0
y=1, slope=1
y=5, slope=(-3)
y=5, slope=(-2)
y=5, slope=(-1)
y=5, slope=0
y=5, slope=1
y=4, slope=(-3)
y=4, slope=(-2)
y=4, slope=(-1)
y=4, slope=0
y=4, slope=1
y=1, slope=1
x=3, slant=(-3)
y=1, slope=1
x=4, slant=(-3) x=4, slant=(-3)
x=5, slant=(-3)
x=4, slant=(-3)
y=5, slope=(-3)
y=5, slope=(-2)
y=5, slope=(-1)
y=5, slope=0
y=5, slope=1
y=4, slope=(-3)
y=4, slope=(-2)
y=4, slope=(-1)
y=4, slope=0
y=4, slope=1
x=5, slant=(-2)
x=3, slant=(-3)
y=5, slope=(-3)
y=5, slope=(-2)
y=5, slope=(-1)
y=5, slope=0
y=5, slope=1
y=4, slope=(-3)
y=4, slope=(-2)
y=4, slope=(-1)
y=4, slope=0
y=4, slope=1
x=4, slant=(-2)
x=3, slant=(-2)
y=5, slope=(-3)
y=5, slope=(-2)
y=5, slope=(-1)
y=5, slope=0
y=5, slope=1
y=4, slope=(-3)
y=4, slope=(-2)
y=4, slope=(-1)
y=4, slope=0
y=4, slope=1
y=3, slope=(-3)
y=3, slope=(-2)
y=3, slope=(-1)
y=3, slope=0
y=3, slope=1
x=2, slant=(-2)
y=4, slope=(-3)
y=4, slope=(-2)
y=4, slope=(-1)
y=3, slope=(-2)
y=3, slope=(-1)
y=4, slope=(-3)
y=4, slope=(-2)
y=4, slope=(-1)
y=3, slope=(-2)
y=3, slope=(-1)
y=4, slope=(-2)
y=4, slope=(-1)
y=3, slope=(-2)
y=3, slope=(-1)
x=4, slant=(-2) x=4, slant=(-2)
x=5, slant=(-2)
x=4, slant=(-2)
x=3, slant=(-2)
y=3, slope=0
y=3, slope=1
y=3, slope=0
y=3, slope=1
y=3, slope=(-2)
y=3, slope=(-1)
y=3, slope=0
y=3, slope=1
x=5, slant=(-2)
y=3, slope=(-3)
y=3, slope=(-2)
y=3, slope=(-1)
y=3, slope=0
y=3, slope=1
x=4, slant=(-2)
y=3, slope=(-3)
y=3, slope=(-2)
y=3, slope=(-1)
y=3, slope=0
y=3, slope=1
x=3, slant=(-2)
y=2, slope=(-1) y=2, slope=0
y=2, slope=1
y=2, slope=(-1)
y=2, slope=0
y=2, slope=1
y=2, slope=(-1)
y=2, slope=0
y=2, slope=1
y=2, slope=(-3)
y=2, slope=(-2)
y=2, slope=(-1)
y=2, slope=0
y=2, slope=1
x=4, slant=(-2)
y=2, slope=(-3)
y=2, slope=(-2)
y=2, slope=(-1)
y=2, slope=0
y=2, slope=1
x=3, slant=(-2)
y=2, slope=(-3)
y=2, slope=(-2)
y=2, slope=(-1)
y=2, slope=0
y=1, slope=(-2)
y=1, slope=(-1)
y=1, slope=0
y=1, slope=1
y=1, slope=(-3)
y=1, slope=(-2)
y=1, slope=(-1)
y=1, slope=0
y=1, slope=1
x=4, slant=(-2)
y=5, slope=(-3)
y=5, slope=(-2)
y=5, slope=(-1)
y=5, slope=0
y=5, slope=1
y=4, slope=(-3)
y=4, slope=(-2)
y=4, slope=(-1)
y=4, slope=0
y=4, slope=1
x=5, slant=(-1)
y=1, slope=(-3)
y=1, slope=(-2)
y=1, slope=(-1)
y=1, slope=0
y=1, slope=1
x=3, slant=(-2)
y=5, slope=(-3)
y=5, slope=(-2)
y=5, slope=(-1)
y=5, slope=0
y=5, slope=1
y=4, slope=(-3)
y=4, slope=(-2)
y=4, slope=(-1)
y=4, slope=0
y=4, slope=1
y=1, slope=1 y=1, slope=1
y=1, slope=(-3)
y=1, slope=(-2)
y=1, slope=(-1)
y=1, slope=0
y=1, slope=1
y=5, slope=(-3)
y=5, slope=(-2)
y=5, slope=(-1)
y=5, slope=0
y=5, slope=1
y=4, slope=(-3)
y=4, slope=(-2)
y=4, slope=(-1)
y=4, slope=0
y=4, slope=1
y=5, slope=(-3)
y=5, slope=(-2)
y=5, slope=(-1)
y=5, slope=0
y=5, slope=1
y=4, slope=(-3)
y=4, slope=(-2)
y=4, slope=(-1)
y=4, slope=0
y=4, slope=1
x=2, slant=(-1)
y=5, slope=(-3)
y=5, slope=(-2)
y=5, slope=(-1)
y=5, slope=0
y=5, slope=1
y=4, slope=(-3)
y=4, slope=(-2)
y=4, slope=(-1)
y=4, slope=0
y=4, slope=1
x=1, slant=(-1)
y=4, slope=(-3)
y=4, slope=(-2)
y=4, slope=(-1)
y=3, slope=(-2)
y=3, slope=(-1)
y=4, slope=(-3)
x=3, slant=(-2)
y=4, slope=(-2)
y=4, slope=(-1)
y=3, slope=(-2)
y=3, slope=(-1)
y=4, slope=(-3)
y=4, slope=(-2)
y=4, slope=(-1)
y=3, slope=(-2)
y=3, slope=(-1)
y=4, slope=(-2)
y=4, slope=(-1)
y=3, slope=(-2)
y=3, slope=(-1)
y=4, slope=(-3)
x=2, slant=(-1)
x=3, slant=(-1)
y=3, slope=0
y=3, slope=1
y=3, slope=0
y=3, slope=1
y=3, slope=0
y=3, slope=1
y=3, slope=(-2)
y=3, slope=(-1)
y=3, slope=0
y=3, slope=1
y=3, slope=(-3)
y=3, slope=(-2)
y=3, slope=(-1)
y=3, slope=0
y=3, slope=(-3)
y=3, slope=1
y=3, slope=(-2)
y=3, slope=(-1)
y=3, slope=0
y=3, slope=1
x=3, slant=(-1)
x=4, slant=(-1)
y=3, slope=(-1)
y=4, slope=(-2)
y=4, slope=(-1)
y=3, slope=(-2)
y=3, slope=(-1)
x=2, slant=(-1)
y=3, slope=(-3)
y=3, slope=(-2)
y=3, slope=(-1)
y=3, slope=0
y=3, slope=1
x=2, slant=(-1)
y=3, slope=(-3)
y=3, slope=(-2)
y=3, slope=(-1)
y=3, slope=0
x=3, slant=(-1)
y=3, slope=1
y=3, slope=1 x=4, slant=(-1)
y=3, slope=(-3)
y=4, slope=(-1)
y=3, slope=(-2)
x=2, slant=(-1)
x=1, slant=(-1)
x=4, slant=(-1)
x=5, slant=(-1)
y=4, slope=(-2)
x=3, slant=(-1)
x=4, slant=(-1) x=4, slant=(-1)
x=3, slant=(-1)
x=4, slant=(-1)
y=1, slope=1
y=1, slope=1
x=3, slant=(-2)
x=2, slant=(-2)
x=3, slant=(-1)
x=4, slant=(-1)
x=5, slant=(-1)
y=2, slope=1
y=2, slope=1
x=2, slant=(-2)
x=4, slant=(-2) y=1, slope=(-3)
y=3, slope=1
x=3, slant=(-2)
x=3, slant=(-2)
x=4, slant=(-2)
x=5, slant=(-2)
y=2, slope=(-1)
y=2, slope=1
x=4, slant=(-2)
y=2, slope=(-2)
y=3, slope=(-1)
x=2, slant=(-2) y=2, slope=(-1)
y=2, slope=(-3)
y=4, slope=(-1)
x=3, slant=(-2)
x=3, slant=(-2)
x=4, slant=(-2)
x=5, slant=(-2)
y=4, slope=(-2)
y=3, slope=1 x=4, slant=(-2)
x=4, slant=(-2)
y=3, slope=(-3)
y=3, slope=(-2)
x=3, slant=(-2)
x=3, slant=(-2)
x=2, slant=(-2)
x=3, slant=(-1)
x=2, slant=(-1)
x=2, slant=(-1)
y=3, slope=1
x=1, slant=(-1) y=2, slope=(-1) y=2, slope=(-1)
y=2, slope=0
y=2, slope=(-1)
y=2, slope=1
y=2, slope=0
y=2, slope=(-1)
y=2, slope=1
y=2, slope=0
y=2, slope=1
x=3, slant=(-1) x=3, slant=(-1)
x=4, slant=(-1) y=2, slope=(-3)
y=2, slope=(-2)
y=2, slope=(-1)
y=2, slope=0
y=2, slope=1
y=1, slope=(-3)
y=1, slope=(-2)
y=1, slope=(-1)
y=1, slope=0
y=1, slope=1
x=5, slant=(-1)
y=2, slope=(-3)
y=2, slope=(-2)
y=2, slope=(-1)
y=2, slope=0
y=2, slope=1
y=1, slope=(-3)
y=1, slope=(-2)
y=1, slope=(-1)
y=1, slope=0
y=1, slope=1
y=2, slope=(-3)
y=2, slope=(-2)
y=2, slope=(-1)
y=2, slope=0
y=2, slope=1
y=1, slope=(-3)
y=1, slope=(-2)
y=1, slope=(-1)
y=1, slope=0
y=1, slope=1
x=3, slant=(-1)
x=4, slant=(-1)
y=2, slope=(-3)
y=2, slope=(-2)
y=2, slope=(-1)
y=2, slope=0
y=2, slope=1
y=1, slope=(-3)
y=1, slope=(-2)
y=1, slope=(-1)
y=1, slope=0
y=1, slope=1
x=2, slant=(-1)
y=2, slope=(-3)
y=2, slope=(-2)
y=2, slope=(-1)
y=2, slope=0
y=2, slope=1
y=1, slope=(-3)
y=1, slope=(-2)
y=1, slope=(-1)
y=1, slope=0
y=1, slope=1
y=5, slope=(-3)
y=5, slope=(-2)
y=5, slope=(-1)
y=5, slope=0
y=5, slope=1
y=4, slope=(-3)
y=4, slope=(-2)
y=4, slope=(-1)
y=4, slope=0
y=4, slope=1
x=2, slant=(-1)
y=1, slope=1
x=1, slant=(-1)
y=1, slope=1
y=1, slope=1
y=1, slope=1
y=1, slope=1
x=4, slant=(-1) x=4, slant=(-1)
x=5, slant=(-1)
x=3, slant=(-1)
x=4, slant=(-1)
y=5, slope=(-3)
y=5, slope=(-2)
y=5, slope=(-1)
y=5, slope=0
y=5, slope=1
y=4, slope=(-3)
y=4, slope=(-2)
y=4, slope=(-1)
y=4, slope=0
y=4, slope=1
x=5, slant=(0)
y=5, slope=(-3)
y=5, slope=(-2)
y=5, slope=(-1)
y=5, slope=0
y=5, slope=1
y=4, slope=(-3)
y=4, slope=(-2)
y=4, slope=(-1)
y=4, slope=0
y=4, slope=1
x=4, slant=(0)
x=2, slant=(-1)
y=5, slope=(-3)
y=5, slope=(-2)
y=5, slope=(-1)
y=5, slope=0
y=5, slope=1
y=4, slope=(-3)
y=4, slope=(-2)
y=4, slope=(-1)
y=4, slope=0
y=4, slope=1
x=3, slant=(0)
x=3, slant=(-1)
y=5, slope=(-3)
y=5, slope=(-2)
y=5, slope=(-1)
y=5, slope=0
y=5, slope=1
y=4, slope=(-3)
y=4, slope=(-2)
y=4, slope=(-1)
y=4, slope=0
y=4, slope=1
x=2, slant=(0)
x=1, slant=(0)
y=5, slope=(-3)
y=5, slope=(-2)
y=5, slope=(-1)
y=5, slope=0
y=5, slope=1
y=4, slope=(-3)
y=4, slope=(-2)
y=4, slope=(-1)
y=4, slope=0
y=4, slope=1
y=3, slope=(-3)
y=3, slope=(-2)
y=3, slope=(-1)
y=3, slope=0
y=3, slope=1
y=2, slope=(-3)
y=2, slope=(-2)
y=2, slope=(-1)
y=2, slope=0
y=2, slope=1
y=1, slope=(-3)
y=1, slope=(-2)
y=1, slope=(-1)
y=1, slope=0
y=1, slope=1
x=1, slant=(0)
y=4, slope=(-3)
y=4, slope=(-2)
y=4, slope=(-1)
y=3, slope=(-2)
y=3, slope=(-1)
y=4, slope=(-3)
x=4, slant=(0)
x=5, slant=(0)
x=4, slant=(0)
x=3, slant=(0)
x=2, slant=(0)
x=1, slant=(0)
y=3, slope=(-2)
y=3, slope=(-1)
y=3, slope=0
y=3, slope=1
y=2, slope=(-3)
y=2, slope=(-2)
y=2, slope=(-1)
y=2, slope=0
y=2, slope=1
y=1, slope=(-3)
y=1, slope=(-2)
y=1, slope=(-1)
y=1, slope=0
y=1, slope=1
x=5, slant=(0)
y=3, slope=(-3)
y=3, slope=(-2)
y=3, slope=(-1)
y=3, slope=0
y=3, slope=1
y=2, slope=(-3)
y=2, slope=(-2)
y=2, slope=(-1)
y=2, slope=0
y=2, slope=1
y=1, slope=(-3)
y=1, slope=(-2)
y=1, slope=(-1)
y=1, slope=0
y=1, slope=1
x=4, slant=(0)
y=3, slope=(-3)
y=3, slope=(-2)
y=3, slope=(-1)
y=3, slope=0
y=3, slope=1
y=2, slope=(-3)
y=2, slope=(-2)
y=2, slope=(-1)
y=2, slope=0
y=2, slope=1
y=1, slope=(-3)
y=1, slope=(-2)
y=1, slope=(-1)
y=1, slope=0
y=1, slope=1
x=3, slant=(0)
y=3, slope=(-3)
