Future of American Housing by Jeffrey Nesbit

FUTURE OF AMERICAN HOUSING

Jeffrey S. Nesbit Design Research Studio School of Architecture University of North Carolina at Charlotte Summer 2020

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FUTURE OF AMERICAN HOUSING

Faculty Researcher Jeffrey S. Nesbit Teaching Assistant Amir Zarrinrad Students Participant Abigail Loftis, Alejandra Casar Rodriguez, Anna Gelich, Anthony Murphy, Chia Omotosho, Daniel Rojas Fernandez, Davis Millard, Griffin Lichtenfelt, Joan Dalton, Kailey Olbrich-Daniels, Kathryn Warren, Lindsey Weeber, Patty Davis, Sara Chafi, Shelby Adair, Tia Neal, Zach Urban Reviewers and Advisors Jose GamĂŠz, University of North Carolina at Charlotte Derek Hoeferlin, Washington University St. Louis Cesar Lopez, UC Berkeley / Open Workshop Joshua Nason, University of Texas Arlington Mercedes Peralta, Harvard GSD Samir Shah, Urban Quotient Julia Smachylo, Harvard GSD Antje Steinmuller, California College of the Arts Alex Wall, Harvard GSD Peter Wong, University of North Carolina at Charlotte Image Credits The editors have attempted to acknowledge all sources of images used and apologize for any error or omissions. Copyright ÂŠ 2020, University of North Carolina at Charlotte All Rights Reserved No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner without written permission from the School of Architecture, University of North Carolina at Charlotte. ISBN 978-0-578-73954-0 School of Architecture University of North Carolina at Charlotte 9201 University City Boulevard Charlotte, NC 28223 www.coaa.uncc.edu/architecture www.haecceitasstudio.com

Contents

Foreword, Antje Steinmuller Housing the Future, Jeffrey S. Nesbit Housing Type: A Measure of City Form, Peter Wong

16 18 20

BAY Buried Histories of Labor and Living, Anna Gelich and Zach Urban 24 28 Islands 54 Grids 88 Docks 116 Ships BAYOU Dreaming of Fallacy, Lindsey Weeber Wilderness Fictions Agencies

142 146 184 222

BEACH Artificial Paradise, Katie Warren Drift Desires

260 264 302

References

330

“The Democrats in DC have been and want to at a much higher level abolish our beautiful and successful suburbs by placing far left Washington bureaucrats in charge of local zoning decisions. They are absolutely determined to eliminate single family zoning, destroy the value of houses and communities already built, just as they have in Minneapolis and other locations you read about today. Your home will go down in value and crime rates will rapidly rise. Joe Biden and his bosses from the radical left want to significantly multiply what they’re doing now and what will be the end result is you will totally destroy the beautiful suburbs. Suburbia will be no longer as we know it.” President Donald Trump, White House (South Lawn), July 2020

Houston Suburbs. 2010. Nelson Minar.

Future of American Housing

Jayveon Murphy wades through flood waters to check on neighbors. 2017. LM Otero.

Future of American Housing

Flooded houses in Orange, Texas. 2017. Scott Olson.

Future of American Housing

w Fair , FL 14

Darrow Vanity Fair. Miami, FL. 2020.

Future of American Housing

Foreword

Antje Steinmuller

In the contemporary context of rapid urbanization, housing affordability and climate change have placed pressure on cities in ways that challenge established definitions for architecture and urbanism. Furthermore, we find ourselves confronted with a new urgency to question disciplinary boundaries when it comes to educating the next generation of architects and urban thinkers. Jeffrey S. Nesbit’s The Future of American Housing, a volume of work probing the intersection of environmental politics and housing economics, presents a thought-provoking foray into two territories within this context: a teaching methodology that links collective interdisciplinary analysis with spatial interventions designed within an evolving network of larger intangible forces; and a reconsideration of housing as an ecologically and economically productive engine for coastal territories under threat. My first conversations with Nesbit took place on a jury in Seoul, pondering forms of architectural agency vis-a-vis the yellow dust phenomenon in East Asia. In my review of this studio material, these early discussions still resonate in the design methodology that uses analytical and representational skills akin to detective work in order to situate disciplinary 16

Future of American Housing

agency within complex and constantly changing environmental conditions. By diligently slicing through the evolving layers of constituent forces in a given environment, Future of American Housing puts forward design research as the act of carefully and critically assembling relationships between spatial, environmental, political, and economic factors into a narrative that simultaneously elucidates and productively redirects ongoing processes. A manifestation of this approach is already evident in Nesbit’s earlier 2016 and 2017 Seoul Studios at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. These studios stand out through the multi-layered analysis of urban eco-systems, defined as evolving networks of commerce, environment, and urban life that are fused together through histories of adaptation and resilience. As a result of this analysis, students productively engaged the interrelationship between artifact, commerce, and environmental challenges through thoughtful urban interventions positioned as participants, and catalysts, within this larger context. The ‘close reading’ of urban environments evident in these studios is timely, urgent and characteristic of the research methodologies

employed in Jeffrey Nesbit’s own work. Whether his research engages processes of urbanization or landscapes of defense and military logistics, the work is notable for its detailed inquiries into the relationships of intangible large-scale formative forces to their physical manifestations as a point of entry to effecting change. Consequently, the city as a territory for intervention is framed as an expanded field of influence—a territory in which physical and environmental conditions are inseparable from the latent landscapes of economy and power that contributed to their formation. This results in a compelling and necessary argument for a design process that understands itself as self-generative— negotiating history, current configuration, and future projections as interlinked input for design. In all of his research, and equally with Future of American Housing, Nesbit directs attention to our relationship to the methodological devices and disciplinary positions with which we observe, record, and theorize such sites as he does on the capacities inherent in the territories themselves. At a time of wide-spread housing and climaterelated crises, this design research offers unique potentials for rethinking housing for

vulnerable coastal sites—the key subject of the research in this volume. Within Future of American Housing, the students critically position climate change as an instigator for alternative housing strategies, linking a multilayered analysis of the evolution of sea level rise projections amongst challenged coastal territories in Boston, Miami, and Houston. Research topics range from mobility, ecology, and housing economics. The studio carefully guides students through a process of probing architecture’s agency vis-a-vis questions of property, equity, and resilience. Not only does the studio brief present a pressing and relevant approach to educating architects as future agents in a complex and evolving world under environmental and economic threat— the resulting work in this volume also offers alternative approaches to the role of housing in a context of climate change, setting us on a meaningful path towards an ecological and social productivity as we consider what it means to build housing today. Antje Steinmuller Director, Urban Works Agency Associate Professor, California College of the Arts Foreword

Introduction

Housing the Future

Jeffrey S. Nesbit

Future of American Housing investigates the role of climate change as it relates to providing alternative design strategies for housing and its impact on the public realm. This abbreviated summer design research studio investigates the natural environment and its future challenges faced amongst contemporary issues surrounding climate change, social equity, and affordable housing in the United States. As a design research studio, the studio attempts to build upon the rise of discourse centered around two primary challenges in the contemporary American city: (1) the politics of environment and (2) the economics of housing. The studio begins by surveying the variety of contexts along the threatened coastlines in the

Future of American Housing is only the beginning for urging a better and more equitable environment.

Future of American Housing

United States to consider the impact of sealevel rise on the future of housing architectural typologies. From Boston to Miami to Houston, selections of sites along the Atlantic Ocean and Gulf Coast provide a range of specific scales, themes, and tactics, to shift perceptions on the relationality of the equitable environments for both climate change and affordable housing. Future of American Housing attempts to enhance the quality of the environment within the public right of way as it relates directly to the extra-urban commons, collectivity, and culture. Participating students were asked to study radical alternatives that must operate in an unpredictable political and environmental future. From the scale of regional watershed, infrastructural strategies, and down to the housing typologies, the research focuses on the near-future solutions and redefine the shape of urban infrastructure entirely. By rejecting the failed models of postwar single-family housing, students evoke new opportunities, promote healthy living, and enhance the interrelated futures of posthuman ecological systems. Outcomes in the studio generate diverse housing prototypes that can be deployed across contexts endangered by rising sea levels and storm surges while increasing a more equitable

urban structure and system. Such prototypes are intended to not be considered as externally implanted discrete objects, but instead thought of as a flexible system to be deployed and continuously adaptable according to specific changes in geographic and environmental futures. Future of American Housing borrows from contemporary scholars as a critical framework in the investigations and translations from politics to the environment, including Geostories: Another Architecture for the Environment by Rania Ghosn and El Hadi Jazairy (Design Earth), New Investigations in Collective Form by Neeraj Bhatia (The Open Workshop), and Harvard Graduate School of Design’s Future of the American City project led by Mohsen Mostafavi and Charles Waldheim. These rich bodies of work from within design discourse are clues to the everchanging focus of the architectural profession and here the studio seeks to advance the focus from an object of form to a contemporary subject of equity and environment. Prototypes explore levels of resiliency (float, elevate, submerge) while strategically aligning forms of energy production, housing adaptability, and ecological responsibility. Therefore, the studio intentionally shifts the design inquiries of site and program-specific based on canonical project-based studios and moves towards questions of resiliency, adaptation, and performativity. Future of American Housing is organized in three sections based on three differing geographic and environmental contexts: BAY, BAYOU, and BEACH. The first section, BAY, explores the deep economic history associated with early colonization of the Boston Bay in Massachusetts and proposes new alternatives in planning. Rather than defending the water’s edge, these projects offer radical strategies of living islands and infrastructure in an aqueous environment. The second section, BAYOU, investigates the relationship between the natural history of the Buffalo Bayou regional watershed in Houston, Texas, and the postwar bungalow housing types. By focusing on the often-overlooked social space of the front yard and streets of suburban single-family housing, research and design scenarios recommend to reform zoning laws, increase common social

Rather than defending the water’s edge, these projects offer radical strategies of living islands and infrastructure in an aqueous environment.

space, and integrate agencies in the existing heterogeneous jurisdictions. The third and final section, BEACH, redefines the role of nature in the synthetic environment by returning to the developmental history of Miami Beach. Projects intentionally speculate on questions related to landscape conservation, reject privatizing leisure and beach access, and propose more rich and adaptable ecological solutions in the face of a tourist economy. Future of American Housing reorients the traditional architecture design studio to one situated between research and scenario planning for a better future. In the wake of COVID-19, this intensive summer design research studio was conducted virtually over regular video conferences, “office hours,” and studio meetings. The structure of the summer was organized into two 5-week segments. The first segment introduced the most pressing challenges, discussed social and infrastructural alternatives, and attempted to acclimate to our ever-unexpected virtual and enclosed social settings during a global pandemic. The second segment focused on narration, transformation, and illustration of those early ideas to proliferate into a legible series of future scenarios. Students, reviewers, and administrators worked collectively, respectfully, and diligently to elevate the quality of research during a continued environmental and public health catastrophe. This effort to explore the Future of American Housing is only the beginning for urging a better and more equitable environment.