y=3, slope=(-2)
y=3, slope=(-1)
y=3, slope=0
y=3, slope=1
y=2, slope=(-3)
y=2, slope=(-2)
y=2, slope=(-1)
y=2, slope=0
y=2, slope=1
y=1, slope=(-3)
y=1, slope=(-2)
y=1, slope=(-1)
y=1, slope=0
y=1, slope=1
x=2, slant=(0)
y=4, slope=(-2)
y=4, slope=(-1)
y=3, slope=(-2)
y=3, slope=(-1)
y=3, slope=(-3)
y=3, slope=(-2)
y=3, slope=(-1)
y=3, slope=0
y=3, slope=1
x=3, slant=(0)
y=2, slope=(-3)
y=2, slope=(-2)
y=2, slope=(-1)
y=2, slope=0
y=2, slope=1
y=1, slope=(-3)
y=1, slope=(-2)
y=1, slope=(-1)
y=1, slope=0
y=1, slope=1
x=1, slant=(0)
x=2, slant=(0)
y=4, slope=(-1)
y=3, slope=(-2)
y=3, slope=(-1)
y=4, slope=(-3)
y=4, slope=(-2)
y=4, slope=(-1)
y=3, slope=(-2)
y=3, slope=(-1)
x=4, slant=(0)
x=3, slant=(0)
x=2, slant=(0)
x=4, slant=(0)
x=3, slant=(0)
x=2, slant=(0)
x=1, slant=(0)
x=1, slant=(0)
x=3, slant=(0)
x=2, slant=(0)
x=1, slant=(0)
x=1, slant=(0)
y=3, slope=0
y=3, slope=0
x=2, slant=(0)
x=3, slant=(0)
y=3, slope=0
x=1, slant=(0)
x=1, slant=(0) y=2, slope=0
x=4, slant=(0)
y=4, slope=(-2)
x=2, slant=(0)
y=3, slope=0
y=2, slope=(-1)
x=4, slant=(0)
x=5, slant=(0)
y=4, slope=(-3)
x=3, slant=(0)
x=1, slant=(0)
x=4, slant=(0)
y=3, slope=(-3)
x=2, slant=(-1)
x=2, slant=(-1)
x=1, slant=(-1)
x=1, slant=(0)
x=1, slant=(0)
y=2, slope=0
y=2, slope=(-1)
x=3, slant=(0)
y=2, slope=0
y=2, slope=(-1)
y=2, slope=0
x=1, slant=(0)
x=2, slant=(0)
y=1, slope=1
x=4, slant=(0) x=4, slant=(0)
x=5, slant=(0)
x=4, slant=(0)
x=3, slant=(0)
y=5, slope=(-3)
y=5, slope=(-2)
y=5, slope=(-1)
y=5, slope=0
y=5, slope=1
y=4, slope=(-3)
y=4, slope=(-2)
y=4, slope=(-1)
y=4, slope=0
y=4, slope=1
x=2, slant=(0)
y=5, slope=(-3)
y=5, slope=(-2)
y=5, slope=(-1)
y=5, slope=0
y=5, slope=1
y=4, slope=(-3)
y=4, slope=(-2)
y=4, slope=(-1)
y=4, slope=0
y=4, slope=1
x=3, slant=1
x=4, slant=1
x=1, slant=(0)
y=5, slope=(-3)
y=5, slope=(-2)
y=5, slope=(-1)
y=5, slope=0
y=5, slope=1
y=4, slope=(-3)
y=4, slope=(-2)
y=4, slope=(-1)
y=4, slope=0
y=4, slope=1
x=2, slant=1
x=1, slant=(0)
y=5, slope=(-3)
y=5, slope=(-2)
y=5, slope=(-1)
y=5, slope=0
y=5, slope=1
y=4, slope=(-3)
y=4, slope=(-2)
y=4, slope=(-1)
y=4, slope=0
y=4, slope=1
x=1, slant=1
y=5, slope=(-3)
y=5, slope=(-2)
y=5, slope=(-1)
y=5, slope=0
y=5, slope=1
y=4, slope=(-3)
y=4, slope=(-2)
y=4, slope=(-1)
y=4, slope=0
y=4, slope=1
x=0, slant=1
y=4, slope=(-3)
y=4, slope=(-2)
y=4, slope=(-1)
y=3, slope=(-2)
y=3, slope=(-1)
y=4, slope=(-3)
y=4, slope=(-2)
y=4, slope=(-1)
y=3, slope=(-2)
y=3, slope=(-1)
y=4, slope=(-3)
y=4, slope=(-2)
y=4, slope=(-1)
y=3, slope=(-2)
y=3, slope=(-1)
y=4, slope=(-2)
y=4, slope=(-1)
y=3, slope=(-2)
y=3, slope=(-1)
x=2, slant=1
x=1, slant=1
y=3, slope=0
y=3, slope=1
y=3, slope=0
y=3, slope=1
y=3, slope=0
y=3, slope=1
y=3, slope=(-2)
y=3, slope=(-1)
y=3, slope=0
y=3, slope=(-3)
y=3, slope=1
y=3, slope=(-2)
y=3, slope=(-1)
y=3, slope=0
y=3, slope=(-3)
y=3, slope=1
x=3, slant=1
y=3, slope=(-2)
y=3, slope=(-1)
y=3, slope=0
y=3, slope=1
x=2, slant=1
y=3, slope=(-1)
y=4, slope=(-2)
y=4, slope=(-1)
y=3, slope=(-2)
y=3, slope=(-1)
x=1, slant=1
y=3, slope=(-3)
y=3, slope=(-2)
y=3, slope=(-1)
y=3, slope=0
y=3, slope=1
x=1, slant=1
y=3, slope=(-3)
y=3, slope=(-2)
y=3, slope=(-1)
y=3, slope=0
y=3, slope=1
y=3, slope=1 x=3, slant=1
y=3, slope=(-3)
y=4, slope=(-1)
y=3, slope=(-2)
x=1, slant=1
x=2, slant=1
x=0, slant=1
x=3, slant=1
x=4, slant=1
y=4, slope=(-2)
x=2, slant=1
x=3, slant=1 x=3, slant=1
x=3, slant=1
x=4, slant=1
x=2, slant=1
x=1, slant=1
x=1, slant=1
x=2, slant=1
y=3, slope=1
x=0, slant=1 y=2, slope=(-1) y=2, slope=(-1)
y=2, slope=0
y=2, slope=(-1)
y=2, slope=1
y=2, slope=0
y=2, slope=1
y=2, slope=(-1)
y=2, slope=0
y=2, slope=1
x=2, slant=1 x=2, slant=1
x=3, slant=1 y=2, slope=(-3)
y=2, slope=(-2)
y=2, slope=(-1)
y=2, slope=0
y=2, slope=1
y=1, slope=(-3)
y=1, slope=(-2)
y=1, slope=(-1)
y=1, slope=0
y=1, slope=1
x=4, slant=1
y=2, slope=(-3)
y=2, slope=(-2)
y=2, slope=(-1)
y=2, slope=0
y=2, slope=1
y=1, slope=(-3)
y=1, slope=(-2)
y=1, slope=(-1)
y=1, slope=0
y=1, slope=1
x=3, slant=1
y=2, slope=(-3)
y=2, slope=(-2)
y=2, slope=(-1)
y=2, slope=0
y=2, slope=1
y=1, slope=(-3)
y=1, slope=(-2)
y=1, slope=(-1)
y=1, slope=0
y=1, slope=1
x=2, slant=1
y=2, slope=(-3)
y=2, slope=(-2)
y=2, slope=(-1)
y=2, slope=0
y=2, slope=1
y=1, slope=(-3)
y=1, slope=(-2)
y=1, slope=(-1)
y=1, slope=0
y=1, slope=1
x=1, slant=1
y=2, slope=(-3)
y=2, slope=(-2)
y=2, slope=(-1)
y=2, slope=0
y=2, slope=1
y=1, slope=(-3)
y=1, slope=(-2)
y=1, slope=(-1)
y=1, slope=0
y=1, slope=1
y=5, slope=(-3)
y=5, slope=(-2)
y=5, slope=(-1)
y=5, slope=0
y=5, slope=1
y=4, slope=(-3)
y=4, slope=(-2)
y=4, slope=(-1)
y=4, slope=0
y=4, slope=1
x=1, slant=1
y=1, slope=1
y=1, slope=1
x=0, slant=1
y=1, slope=1
y=1, slope=1
y=1, slope=1
x=1, slant=1
x=3, slant=1 x=3, slant=1
x=4, slant=1
x=3, slant=1
x=2, slant=1
y=5, slope=(-3)
y=5, slope=(-2)
y=5, slope=(-1)
y=5, slope=0
y=5, slope=1
y=4, slope=(-3)
y=4, slope=(-2)
y=4, slope=(-1)
y=4, slope=0
y=4, slope=1
x=3, slant=2
x=1, slant=1
y=5, slope=(-3)
y=5, slope=(-2)
y=5, slope=(-1)
y=5, slope=0
y=5, slope=1
y=4, slope=(-3)
y=4, slope=(-2)
y=4, slope=(-1)
y=4, slope=0
y=4, slope=1
y=5, slope=(-3)
y=5, slope=(-2)
y=5, slope=(-1)
y=5, slope=0
y=5, slope=1
y=4, slope=(-3)
y=4, slope=(-2)
y=4, slope=(-1)
y=4, slope=0
y=4, slope=1
x=1, slant=2
x=2, slant=2
x=1, slant=1
x=2, slant=1
x=0, slant=1
x=0, slant=2
y=4, slope=(-3)
y=4, slope=(-2)
y=4, slope=(-1)
y=3, slope=(-2)
y=3, slope=(-1)
y=4, slope=(-3)
y=4, slope=(-2)
y=4, slope=(-1)
y=3, slope=(-2)
y=3, slope=(-1)
y=4, slope=(-2)
y=4, slope=(-1)
y=3, slope=(-2)
y=3, slope=(-1)
x=2, slant=2
x=2, slant=2
x=1, slant=2
y=3, slope=0
y=3, slope=1
y=3, slope=0
y=3, slope=1
y=3, slope=(-3)
y=3, slope=(-2)
y=3, slope=(-1)
y=3, slope=0
y=3, slope=1
y=2, slope=(-2)
y=2, slope=(-1)
y=2, slope=0
y=2, slope=1
y=1, slope=(-3)
y=1, slope=(-2)
y=1, slope=(-1)
y=1, slope=0
y=1, slope=1
y=3, slope=(-3)
y=3, slope=(-2)
y=3, slope=(-1)
y=3, slope=0
y=3, slope=1
y=2, slope=(-3)
y=2, slope=(-2)
y=2, slope=(-1)
y=2, slope=0
y=2, slope=1
y=1, slope=(-3)
y=1, slope=(-2)
y=1, slope=(-1)
y=1, slope=0
y=1, slope=1
y=3, slope=(-3)
y=3, slope=(-2)
y=3, slope=(-1)
y=3, slope=0
y=3, slope=1
y=2, slope=(-3)
y=2, slope=(-2)
y=2, slope=(-1)
y=2, slope=0
y=2, slope=1
y=1, slope=(-3)
y=1, slope=(-2)
y=1, slope=(-1)
y=1, slope=0
y=1, slope=1
x=1, slant=2
x=2, slant=2
y=3, slope=(-3)
y=3, slope=(-2)
y=3, slope=(-1)
y=3, slope=0
y=3, slope=1
y=2, slope=(-3)
y=2, slope=(-2)
y=2, slope=(-1)
y=2, slope=0
y=2, slope=1
y=1, slope=(-3)
y=1, slope=(-2)
y=1, slope=(-1)
y=1, slope=0
y=1, slope=1
y=5, slope=(-3)
y=5, slope=(-2)
y=5, slope=(-1)
y=5, slope=0
y=5, slope=1
y=4, slope=(-3)
y=4, slope=(-2)
y=4, slope=(-1)
y=4, slope=0
y=4, slope=1
x=0, slant=2 y=2, slope=(-1)
x=2, slant=2
x=1, slant=2
y=2, slope=0
y=2, slope=1
y=2, slope=(-1)
y=2, slope=0
y=2, slope=1
x=1, slant=2
y=1, slope=1
x=0, slant=2
y=1, slope=1
x=1, slant=2
x=2, slant=2
y=5, slope=(-3)
y=5, slope=(-2)
y=5, slope=(-1)
y=5, slope=0
y=5, slope=1
y=4, slope=(-3)
y=4, slope=(-2)
y=4, slope=(-1)
y=4, slope=0
y=4, slope=1
x=2, slant=3
y=1, slope=1
y=1, slope=1
x=2, slant=2 x=2, slant=2
x=3, slant=2
y=3, slope=1
x=1, slant=2
x=1, slant=2
x=2, slant=2
x=3, slant=2
y=3, slope=(-1)
y=3, slope=1 x=2, slant=2
y=2, slope=(-3)
y=4, slope=(-1)
y=3, slope=(-2)
x=0, slant=2
x=2, slant=2
x=3, slant=2
y=4, slope=(-2)
x=1, slant=2
x=1, slant=2
x=2, slant=2
x=3, slant=2
x=1, slant=2
x=1, slant=2
x=0, slant=2
y=5, slope=(-3)
y=5, slope=(-2)
y=5, slope=(-1)
y=5, slope=0
y=5, slope=1
y=4, slope=(-3)
y=4, slope=(-2)
y=4, slope=(-1)
y=4, slope=0
y=4, slope=1
x=1, slant=3
x=0, slant=1
y=4, slope=(-3)
y=4, slope=(-2)
y=4, slope=(-1)
y=3, slope=(-2)
y=3, slope=(-1)
y=4, slope=(-2)
y=4, slope=(-1)
y=3, slope=(-2)
y=3, slope=(-1)
x=1, slant=3 x=1, slant=3
x=2, slant=2
x=1, slant=3
x=0, slant=3 y=3, slope=0
y=3, slope=1
y=3, slope=1 x=1, slant=3
x=1, slant=3
y=3, slope=(-3)
y=3, slope=(-2)
y=3, slope=(-1)
y=3, slope=0
y=3, slope=1
x=2, slant=2
y=3, slope=(-3)
y=3, slope=(-2)
y=3, slope=(-1)
y=3, slope=0
y=3, slope=1
x=1, slant=3
y=3, slope=(-3)
y=3, slope=(-2)
y=3, slope=(-1)
y=3, slope=0
y=3, slope=1
x=0, slant=3 y=2, slope=(-1)
y=2, slope=0
y=2, slope=1