Housing the Future

Housing Type: A Measure of City Form

Peter Wong

How are we to think about the design of future housing? If architecture is a creative activity or process, then where should this future lie within a continuum of housing lessons and examples? Within the context of architecture, the notion of housing is frequently attributed to the history of urbanization in which the constraints of density, infrastructure, and access to the public amenities of the city are possible and challenged. Dependent on the context, housing sectors may result in varied formal responses based on region, culture, economic, and climate conditions. Housing type is therefore intimately connected to the changing conditions and forces of the metropolis and as they reach into the suburban boundaries. Is it possible that building types evolve into architectural morphologies through some enduring natural aim—contrary to design artifice—taking clues from these conditions that lead to unique urban scenarios and building forms? As an example, the Charleston “singlehouse”—characterized by a multi-story veranda, a small garden, and a major axis ambivalent to the street—is a dwelling type that is recognizable throughout the city. It emerges from conditions unique to its era by responding to factors that include capturing ocean breezes, 20

Future of American Housing

reducing taxation by its slim street frontage, and aspiring to a Caribbean-derived plan attributed to an African building vernacular. Reasons for the form of this house are complex and comprehensive, resulting from factors that imply a naturally occurring process. However not all things are equal between nature and design, and the impulse for artistic practice by the architect weighs heavy in the process of designing house types in urban places. In sorting through how typology serves as an agent for future projects, the architectural theorist, Giulio Argan, reflects on Quatremáre de Quincy’s definition of type by telling us “the word ‘type’ [says de Quincy] does not present so much an image of something to be copied or

...with the image of other architectures leads to the indiscriminate use of precedent and type that Argan warns us about.

imitated exactly as the idea of an element which should itself serve as a rule for the model.” This notion of type offered by de Quincy— an Enlightenment thinker interested in applying the complexities of classification and taxonomy—helps distinguish the importance of typological thinking, not as a “model” to be strictly followed (i.e., through a process of copying or imitation) but rather as an open process that defines type as an idea or essence. Argan furthers this notion by explaining “that the assumption of a ‘type’ as a starting point for the architect’s working process does not exhaust [their] involvement with historical data; it does not stop [them] from assuming or rejecting definite buildings as models.”

speculation) that Argan warns us about. On such occasions, an architectural type is merely demonstrating its worth as a “model” to satisfy short-term objectives. It appears likely that a more authentic understanding of urban housing for the future is reliant on a measured reading of incremental factors leading to revised residential forms and types. Given the changing conditions of ocean and waterway ecologies, the challenge of infrastructure replacement, as well as leveling the unbalance between wealth vs. needs, there remains an ambition for a program of housing that we are enthusiastic about but has yet to arrive.

As designers contemplate the problem of housing, we often look to examples or precedents that justify current design attitudes or add a flourish to our design solutions. Offering architecture as iconography or rendering it with the image of other architectures leads to the indiscriminate use of precedent and type (particularly those engaged in real estate

Peter Wong Associate Professor University of North Carolina at Charlotte

1 Giulio Argan, “Typology.” From an article that appeared first in a volume of essays (edited by Karl Oettinger and Mohammed Rassem) offered to Professor Hans Sedlmayr on his 65th birthday and published in Munich by C. H. Beck in 1962. 2 Ibid.

Housing Type: A Measure of City Form

BAY, n. Boston

An indentation of the sea into the land with a wide opening; rounded projection of the land into the sea.

Buried Histories of Labor and Living

Anna Gelich, Zach Urban

Native Americans, colonists, and contemporary laborers have inhabited, shaped, and reconstructed the geographic, industrial, and urban conditions of the Boston Bay for thousands of years. The waterfront ebbs and flows naturally over time, but settler interventions have engineered the water’s edge to support an industry which geomorphologically ripples across both land and sea. The coastlines have receded miles inland from prehistory to contemporary history due to natural climate cycles. Postcolonial settlers have reshaped the waterfront of a swelling harbor into a port city. As an artificial landscape of ports, piers, and docks, the relationship between the Bay and the landscape is the product of labor. The threshold between land and water supports an entire industry, but the economic expansion of the city threatens the extirpation of the histories which precede it. The inception of one history is also the destruction of another as the landscape takes new forms. The cultural landscape of the Bay carries the soul of the people who inhabit and identify a place. Native tribal communities have resided in Boston Bay for over 12,000 years. Despite the primordial tribal occupation of the Bay for millennia, the Indian Imprisonment and Exclusion Act of 1675 banned indigenous populations from living within the Boston city limits following its enactment. Before European colonization, the memories of thousands of natives 24

Future of American Housing

from the Massachusett, Nipmuc, and Wampanoag among other tribes have historically shaped the shoreline of the New England seaboard. A catastrophic population loss resulted from the exposure to numerous diseases, military conflicts, slavery, and hazardous employment; however, the unique heritage of a culturally diverse indigenous people persevered. Their heritage represents an impermanent coexistence with natural marine ecology for centuries and vastly differed from later colonial and postcolonial lifestyles. The existing landscape of the Bay area has been formed by Bay topography, which is “a result of a complex series of geological processes”; indigenous people who cultivated the distinct ecological environment of the waterfront; industrialization and working-class labor of the colonial and postcolonial periods. The framers of the environment filled in the semiotic vacuum of this region by superimposing different approaches and developments which gave this region distinctive perspectives. Since the prehistoric settlement of the Bay, the majority of natives lived near the water on the shores of the Charles River, its estuaries, and the islands of the Boston Harbor. The harbor engulfed the land and provided a “bountiful smorgasbord of foods,” for the aboriginal tribes who camped in the harbor, which included fish, crustaceans, and shellfish. Even into the 19th century, “the bar on the south has long been

famous for its delicious clams.â&#x20AC;? Quahog, scallop, soft-shell clam, and other shellfish were gathered and processed, hickory nuts were collected, and deer and other animals were hunted. Native plant life consisted of berries, cattails, and a variety of nut trees such as oak and hickory. As a hunter-gatherer society, tribes hunted mammals such as skunk, muskrat, feral cats, as well as numerous songbirds, shorebirds, and pheasants. As the archeological sites on Thompson Island reveal, the aboriginal tribes of the Bay were fishers, hunters, and gatherers. Thompson Island is one of many living islands diffused across the Bay. The living islands simultaneously supported an ecosystem of indigenous flora and fauna and Native American seasonal settlements. Natives coexisted with biodiverse ecosystems of the islands because a thriving ecosystem is synonymous with tribal growth and survival. The region gradually shifted towards agrarianism to sustain a growing population through subsistence crops demonstrating the complexity of the native way of life. Tools were made out of stone and animal bones. Indigenous people collected reeds for basketry and made their clay pottery. Fish were harvested by building structures from twigs and wooden stakes. The occupation of land was impermanent and

seasonal. Native family camps were erected according to the seasonal availability of food sources as tribes adapted to the dynamic environment. The history of indigenous tribes is embedded in seasonal settlements scattered across the waterfront, and archeologists have unearthed artifacts that date to prehistoric periods. Archeological reports indicate that the region of â&#x20AC;&#x153;Water Street was used as a seasonal campsite several times between 4,000 and 1,500 years ago. The principal period of occupation was during the Early Woodland period 2,300 years ago when the site was used as a fishing camp.â&#x20AC;? Stone tools and pottery sherds found in or near the hearths were fundamental to these settlements tying the means of daily consumption to the dynamics of the landscape. The Town Dock in Boston Bay is another archaeological site of a small hunting camp located near a small cove where stone tools were manufactured and repaired. As this site became flooded, natives moved further inland to higher ground. Natives nevertheless remained near the coast understanding the economic significance of erecting settlements along the harbor. Generations of Native Americans relocated in response to sea-level rise and natural climate cycles. The aboriginal tribes adapted to their habitats and evolved tool technology as a response to biotic and environmental change. Their natural resilience to Buried Histories of Labor and Living

climate change was ignored during the colonization of the Bay and was replaced by a defense strategy to station numerous fortifications along the coast. The Native American presence in the Bay continued to decrease throughout the 17th century as colonists overtook tribal land to expand colonial economies. The nature of the original settlement changed, and a new cycle of environmental development and Bay transformation commenced. Labor shapes the geographic boundary between the Boston landscape and the Bay. The morphology of the impermanent waterfront is a product of native and contemporary labor. Before its industrialization, the waterfront harbored Native American settlements according to the seasonal, upriver migration of fish. Wigwams and wooden fishing weirs mark the materialization of labor which spanned across the precolonial New England seaboard. In a tribal society labor is a means of survival. The tribal conformity to the dynamic of species migration and spawning populates settlements across the landscape strictly in response to ecological patterns. The physical, tribal relationship between people and Bay is determined by ecology but is marked by labor. The impermanence of the waterfront is a product of the dynamism of natural marine ecologies and colonial intrusion. The manufactured landscape of Boston Bay was built by the working class. Juxtaposing the ecologically driven tribal morphology of weirs, the contemporary engineered landscape is one of piers, ports, factories, and hulls. The colonization of the Bay consequentially buried the tribal histories of labor beneath the fabricated, superficial pavement of an artificial land. Despite epochal differences across waterfront histories, labor remains the agent of transformation. Shipwrights reconfigured the anatomy of a bay of shores into a bay of ports. The shipping industrydevised formula to urbanize labor stitches housing and industry together into a seamless urban fabric. The impact of the industrial waterfront reverberates inland with the emergence of factories across the landscape. The exigencies of the manufacturing industry urbanize the encroachment of living and working through an affordable, industrial, multifamily tenement, the Boston triple-decker. Working-class shipwrights forged the claustrophobic, urban footprint of the triple-decker by lining the perimeter of residential blocks, which directly about the industrial landscape of factories and ports. Triple-stacked units with minimal frontage and deep plans characterize the typology of the node that ties the workforce to the shipping industry. 26