x=1, slant=3 y=2, slope=(-3)
y=2, slope=(-2)
y=2, slope=(-1)
y=2, slope=0
y=2, slope=1
y=1, slope=(-3)
y=1, slope=(-2)
y=1, slope=(-1)
y=1, slope=0
y=1, slope=1
x=2, slant=2
y=2, slope=(-3)
y=2, slope=(-2)
y=2, slope=(-1)
y=2, slope=0
y=2, slope=1
y=1, slope=(-3)
y=1, slope=(-2)
y=1, slope=(-1)
y=1, slope=0
y=1, slope=1
x=1, slant=3
y=2, slope=(-3)
y=2, slope=(-2)
y=2, slope=(-1)
y=2, slope=0
y=2, slope=1
y=1, slope=(-3)
y=1, slope=(-2)
y=1, slope=(-1)
y=1, slope=0
y=1, slope=1
y=1, slope=1
x=0, slant=3
y=1, slope=1
x=1, slant=3 x=1, slant=3
x=2, slant=2
x=1, slant=3
x=0, slant=3
131
design schematic design process y=4, slope=(-2) y=4, slope=(-2)
y=4, slope=(-1)
y=3, slope=(-2)
y=3, slope=(-1)
y=4, slope=(-2)
y=4, slope=(-1)
y=4, slope=(-1)
x=4, slant=(-3)
x=4, slant=(-3) x=4, slant=(-3)
y=3, slope=(-1)
y=3, slope=(-1)
y=3, slope=(-1) y=3, slope=1
x=4, slant=(-3)
x=4, slant=(-3)
x=4, slant=(-3)
y=2, slope=(-1)
y=2, slope=1
x=4, slant=(-3)
y=1, slope=1
x=4, slant=(-3)
y=4, slope=(-2)
y=4, slope=(-1)
y=3, slope=(-2)
y=3, slope=(-1)
y=4, slope=(-2)
y=4, slope=(-1)
y=3, slope=(-2)
y=3, slope=(-1)
y=3, slope=1
y=2, slope=(-1)
y=2, slope=1
y=4, slope=(-2)
y=4, slope=(-1)
y=3, slope=(-2)
y=3, slope=(-1)
y=4, slope=(-2)
y=4, slope=(-1)
y=3, slope=(-2)
y=3, slope=(-1)
x=4, slant=(-2)
x=4, slant=(-2) x=4, slant=(-2)
x=3, slant=(-2)
y=3, slope=1
y=3, slope=1
x=4, slant=(-2)
y=3, slope=(-1)
y=3, slope=1
y=3, slope=(-2)
y=3, slope=(-1) x=3, slant=(-2)
x=4, slant=(-2)
x=3, slant=(-2)
y=3, slope=(-1)
x=4, slant=(-2)
y=3, slope=(-1)
y=3, slope=1 x=3, slant=(-2)
x=3, slant=(-2)
x=4, slant=(-2)
y=2, slope=(-1)
y=2, slope=1
x=4, slant=(-2)
x=3, slant=(-2)
y=1, slope=1
x=4, slant=(-2)
y=1, slope=1
x=3, slant=(-2)
y=4, slope=(-2)
y=4, slope=(-1)
y=3, slope=(-2)
y=3, slope=(-1)
y=4, slope=(-3)
y=4, slope=(-2)
y=4, slope=(-1)
y=3, slope=(-2)
y=3, slope=(-1)
y=4, slope=(-2)
y=4, slope=(-1)
y=3, slope=(-2)
y=3, slope=(-1)
y=4, slope=(-2)
y=4, slope=(-1)
y=3, slope=(-2)
y=3, slope=(-1)
y=4, slope=(-2)
x=4, slant=(-1) x=4, slant=(-1)
x=3, slant=(-1)
y=3, slope=1
x=4, slant=(-1)
y=2, slope=(-1)
y=3, slope=1
x=4, slant=(-1)
y=3, slope=1
y=4, slope=(-2)
y=4, slope=(-1)
y=3, slope=(-2)
y=3, slope=(-1)
y=4, slope=(-2)
x=4, slant=(-1)
y=3, slope=(-1) x=3, slant=(-1)
y=3, slope=(-1) x=4, slant=(-1)
x=2, slant=(-1)
y=4, slope=(-2)
y=4, slope=(-1)
x=4, slant=(-1)
x=3, slant=(-1)
y=3, slope=(-1)
y=3, slope=1 x=3, slant=(-1)
x=2, slant=(-1)
y=2, slope=1
x=4, slant=(-1)
y=4, slope=(-1)
x=3, slant=(-1)
y=4, slope=(-1)
x=3, slant=(-1)
x=2, slant=(-1)
y=3, slope=1
x=3, slant=(-1)
y=2, slope=(-1)
y=2, slope=1
x=3, slant=(-1)
y=2, slope=(-1)
y=2, slope=1
x=2, slant=(-1)
y=1, slope=1
y=1, slope=1
x=4, slant=(-1)
y=1, slope=1
x=2, slant=(-1)
y=4, slope=(-2)
y=4, slope=(-1)
y=3, slope=(-2)
y=3, slope=(-1)
y=4, slope=(-2)
y=4, slope=(-1)
y=3, slope=(-2)
y=3, slope=(-1)
x=2, slant=1
x=3, slant=1
y=3, slope=1
x=3, slant=1
y=2, slope=(-1)
y=4, slope=(-1)
y=3, slope=(-2)
y=3, slope=(-1)
y=3, slope=1
x=1, slant=1
y=2, slope=1
x=3, slant=1
y=4, slope=(-2)
x=1, slant=1
y=3, slope=1
x=2, slant=1
y=2, slope=(-1)
y=2, slope=(-1)
y=2, slope=1
x=2, slant=1
y=2, slope=1
x=1, slant=1
y=1, slope=1
y=1, slope=1
x=3, slant=1
y=1, slope=1
x=1, slant=1
y=4, slope=(-2)
y=4, slope=(-1)
y=3, slope=(-2)
y=3, slope=(-1)
y=4, slope=(-2)
y=4, slope=(-1)
y=3, slope=(-2)
y=3, slope=(-1)
x=1, slant=2
x=2, slant=2
y=3, slope=1
y=3, slope=1
x=1, slant=2
x=2, slant=2
y=2, slope=(-1)
y=2, slope=(-1)
y=2, slope=1
y=2, slope=1
x=1, slant=2
x=2, slant=2
y=1, slope=1
x=2, slant=2
Some of the combinations repeat or are merely reflections or rotations of other combinations and so they are eliminated to reduce duplication. Cells with spaces that result in duplication within the cell, that taper to too narrow of a point (1 meter by 1 meter) and that have surfaces that have prohibitive slopes are also eliminated. Eventually seven cells are chosen and further analyzed.
y=1, slope=1
x=1, slant=2
y=4, slope=(-2)
y=4, slope=(-1)
y=3, slope=(-2)
y=3, slope=(-1)
x=1, slant=3
y=3, slope=1
x=1, slant=3
y=2, slope=(-1)
y=2, slope=1
x=1, slant=3
y=1, slope=1
x=1, slant=3
132
y=3, slope=(-2)
y=3, slope=(-1) x=2, slant=(-1)
x=4, slant=(-1)
y=3, slope=(-1)
y=3, slope=(-1) x=3, slant=(-1)
y=3, slope=(-1) x=2, slant=(-1)
design schematic design process
When comparing all the surfaces of the remaining two or three cells it appears that there are some cells that result in various surface shapes and some that result in less. To ensure ease of construction and economy of production the fewer the number of surface shapes the better. Two cells result in the lowest number of variations in surface shapes and so they have been chosen for further exploration.
133
design schematic design process
rotate 90
rotate 180 rotate 270
rotate 90
rotate 180 top two
rotate 180 whole set
move right two to left side
rotate 180 whole set
rotate 180 top two
rotate 180 rotate 270
rotate 90
rotate 180 rotate 270
rotate 90
rotate 180 rotate 270
rotate 90
rotate left two
rotate 180 left two
rotate 180 whole set
rotate 180 rotate 270
switch top two
rotate 180 whole set
rotate 180 whole set
rotate left two
rotate 180 left two
switch top two
rotate 180 whole set
rotate 180 whole set rotate 180 whole set
move top two to bottom
rotate 180 whole set
switch two on top
rotate 180 whole set
rotate 180 whole set
rotate 180 whole set
rotate 180 top two
rotate 180 whole set
rotate 180 top two
rotate 180 whole set
rotate 180 left two
switch top two
rotate left two
rotate 180 whole set
rotate 180 whole set
rotate 180 whole set
rotate left two
rotate 180 left two
switch top two
rotate 180 whole set
rotate 180 whole set
rotate 180 whole set
switch two on bottom rotate 180 top two
rotate 180 whole set
rotate 180 whole set
rotate 180 left two
switch top two
rotate left two
rotate 180 whole set
rotate 180 whole set
rotate 180 whole set
switch two on right rotate 180 top two
rotate left two
rotate 180 left two
switch top two
rotate 180 whole set
rotate 180 whole set rotate 180 whole set
rotate 180 whole set
rotate 180 whole set
A
A2
B
B2
C
C2
A
D
B
D
C
A2
B2
C2
D2
D2 A+A
134
A+B
B+B
A+C
B+C
C+C
A+D
B+D
C+D
A+A2
B+A2
C+A2
D+A2
A2+A2
A+B2
B+B2
C+B2
D+B2
A2+B2
B2+B2
A+C2
B+C2
C+C2
D+C2
A2+C2
B2+C2
C2+C2
A+D2
B+D2
C+D2
D+D2
A2+D2
B2+D2
C2+D2
D+D
D2+D2
design schematic design process
rotate 90
rotate 90
rotate 180 rotate 270
rotate 180 rotate 270
rotate 90
rotate 180 top two
rotate 180 whole set
move right two to left side
rotate 180 rotate 270
rotate 90
rotate 180 whole set
rotate 180 whole set
rotate 180 top two
rotate 180 rotate 270
rotate 90
rotate left two
rotate 180 left two
rotate 180 rotate 270
switch top two
rotate 180 whole set
rotate 180 whole set
rotate left two
rotate 180 left two
switch top two
rotate 180 whole set rotate 180 whole set
move top two to bottom
rotate 180 whole set
switch two on top
rotate 180 whole set
rotate 180 whole set rotate 180 whole set
rotate 180 whole set
rotate 180 top two
rotate 180 left two
rotate 180 whole set
rotate 180 whole set
rotate 180 top two
rotate 180 whole set
rotate 180 whole set
rotate left two
rotate 180 left two
switch top two
rotate 180 whole set
rotate 180 whole set
rotate 180 whole set
switch top two
rotate left two
rotate 180 whole set
switch two on bottom rotate 180 top two
rotate 180 left two
rotate 180 whole set
rotate 180 whole set
rotate 180 whole set
switch top two
rotate left two
rotate 180 whole set
rotate 180 whole set
switch two on right rotate 180 top two
rotate left two
rotate 180 left two
switch top two
rotate 180 whole set rotate 180 whole set
rotate 180 whole set
rotate 180 whole set
rotate 180 whole set
The 4 spaces of any given cell to this point have remain fixed in relation to one another. For this portion the positions of each of the 4 spaces for the two remaining cells were rearranged. The aim is to test the flexibility and adaptability of combinations among the two cells that have proved promising to this point. Ultimately the one above proved the most optimal. The one on the previous page had an additional surface shape which was not justified by any additional adaptability.
A
A2
B
B2
C
C2
D
B
A
D
C
A2
B2
C2
D2
D2 A+A
135
A+B
B+B
A+C
B+C
C+C
A+D
B+D
C+D
A+A2
B+A2
C+A2
D+A2
A2+A2
A+B2
B+B2
C+B2
D+B2
A2+B2
B2+B2
A+C2
B+C2
C+C2
D+C2
A2+C2
B2+C2
C2+C2
A+D2
B+D2
C+D2
D+D2
A2+D2
B2+D2
C2+D2
D+D
D2+D2
design schematic design process preferential attachment* Those in shantytowns tend to cluster. When given the option of separating dwellings from others or abutting neighbors the tendency is towards the latter. It is more economical to use a neighbors wall as one of your own and so the beginnings of shantytown appear clustered and chaotic.
connectivity 2.0 3.0 4.0 5.0 6.0 7.0
# of units
20 15 10 5
.5
1
2
3
4
shared planes
136
5
design schematic design process cellular automata (CA) -
CA consists of a regular grid of cells. each cell has a finite number of states (off/ on). the grid can be in any finite number of dimensions. for each cell a neighborhood is defined. an initial state (time = 0) is selected by defining a state for each cell. - a new generation is created (time + 1) according to a fixed rule that determines the new state of each cell in terms of the current state of the cell and the current states of the cells in its neighborhood. - the “Game of Life� is a zero-player game - its evolution is determined by its initial state requiring no further input from users.
2D
2D extruded becomes 3D
G.O.L. rules become increasingly complex when applied 3D (a neighborhood of 8 becomes 26)
game of life (GOL)
setup
alive dead
game over
start
Rules: 1. any live cell with fewer than two neighbors dies from underpopulation 2. any live cell with more than three neighbors dies from overcrowding 3. any dead cell with exactly three live neighbors becomes a live cell
137
design schematic design process
Alpha grid/Beta grid: - structural framework grid is subdivided by a secondary non-visible grid. - the structural grid is evenly divisible by the dimensions of the secondary grid cells. - units originate and terminate in dimensions compatible with the secondary grid but need not travel along these dimensions.
Nodes/strata grid: - nodes (cores) are established within grid layout. - structural framework is subdivided by a secondary non-visible grid. - expansion occurs radially and enters sequential strata between nodes. - once strata from different nodes overlap, node networks become interconnected.
138
design schematic design process Strategies
Alpha grid/Beta grid (perpendicular): - one grid is influenced by a secondary grid that bisects it. - each cell can hinge a maximum of x degrees from neighboring cells. - each cell must have a minimum of 1 connection to other cells.
Standardized negative spaces grid: - if the geometry of units can be standardized so too can the space between units. - this would allow for the standardization of a secondary type of additive unit. - additive unit is a direct product of the angles of the framework.
Covalent framework grid: - nodes are created - additions can be made along different strata that radiate outward from the nodes. - given the logic of “preferential attachment,� the prevalence of additions will decrease as the proximity from the node decreases. - stratas will overlap extending from different nodes. 139
design schematic design process site
industrial storage canal tire bridges walking paths mechanic/machinery plant nursery playing fields Univ. Xochilcalco parking lots proposed roadways
site
n
site
The site lies on flat ground at the base of a neighborhood situated on a sloping hill. The threshold at which the topography becomes less than optimally flat lies at the south edge of the site.
slope threshold
n
Context 140
design schematic design process
major circulation & gathering areas
streetscape (high traffic)
streetscape (low traffic)
massing footprints
yardscape
canal
Existing circulation paths will be preserved. The massings are responses to existing edge conditions/corridors. A proscribed response has be developed to generalized edge conditions. The massing footprints are situated to provide increasing levels of insularity towards the center of the site - providing moments of intimacy and gathering.
45 ft.
north elevation 141
design schematic design process
Alpha grid/Beta grid: An extruded square is bisected by two planes. This allows for the four resultant spaces to be paired with another to combine a hybridized space when the membrane that separates them is removed. Core units will consist of such merged spaces and additive units (one of the four resultant spaces) will be added to core units. core unit
additive unit combinations
142
design schematic design process
progression of schematic sectionsunits extrude from one shape to another
143
design schematic design process
massing model 144
design schematic design process
145
design development
design process design development
4.3
EXPECTATIONS: - investigation into structural systems and const- ruction assemblies involved in the design process. - finalize project at a schematic design level of development and begin design development phase. - focus on factors that seem of most consequence to concept, site, program and philosophy and pursue options that best respond.
146
design process design development
building footprints
massing strips
The massing concept is similar to that mentioned previously but has been more refined according to scale, unit articulation and height proportions.
n 147
design process design development my Game Of Life (G.O.L.) rules 1. Horizontal surfaces must not slope >2 cells in either direction on the y-axis (to prevent excessive slopes). 2. Vertical surfaces must not angle >2 cells in either direction on the x-axis (to prevent narrow spaces). 3. Each additive space must not exceed 4 cells in either height or width (to prevent excessively large spaces from being created). 4. Each additive space must not be smaller than 2 cells along its narrower end (any smaller is prohibitive). 5. Each additive space must be joined either directly or indirectly to the original core unit (so entirely new units cannot be spawned). 6. Original core units must be at least x cells apart and no unit can expand further than x cells from its core unit (to prevent units from getting
excessively large 7. Each larger space must have at least one end open to the outside along its longitudinal axis (to ensure adequate light, air, escape access). 8. Each space (core & additive) must originate and terminate along the same plane as the structural grid (for structural stability). 9. Once two additive spaces share a plane (horizontal or vertical) that plane may be removed to merge the spaces. 10. Spaces may also connect with other spaces along the longitudinal axis as long as those spaces are at least partially aligned. 11. Only 4 standardized additive space modules will be used.
interior face (plywood)
structural frame (wood stud framing) exterior face (corrugated metal)
modules begin separately
units combined over time
batt insulation dividers removed and reused
148
design process design development progressive sections through core unit and additive units
steel frame & stud framing
interior surfaces
structural frame & surfaces 149
design process design development TIMELINE of phases: Phase Phase Phase Phase
1: introduce framework 2: construct core units at predetermined spacing 3: add spaces to the core - spaces must always span from one framework to another 4: continue to add spaces to the core - if two or more units share a planar surface, integrate spaces
150
design process design development Plan - 1/4� = 1’0
151
design process design development DESIGN DEVELOPMENT REVIEW: Expectations:
- represents the culmination of schematic and design development efforts. - demonstrate comprehension of numerous skills acquired over the course of formal architectural education. - the pedagogical intent is to carry the design further than is usually possible in school. - update, revise and/or augment existing work to reflect most current design ideas. - emphasis on systems integration.
152
design process design development
This portion of design was influenced by a text written by Frei Otto entitled, Occupying and Connecting: Thoughts on Territories and Spheres of Influence with Particular Reference to Human Settlement (Otto’s images above). He writes in depth about certain path systems. The “direct path” system is just that - every point is connected to every other point by the shortest route, a straight line (#2 in the center graphic). No forking routes or detours occur in the direct path system. Another type is the “minimal path” system (#3). The path is less direct but the overall network of paths will be connected by fewer routes, involving detours, but the total length of the paths will be less. The path system that is the compromise between the two, and perhaps the most efficient, is the “minimizing detour network” (#4). It utilizes the directness of the direct path but also consolidates paths where possible.
153
design process design development
These previously mentioned principles are used in several places throughout the project including the massing strategy, utilities and circulation. Since costs must be kept at a minimum in my project using the efficiency of the path networks will decrease distance of utilities running across the site as well as decreasing amount of circulation while maximizing their connection potentials. The massings are oriented with this in mind locating them close to areas where utilities connections and access points to the site occur.
154
design process design development
The building mass striations run more or less perpendicular to the north and south roads, as opposed to the typical parallel street frontage response. The site serves as a filtration system mediating the relationship between the neighborhood to the south and the busy highway slated to be built soon to the north. Most of the mass is situated on the south side closer to the neighborhood where the utility connections are located, leaving the north side to house more of the open gathering spaces, which are so infrequent in Tijuana.
155
design process design development In an effort to make the system more isotropic, bridge units can extend across the massing rows on the second and third floor on the south side of the site. Half way through the site the massings become angled, leaving the gap too wide between rows to be bridged by units - ensuring a certain openness to the space. These spaces will be used to mediate between the open green spaces to the north and the more dense residences to the south. Utilities are also located to the south furthering the justification for concentrating density here.
n
gap = proper distance for spanning gap = too wide to span
156
sewer gathering areas/green light poles
design process design development 50ft
400ft 150ft
n
n
Fingers extend towards the canal/highway giving way to green spaces. Preliminary circulation pathways are shown in the upper-right site plan. n
summer solstice
157
winter solstice
spring equinox
fall equinox
Phase 3 : infill additive units
START Time line Structure
Phase 1 : introduce framework
design process design development
Phase 4 : bridge gap where possible
Phase 2 : construct core units
158
Phase 5 : approach max capacity
design process design development
END
159
design process design development ventilation & sun
convection cooling cross ventilation
modular surface
exterior surface (corrugated metal) framing (wood studs) insulation interior surface (plywood)
utilities
sewer piping plumbing electrical & hubs water
160
connection
structural frame - welded surface - bolted to frame welded ledges on right corner of beams
design process design development systems integration Interventions in this project are minimal and so are the introduction of systems, in an effort to keep costs low and only provide essentials. Sewer pipes, water pipes, and electrical wiring hubs will be run through a conduit that can be easily accessible running up the side and over the tops of the buildings. Inhabitants can tap into these connections - such is the method in informal shantytowns. Utilities are relegated mainly to the initial core units which contain the bathrooms and kitchens. Electrical hubs will be provided so tenants can run electricity to the rooms that they have added.
161
design process design development
162
design process design development -1
PLAN VIEW:
corner unit
+1
Units can bridge the gap between structures according to certain rules. No more than two units should be placed end to end - units can bridge the gap as long as the appropriate spaces are left vacant.
middle unit
AXON: Core units are staggered systematically to allow for maximum opportunity for expansion. Core units can expand in linear directions. Each core unit has 4 potential full cells that it can expand into. Units that have potential for more expansion (center units) will redistribute those cells to units that have less potential (corner units) to level the playing field.
163
design process design development
0
25
50
100 ft.
WEST ELEVATION
164
design process design development
SOUTH ELEVATION
0
165
25
50
100 ft.
design process design development
166
design process design development DESIGN REVIEW: Expectations:
- final progress presentation before final thesis presentation. - focus on site development and landscape interventions. - resolve fenestration patterns, materials, roofing and circulation.