Future of American Housing

Bay housing is a product of industry, so its longevity is undermined by the destabilization of the shipping industry and economic expansion. Manufacturers optimize efficiency and economy to maximize product consumption, but all products yield to life cycles. As the morphology of Bay and landscape and the social displacement of anterior populations has demonstrated, the physical world yields to somatic impermanence. In other words, people, places, and objects are finite. The triple-decker is a product of industry, and “a product that exists in a form suitable for consumption may nevertheless serve as raw material for some other product.” Bay housing is the amalgamation of milled, kilned, and refined products which exist as a means to an end. Nevertheless, the triple-decker is a product consumed by the working class. History replacing history, both native and contemporary, repeats itself. With the economy pivoting away from manufacturing to finances, leisure, and hospitality, old industry to new industry, the Bay’s “economic expansion is a concrete manufacture of the alienation” of its people. The substitution of whitecollar workers for manual laborers exemplifies how “an economy developing for its own sake can be nothing other than a growth of the very alienation at its origin.” Economic expansion dissolves the contemporary waterfront histories embedded in housing, factories, and decommissioned ports which cultivate the Bay’s landscape. Despite the geographic footprint that the working class built, the workforce is divorced from the products that they manufacture. Although laborers are alienated from the individual products they fabricate and the framework which employs them, “people nevertheless produce every detail of their world.” Shipwrights craft the urban environment from the waterfront, the block, the port, the triple-decker, and the hull, down to the rivets which fasten their history together. The discernible, tangible geomorphologies of the Bay transcend both the linear histories of human settlements and the cyclical forces of nature that reconfigure its topography. Landscapes do not act solely as chronicles of a singular cycle of inhabitation but rather as a cumulative and simultaneous coexistence of superimposed landscapes. The landscape is where “the union of physical and cultural elements” accumulate in the form of reconstructed, epochal fragments. The Bay is ultimately a palimpsest of the superimposed vestiges of native and industrial cultures. Superimposing vestiges of tribal settlements

on the mainland coast and harbor islands with the engineered ports and piers of the waterfront demarcate this collective history. When an “alien culture is introduced” to an existing landscape, “a new landscape is superimposed on the remnants of an older one.” The cultural landscape is the manifestation of the tangible and intangible aspects that identify the people of the Bay. Viewing the void of the terrestrial and aquatic environment of their cultural footprint misrepresents the geomorphology of the waterfront’s histories. The landscapes of the Bay, both natural and cultural, are inherently linked together. Bay culture has become objectified and commercialized to gratify the economic expansion of tourist economies. The cultural landscape of the Bay is not always palpable because its ethereal aspects such as lifestyle, ethics, and beliefs must be interpreted without historical documentation. Artifacts of indigenous tribes are often commodified to distill their cultural memories into a physical object. The artifact transforms into a product for consumption in a display case protected under the politics of preservation. Preservation is crucial for archaeologists to dissect the history of the landscape. However, preservation is a political act whether councils preserve native artifacts in a museum or form historic districts to tour the Bay’s earliest triple-deckers. The commercialization of heritage marginalizes the populations who molded and inhabited the landscape for millennia. Cultural memories cannot be condensed or objectified because tourist economies fail to benefit the lineage of people capitalized by the economy. The systemic influx of outsiders supports business, leisure, and hospitality over improving the quality of life and equity of the working class. The socioeconomic alienation of tourist economies manifests in the social division of service and leisure. Tourism and preservation generate disproportionate capital accumulation by commercializing culture; however, reimagining the incorporeal, cultural memories on a superimposed landscape restores history through memory. The restoration of intangible memories such as lifestyle or tribal ethics spatializes the ethereal landscape of the Bay. Responsible ecological practices protect seasonal patterns of fish spawns, restore natural habitats, and replenish marine populations. Barring overfishing and harvesting with aquafarming rematerializes the cultural memory of lifestyle and ethics embedded in tribal histories which respect land, species, and ecologies.

History does not survive through preservation or tourism but rather through reimagination. Memory instills and incarnates history because memory can transcend the physiological and temporal limits of any object, organism, or place. The somatic impermanence of the material landscape is expressed through the superimposed vestiges from one alien culture to the next. While histories of inhabitation are superimposed, the creation of the Bay’s industrial history is simultaneously the destruction of native waterfront histories. Whether the geomorphology of the Bay is the result of natural climate cycles or human intervention, the landscape will perpetually reflect culture through labor and urbanization. When the tangible impressions of a former culture dissolve into a new landscape, “memory begins where history ends.” Tourist economies preserve and commercialize vestiges of culture to transform history into a product that is consumed. The act of preservation nevertheless remains a temporary solution for an inexorable outcome. The cultural landscape becomes a reflection of the working class and native tribes as “history shifts into the realm of memory” to capture the “soul of the people and become a sign of place.” Memory is not a substitute for history but rather a stage of its evolution. Memory succeeds in history. When given form, the collective memory of the cultural landscape “comes to embody both an idea of itself and a memory of itself.” History rematerializes through memory and reimagination. The emergence of waterfront histories through a collective memory perpetuates the simultaneous coexistence of superimposed Bay cultures.

Buried Histories of Labor and Living

Islands

Regional Watershed Anna Gelich

Future of American Housing

Boston Bay is made of “Living islands.” Building taxable land on low-lying landfill changed the areas natural configuration and increased the risk of flooding, storm surge, water pollution, and ecosystem contamination. Native tribal communities have lived in Massachusetts for over 12,000 years. The islands were an extremely important and vital ecosystem for the tribe’s seasonal settlements. After European colonization, the landscape in the greater Boston area and the identity of the Bay were altered. Modified for by interests in defense strategy formed islands of fortification. Wars significantly altered the island ecosystem—massive bastions were built on a number of islands, disrupting local flora and fauna, leading to an endangered habitat. More recently, a few of the islands have been designated as leisure parks and recreation zones framed by interests in historic preservation. This research presents the mapping configuration of the possibility to transform the historical reality into a counter historic fiction, to re-imagine the Boston Bay history of urban development since the seventeenth century. We attempt to recreate the concept of “Living islands” as a sustainable economic and environmental urban development. The Boston Harbor Islands could be envisioned as carrying multiple functions and become a part of the urban ecosystem. It is crucial in terms of climate change resilience and the establishment of a stronger relationship between the city and the natural world. Instead of the defense strategy, we explore the potential of synergetic development in creating biodiverse corridors and the island’s ecosystem and outlining futuristic coexistence.

Bay / Islands

Boston Bay is a historical economy

Future of American Housing

Wampanoag meeting English settlers in 1620. 1906

Massasoit meeting English settlers. Lives of Famous Indian Chiefs by Norman B. Wood. 1906.

n 1620 the Wampanoag high chief, Massasoit, made a peace treaty with the Pilgrims, who had landed in the tribeâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s territory; the treaty was observed until Massasoitâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s death

Bay / Islands

Boston Bay is “living islands”

Future of American Housing

Plymouth, Detail.

Boston to Nantasket Beach and Plymouth. Birdâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s-eye view from the northwest of the coast from Boston to Plymouth. 1915.

as urbanization spread, the islandsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; value became increasingly evident

Bay / Islands

Boston Bay is fragile and defended

Future of American Housing

Bay / Islands

Boston Harbor

Map includes East Boston, Logan Int. Airport, Charlestown, North End

Future of American Housing

Current outline, 18 century outline- detail

Map includes Long Island, Thompson Island, Spectacle Island, Gallops Island, Lovells Island, Grape, Calf, Brewster Islands, Deer Island

Bay / Islands

Boston Harbor, 1711

act drawn Survey of Bostone Harbour, with most of the Islands about it, 1711

a scale of 2 inches to a mile: 1 f. 6 in. x 1 f. 2 in. Depicts trees, buildings, the encampment on Noddle Island and ships in Boston Harbour pictorially. fortifications on Castle Island

Drawn on a scale of 2 inches to a mile: 1 f. 6 in. x 1 f. 2 in. Depicts trees, buildings, the encampment on Noddle Island and ships in Boston Harbor pictorially. Shows the fortifications on Castle Island

Future of American Housing

Fort Independence, Boston Harbor, 1870â&#x20AC;&#x201C;1930

Fort Independence is a granite bastion fort that provided harbor defenses for Boston, Massachusetts. Located on Castle Island, Fort Independence is one of the oldest continuously fortified sites of English origin in the United States

Fort Independence. Birdâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s eye view of Fort Independence, in Boston Harbor. 1850.

Boston to Nantasket and Plymouth, 1915

nd Plymouth, 5.

and as urbanization spread, the islandsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; value became increasingly evident

As Boston grew into a prominent port and as urbanization spread, the islandsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; value became increasingly evident

Future of American Housing

“They [Geographic Fictions] project some of hummanity’s present enviromental and political hopes and fears, and while bringing forth these same systems and their attributes as generators of a renewed planetary imagination” Rania Ghosn and El Hadi Jazairy, Geostories: Another Architecture for the Environment, 2018

Bay / Islands

Former Noddle’s Island (now East Boston) The former Noddle’s Island (now East Boston)

Historical re-imagination of the Boston Harbor Islands as the centers of urban ecosystem to perform numerous functions, including fishing economy and cultural devel The former Noddle’s (now East Boston) Island lies immediately to the west of Logan Airport

Historical re-imagination of the Boston Harbor Islands as the centers of urban ecosystem to perform numerous functions, including fishing economy and cultural development. The former Noddle’s (now East Boston) Island lies immediately to the west of Logan Airport

Future of American Housing

lopment.

Bay / Islands

Spectacle Island

n Harbor Islands as the centers of urban ecosystem to perform numerous functions, including fishing economy and cultural development -

Future of American Housing

Thompson Island and Moon Island

oon Island

bor Islands as the centers of urban ecosystem to perform numerous functions, including fishing economy and cultural development

Historical re-imagination of the Boston Harbor Islands as the centers of urban ecosystem to perform numerous functions, including fishing economy and cultural development.

Bay / Islands

The proposition for the Boston Islandsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; biodiversity (ecosystems) development, including the Thompson Island

Spectacle Island

Gall

Long Island

2 2

2 4

3 2

4 1

5 1

3 1

Sandy Beach

Pine Forest

Maritime Cliff

Beach Strand

Salt Marsh

The salt marsh is one of the most important ecosystems. These highly productive biological communities, varying in size from tiny pockets to thousands of acres, are found along the entire coast of Massachusetts.can be viewed as a "machine"transferring food and chemicals back and forth between the productive land systems and the open sea. Five salt marshes currently exist on Thompson Island.

The many plants and animals associated with the Maritime Cliff (Rocky Shore) have adapted to their difficult environment by developing means of firmly attaching themselves to rock. The Maritime Erosional Cliff Comunity of Thompson Island has sparse vegetation on cliffs being actively eroded by the sea.

Spectacle Island has a varied history that included farming, a quarantine hospital, a glue factory, resort hotels and a garbage dump.The site is being returned to the public for recreation as a park is constructed over the landfill. Newly planted deciduous and conifer trees, and meadow grasses.

1.Mussel 2. Cord Grass 3.Blue Crab 4.Smooth Cordgrass 5.Grass Shrimp

1.Irish Moss 2.Blue Mussel 3.Clam 4.Winged Kelp

1.Grass Shrimp 2.Flounder 3.Clam

At the beginning of the American colonial period, Long Island was used and populated by Native American Indians. During the colonial period, the island was granted to Boston then leased and later sold to tenant farmers. In 1928, homeless men were housed in an addition to the former hotel, and in 1941 another addition housed a treatment center for alcoholics. Long Island contains an abundance of cultivated and naturalized plant species,including shade trees and remnants of an apple orchard. The East Head of the island contains an extensive grove of pine 1.Pine Tree 2.Haddock 3.Rhizome 4.Lobster

Historically Boston Harbor Islands can perform more functions, than only the function of the recreation (park) area. They are part of living ecosystem with num climate change resiliance

Historically Boston Harbor Islands can perform more functions than only the function of the recreation (park) area. They are part of living ecosystem with numerous functions and various opportunities, without them urban ecosystem lacks of the natural marine connection which is crucial in terms of climate change resilience. 46

Future of American Housing

e development of connection and transportation Grape, Slate Island

lops Island, Lovells

Brewster Islands, Noddleâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s

Calf, Brewster Islands

1 6

5 1

6 3

Nonsupervised Beach

+ Shrubland

Tidal Marsh

Maritime Shrubland

Asphalt Concrete

Rock Cliff

Gallops Island has a notable collection of ornamental trees, shrubs and herbaceous plants, coniferous trees, stands of lilacs, mock orange, snowberry, and forsythia. These cultivated plants compete with encroaching self-sown sumac, poplar, poison ivy, and bayberry. Non-native plant species are commonly mixed with the typical native beach species.Dunes,rocky beaches, salt spray roses.

Grape Island has Maritime Shrubland community which covers much of southwest side of the island. Although it is currently dominated by Staghorn sumac, the community appears to be succeeding to an aspen-gray birch woodland with many invasive exotic species. The island has an abundance of berries including Blackberry, Dewberry, Raspberry, Blueberry, Huckleberry, and American Elderberry.

1.Sand Piper 2.Flounder 3.Rock Crab 4. Herbaceous Plants 5. Staghorn Sumac 6. Haddock 7. Lobster

1.Birch 2.Staghorn Sumac 3.Rock Crab 4. Flounder 5. American Elderberry 6. Cod

Shrubland of the Calf Island has lack of diversity with few trees is typical of the Staghorn sumac communities of the outer Harbor islands as is its thick undergrowth of non-native grass. In 19 century the island was occupied by a small group of lobster fisherman, who built small wooden shelters on the island. In 1902, P. Cheney and his wife, actress Julia Arthur built two-story summer estate with roofs used to collect rainwater. The last of the estate remains were burned in 1971. 1.Blue Mussel 2.Great Cormorant 3.Smooth Periwinkle 4.Winged Kelp 5.Wild Cherry Tree 6.Lobster

On the contrary, Brewster Islands despite small example of Brackish Tidal Marsh's abundance of non-native species it supports a good diversity of native plants. The former Noddle's (now East Boston) Island lies immediately to the west of Logan Airport,

1.Cod 2.Herbaceous Plants 3.Cord Grass 4.Mussel 5.Beach Rose 6.Gull

merous functions and various opportunities, without them urban ecosystem lacks of the natural marine connection which is crucial in terms of

Bay / Islands

Meteor -3M

Floating wind turbines Substation

Superimposed hou

Electric cable Mooring lines

Future of American Housing

using

Power station

Sea farm

Synergy

Bay / Islands

Future of American Housing

Bay / Islands

Future of American Housing

“In his text of the Geographic (2nd century CE), Ptolemy defined geography as the study of the entire world, but choreography as the study of its smaller parts-provinces, regions, cities, or ports. Its goal was “an impression of a part...” Rania Ghosn and El Hadi Jazairy, Geostories: Another Architecture for the Environment, 2018

Bay / Islands

Grids

Infrastructural Strategies Griffin Linchternfelt, Tia Neal

Future of American Housing

The Bay is taking back Boston. The politics that formed the city are negated by sea-level rise. Boston Bayâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s urban form is tied directly to the management of its synthetic edge built up throughout the cityâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s shipping and transportation history. Early development in Boston adapted to its natural shoreline, however, the Bay was soon filled in as railroad and dam projects inhibited the natural filtration of tidal basins. By way of successive infill projects, Boston increased its land area by 60 percent. Consequently, the effects of climate change and sea-level rise are exacerbated in these manufactured areas. Future urban life in Boston must be lifted above the dangers of sea-level rise caused by global climate change. As there is no higher ground to retreat to, city life must be supported tectonically. Without the reference of existing streets and patterns within the city, new spatial relationships will be determined by the architecture housing it. Democratization of this new public space will be facilitated by the spatial principles laid out in this nation first by Jefferson and by many other planners around the world before him. The uniform grid establishes equal access to resources and democratic platforms. The land is divided and then allocated for different uses. The functions of these commodified parcels interact with each other, enabled by the universal accessibility of the grid. The specificity of use does not apply to the users of these spaces. In this future, occupiable urban space is at a premium requiring conventionally separated programs to merge at the scale of the city.

Bay / Grids

Boston Bay must incorporate the aqueous environment

Future of American Housing

Deer Island Park. 2014. VanDerWerf, Paul. Georges Island & Fort Warren / Boston Harbor Islands. 2019. Thompson Island, Boston harbor. 2008. Searls Doc.

Bay / Grids

Boston Bay must reimagine commons and collectivity

Future of American Housing

Vanderwarker, Peter. City Hall Plaza full of Patriots fans. 2002. Boston Society for Architecture.

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Boston Bay is built on unstable soil

Future of American Housing

Still from Wood Piles: Preserving Bostonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s First Deep Foundations. 2018. Boston Groundwater Trust.

Image: Boston Ground

Bay / Grids

Future of American Housing

Current research provides significant data to suggest the projected sea level growth over the next half-century, imposing a variety of environmental and economic risks to shore-based communities. The Boston Bay is one of the areas at risk from the aforementioned impact. Although the risk is recognized, there is no current systematic approach that prioritizes the development of Architectural systems that satisfy both defensive and growth-oriented goals. Many previous hard engineered defenses of the 20th century have been criticized for being damaging to coastal habitats, unsustainable, and reducing access to water, however, they have also provided protection and reduced the risk of flooding. The Boston Bay requires harbor and shore-based adaptations to secure a stable future for growth and preservation. This design research asks how those adaptations impact local ecological environments, how they impact the perceived image of the local area, as well as how they impact water transportation systems. The research aims to provide a fully realized defensive adaptation that challenges the preconceived role of engineered defensive systems. To defend is to ensure that seawater does not enter the existing built environment, which requires built defenses ensuring the standard of protection will be met in the distant future. The ferry system is instrumental in the opening of the defense barrier attitude. This coastal defense ferry would be a way of monitoring the coast against winds, waves, and tides as well as protecting nearby barrier islands and keeping them active. The outcomes of this research also reinforce the image of the local area to ensure growth in projected tourism, secure and maintain the existing aqueous environment and its planetary relationship and provide a precedent for future systems.

Bay / Grids

Ferry boat transportation throughout harbor barrier islands

Future of American Housing

Bay / Grids

Harbor barrier systems

Future of American Housing

Rising sea level

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Harbor barrier islands

Future of American Housing

Harbor barrier islands

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Integrated flood-wall systems

Future of American Housing

Wave height influence on barrier system

WAVE HEIGHT INFLUENCE ON BARRIER SYSTEMS

Integrated floodwall system that is suitable for contrained areas with opportunity for integration.

Decrease in Wave Heights 7.5ft 6.5ft 5.5ft 4.5ft 3.5ft 2.5ft 1.5ft 0.5ft

N Decrease in wave height with the use of outer harber barrier system introduced. (With flood gates closed)

Scale: 1: 175,000

Decrease in wave height with the use of outer harbor barrier system introduced. (With flood gates closed)

Bay / Grids

Long Island existing condition

Future of American Housing

Peddocks Island exiting conditions

Bay / Grids

Urban form

present Density facilitated by transit + industrial infrastructure

1878 Infill and damming in Back Bay

1839 Development of East + South Boston

1776

Infill projects on Shawmut Peninsula

Future of American Housing

Razing of local hills

Image: https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/hPdEWTdR82OJG2jHX3hu7efYBVg=/1400x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/19726808/GettyIm

Bay / Grids

Projected Risk: Downtown + Waterfront

Projected Risk: Eagle Hill + East Boston 1 : 500

Beacon Hill + Downtown N

1 : 10000

1 : 500

Projected Risk; Downtown + Waterfront Projected Risk; Eagle Hill + East Boston

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Bay

Projected Risk; Back Bay

Bay / Grids

Miletus, 5th century

500

Image: https

Future of American Housing

Back bay

Back Bay

1 : 50

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Urban grids

Urban Grids

1 : 500

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Shipping + Waterfront

1:100

Bay / Grids

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Bay / Grids

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Bay / Grids

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Docks

Housing Typologies Zach Urban, Shelby Adair

Future of American Housing

Working-class labor and the shipping industry in the Bay are bound by the triple-decker. Housing and manufacturing, historically, are seamlessly woven into the city without any buffers shaping an urban environment where living and working push up against one another. The working class owes its vitality to ports and factories while the city likewise owes its economic fortitude to the middle class. As a city built on water, both industrially and geographically, the aqueous relationship between labor and the shipping industry is being dissolved by the new industry as high skill workers are supplanting the immigrant, workingclass population of the triple-decker to accommodate the consequences of the industrial overtaking. The working class is the backbone of Boston, but as factories and ports close and are decommissioned an entire population, the one that built the city, is being laid off and forgotten through this socioeconomic displacement. Labor and industry forge the urban condition, and the triple-decker is the node tying the collective history of the workforce to the ports. However, the politics of the environment minimize frontage and setbacks while maximizing volume under height restrictions constricting a claustrophobic urban environment provoked by the political boundaries of zoning ordinances and urban code.

Bay / Docks

Boston Bay was built by the working class

Future of American Housing

U.S. Navy. The Working Class. 1927. USS Constitution Museum.

Bay / Docks

Boston Bay was built on water

Future of American Housing

Gregory, Albert. USS Constitution docked in Portsmouth Navy Yard. 1858. USS Constitution Museum.

Bay / Docks

Boston Bay is waterfront innovation

Future of American Housing

Carlson, Stephen. Boston Navy Yard Post-World War II. 1960. NavSource Naval History Archive.

Bay / Docks

Luttrell, Aviva. The Boston Triple Decker. 1917. Worchester Historical Museum.