167
design process design development
Context Integration:
It was apparent after the last presentation that the built structure needed to engage the surrounding context. The is the whole project needs to be sensitive to the context and this can primarily be done through site interventions or creating new infrastructure that taps into the existing infrastructure – especially the canal. The buildings began to do this but it is important to have the landscape and infrastructure complete the gesture. The second sketch (center) is an elaboration of the first (left). In the second sketch the shaded area was going to be excavated and slope down towards the canal, both of which would be separated by a proposed highway. A previous idea to excavate right up to the cement canal and use its steep slope to provide a back wall for the marketplace with structure strong enough to support the eventual highway over the top of it and parking just on the side of the road. The marketplace would have been facing the massing with a promenade leading from the original ground level, down in front of the marketplace vendors and back up to ground level running parallel to the parking. Small slits would separate the highway from the canal edge and provide skylights for the marketplace stalls below. Pathways would have extended from the fingers of the buildings across the excavated area to the parking - however this proposal involved creating too much structure to support the highway and the marketplace would have been dark and somewhat unnecessarily confined. The three sketches on the next page (in order from left to right) are all variations on an idea a little less invasive than what was just mentioned. This does 168
design process design development
not involve excavating as deeply (maybe 6 feet maximum) but incrementally terracing the earth. The terraces basically triangulate the sloping ground and point towards the closest low point. From here the ground drops a few more feet and steps lead to a large drainage pipe below the ground that leads under the future highway and comes out through the side of the canal. People already cross the canal – in aerial shots you can see tire bridges strewn together. With the paving of the new highway people will need a way to safely cross. Preserving that connection is key. These tunnels are not only for people to use but also will provide much needed drainage since the neighborhood towards the south slopes towards the site which is almost totally flat. So the people and the water take the same path. The parking has been removed entirely from the road side and situate it on the sides of the site. A sidewalk runs along the highway and is terraced by a retaining wall that houses the beginning of the tunnel. The sidewalk turns toward the site at the high points of land created in between the low points. The sidewalks will meet the fingers of the buildings and join a market promenade that weaves in an out of the buildings. Market stalls will occupy the ground floors of the fingers with residential units just above that. In the future the sidewalk on the high points can extend across to bridges that span the top of the canal to create a more substantial crossing. 169
MASSING ARTICULATION
170
ADDITIVE UNITS
MARKET STALLS
BRIDGE UNITS
STAIRWELLS
design process design development
CORE UNITS
design process design development
171
STAIRWELLS/ CIRCULATION
SITE TREATMENTS
design process design development
172
GROUNFLOOR CIRCULATION
173 TUNNELS
TERRACES
PARKING
GREEN AREAS
2ND & 3RD FL. WALKWAYS
GATHERING AREAS
design process design development
Phase 4 : terrace earth, pave ground floor circulation, cultivate vegetation
Phase 1 : construct framework - pour slabs Phase 2 : install core units - construct walkways on 2nd & 3rd floors - build stairwells Phase 3 : infill additive units Phase 4 : terrace earth, pave ground floor circulation, cultivate vegetation Phase 5 : tunnel through to canal Phase 6 : construction of highway Phase 7 : pave parking, face terraced earth Phase 8 : maximum occupancy density Phase 9 : bridge units Phase 10 : address overflow parking Phase 11 : construction of pedestrian canal bridges
174 Phase 5 : tunnel through to canal
Phase 3 : infill additive units
Phase 1 : construct framework - pour slabs
START
Phase 2 : install core units - construct walkways on 2nd & 3rd floors - build stairwells
Phase X : performed by construction professionals Phase X : performed by tenants Phase X : performed by city
PHASEOLOGY
design process design development
Phase 9 : bridge units
Phase 6 : construction of highway
175 Phase 11 : construction of pedestrian canal bridges
Phase 10 : possible overflow parking
Phase 8 : maximum occupancy
Phase 7 : pave parking, face terraced earth
design process design development
END
design process design development SITE PLAN The orientation of massing fingers allow free passage through the site. The neighborhood also slopes towards the site so the site also must allow for water to pass through unabated and drain into the canal. The terraces allow for areas for the water to collect and transition into the canal. The drainage pipes will serve as passages for people as well so that they can bypass the future highway and emerge halfway down the canal side. People already traverse the canal and cross along tire bridges but this will expedite the process. Two different parking areas are provided. The western most area will serve those using the market as they enter from the highway. The eastern most parking area will serve the residents as they enter from the less commercial street entrance. The end of the fingers house the marketplace stalls and so the thick purple band interweaving between the ends of the fingers will serve as a marketplace promenade. The green areas mediate the primarily residential and commercial programmatic elements and form a band across the site.
2nd/3rd floor circulation ground floor circulation green spaces
Courtyards are placed at the entrance of every other gap along the residential side and along the western side of the site overlooking the universities field.
parking gravel gathering areas terraced seating areas
176
design process design development
market place/terraced seating & drainage areas
gap between massings looking south
southern facing courtyards/stairwells
177
design process design development EXTERIOR MATERIALS: - roofing: corrugated metal (sloped roof), built-up roofing (flat roof). - siding: concrete board (primary), corrugated metal, osb, plywood, asphalt roofing tiles (secondary).
INTERIORS
INTERIOR MATERIALS: - flooring: osb, plywood, concrete - walls, ceiling: osb, plywood, plaster, gypsum board
CIRCULATION
STRUCTURAL: - tube steel (primary), light-guage steel (secondary) CLADDING
CIRCULATION: - concrete stairways, metal grating (second & third floor), concrete surfaces, gravel (ground floor). STRUCTURE
corrugated metal
osb
hardie board concrete siding
178
mdf/ asphalt shingles
design process design development FINAL PRESENTATION: Expectations:
- represent the culmination of efforts put into the development of the self-generated project. - demonstrate comprehension of skills acquired over the course of formal architectural education. - the pedagogical intent has been to carry a design further than is usually possible in school. - update, revise, and/or augment existing work to reflect the most current - and, presumably, best design ideas. - present work at the highest visual standards consistent with a level expected of Masters candidates.
179
design process design development FINAL BOARDS: Dual axes:
INFORMAL HOUSING - A SYSTEMIC HOUSING HYBRID IN TIJUANA Thesis statement
- the first board serves as an introduction to some of the most basic concepts. - the second larger board has two axes: one along the top that serves as a time line and one on the left that segments the presentation into strips grouped around certain aspects (diagrams, renders, site, etc.). - by following the top axis you can see the progression of the phases of the project. - by following the side axis you can see how the project develops in terms of a single means of representation.
By introducing limited formalized elements into the building of informal settlements the standards of living can be increased disproportionately. Such interventions will suggest methods of assembly that acknowledge the incremental nature of shantytown housing and respond to highly localized conditions. This project responds to the gap that exists in the housing market between what is offered and what is actually inhabited.
or
* ANY imaginable shape/geometry conforms to some coordinate system
Cellular Automata (CA) - CA consists of a regular grid of cells. - each cell has a finite number of states (off/on). - the grid can be in any finite number of dimensions. - for each cell a neighborhood defined relative to a specified cell. - an intital state (time = 0) is selected by a assigning a state for each cell. - a new generation is created (time + 1) according to a fixed rule that determines the new state of each cell in terms of the current state of the cell and the states of the cells in its neighborhood. - the “game of life� is a zero-player game - its evolution is determined by its initial state requiring no further input from users.
GAME OF LIFE...
2-D
2-D extruded becomes 3-D
G.O.L. rules become increasing complex when applied 3-D (a neighborhood of 8 becomes 26)
Grid becomes elongated per dimension of actual units
Rules: 1. Any live cell with fewer than two live neighbors dies from underpopulation, 2. Any live cell with more than three live neighbors dies from overcrowding
alive dead
3. Any dead cell with exactly three live neighbors becomes a live cell.
setup
game over
start
My G.O.L. rules 1. Horizontal surfaces must not slope >2 cells in either direction on the y-axis (to prevent excessive slopes). 2. Vertical surfaces must not angle >2 cells in either direction on the x-axis (to prevent narrow spaces). 3. Each additive space must not exceed 4 cells in either height or width (to prevent excessively large spaces from being created). 4. Each additive space must not be smaller than 2 cells along its narrower end (any smaller is prohibitive). 5. Each additive space must be joined either directly or indirectly to the original core unit (so entirely new units cannot be spawned). 6. Original core units must be at least x cells apart and no unit can expand further than x cells from its core unit (to prevent units from getting
excessively large 7. Each larger space must have at least one end open to the outside along its longitudinal axis (to ensure adequate light, air, escape access). 8. Each space (core & additive) must originate and terminate along the same plane as the structural grid (for structural stability). 9. Once two additive spaces share a plane (horizontal or vertical) that plane may be removed to merge the spaces. 10. Spaces may also connect with other spaces along the longitudinal axis as long as those spaces are at least partially aligned. 11. Only 4 standardized additive space modules will be used.
Alpha grid beta grid (planar) - structural framework grid is subdivided by a secondary non-visible grid. - the structural grid is divisible by the dimensions of the secondary grid cells. - units originate & terminate in dimensions compatible with the secondary grid but need not travel along these dimensions. - units are extrusions from one grid to another
Context
industrial storage canal tire bridges walking paths mechanic/machinery
site
plant nursery playing fields Univ. Xochilcalco parking lots proposed roadways
100ft
800ft 300ft
ted sheils . ar903 . spring 2009 . NSAD
180
n
design process design development
181
design process design development Diagrams: - at first glance the massing of the project can appear chaotic however there are very basic and sensible rules that apply at different scales of the project. - the units shapes, the positioning of the units relative to one another, location of circulation (stairwells and walkways) the direction of roof slopes and the void spaces and resultant bridge units all are defined by different logic.
unit geometry diagram
expansion diagram core units have opportunity to to expand in linear directions
circulation diagram -1
roof drainage diagram DO THIS . . .
corner unit
OR
middle unit
standardized modules
+1
plan
NOT THIS . . .
OR
by staggering the placement of core units so that they are aligned across cuts the amount of circulation infrastructure needed in half.
additive unit combinations
unit roofs are designed to drain towards the voids rather than towards another unit - a unit can drain back towards another unit as long as the roof of the unit below will channel that water outwards.
*each core has 4 potential full cells for expansion *units with more redistribute to neighbors with less
182
units can bridge gap between structures never more than two in a row longitudinally and never where the gap exceeds the length of a unit.
design process design development door & window diagram latitudinal
3’ - 0”
3’ - 0”
longitudinal
or
minimum door height
+ +
7’ - 0”
or or
3’ - 0”
3’ - 0”
latitudinal and longitudinal surfaces are made up of standardized regular components that can combine to create diverse connections. Therefore the size and placement of openings are defined as well.
utility conduit water electric sprinkler cross ventilation
183
design process design development
stairwells/ 2nd & 3rd level walkways
terraced court
drainage/ canal entry
concrete slabs
ground floor walkways
utility conduit
core units
steel structure
184
design process design development gravel courtyards
non-paved parking
green areas
paved parking
market stalls
infilled units
additional infilled units
bridge units
canal bridges
185
design process design development initial setup
first infill
max capacity
186
design process design development
187
design process design development n
infrastructural strip -
9
drainage highway parking circulation
10 8 5
7
3
social strip 4
market green spaces
6
1
2
residential strip -
housing units
0
1 - playing field 2 - gravel courtyard 3 - grass/green area 4 - residents playing field
5 - marketplace parking 6 - tennant parking 7 - marketplace promenade 8 - overflow parking
188
25
9 - canal passage 10 - terraced gathering area/drainage collection
50
100 ft.
design process design development
n fall equinox
spring equinox
winter solstice
summer solstice
189
design process design development
0
25
50
100 ft.
0
190
25
50
100 ft.
design process design development
WEST ELEVATION
SOUTH ELEVATION
191
“The order is not rationalistic and underlying but is simply order, like that of continuity, one thing after another.� - Donald Judd, Points + Lines
conclusion chapter
five
summary
conclusion summary
5.1
This project offers an affordable and safe housing alternative to the working-class and the poor of Tijuana. As cities worldwide continue to grow so do the informal squatter settlements located on their peripheries. Entire villages are constructed out of necessity without the assistance of the construction or design communities. The only option available offered to most is fully finished models, which come with a price tag that puts them just out of reach of those living on the margins worldwide. For those that cannot afford what is offered, they must build homes themselves, often on land that is deemed too risky or undesirable to build on by the rest of society and without the knowledge of the professional world. Such pieces of land are usually dangerously steep and located far from jobs and available utilities. Many homes built hastily by developers in Tijuana are cheap and as a result actually depreciate in value, becoming burdensome to owners. In Tijuana there is a need for a more feasible alternative - one that ensures minimum safety requirements are met as well as a base level of comfort and dignity in habitation. By locating such an alternative near the benefits of infrastructure offered just within the city grid, including access to utilities and ease of access, we can immediately begin to circumvent a whole host of problems. Such interventions need to be minimal to avoid rais-
ing costs any more than necessary, if at all, and to maintain the emergent and self-ordering nature of informal housing. A systematic approach can standardizes the process providing both adequate responsiveness to the needs of inhabitants and an economy of production. A two-pronged design approach merges the nonsite specific with the highly site-specific involving 1. the development of a flexible component-based building system and 2. design interventions which are highly site specific meant to engage the context of the site while adding value to the surrounding area. The poor and underprivileged of Tijuana build what and when they can afford to. It is important that time is incorporated as a design factor - a phasing of the design process will allow for incremental construction responding to changing needs and dissipating construction costs over time. This became one of the most influential design factors throughout the course of the project and was the basis for the layout of my final presentation. Some construction can be completed by the inhabitants themselves to suit their specific needs. It is important that the initial phases of construction involve the deployment of a framework and component based materials that suggest a way to build and ensure certain minimum standards are met but will not dictate future articulation. 194
Once the framework has been set it is infilled creating dwellings that are tailored to and by users the final product emerges. The framework provides structural stability and consolidation of utilities but does not dictate how users must build – it will suggest an approach, well aware that mutations will occur as seen fit by residents. Certain common-sense rules are created to facilitate ease of construction and to make sure certain standards of living-space quality are maintained. It is obvious that not all rules will be followed and others will be created but this is a built-in expectation. The basic assumption is that residents will generally act in their own best interests and the best interests of the community - such protocol is demonstrated in current shantytowns. Such a systematic approach is suited for the conditions of Tijuana and can be adapted, in theory, to any given site within the city. By changing a few of the base parameters that are city-specific it can be applied to a variety of environments.
limits of the study
conclusion limits
5.2
The project accomplished all of the goals set out at the onset of the project. One of the difficulties of the project arose from an observation mentioned earlier on in the Background of the Problem: the problem is not architectural. That is the housing deficit in developing and nondeveloping urban centers alike is the product of a confluence of socioeconomic, global problems that cannot be solved through architecture alone. Architecture can alleviate some of the symptoms but cannot fight the problem at its roots. But then again, that is all we can ask of architecture. Another observation is the tendency for those viewing the project, including myself, to try to move in one of two distinct directions - towards the formal or towards the informal. A formal architecture education tends to address formal architecture. Classmates, instructors, jurors all try to “formalize” the project. That is, on some level, a project that is not formalized will somehow fall short of what is expected from a graduate thesis project. There is a tendency to suggest the adoption of extensive mechanical systems, or meet some requirements for parking, or provide exactly that thing which this thesis attempts to avoid - a fully finished housing project that oftentimes offers more than the important necessities required of housing, and nothing more. As a result such luxuries, and yes they are luxuries, cause even the
cheapest models on the market to be unattainable by those with modest financial means. Therefore these luxuries that we assume or necessities of housing are actually become detriments. Perhaps the tendency to identify the project as either formal or informal (or at least to identify elements of such) is the result of a lack of a meaningful alternative to the two terms. There is no commonly used and/or accepted term similar to “semi-formal.” But this is the heart of my thesis, to create a typology that mediates the two. There arose another question of the appropriate level of involvement on the part of the architect/ designer or at least to what degree certain constants should be introduced and correlatively, what should be left entirely to the tenants. In the final jury comments arose suggesting movement in both directions, which may be an indication that perhaps the right balance was struck. On the one hand it seems as though the designer could be too trusting in the tenants to produce architecture that maximizes their contentedness. On the other hand it may seem that the designer is too controlling and eclipses the informal nature of such a project. But of course, this is the age old question of how heavy-handed an architect should be. It also proved difficult for those who have not experienced Tijuana to formulate a realistic interpre195
tation of it. Perhaps this is partly my inadequacy in explaining it or perhaps it is the nature of the city that eludes description. More accurately the disconnect is primarily due to varying social barometers. Architects are formally trained and for the most part educated or practice in first-world countries (the ones who have viewed my project). Mexico is a third-world country. The priorities for the demographic that architects are used to dealing with (or more accurately deal exclusively with) are different from the poor in Tijuana so there is a certain amount of learned, popular assumptions that essentially need to be relearned or at least reevaluated. Typical assumption cannot be assumed. Priorities are drastically different and so to must be the architecture. It seems that if someone is not familiar with Tijuana they simply miss the picture. On a more specific note one of the challenges of the project was the sheer size of it. It was difficult at times to achieve a certain economy of repetition while at the same time avoiding redundancy. Files, drawing, and models became unmanageable at points because of the quantity of self-similar components that were all locally organized. That is, each unit was different, and responding to different conditions so although elements were similar, the similarity did not allow for duplication or even the convenience of making assumptions about appearances.
recommendations
conclusion recommendations
5.3
It would have been interesting to have introduced a modulated gathering space that was more integrated into the built structure than the gathering spaces that were provided. The gathering spaces were sufficient but they were largely not part of the system of the structure, rather they were more of a product of that system. In order to break some of the redundancy a modulated courtyard space/light wells could have been introduced in some manner. They could become as important to the project as the units themselves used to define groupings of units or occurring once certain thresholds are reached. Intimate courtyards would have arisen but largely at the discretion of the tenants and their neighbors. For example, a group of tenants could choose not to expand into a certain cell on the ground floor so that all may pass directly through one of the fingers instead of around it. But such a formation would not have been systemic and would have been subject to the desires of the tenants.
The system would remain largely unchanged on alternate sites but the arrangements and different site considerations would cause such a project to manifest itself in a variety of ways. The adaptability of the system could be tested and subsequently modified based on future performances - an opportunity that can only be presented with the exploration of multiple sites.
Also an opportunity was missed in the design of the drainage/passages leading into the canal. In haste, their mere existence seemed adequate enough but there was potential to design these spaces to maximize both utility and interest. The system introduced for this project could now be transplanted to other sites that would be distinctly different from the type of the current site. 196
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works cited
works cited 1. Abani, Chris. Graceland. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2004. 2. Abruzzo, Emily and Eric Ellingsen and Jonathan Solomon, eds. Models: Volume 11. New York: 306090, Inc., 2007. 3. Alegria, Tito. “The Solution is Not Architectural: Housing Problems of the Poor in Tijuana.” Harvard Design Magazine: Number 28, 2008. 4. Alexander, Christopher. Notes on the Synthesis of Form. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1964. 5. Allen, Stan. Points + Lines: Diagrams and Projects for the CIty. New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1999. 6. Aranda, Benjamin, et al. Pamphlet Architecture 27: Tooling. Princeton: Princeton Architectural Press, 2005. 7. Ballesteros, Mario and Irene Hwang, eds. Verb: Crisis. Volume 6 of Actar’s architecture boogazine. 2008. 8. Balmond, Cecil and Eric Ellingsen. “Survival Patterns.” Abruzzo, Emily and Eric Ellingsen and Jonathan Solomon, eds. Models: Volume 11. New York: 306090, Inc., 2007. 9. Barba, Gerardo O. and Tito A. Olazabal. Legalizando la Ciudad. Asentamientos Informales y Procesos de Regularizacion en Tijuana. Colegio de la Frontera, 2005. 10. Batty, Michael. Cities and Complexity: Understanding Cities with Cellular Automata, Agent-Based Models, and Fractals. Cambridge: The MIT Press, 2007. 11. Beardsley, John. “A Billion Slum Dwellers and Counting.” Harvard Design Magazine: Number 27, 2008. 12. Becker, Stephen and Rob Holmes. <http://m.ammoth.us/blog/> 13. Brillembourge, Alfredo and Kristin Feireiss and Hubert Klumpner, eds. Informal City: Caracas Case. New York: Prestel, 2005. 14. “Census Results in Conway’s Game of Life.” The Online Life-Like CA Soup Search. 2008. 15. Dennett, D.C. Consciousness Explained. Boston: Back Bay Books. 1991. 200
works cited 16. Corner, James. “Landscape Urbanism.” In Landscape Urbanism: A Manual for the Machinic Landscape. London: AA Publications, 2003. 17. Corner, James. “Not Unlike Life Itself: Landscape Strategy Now.” Saunders, William Ed. The New Architectural Pragmatism: A Harvard Design Magazine Reader. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2007. 18. Davis, Mike. Planet of Slums. New York: Verso, 2005. 19. Ellingsen, Eric. “Illogical Leap.” Models: Volume 11. New York: 306090, Inc., 2007. 20. Enriquez, D. and W. Frohn. “The Transformation from Shantytowns to Emerging Cities: the Case of Lima.” University of Quebec, Department of Urban Studies and Tourism. 21. Escobar, Miguel. “Housing in Tijuana: A Dichotomy of Land and Space.” Worldview: Perspectives on Architecture and Urbanism from Around the Globe. <http:// www.worldviewcities.org/tijuana/housing.html>. November, 2009. (Date of acess??). 22. Fabricius, Daniela. “The Informal Geographies of Rio de Janiero.” Harvard Design Magazine: Number 38, 2008. 23. Felsen, Martin. “Survival Patterns.” Models: Volume 11. New York: 306090, Inc., 2007. 24. Furjan, Helene. “Cities of Complexity.” Models: Volume 11. New York: 306090, Inc., 2007. 25. Gardner, M. Scientific American. October, 1970. 26. Gausa, Mauel, et al. The Metapolis Dictionary of Advanced Architecture. Barcelona: Actar, 2003. 27. Holston, James and Teresa Caldeira. “Urban Peripheries and the Invention of Citizenship.” Harvard Design Magazine: Number 28, 2008. 28. ‘Infrastructure.’ The Mirriam-Webster English Dictionary. Revised Edition. New York: Merriam-Webster, 2004. 29. Johnson, Steven. Emergence: the Connected Lives of Ants, Brains, Cities and Software. New York: Scribner, 2001. 201
works cited 30. Jones, Peter L. “Context Messaging: Modeling Biological Form.” Models: Volume 11. New York: 306090, Inc., 2007. 31. Kilian, Axel. “The Question of the Underlying Model and its Impact on Design.” Models: Volume 11. New York: 306090, Inc., 2007. 32. Manaugh, Geoff. The BLDG BLOG Book. San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 2009. 33. Montezemolo, Fiamma and Rene Peralta and Heriberto Yepez. Here is Tijuana! London: Black Dog Publishing, 2006. 34. Montezemolo, Fiamma. “Tijuana is Not Tijuana: Fragmented Representations at the Edge of the Border.” Worldview: Perspectives on Architecture and Urbanism from Around the Globe. Oct., 2009. < http://www.worldviewcities.org/tijuana/fragmented.html>. 35. Paavo, Monkkonen. Book review of Legalizando la Ciudad: Asentamientos Informales y Procesos de Regularizacion en Tijuana. 36. ‘Phase.’ The Mirriam-Webster English Dictionary. Revised Edition. New York: Merriam-Webster, 2004. 37. Reiser + Umemoto. Atlas of Novel Tectonics. New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2006. 38. Saunders, William. “Design Politics...and Parametrics.” Harvard Design Magazine: Number 38, 2008. 39. Snooks, Roland. “Observations on the Algorithmic Emergence of Character.” Models: Volume 11. New York: 306090, Inc., 2007. 40. Somol, Robert and Sarah Whiting. “Notes Around the Doppler Effect and Other Moods of Modernism.” Saunders, William Ed. The New Architectural Pragmatism: A Harvard Design Magazine Reader. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2007. 41. Trans_Formation. Shanghai, April 18-21, 2007. Tongji University. 42. Terzidis, Kostas. Algorithmic Architecture. San Diego: Architectural Press, 2006. 43. ‘Threshold.’ The Mirriam-Webster English Dictionary. Revised Edition. New York: Merriam-Webster, 2004. 44. Whitehouse, David. “Half of Humanity Set to Go Urban.” BBC News Website - Science/Nature. <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/4561183.stm>. May 19, 202
works cited 2005. 43. Wiscombe, Tom. <http://www.emergentarchitecture.com/about.php?id=1>
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appendices
blogumentation
Purpose:
appendix blogumentation
1
- At the beginning of thesis I began keeping a log of my progress and process through a blog that I started called RUNTEDDYRUN.COM. - The following can be found under the “About” section of my blog:
The purpose of this blog is really two-fold. I realized that my pictures, drawings, writings, etc. are all stuck inside my computer or in my sketchbooks and I needed a way to share them with anyone who might be interested – so this way I can just put all that stuff on my blog. That way when I do a sketch I can just post it.
Secondly, I need a way to document my projects, the newest being my thesis project. It’s probably the best way to chronologically show a project and watch its evolution over time. I’m going to keep my work current so I’ll refrain from posting work that I did before I started this site.