Future of American Housing

Boston was built on piers. When colonists arrived in 1630, much of the land that now makes up Boston did not exist. They settled on the peninsula that then covered less than 800 acres. As the settlement grew so did the peninsula. A large portion of modern-day Boston sits on man-made land, built via landfill and supported by large 30-40ft wood pilings. This new synthetic waterfront is packed with piers and docks that have characterized Boston’s robust shipping industry for decades. Over time, as Boston’s waterfront continued to shift and change, the pier typology has remained a constant of social and economic life. These piers are the model for future urbanization. Public spaces as well as commercial space for businesses and the shipping industry have created a dynamic edge between Boston and the Bay. However, the vast majority of these piers serve a single specific purpose or lay abandoned at the water’s edge. As a city built on and around water, Boston must imagine life with water. As Boston adapts to life with rising sea levels it must learn from these existing pier types and begin to consider the combinations of housing and their existing public amenities. This point of connection between water and the city has to work to enrich the way people live and interact. To do this it must include key features of Boston life and culture, specifically boating. Boating has a huge part to play in Boston’s history and culture but is entirely partial to the upper class. As these new pier typologies evolve to provide housing for the working class it must consider the dynamics of waterfront life and transportation. Boston’s edge is not finite, and it must continue to adapt and change by utilizing its historic and physical roots; its piers.

Bay / Docks

Duplex

Duplex 1 2 3 4 5

Elevated Entrance Single Entry Walk-Up Style Cellar Below Grade Triple Stacked Occupancy

de ccupancy

40’ Height Restriction

40’ Height Restric

15 ’ Duplex Party Wall Below Relocate Flooded Space

Storm Vent to Replace Window

4 2

Flood Compromised Uninhabitable Space

Mininum Required Wetproofing or Infill

2070 Base Flood Elevation Projection 3.2’

’ 5’

Storm Ve

Entrance Below 100 Yr. Flood Guidelines 2100 High Emission Pathway Projection 8.5’ BFE: 8.5’ DFE: 5.2’ BFE: 3.2’

Floo

Duplex 1 2 3 4 5

Elevated Entrance Single Entry Walk-Up Style Cellar Below Grade Triple Stacked Occupancy

1:200

40’ Height Restriction

’

Future of American Housing

Detached Triple Decker

Detached Triple Decker 1 2 3 4 5

ple Decker

Elevated Entrance Single Entry Walk-Up Style Cellar Below Grade Triple Stacked Occupancy

de ccupancy

40’ Height Restric

Relocate Flooded Space

15 ’ 5

Requires Wetproofing or Infill

’ 5’

40’ Height Restriction

Flood Compromised Uninhabitable Space

Temporary Flood Solution

2100 High Emission Pathway Projection 8.5’

2070 Base Flood Elevation Projection 3.2’

BFE: 8.5’ DFE: 5.2’ BFE: 3.2’

Requires Wetpro

Flood Comprom

Detached Triple Decker 1 2 3 4 5

Elevated Entrance Single Entry Walk-Up Style Cellar Below Grade Triple Stacked Occupancy

1:200

40’ Height Restriction

Bay / Docks 15

’

Row House

Duplex 1 2 3 4 5

ance

Elevated Entrance Single Entry Walk-Up Style Cellar Below Grade Triple Stacked Occupancy

de ccupancy

Relocate Flooded Space

15 ’

40’ Height Restric 40’ Height Restriction

Existing Flood Zone Mininum Required Wetproofing or Infill

0 0

Flood Compromised Uninhabitable Space

No Front or Side Setbacks for Height < 40’ and Floor Area Ratio > 2.0

Storm Ve

2 Entry Below Base Flood Elevation

2100 High Emission Pathway Projection 8.5’

BFE: 8.5’ DFE: 5.2’ BFE: 3.2’

2070 Base Flood Elevation Projection 3.2’

Floo

Duplex 1 2 3 4 5

Elevated Entrance Single Entry Walk-Up Style Cellar Below Grade Triple Stacked Occupancy

1:200

40’ Height Restriction

’

100 Future of American Housing

Hybrid Proposition

Detached Triple Decker 1 2 3 4 5

oposition

e Living e Kitchen ng room uple t ouble Bunk

Elevated Entrance Single Entry Walk-Up Style Cellar Below Grade Triple Stacked Occupancy

Memory of Street

Passage Through Dining Space

Public Street

40’ Height Restric

Memory of Balcony

4a 2 1

Semipublic Balcony

Private Bedrooms Public Stair

Semiprivate, Shared Living Amenities

Requires Wetpro

Public Dock

4b 20

Ballast Tank

Flood Comprom

Private Bedrooms

Detached Triple Decker 1 2 3 4 5

Elevated Entrance Single Entry Walk-Up Style Cellar Below Grade Triple Stacked Occupancy

1:200

40’ Height Restriction

Bay / Docks 101 15

’

Triple Decker Characteristics 1 2 3 4 5

Exterior Balcony Single Entrance Walk-Up Style Housing Triple Stacked Occupancy Narrow, Elongated Form

100

1:100

Prototype Collective Memory 1 2 3 4 5

Exterior Balcony Single Entrance Walk-Up Style Housing Triple Stacked Occupancy Narrow, Elongated Form

4 1

4 1 1

Ballast Tanks

100

1:100

102 Future of American Housing

Detached - Ground

Detached - Ground 1 Existing Detached Triple Decker 2 Scenario Proposition 3 Cultural Memory of Ground

ound

Triple Decker on f Ground

3 3 2

Rainwater Cistern 3

3 Ballast Tank 1 Balcony Animating Social Space Between Detached Units

Cultural Memory of Yard and Garden

Roof Shell Rotation Axis

Daylight Access on All Sides

Dissolution of Urban Footprint

Detached - Ground 1 Existing Detached Triple Decker 2 Scenario Proposition 3 Cultural Memory of Ground

1:200

Bay / Docks 103

Duplex - Balcony

Duplex - Balcony 1 Existing Duplex 2 Scenario Proposition 3 Cultural Memory of Balcony

ony

tion of Balcony

Cultural Memory of Balcony Centerline of Closed Form 2

3 2

3 1

Living/Dining Amenities Floor Latched Rotating Walls Affix Duplex Balconies Rotation Axis

Duplex Edge Before Expansion

Duplex - Balcony 1 Existing Duplex 2 Scenario Proposition 3 Cultural Memory of Balcony

1:200

104 Future of American Housing

Row House - Street

Row House - Street 1 Existing Row House 2 Scenario Proposition 3 Cultural Memory of Street

Street

use tion of Street

Sliding Wall Reimagined Public Street Shared Living Space Open to Roof

3 2

1 Existing Row House Public Stairs From Street Submersible Ballast Tank Dry Dock Lifts Home During Flood Closed Balcony Open Balcony

Sliding Steel Panel Protecting Closed Balcony

Row House - Street 1 Existing Row House 2 Scenario Proposition 3 Cultural Memory of Street

1:200

Bay / Docks 105

Housing and Industry

106

107

Pier Taxonomy - Park

108 Future of American Housing

180

300

War HouseWarhouse

240

400

Bay / Docks 109

Street

110 Future of American Housing

240

400

Marina

240

400

Bay / Docks 111

Proposal endant

Proposal ing

150

450

112 Future of American Housing

150

450

r Proposal logical

r Proposal oding

150

450

150

Bay / Docks 113

450

Design Scenarios: Pier Floor Plans

Floor Plan Proposal End

Floor Plan Proposal Along

End Along

114 Future of American Housing

Floor Plan Proposal Above

Above

Bay / Docks 115

Ships

Post-Capital Housing Anthony Murphy

116 Future of American Housing

Boston’s coastline has been expanded out into its harbor continuously since the 17th century. Many of the prominent neighborhoods built on this manufactured land, such as the South End and Back Bay, are now the most susceptible to flooding. Boston’s model of urban development throughout its 400-year existence has been centered around capitalism and the industries on which the city was built. Contemporary issues such as increasing development costs and rapidly changing environmental conditions have brought us to a point where we are having to question Boston’s future relationship with the water. The Climate Ready Boston study conducted by the city government in 2016 suggests that by 2070, around 11,000 buildings will be exposed to frequent flooding. Of those 11,000 buildings, 70% are residential. To combat these issues, government officials in Boston are forced to imagine a new life with water. Within the last decade, increasing awareness has been given to the issues of climate change as they apply to the future of the American city. This new urgency of issues related to rising sea levels imposes the inevitability of change. Paul Kirshen, of UMASS Boston, compares the future of America’s coastal cities to cities such as Venice, Italy, and Wuzhen, China, both of which have adopted unique ways of living with water. Kirshen offers that it is no longer a consideration of “if” but a consideration of “how soon” and “how bad.” Our current understanding of water as a sort of passive force within our daily lives is rapidly changing and needs to be addressed immediately. High-end neighborhoods in Boston are directly threatened by rising sea levels and by the failure of the wood pilings upon which they sit – it is time we invest in a sustainable urban model.

Bay / Ships 117

Boston Bay must reimagine living on water

118 Future of American Housing

Kubitz, Frederick. ‘T’ Wharf Boston Harbor, North Basin with Trawler ‘Ripple’. 1990s. Antiques Collaborative.

Bay / Ships 119

Boston Bay requires harbor-based adaptations

120 Future of American Housing

Mays, Maxwell. View of Old Boston Harbor. 1918. Artnet.

Bay / Ships 121

Boston Bay must invest in social equity

122 Future of American Housing

Laura Lee Zanghetti. Boston Skyline. 2009. Fine Art America.

Bay / Ships 123

Leslie Jones. Boston Harbor - T-Wharf. 1934-1967. Boston Public Library.

124 Future of American Housing

CHARLES RIVER

An Underwater Back Bay

Our current understanding of water as a sort of passive force in our lives is rapidly changing. Bostonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s most prominent neighborhoods are directly threatened and we must begin to re-imagine a new life in which humans coexist with water.

Bay / Ships 125

Global Shipping Network

A broad look at the expansive and dynamic network of aquatic industry.

126 Future of American Housing

State Street Trust Company. Old Shipping Days in Boston. 1918. Archive.org.

Bay / Ships 127

bio â&#x2C6;&#x2122; foul â&#x2C6;&#x2122; ing /bahy-oh-fou-ling/ noun

The gradual accumulation of waterborne organisms (such as bacteria and protozoa) on the surfaces of engineering structures in water that contributes to corrosion of the structures and to a decrease in efficiency

128 Future of American Housing

Laurie Penland. Ian Davidson collecting specimens under the cargo ship. 2014. Smithsonian Magazine. Laurie Penland. Smithsonian divers explore the hull of a large ship. 2014. Smithsonian Magazine.