- I began the blog as a way to share my project with others but soon realized that the true value was in framing my project in a way not typically done for more formal presentation methods in the classroom. - Through re-synthesizing the project I learned to look at it more objectively but also found myself refining thoughts that would otherwise have gone unsubstantiated to fill in the gaps of my process as it would appear to viewers. - The blog served as a mouthpiece of sorts for opinions, thoughts, and discussions that have no other forum.
i
one
appendix blogumentation
ii
one
appendix blogumentation
iii
one
appendix blogumentation
iv
one
appendix blogumentation
v
one
appendix blogumentation
vi
one
definitions
appendix two definitions
2
rules
simple
emergent phenomena agents
complexity
bottom-up systems
variable
incrementally
integrated
coherent
responding
time decision-making processes
localized decisions
flocking
changing conditions
feedback
adaptability transformative
type
threshold
phase
parameters
basic structure
logic
critical infrastructure basic facilities
diverse results
strategy
flexibility of typology
levels of scale
algorithm
constants behavioral typology
extraction
if/then statements transformative systemic approach
vii
appendix two definitions Adaptation - the flexible capacity to fitting and/or moulding a conceptual, abstract, strategy to specific, concrete, conditions. Algorithm - a series of symbols for operating procedures and for the relations between these groups of signs and operating procedures. Processes of artificial relation that determine modes of â&#x20AC;&#x153;relactionâ&#x20AC;? and enable their proliferation. The algorithm is a tool in any system for operating in a way that is open and directed - that is, intentional - and, in most of the cases that interest us, factitious. Bottom-Up - non-complex increments will form complex results over time when assessed wholistically. There is no acknowledged greater plan that determines the actions of individual agents. Cellular Automata - a formal and dynamical system consisting of a collection of cells arranged on a grided space. All the cells are identical in architecture and have an internal state. The system evolves by applying, in discrete time units, a transition rule that updates the internal state of all the cells simultaneously. The inputs of the transition rule, for each cell, are the internal state of the updated cell and the internal states of its neighbor cell. Different arrangements and space dimensions can be considered, as well as different sets of possible internal states, neigborhoods or transition rules, in each case a different cellular automata may be produced. Combinatorial Patterned Distributions - an authentic residential diversity can, in certain cases, be achieved through the strategic combination of fixed elements and articulated free spaces in basic elemental schemes, based upon the disposition of the service nuclei (bathrooms, kitchens, installations, etc.) and the modelled variable of a fluid, univocal space defined through them. A broad range of solutions are grounded largely in strategic movements of concentration of service spaces - equipped with clots or clusters, conceived as hard nuclei - and in the normed growth of the remaining environments, in successive combinations where, by means of the variable rhythm of dividing elements, the appearance of distinct subtypes with diverse superficial boundaries would be favoured. Do-It-Yourself - problem-solvers who do not proceed from top-dodwn design but are arranging and rearranging a set of well-known materials can be said to be practicing bricolage. They tend to try one thing, step back, reconsider, and try another. For planners, mistakes are steps in the wrong direction; bricoleurs navigate through mid course corrections. The revaluation of bricolage in the culture of simulation includes a new emphasis on visualization and the development of intuition through the manipulation of virtual objects. Emergence - 1) an inner world of highly anthropomorphized agents. Each agent has a limited point of view 2) created by simple interactions between relatively similar agents that incrementally create complexity. Fineness - encompasses an examination of architecture at all levels of scale. Fineness breaks down the gross fabric of building into finer and finer parts that it can register small differences while maintaining an overall coherence. viii
appendix two definitions Fourth World - accompanying the rise of informational and global capitalism, previously defined entities have diversified. Geopolitics have re-drawn the world map. First World (developed countries), Second World (the statist universe) and Third World (developing countries) have disintegrated. All conditions exist within each other. â&#x20AC;&#x153;A new world, the Fourth World, has emerged, made up of multiple black holes of social exclusion throughout the planet.â&#x20AC;? Housys - refers to open systems which generate residential diversity. These evolutionary devices combine types and subtypes, mixed programmes and autonomous elements, based upon growth patterns which generate manifold spatial and technical definitions. Flexible norms based upon a global morphological heterogeneity and an effective empty-full alternation, equipped-freed, open-closed, public-private, occupied-occupiable, produced at all levels (from the cell to the urban layout). Hybrid - the hybrid nature of the contemporary project alludes to the current simultaneity of realities and categories, relating no longer to harmonious and coherent bodies, but rather to mongrel scenarios made up of structures and identities in parasitic coexistence. By accepting, without prejudice, a strange situation of cohabitation made up of contracts, pacts and mongrelisations between bits of information at once overlapping and interconnected (imbricated and differentiated layers and [infra] structures) is how the culture of the contemporary project can be understood today. Informal - an approach to design of a form that is non-linear. It is not based on the idea of a traditional plan that is done by setting a boundary and then sub-dividing space, nor is it relevant to fixed centring and classical notions of symmetry. Instead, informal is an internalisation that moves forward to produce a coherence that is form. The informal has three characteristics, local, hybrid and juxtaposition. They inter-relate and are not stand-alone classifications. For example, extreme juxtaposition, when very close together appears as hybrid or hybrid can be a local condition, etc. The approach is essentially one of experimentation, where interpretation is the best we can do. It is therefore open-ended. Informal is a dynamic that releases energies - notions of slip, jump, scatter, enter the vocabulary, new geometries underpin such form-finding. Infrastructure - bases of reference, independent of construction marked by velocity and sequenciality as supports for new activities, not only along their lengths but even over the latter as well: over formerly hierarchically and monofunctionality separated plots of land that have begun to absorb, progressively complex and stratified programs, defined through a complicated superposition of vertical and horizontal sectional use of structures. Phase - a particular appearance or state in a regularly occuring cycle of changes. Standardization - to serve or adapt to everything, is more than an architectural denomination and supposes the project to be a thought out activity that is repeated. Standardization abandons the individuality of decisions to opt for a project that from the anonymity of its tables, spaces, and areas and aspires to fulfill the necessities of its future renters or owners. ix
appendix two definitions Strategy - a logic, the tactic a criterion, the strategem a means. Strategy refers to the global logic - an abstract system - capable of directing operations; the tactic is the set of rules and relationships - the operative device - necessary to facilitate their local evolution; the strategem is a contingent application, or intelligent instrument. Threshold - a level, point, or value above which something is true or will take place and below which it is not or will not.
x
code analysis
appendix three code analysis
3
1. Use or Occupancy:
R-2 (Residential): This group includes residential facilities where occupants are primarily permanent, such as apartment houses, nontransient boarding houses, convents, dormitories, nontransient hotels and motels, timeshare properties, and similar facilities.
B (Business): Business occupancies include office, professional, and service activities, and storage of related records and accounts. Business occupancy also includes education facilities past the 12th grade, but does not include retail or wholesale sales, which are classified as Group M Mercantile. *Note: Gathering spaces less than 750 sq ft in area or accommodating fewer than 50 persons are treated as Group B, Business occupancies or, when located within other occupancies, as part of the surrounding occupancy.
M (Mercantile): Mercantile occupancies include the display and sale of retail and wholesale merchandise and the related stocking of goods (p. 8). Special uses or occupancies:
None Occupant loads for significant spaces:
R-2: It is expected that the maximum occupancy of any given residential unit will not exceed a total of 10 people.
B and M: It is expected that the maximum occupancy of any given business/mercantile at any given time will not exceed 50 people as exceeding this number would require the occupancy to change to an A-2 (Assembly).
2. Construction Type: Allowable structural building materials: Fire rating in hours:
R-2: Noncombustible (structural steel), 2-Hour, Type I-B, Residential Sprinkler. xi
appendix three code analysis
B: Noncombustible (structural steel), 2-Hour, Type I-B, Unsprinklered. In most cases B Occupancies will be supporting R-2 Occupancies.
M: Noncombustible (structural steel), 2-Hour, Type I-B, Unsprinklered. In most cases M Occupancies will be supporting R-2 Occupancies.
3. General Building Limitations: R-2 (residential): o Allowable floor area: unlimited. o Actual floor area: one floor in largest freestanding structure = 21,750 sq. ft. (at the very most – assuming the structure is built to 100% oc cupancy). o Basements, mezzanines, other spaces: Mezzanines: a mezzanine is not counted toward the number of floors or area limits of the building. However, the area of the mezza nine is considered when calculating occupant loads and egress requirements. In the IBC the area of a mezzanine usually may not exceed one-third of the open area of the room in which it is located. The mezzanine itself (in most cases) is required to remain open (p. 356). Basement: none o Allowable height: 60 feet o Allowable number of stories: 4 o Area increase allowance: yes but irrelevant considering the area is already unlimited. B (business): o Allowable floor area: unlimited o Actual floor area: one floor in largest freestanding structure = 2,625 sq. ft. (375 sq. ft. per unit x 14 units divided by 2 [some may be resi dential or mercantile] = 2,625 sq. ft.) o Basements, mezzanines, other spaces: none o Allowable height: 75 feet o Allowable number of stories: 11 o Area increase allowances: yes but irrelevant considering the area is already unlimited. M (mercantile): o Allowable floor area: 24,000 feet. xii
appendix three code analysis o Actual floor area: one floor in largest freestanding structure = 2,625 sq. ft. (375 sq. ft. per unit x 14 units divided by 2 [some may be resi dential or business] = 2,625 sq. ft.) o Basements, mezzanines, other spaces: none o Allowable height: 75 feet o Allowable number of stories: 3 o Area increase allowances: yes If the occupancy is fully sprinklered the area is unlimited. Inclusion of firewalls within the occupancy will allow increase in area. If more than 25% of the building of the building perimeter fronts on a street or open space at least 20 ft. wide that is accessible to firefighting vehicles, the tabulated area limitation may be increases. Other considerations: o When two or more Occupancy Groups are combined in one building, the IBC allows these mixed uses to be treated as either Nonseparated or Separated Occupancies. 4. Special Requirements (per occupancy type):
None
5. Exiting: Means of Egress:
For Group R Occupancies, unrated enclosures are permitted for any corridor serving 10 or fewer occupants, and ½-hour rated enclosures are permitted for corridors serving more than 10 occupants within sprinklered buildings – I do not intend on using enclosed corridors for egress. Exit access ways may include open balconies on the exterior of a building. When leading to only one exit stair, such balconies must be separated from interior spaces by fire resistive wall and protected door and window openings (p. 257) – exterior balconies/circulation will be used to provide egress. Such balconies may be separated from the building itself except at specific points. Such balconies also will provide access to two exit stairs. Number of exits per room: 1 xiii
appendix three code analysis
2 exit access ways leading to two independent exits are required for both B and M Occupancies only when the occupant load exceeds 49 persons – this is not the case for this project.
2 exit access ways leading to two independent exits are required for R Occupancies with an occupant load exceeding 10 – this is not the case for this project. Special exiting requirements:
None Number of exits per floor:
For most buildings, each floor with 500 or fewer occupants must have at least two exits. Floors with between 501 and 1000 must have at least three such exits.
Certain buildings of limited size and occupancy may have only one exit per floor including single-story buildings of Occupancy Groups B and M having not more than 49 occupants and a travel distance not exceeding 75 ft. This applies to my building for all B and M Group Occupancies.
Enclosures of stairways serving fewer than four floors may be of 1-hour rated construction, with 1-hour self-closing doors.
Exit enclosures are not required for exit stairways in open parking structures or open arenas.
Outside stairways may be used as exits. An outside stairway must be constructed with solid treads. It must be built to the same fire-resistive requirements as an interior stair, including separation from the interior of the building by wall and openings with fire-resistance ratings as specified for interior stairs. Required exit width, doors, corridors, stairs:
R-2 (residential): occupant load = 200 square/feet gross floor area per occupant. o minimum door width = 32 inch net clear. o maximum door width = 48 inch nominal. xiv
appendix three code analysis o minimum clear corridor width = 36 inch serving 49 or fewer, or within dwelling units. o minimum stair width = 36 inch serving 49 or fewer. B (business): occupant load = 100 square/feet gross floor area per occupant. o minimum door width = 32 inch net clear. o maximum door width = 48 inch nominal. o minimum clear corridor width = 36 inch serving 49 or fewer o minimum stair width = 36 inch serving 49 or fewer. M (mercantile): occupant load = 30 square/feet gross floor area per occupant. o minimum door width = 32 inch net clear. o maximum door width = 48 inch nominal. o minimum clear corridor width = 36 inch serving 49 or fewer. o minimum stair width = 36 inch serving 49 or fewer. Maximum allowable horizontal distance to exits:
R-2 (residential) : sprinklered = 250 ft.
B (business): not sprinklered = 200 ft.
M (mercantile): not sprinklered = 200 ft. Horizontal separation of exits on a floor:
Where a room, space or whole floor requires more than one way out, at least two of the ways out must be separated by a distance equal to not less than one-half the diagonal measure of the room, space, or floor (if the Occupancy is unsprinklered, B and M). Where the building is sprinklered, (Occupancy R-2) the distance may be reduced to one-third the diagonal measure of the space. Places of Refuge: xv
appendix three code analysis
Area of refuge must have direct access to the stairway. It must be clearly identified with visual and tactile signage within the enclosure, protected from smoke and fire, provided with instructions for use, and provided with two-way electronic communications with the primary entry point of the building.
A wheelchair space 30 x 48 inches must be provided for each 200 occupants or portion thereof on each floor, with minimum provision of two such spaces for each refuge area. Areas of Discharge:
Exists shall discharge directly to the exterior of the building. The exit discharge shall be at grade or shall provide direct access to grade. The exit discharge shall not reenter a building (with multiple exceptions).
The capacity of the exit discharge shall be not less than the required discharge capacity of the exits being served.
Exit discharge location. Exterior balconies, stairways and ramps shall be located at least 10 feet (3048 mm) from adjacent lot lines and from other buildings on the same lot unless the adjacent building exterior walls and openings are protected in accordance with Section 704 based on fire separation distance.
Exit discharge components. Exit discharge components shall be sufficiently open to the exterior so as to minimize the accumulation of smoke and toxic gases.
6. Fire Sprinklers:
See #2 and #3 above.
7. Guardrails: Height:
Ramp height more than 30 inches above the adjacent floor or ground and open on one or both sides shall be provided with guardrails as required by Section 509. Guardrails shall be continuous from the top of the ramp to the bottom of the ramp. xvi
appendix three code analysis
Handrail heights the top of handrails shall be 34 to 38 inches above the ramp surface.
Headroom clearance – if the vertical clearance of an area adjoining an accessible route is reduced to less than 80 inches nominal dimension, a guardrail or other barrier having its leading edge at or below 27 inches above the finished floor shall be provided. Required locations:
Ramp handrails handrail shall be provided at each side of ramps when the slope exceeds 1 vertical unit to 20 units horizontal. Handrails on all ramps shall be continuous except on curb ramps and ramps that serve an individual dwelling unit may have one handrail except that ramps that open on one or both sides shall have handrails provided on the open side or sides.
When the floor level at any door opening of any building or structure is more than 30 inches above the adjacent ground level, handrails or guardrails shall be provided on the landing, balcony or porch, and on every stairway or ramp to ground level.
Degree of Openness:
Ramp height more than 30 inches above the adjacent floor or ground and open on one or both sides shall be provided with guardrails as required by Section 509. Guardrails shall be continuous from the top of the ramp to the bottom of the ramp.
Ramp handrails handrail shall be provided at each side of ramps when the slope exceeds 1 vertical unit to 20 units horizontal. Handrails on all ramps shall be continuous except on curb ramps and ramps that serve an individual dwelling unit may have one handrail except that ramps that open on one or both sides shall have handrails provided on the open side or sides.
8. Plumbing fixture count: Dwellings: water closets = 1 per dwelling, urinals = 0, lavatories = 1 per dwelling, bathtubs/showers = 1 per dwelling Retail or wholesale stores (numbers will be provided only for my expected occupancy load): o Men: water closets 1-100 = 1, urinals 0-25 = 0 and 26-100 = 1, lavatories = 1 for each 2 water closets, bathtubs/showers = 0. o Women: water closets 1-25 = 1 and 26-100 = 2, urinals = 0, lavatories = 1 for each 2 water closets, bathtubs/showers = 0. xvii
appendix three code analysis
Restaurants (numbers will be provided only for my expected occupancy load):
o Men: water closets 1-50 = 1 and 51-150 = 2, urinals 0-25 = 0 and 26-100 = 1, lavatories 1-150 = 1, showers/bathtubs = 0 o Women: water closets 1-50 = 1 and 51-150 = 2, urinals = 0, lavatories 1-150 = 1, showers/bathtubs = 0.
9. Accessibility
Ramps: May not slope greater than 1:12, must have a minimum clear width of 36 inches between handrails, and may not rise more than 30 inches between landings. Landings must be not less than 60 inches in length.
Ramps exceeding 10 feet in length and ramp landing having a vertical drop exceeding 4 inches shall be provided with one of the following: guide curbs a minimum of 2 inches in height at each side or wheel guide rails at each side, centered 2 to 4 inches above the surface of the ramp or ramp landing.
Curb ramps:
o Curb ramps shall be constructed at each corner of street intersections and where a pedestrian way crosses a curb. Built-up curb ramps shall be located so that they do not project into vehicular traffic lanes. The preferred and recommended location for curb ramps is in the center of the crosswalk of each street corner. Where it is necessary to locate a curb ramp in the center of the curb return and the street surfaces are marked to identify pedestrian crosswalks, the lower end of the curb ramp shall terminate within such crosswalk areas. 2. o Width of curb ramps. Curb ramps shall be a minimum of 4 feet in width and shall lie, generally, in a single sloped plane, with a minimum of surface warping and cross slope. o Slope of curb ramps. The slope of curb ramps shall not exceed one unit vertical to 12 units horizontal (8.33-percent slope). Transitions from ramps to walks, gutters or streets shall be flush and free of abrupt change. Maximum slopes of adjoining gutters, road surface immediately adjacent to the curb ramp, or accessible route shall not exceed one unit vertical to 20 units horizontal (5-percent slope) within 4 feet (1219 mm) of the top and bottom of the curb ramp. The slope of the fanned or flared sides of curb ramps shall not exceed one unit vertical to 10 units horizontal (10-percent slope).
Exterior ramps: xviii
appendix three code analysis
o Width. The width of ramps shall be consistent with the requirements for exits in Chapter 10 of this code, but in no case shall the ramp width be less than the following: 1. Ramps serving accessible entrances to covered multifamily buildings where the ramp is the only exit discharge path and serves an occupant load of300 or more shall have a minimum clear width of 60 inches (1524 mm). 2. Ramps serving accessible entrances in Group R occupancies with an occupant load of 10 or less may be 36 inches (914 mm) in clear width. 3. All other ramps shall have a minimum clear width of48 inches (1219 mm). 4. Handrails, curbs, wheel guides and/or appurtenances shall not project into the required clear width of a ramp.
o Slope. The maximum slope of ramps on an accessible route shall be no greater than 1 unit vertical in 12 units horizontal (833-percent slope). Transitions from ramps to walks, gutters or streets shall be flush and free of abrupt changes.
o Cross slope. The cross slope of ramp surfaces shall be no greater than 14 inch (635 mm) per foot (2.083-percent slope).
o Outdoor ramps. Outdoor ramps, ramp landings and their approaches shall be designed so that water will not accumulate on the walking surface.
ď&#x201A;ˇ Interior ramps - the width of ramps shall be consistent with the requirements for exits in Chapter 10 of this code, but in no case shall the ramp width be less than the following: 1. Ramps serving accessible entrances to covered multifamily buildings where the ramp is the only exit discharge path and serves an occupant load of300 or more shall have a minimum clear width of 60 inches (1524 mm). 2. Ramps serving accessible entrances in Group R occupancies with an occupant load of 10 or less may be 36 inches (914 mm) in clear width. 3. All other ramps shall have a minimum clear width of 48 inches (1219 mm). 4. Handrails, curbs, wheel guides and/or appurtenances shall not project into the required clear width of a ramp.
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cost estimate
four costappendix analysis
4
Area SF
Cost SF
Time (months)
Value
Hard Construction Costs Site Construction Estimate 259,081 12 Building Construction Estimate A 195,840 32.31 Building Construction Estimate B 0 0 Building Construction Estimate C 0 0 Sub Total A - Construction Cost Geographic Factor (-10%) Sub Total B - Construction Cost Mid-point Escalation (Months/Percentage) 42 Escalation Value
3108972 6327590.4 0 0 9436562.4 -94365.624 9342196.776 .011 1027641.645
Sub Total C - Hard Construction Cost
10369838.42
Soft Project Costs Schematic Design Contingency (10%) General Conditions (7%) Overhead & Profit (5% & 5%)
1036983.842 725888.6895 1036983.842
Sub Total D - Soft Project Cost
2799856.374
Total - Project Cost Other Costs Considerartions FF&E Graphics/Signage Fees Agency Review/Approvals Special Conditions
13169694.8 0 0 0 20000 20000 0
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four costappendix analysis Basics: Site Description: the site is located in Tijuana, Mexico, with the canal bordering its north side, a neighborhood on a hill to the south, a mechanic to the east and a school and its fields to the west. The site is nearly flat but is slightly slanted towards the canal which is optimal for drainage purposes. There are currently no structures on the site but it is littered along one edge with small trash items. Two roads lead to the site from two different directions and are both dirt roads, but highly traveled. One road along the canal is slated to be replaced by a 2-4 lane highway. Site Square Footage: 259,081 Building Description: the building is an attempt to create a typology that mediates between fully finished models that become too expensive for those in lower income groups and current shantytown models that are self constructed and often lacking basic structure and utilities. The building will consist of a maximum of 3 stories; each story is 15 ft. in height. The building masses are broken up into 6 bars of varying size. The building will be constructed incrementally: first a steel framework will be constructed along with core units housing utilities spaced at established intervals, as well as 12 stairwells, and the slab poured along the ground floor footprints. The second phase involves tenants adding modules to their core units with a secondary framework provided â&#x20AC;&#x201C; the tenants will face these structural elements themselves as well as provide openings. The third phase involves tenants building units to bridge the gap between the massings according to certain established logics. Along the north side market stalls will occupy the ground floor with a second story of previously mentioned residential units above them. Circulation is only needed on either the second or third story of each void and will consist of a light metal walkway supported by the original steel structure. Building Square Footage Area: 195,840 Primary Structural System(s): structural steel Primary Mechanical System(s): none Primary Exterior Materials: determined and provided by tenants. Recommended = corrugated metal (slanted roofing), built up roofing (flat roofing), osb or concrete Hardiboard siding Primary Interior Materials: determined and provided by tenants. Recommended = plywood, plaster, drywall. Primary Site Materials: concrete walkways where necessary - most walkways and parking lots will be designated but not necessarily paved. Some gathering xxii
four costappendix analysis spaces will be surfaced with pavers or concrete and others will be covered with gravel. Designated green spaces will be covered with grass. Gathering spaces will be surfaced with gravel. Specialty Systems & Considerations (energy, equipment): none Means Building Type / Cost per Square Foot: $32.31 Square foot costs: A. Substructure Slab on grade = $1.59/s.f. x (195,840 total s.f. x 1/3 [ground floor area]) = $103,795.00 Slab on grade (market stalls) = $1.59/s.f. x 11,160 s.f. = $17,744.40 B. Shell Floor construction (open web steel joists, slab form, concrete, interior steel columns) = $11.54/s.f. - (subtract cost of concrete @ $1.59/s.f.) = $9.95/s.f. x 130,560 s.f. (195,840 total s.f. x 2/3 [other floors besides ground floor which has been accounted for above] = $1,299,072.00 Steel construction (market structure) (open web steel joists, slab form, concrete, interior steel columns) = $11.54/s.f. - (subtract cost of con crete @ $1.59/s.f.) = $9.95/s.f. x 11,160 s.f. = $111,042.00 Roof construction (open web steel joists with rib metal deck, interior steel columns) = $2.72/s.f. x (195,840 total s.f. x 1/3 [roof area]) = $177,561.60 Roof coverings (built-up tar and gravel with flashing; perlite/EPS composite insulation) = $2.02/s.f. x (195,840 total s.f. x 1/3 [roof area]) = $131,865.60 C. Interiors Partitions (gypsum board and sound deadening board on metal studs) = $5.43/s.f. x 195,840 total s.f. = $1,063,411.20 Stair construction (concrete filled metal pan) = $2.73/s.f. x 15,552 s.f. = $42,456.00 D. Services Plumbing fixtures (kitchen, bathroom and service fixtures, supply and drainage) = $2,488.00 per unit x 151 core units = $375,688.00 Domestic water distribution (gas fired water heater) = $3.92/s.f. x 195,840 total s.f. = $767,692.80 Rain water drainage (roof drains) = $0.37/s.f. x 65,280 s.f. (195,840 total s.f. x 1/3 [roof area]) = $24,153.60 Sprinklers (wet pipe sprinkler system) = $3.10/s.f. x 195,840 total s.f. = $607,104.00 Electrical service/distribution (600 amp. Service, panel board and feeders) = $2.55/s.f. x 195,840 total s.f. = $499,392.00 E. Common Additives Appliances (combination range, refrig. & sink, 30” wide & 72” wide) = $1625 - $5250 each $1625 (cheapest option) x 151 core units = xxiii
four costappendix analysis
$245,375.00 Smoke detectors (ceiling types) = $233 each x 151 core units = $35,183.00 Emergency lighting (25 watt, lead battery operated) = $287.00 each x 151 core units = $43,337 Elevated walkways (treating same as slab on grade)= $1.59/s.f. x 9,418 s.f. of suspended walkway = $14,974.62
Total from above = $6,327,541.78/195,840 total s.f. = $32.31/s.f. Strategies to reduce budget: 1. Instead of supplying a combination of range, refrigerator and sink for $1,626 for each set I could eliminate the refrigerator and rely on tenants to provide their own refrigerator. Sizes could range from full size to half size refrigerators – tenant may even choose to share refrigerators. 2. I have not yet decided on a roof covering but the “built-up tar and gravel with flashing; perlite/EPS composite insulation” could be replaced with a slightly cheaper more generic material. We could assume a 15% reduction in costs which would mean the roofing covering costs would go from $131,865.60 to $112,085.76 saving $19,779.84. 3. The partitions I have quoted are “gypsum board and sound deadening board on metal studs.” A cheaper alternative would be to use wood framing instead of the metal studs. Also I am relying on tenants to face the structural panels so the quote could be lessened considerably. 4. The prices quoted for plumbing fixtures may be an overestimation of the actual quantity and quality of fixtures needed. This number could be re duced by as much as 25% – 50%. The current plumbing estimates are $375,688.00 total and if we reduce this cost by 25% it would then total $281,766.00 saving $93,922.00 5. It may not be totally necessary to provide emergency lighting which could save almost $44,000. 6. I have generally only chosen items that were the cheapest and ones I viewed as a necessity. However, I have also provided quotes assuming that this project would be built to 100% occupancy – in other words, I have provided a “worst-case” scenario for the cost analysis. It is more likely and more optimal that the project be occupied at around 75% occupancy so 25% of the construction costs could, in theory, be cut by 25%. This would take the construction total from $6,327,541.78 to $4,745,656.34 saving a total of $1,581,885.45. 7. Also since this project will be completed incrementally the construction of certain elements could be delayed to defray costs: The market stalls could remain empty at the onset of the project. The landscape intervention could happen months or years down the line. The current site construction costs are estimated at around $12.00/s.f. (which is low) costing $3,108,972.00 total. We can delay most of the site construction, other than the preparation of constructed footprints and the creation of the most necessary of pathways and reduce the costs to around $6.00/s.f. and the site construction costs would then total $1,554,486.00 saving $1,554,486.00.
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