Bay / Ships 129

Overall Map

130 Future of American Housing

“This is an area where we’re never going to check the box and say we’re fully prepared for climate change and sea-level rise...but the idea is to try and continuously adapt” Brian Swett.

Bay / Ships 131

Port

PORT

HARBOR

OCEAN

DEPLOY

Boston Bay must re-imagine its existing ports

HOUSING

COMMERCIAL + COMMONS

- Affordable housing developments addressing the needs of marginalized populations within society

- Commercial support for the community including stores, restaurants, and health services

- Opportunity to revitalize many of the abandoned port areas that are not being used to their full potential

- Expansive green areas that promote fitness and the overall well being of the community

An interaction with Bostonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s shipping industry through urban development in and around its ports.

132 Future of American Housing

Bay / Ships 133

Harbor

PORT

HARBOR

OCEAN

DEPLOY

The city of Boston requires harbor based adaptations

HOUSING

COMMONS

COMMUNITY

- Affordable housing developments addressing the needs of marginalized populations within society

- Large public spaces dedicated to promoting physical activity and public interaction

- Programs dedicated to serving, educating and rehabilitating those who live in the communities

- Geometry allows for the construction and incorporation of hexagonal components into the development

- Community would have access to the network of walking trails as well as fitness classes and info sessions

- Necessary traditional services such as government and retail

An occupation of Boston Harbor challenges the existing methods and locations of urban expansion within the city.

134 Future of American Housing

Bay / Ships 135

Ocean

PORT

HARBOR

OCEAN

DEPLOY

Boston must invest in aquatic, urban autonomy

HOUSING

COMMUNITY

RESEARCH

- Affordable housing developments addressing the needs of marginalized populations within society

- Programs dedicated to serving, educating and rehabilitating those who live in the communities

- Hexagonal pod allows for views outward and communal space inward

- Necessary traditional services such as government and retail

PRODUCTION - FARMING

- Domed, deployable pods used to regulate shipping traffic coming into Boston and sterilize bottoms of ships to prevent global biofouling - Research programs for preserving and rehabiliting local ecosystems while educating the community

PRODUCTION - ENERGY

- Organically shaped islands dedicated to farming and food production for the community

- Organically shaped islands dedicated to sustainably harvesting energy for the community

- Research regarding the outcomes of traditional versus hydroponic food growth

- The three methods of harvesting include solar, wind, and waves

Fully autonomous communities float in the middle of the ocean, regulating shipping and preventing destruction of native ecosystems.

136 Future of American Housing

Bay / Ships 137

138 Future of American Housing

Bay / Ships 139

BAYOU, n. Houston

The name given (chiefly in the Southern states of North America) to the marshy off-shoots and overflowing of lakes and rivers.

Dreaming of Fallacy

Lindsey Weeber

The American Dream is a failure. The over idealized American Dream is an impossible promise to provide United States residents and migrants with false images of what it means to succeed. It truly was only ever a dream. A dream built on individualism, materialism and the fascination of personal ownership. The American Dream is an image of fallacy. Capital drive design of the Dream benefits white, middle-class Americans. The most iconic symbol of wealth is the single-family home with a white picket fence and a car parked out front. People migrate to the United States with the hope for opportunity, freedom and prosperity, but prejudice and systemic racism play a large role in the deterioration of such a dream. The epitome of success for the American family is intimately tied to singlefamily homeownership. Separate from the rest of society, the suburban lawn becomes an imagined paradise for the Nuclear American family. The Dream promises escape from the city and simultaneously the wilderness— freedom of stress, confinement, and the unknown. Americans dreamt of constructing the perfect society and with this came an overwhelming obsession with wealth. The chase for The American Dream suppresses restless populations through the fabricated belief that if 142 Future of American Housing

we work hard, we can build a better future for not only ourselves but our children. The Dream, however, does not acknowledge vulnerable populations. Low-income housing residences are zoned for the most vulnerable locations, placing those who need the most help in unsafe environments, completely rendering the Dream as a fantasy. Discrimination grew along with the suburbs as the American idealized place became fictionalized. The Dream is fueled by lack of individuality, false ideologies of work ethic, and the racial boundaries constructed by the suburbs. The dream of individualism is dead. A failed attempt at individuality resulted in the homogenous housing typology that makes up the suburbs today. What was once a dream for originality has turned into a lack of. Tim Burton critiques this “copycat development” in Edward Scissorhands. Each family owns the exact same house and car, but has a different monochromatic color assigned to it. Cars pull out of the driveway and return at the exact same time of day—a characterization to further emphasize the similarities of socalled individual routine and lifestyle among suburbanites. Identity and image from postwar America rely on imitation towards an American

Standard. Our ability to create a typology and copy it side by side one another was an appealing and faster approach to homebuilding, making it the most profitable and efficient way for Americans to realize their dreams of a single-family home. Our strive for imitation resulted in our obsession with consumerism. Imitation became a way to display our wealth and contribute to a competitive standard with our neighbors. In terms of housing and property it became a race of who could do it better. Over time as generations passed down their wealth, the magnitude of our homes and cars grew, and size became an important aspect in the image of wealth. We are under the impression that if oneâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s neighbor has it, we must also have it. Keith Krumwiede projects the culturally constructed American imitative qualities in his essay As the American Dream Dies, We Must Rethink Our Communities. Krumwiede writes: For Americans are the most quickly imitative people in the world; and when their imitativeness has a standard to copy, which makes an appeal to their sense of excellence, good effects follow with astonishing rapidity. Single-family home design was originally for individual expression through a supposed

aesthetic choice. The suburbs have suppressed freedom within the plan. Our home design fixates on the standard nuclear family, and the floor plans reject different types of family structures. This design has furthered us from a multigenerational lifestyle through the architecture of the single-family home. We design our lives around these developed floor plans, not the other way around. Imitation has limited our design typology and as a result shaped our family dynamic. Our individuality deteriorates as we conform to the single-family, suburban lifestyle. As the suburbs began to grow, people felt the need to retreat from the â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;crimeâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; and the fear of density. The suburbs promised safer communities, better schools and more space between each other. Moving to the suburbs also sparked growth in consumer economy as people began to buy cars and the newest home items. As America was rising out of the Great Depression this economic boom was seen as a positive and only further encouraged the transformation of living. The style of our homes is a response to this fantasy. The Bungalow house is one of the most popular single-family home styles and can be seen throughout Houston, Southern California, and many other locations in the U.S. Dreaming of Fallacy 143

The Bungalow house reinforces the notion that the single-family home has become a place of relaxation through the development of the front porch. The front porch is an in-between space that connects the private and public realms of living. The front porch and white picket fence have shaped the photo identity of The American Dream. The suburbs have begun to adopt their own architecture styles, but each development with look-a-like houses lined up next to each other. The front porch, lawn, and leisure social spaces contribute to the relaxing and simple build that reiterates the fantasy of a singlefamily homes. To live in a stand-alone home and look across the street to a mirrored elevation has become our utopia. Single-family homes, unlike multifamily housing, create pockets of space between residences that become our lawns. The manicured lawn has become a factitious representation of the inhabitants of these homes as we hide our personality behind the front doors. The single-family home is not exempt from the competitive nature that capitalism constructs. Out attempt to be unique quickly turned into a race of production and competition between neighbors to imitate one another. Our housing has become a direct response to American consumption culture as we constantly seek satisfaction through consumption of products. This ideology has further led to the analogous and bland housing styles that fill our suburbs. These inhabitable trophies only further represent our human nature to conform and in no way exhibit the premises of the so-called ‘American Dream’. We have been dreaming for our right to housing. The dream has instilled in us that shelter is a derivative of our work ethic. “The dream fixates on the opportunity for each person to work towards their own ideal wealth in society.” Owning a home is one of the most important and sought-after parts of the dream, but it is not attainable for everyone. The most significant fallacy of the dream is the belief in equal opportunity. The inequalities and prejudice within the United States prevent many Americans from being able to reach the Dream of homeownership. The American Dream relies on so much more than owning a home. Homeownership requires access to higher education, a well-paying job, and an exemplary credit score with little room for error. Due to inflation and the price of living 144 Future of American Housing

rising, minimum wage is not enough to even provide Americans with their minimum needs. We advertise life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, but we do not provide shelter. We have turned the necessity of housing into a dream. The American ideology is that you must work hard to receive the right to housing, but even our idea of what it means to work hard is misconstrued. It is more about working the right way than it is about work ethic. Not only has the Dream standardized our image, but it has also standardized the means in which we obtain that image. Immigrants must conform their routine, work ethic, and simply their time to fit the American standard in pursuit of the Dream. The Dream contradicts itself through the assumption that we are all striving for uniformity. The suburbs were built on racist motives. The overwhelming desire for each family owns a single-family home escalated after World War II. America’s first suburb was built in Levittown, New York by William Levitt. Levitt sought to build homes that were quick affordable, and simple. Prior to Levittown the American Dream was a slow process. Not only did one need to have enough money to buy a home, but the design of homes was not a quick development. Levitt treated the process of home-building like an assembly line. This process made housing more affordable and accessible for veterans after World War II due to the GI Bill. The design of the suburbs is segregated. In William Levitt’s claim to construct affordable housing for all he contributed to the systemic racism that is still prevalent in our society. Black Americans were barred from living in Levittown. Levitt stated that “it is not a matter of prejudice, but one of business.” Levitt knew that if Black Americans moved into Levittown that White Americans would not. The Dream was designed for white people and those who strived to fit the American Standard. It is a Dream that was advertised to the world as a place to better one’s life and take advantage of all the opportunities that the US had to offer, but that is a myth. The suburbs are political. They are a production of the racial and socioeconomic inequality in the United States. The government facilitated suburban growth for white families. In the essay, “Marketing the Free Market” by David Freund he discusses the initiatives taken by the government to further

segregation and inequality with the suburbs, while: Paradoxically, the state helped popularize the myth that its policies did not facilitate suburban growth and did not contribute to new metropolitan patterns of inequality. Instead it insisted that â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;free marketâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; forces alone were responsible for the gulf â&#x20AC;&#x201C; economic and increasingly, spatial- that separated the nations haves from its have-nots.

gaze of our property lines and look towards equity in housing, community engagement, and freedom from competition will we then be able to shape the Future of American Housing.

Freund continues to express the debt that the suburbs owe to the federal government. The Federal Housing Administration played a role in the American Dream becoming a reality for many Americans, but its racial biases made this dream a fiction for minorities. The dream was made specifically to hinder minorities from being able to reach the same economic class level as white Americans. White Americans were given more support in achieving the American Dream, therefore there was never an equal opportunity. The American Dream is something that we must continuously critique. While it set out to promise equal opportunity for every American, it does not uphold those values, and this can be examined through the suburban lifestyle. The fallacy of dreaming contributes to the inadequacy we feel when we cannot accomplish these dreams. While some dream of one day having a lawn, front porch, and a mini-van, others dream of shelter. We can no longer ignore the housing crisis in the United States and disguise it with a suburban utopia. The single-family home is excess, and its development only left us wanting more. While the dream of the suburbs may never die, we must look at ways we can re-build our suburbs with a higher degree of community engagement and begin to provide housing for all. Our needs for shelter should not be something we merely dream about, but it should be a reality. We must confront this fallacy and begin to prioritize our needs and the needs of others over our desires and lust of capital dreams. As we develop denser and more affordable housing typologies, we can look towards the implications of the singlefamily home and what was once so attractive about them. The dream can only be redesigned when we learn what it really means to be a good neighbor. When we begin to look beyond the Dreaming of Fallacy 145

Wilderness Regional Watershed Alex Casar

146 Future of American Housing

The history of Houston’s settlement and its urbanization has the power to destroy the Buffalo Bayou as an ecology and a culture. This work looks into the histories and narratives that threaten Houston, ambiguous and unseen behind criticism of the Bayou’s uncontrollable nature. Under the authority of industrial growth and free-market Capitalism, the built realm in Houston has invaded. Government agencies like the Port of Houston and the Harris County Flood Control District have been put in place to manufacture ways to control the Bayou and its surrounding banks. Since, topographically it is such a large flat area, the floods that occur in this region have always provoked the porosity of the geography to shift the line between water and land. The world can observe the damage that the floods in these areas bring to Houston residents, but not the damages that the city is continuously inflicting on the Bayou’s topography and species. By understanding the forces that have created and misused Houston, man must accept that it cannot colonize and exist in every ecology without inhibiting that ecology’s natural mechanisms. Having considered Houston’s problematic past and present, this work also proposes a future in which the Buffalo Bayou survives. The majority of what is man-made atop of these coastal prairies and wetlands must now be unmade by men to allow for the ecosystem to regenerate itself and manage water flow like it has for the past 18,000 years.

Bayou / Wilderness 147

Buffalo Bayou is natural heritage and lifestyle

148 Future of American Housing

Swimming in Buffalo Bayou. c. 1990. The George Fuermann Texas and Houston Collection, University of Houston.

Bayou / Wilderness 149

Buffalo Bayou exacerbates urban fragmentation

150 Future of American Housing

Birdâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Eye View of the City of Houston Texas. 1873. Harris County Archives.

Bayou / Wilderness 151

Buffalo Bayou sustains the industrial economy

152 Future of American Housing

Painting. 1937. Emma Richardson Cherry.

Bayou / Wilderness 153

Buffalo Bayou 29.767895N 95.825756W

40’

30’

20’

10’

95° W

50’

40’

30’

20’

10’

30°

30° N

50’

40’

30’

20’

40’

30’

Buffalo Bayou 29.767895°N 95.825756°W

154 Future of American Housing

20’

10’

95°

50’

40’

30’

20’

10’

HCFCD Floof Control Strategies

- Label and Annotatians-

Dump truck and excavator at work on the north bank of Buffalo Bayou. November 3, 2016. Jim Olive. Dump truck and excavator at work on the north bank of Buffalo Bayou in Terry Hershey Park on Nov. 3, 2016. Photo by Jim Olive

Bayou / Wilderness 155

Kรถppen Geigler Climate Classification for COH

Cfa Main Climate: warm temperate Precipitation: fully humid Temperature: hot summer

Kรถppen Geigler Climate Classification for COH

156 Future of American Housing

Buffalo Bayou Species

Live Oak

+ 105 ft

Otters and Nutrias Terry Harshey Park

Cedar Alligator Snapping Turtle Briar Bend

Alligator Gar Briar Bend

Bluestem Grass

Night and Great Heron Memorial Park

Smartweed

Coral Snakes Smooth Water Hyssop

Buffalo Bayou Park

N + 20 ft

Buffalo Bayou Species

2.8 mi

8.4 mi

14 mi

Bayou / Wilderness 157

Historical Postcard of buffalo Bayou

- Label and Annotatians-

“Long Reach - Buffalo Bayou, near Houston, Texas.” (1908) Special Collections, University of "Long Reach - Buffalo Bayou, near Houston, Texas.." (1908) Special Collections, University of Houston Libraries: https://hdl.handle.net/1911/36949. Houston Libraries.

158 Future of American Housing

“…To understand our crisis, our case, the explosion we are in. To achieve this, we should not remain close to the explosion, for we will be blinded. We should step back and try to see from far out, to look at the cities we live in from the distance, in the proper scale and time, with open eyes.” Constantinos A. Doxiadis, The Two Headed Eagle, 2005

Bayou / Wilderness 159

Buffalo Bayou Watershed + HCFCD Major Project Sites / Capital and Maintenance projects COH Impervious Surfaces and Population Density / Neighborhoods of interest for densification

160 Future of American Housing

Failing HCFCD Project Strategies / Ongoing Project: W100-00-00-X068 (Buffalo Bayou Park) Buffalo Bayou Neighborhoods for Densification

Bayou / Wilderness 161

Retreat + Recenter

Reintroduced Prairie Land Densified Area Fourth Ward, Downtown, Midtown

+ 30 ft Sea Level

Chicot Aquifer (- 400 ft)

Downtown Houston Scenario

162 Future of American Housing

City of Houston 1913

1913

- Label and Annotatians-

Harris Co., Texas. B. J. Dreesen, Draftsman, 1913 | http://www.harriscountyarchives.com/Research/Municipal-Map-Collection

Harris Co., Texas. B. J. Dreesen, Draftsman, 1913 http://www.harriscountyarchives.com/Research/Municipal-Map-Collection

Bayou / Wilderness 163

Retreat + Recenter

164 Future of American Housing

Bayou / Wilderness 165

Retreat + Recenter

Reintroduced Prairie Land

Densified Area Greater Uptown

+ 50 ft Sea Level

Chicot Aquifer (- 400 ft)

ter

Memorial Park Scenario

166 Future of American Housing

City of Houston 1907

Houston 1907

- Label and Annotatians-

Stewart Abstract & Title Company, 1907

| http://www.harriscountyarchives.com/Research/Municipal-Map-Collection

Stewart Abstract & Title Company, 1907 http://www.harriscountyarchives.com/Research/Municipal-Map-Collection

Bayou / Wilderness 167

Retreat + Recenter

168 Future of American Housing

Bayou / Wilderness 169

Retreat + Recenter

Densified Area Briar Forest

Reintroduced Prairie Land

+ 90 ft

Sea Level

Chicot Aquifer (- 400 ft)

Addicks + Barker Scenario

170 Future of American Housing

City of Houston 1890

n 1890

- Label and Annotatians-

Records of Harris County by Porter, Pollard & Ruby, 1890 | http://www.harriscountyarchives.com/Research/Municipal-Map-Collection

Records of Harris County by Porter, Pollard & Ruby, 1890 http://www.harriscountyarchives.com/Research/Municipal-Map-Collection

Bayou / Wilderness 171

Retreat + Recenter

172 Future of American Housing

Bayou / Wilderness 173

Current Footprint

JP Morgan Chase Tower

Calpine Corporation Market Square Apartments

Platinum Parking Lot

Lyric Tower Offices Houston Ballet

Jones Hall for the Performing Arts Alley Theatre

Jones Plaza

Wortham Theater Center

Bayou Place Shopping Mall

rban Density | Current Footprint

Urban Density

174 Future of American Housing

Mid-Density Housing

Storage Units Kroger Supermarket Commercial Businesses

Townhomes

Single Family Homes

Flood Risk Homes

Urban Agriculture | Current Footprint

500 - Year Floodplain 100 - Year Floodplain Floodway

Stonehenge Townhomes

GSM Marketing Consultant IHS Information Services

SYSCO Corporation SBM Oil & Gas Company

Urban Wilderness | Current

Urban Agriculture Urban Wilderness

Bayou / Wilderness 175

Future Footprint

Affordable Housing

JP Morgan Chase Tower

Affordable Housing

Market Square Apartments

Affordable Housing

Lyric Tower Offices

Jones Hall for the Performing Arts Alley Theatre

Public Market

Park Space in Flood Zone Reintroduced Flora

rban Density | Future Footprint

Urban Density

176 Future of American Housing

Affordable Housing

Produce Processing Facility

Affordable Housing

Public Market

Hammersmith Townhomes

Polycultural Crops

Farm Townhomes

Reintroduced Wetlands

Urban Agriculture | Future Footprint

Urban Agriculture Urban Wilderness

Bayou / Wilderness 177

Urban Density - Sample Blocks

Corporate Offices

Affordable Housing

Rent = 30% of Salary

4 Star Hotel

.006 mi block 250 residents

.006 mi block 500 residents

Low Density

Urban Density | Sample Block

178 Future of American Housing

Medium

m Density

Office Building Affordable Housing

Rent = 30% of Salary

Affordable Housing

Rent = 30% of Salary

Community Center Parking Garage

.006 mi block 1,000 residents

High Density

Bayou / Wilderness 179

Urban Agriculture - Sample Systems

180 Future of American Housing

Bayou / Wilderness 181

Urban Wilderness - Sample Lands

182 Future of American Housing

Bayou / Wilderness 183

Fictions

Housing Typologies Lindsey Weeber, Abigail Loftis

184 Future of American Housing

Houston was built on the bungalow. Bungalow style housing contributes to Houstonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s culture by providing a shared outdoor space that makes up a neighborhood. The most attractive feature which drew Houstonians to sprawl throughout the city was the open front porch and amenities that a neighborhood provides. The bungalow house is comprised of a front porch, pier and beam foundation, front and back yards, and a division between social and resting space within the household. The bungalow promotes neighborly interactions and draws its residents outside of the house with the front porch and sidewalks that connect each other. The pier and beam foundation raise the bungalow off the ground 2030 inches to allow a buffer for flood-prone areas. With climate change becoming a more pressing issue this raise is not enough and homes need to adapt to the changing water level in Houston, especially during natural disasters. Also, single-family homes must stop being built because of the amount of land usage and the infrastructure that is needed to connect such a large city. The social aspects of the bungalow must be integrated into denser housing typologies to preserve the culture of Houston while also considering the impact of the Bayou. These denser housing typologies will also offer public community space to further engage and connect neighbors. Each housing group will provide a different type of community gathering space to avoid redundancy and allowing for communication between different groups through the use of their public space. These housing communities will be connected in a spine-like structure along the Bayou and the structures will be able to adapt to the changing water levels during floods while providing the neighborhood experience to affordable housing.

Bayou / Fictions 185

Buffalo Bayou housing embodies the American Dream

186 Future of American Housing

The Rise of the Suburbs. Post war America Levitown. 1950. Mark Mathosian flickr.

Bayou / Fictions 187

Buffalo Bayouâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s image is constructed by the bungalow

188 Future of American Housing

American Dream Housing. Post-war America Homeownership. 1965. Curbed.

Bayou / Fictions 189

Buffalo Bayou residents are marginalized by economic profits

190 Future of American Housing

Mark Mulligan. Houston Chronicle. 2017.

Bayou / Fictions 191

Bungalow. What is a Craftsman Bungalow? 2019.

192 Future of American Housing

Houston has contributed to the economic disparity of its residence by ignoring the volatile nature of Buffalo Bayou. Historically, the city economically, politically, and culturally revolves around the Bayou. While this allows certain sectors of the city to thrive, many of the residents surrounding the Bayou have been marginalized due to a focus on economic growth. The residences available to the Voucher and Low-Rent Public Housing Programs do not meet the rising demand for homes as residents are pushed out of their neighborhoods due to gentrification and rising property costs. New housing projects are often placed within flood and reservoir zones along the Bayou to limit the cost of development. The impact of the Bayou can be viewed by examining three case studies that give insight into affordable housing, government-subsidized housing, and middle-class housing developments in at-risk areas. Through a thorough examination of these communities, Houston needs to contextualize affordable housing as a communal resource to uplift its residence. These developments can be retrofitted into co-housing communities to introduce service programs such as daycares and neighborhood farms; giving residence access to necessary resources, job opportunities as well as creating a shift in community culture. By retrofitting existing developments and building additional communities, designers in Houston can partner with non-profit groups to use the Bayou to advance social impact as well as reduce future, unpredictable, environmental impact. This model can alter the current perception of affordable housing while creating sustainable communities that take advantage of the Bayouâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s resources.

Bayou / Fictions 193

Edward Scissorhands. Imaginative Suburbs. 1990. Tim Burton.

194 Future of American Housing

Neighbors

Bayou / Fictions 195

Across the Street

196 Future of American Housing

Suburban Neighborhood

Bayou / Fictions 197

Branching

198 Future of American Housing

Bayou / Fictions 199

Perimeter

200 Future of American Housing

Bayou / Fictions 201

Striated

202 Future of American Housing

Bayou / Fictions 203

Centralized

204 Future of American Housing

Bayou / Fictions 205

Reading Community

100

Reading Community

Library

Park

Mail

Front Porch

100

Prioritizes passive and leisure activities such as reading and provides a shared front porch that lies along the Bayou. Mail becomes a shared space which will increase the routines of individuals to promote higher interactions among neighbors.

206 Future of American Housing

Garden Community

Bridged Neighborhood

100

Bridged Neighborhood

Front Porch

Mail

Garden

Library

Community access to a garden while also still giving residents access to a shared front porch that lies along the Bayou. Provides both passive and productive activities.

Bayou / Fictions 207

Recreation Community

Sport Court

Boat Docks

Mail Pool

100

This community promotes active amenities and connects back to the Bayou through aquatic activities such as boat docks and a pool.

208 Future of American Housing

100

Market Community

Homegrown

100

Homegrown

Mail

Market

Garden

100

This is a productive community that provides a â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;front lawn/ garden space for each dwelling and has a market that stretches over the Bayou to allow for residents and visitors to be able to benefit and provide for one another.

Bayou / Fictions 209

Bungalow

100

210 Future of American Housing

Community access to a garden while also still giving residents access to a shared front porch that lies along the Bayou. Provides both passive and productive activities.

Bayou / Fictions 211

Floor-plan Type

One-Bedroom

m edroom Three-Bedroom

212 Future of American Housing

137 20

2013

“Examining the degree of spatial sorting by socioeconomic status – a dominant social structural influence of social interaction more generally (Hipp and Perrin 2009) – in the daily routines of residents is a necessary step in understanding the mechanisms through which segregation affects access to resources and life outcomes.” Browning 7

Bayou / Fictions 213

Flooded homes near Lake Houston. 2017. Getty Images.

214 Future of American Housing

Middle Class Ranch Style Two Story Duplex Shotgun

Bayou / Fictions 215

Bungalow

Bungalow Neighborhood

10 10

216 Future of American Housing

Scott Olson. 2017. Getty Images

Bayou / Fictions 217

Kashmere Gardens Twin Lakes

Kashmere Gardens is north of Buffalo Bayou and is flanked to the west by Interstate 69. This development had the largest number of flooded homes during Hurricane Harvey. The majority of the neighborhood is low income and affordable housing. Twin Lakes lies within Barkers Reservoir. The development is constructed adjacent to government land and was sold to residents without the knowledge of potential flooding due to the reservoir. 218 Future of American Housing

Clayton Homes

Clayton Homes is a development on the East side of Houston, enveloped by the Buffalo Bayou and Interstate 69. A large portion of the development resides within the floodplains of the Bayou.

Bayou / Fictions 219

Communal Living Site Plan

220 Future of American Housing

Bayou / Fictions 221

Agencies

Infrastructural Strategies Sara Chafi, Patty Davis, Daniel Rojas Fernandez

222 Future of American Housing

Houston is a city that has witnessed continuous growth along the Buffalo Bayou since its founding in 1837. The city’s historical settlement repeatedly points to a predominant attraction; the single-family homes found along the Bayou. The absence of zoning regulations and a freemarket approach to growth, has created a peculiar yet locally grounded pattern concerning urban development. Houston’s heterogeneity goes beyond physical infrastructural relationships. Presence of dangerous oil refineries or chemical plants are often found only feet away from homes, obstructing the quality of suburban neighborhoods. The fragmentation manifests itself administratively as well. Regulation of storm-water drainage systems is dependent upon which agency, Federal, State, or local municipality, regulates that portion of the infrastructure. This interferes with safe flood mitigation practices, should flooding occur. Houston experienced three 500-year floods between 2015 and 2017, after which many residents are still trying to recover. Inadequate flood mapping resulted in only 17% of homes required to have flood insurance. Many uninsured homes were not eligible or denied FEMA assistance, leaving these financially fragile households struggling. Houston’s competence depends on the city’s ability to allocate responsibilities appropriately to the overlapping government agencies. The city’s urban fabric serves as a physical reminder of the failed regulation that has led to growing socioeconomic disparity. An imbalance exists at multiple levels, evident of Houston’s unbiased allocation of resources and opportunities to its residents. Buffalo Bayou works with the land by adapting to its new environment to live cohesively within its surroundings. Excessive agency must adapt as well to protect communities which live along the banks of Buffalo Bayou.

Bayou / Agencies 223

Buffalo Bayou impacts surrounding communities

224 Future of American Housing

LIFE Picture Coll. Housing Project Houston. 1946. Dmitri Kessel.

Bayou / Agencies 225

Buffalo Bayouâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s heterogeneous agencies cause disparity

226 Future of American Housing

Aerial view of the Valero Houston Refinery. 2017. Adrees Latif/Reuters.

Bayou / Agencies 227

Buffalo Bayou distributes resources unfairly

228 Future of American Housing

Child playing in Hartman Park while smoke billows from Valeroâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s refinery. 2018. Julianne Crawford

Bayou / Agencies 229

Back at my window, the palimpsest of a new city flaunts its hypertextuality in black and light; its mental map of diverse subjectivities rarely operates while one is on foot, a predicament that hints at the possibility of a new visibility, a new field with emergent, unexpected mega-shapes newly apprehensible but only at vastly different scales of motion.â&#x20AC;&#x2122; Stim & Dross, Lars Lerup, 1995

230 Future of American Housing

Aftermath of Hurricane Harvey. 2017. Brett Coomer / Houston Chronicals.

Bayou / Agencies 231

Urban Footprint Along the Buffalo Bayou

232 Future of American Housing

Bayou / Agencies 233

Urban Footprint Along the Buffalo Bayou

234 Future of American Housing

Bayou / Agencies 235

Urban Footprint Along the Buffalo Bayou Urban Footprint Along the Buffalo Bayou

High-Density Living High Rise Condominiums

Located mostly Downtown Expensive; Not accessible to the majority Lower levels can be mixed-use

Single Detached Units Single Family Homes

Multi-Family Units

Mid Rise Condominiums

Cover Most affordable units Demand for multi-family units the highest it has ever been Found in Historic Districts

Single Family Homes Townhomes Mid or High Rise

236 Future of American Housing

Closes

Highe

Dense

Single Family Attached Units Typically rented out Townhomes Scattered near suburban neighborhoods

st proximity to Bayou

est number of housing units

rs the largest ground surface

est in terms of number of Houses/Land

Single Family Homes Townhomes Mid or High Rise

Bayou / Agencies 237

Commerce with vested interest in flood mitigation, headquartered in Houston, Texas.

238 Future of American Housing

Home Construction by Decade (Near Buffalo Bayou)

2500

Housing Units

2000

1500 1000 500

0 1939 or Earlier

1940 - 1949

1950 - 1959

1960 - 1969

1970 - 1979

1980 - 1989

1990 - 1999

2000 - 2009

2010

Decade

Home Construction by Decade

Bayou / Agencies 239

Taxonomy on housing Typologies

Taxonomy on Housing Typologies // Divided in 3 Categories:

Single Family Homes: They are detached from any other house, they offer more privacy and tend to have a garage. The size and number of rooms can vary depending on affordability and the occupantsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; financial situation. This is the most common type of home found in Houston, TX.

Townhouses: Townhouses can be thought of as a step up in size from a condo, the building tends to have one or more shared walls with the neighboring inhabitants. They are usually a couple floors and the amenties are sometimes divided in that fashion.

Condominiums: They are described as a number of units that make up a whole building. Depending on the region and neighborhood the floors may vary and that is what differentiate it from a mid-rise to a high-rise. Prices can also be at both extremes depending on how luxurious the building is.

Single Family Homes

Townhouses

Mid-rise/High-rise Condominiums

240 Future of American Housing

Home Construction by Decade

Home Construction by Decade Residential Growth around Buffalo Bayou

1940 - 1949

1939 or Earlier

Built: 171 Homes Total: 171 Homes

1950 - 1959

Built: 807 Homes

Built: 2,209 Homes

Total: 978 Homes

Total: 3,187 Homes

KEY: Existing from past decade

Addition during new decade

Bayou / Agencies 241

â&#x20AC;&#x153;Incredible scenes of inequality emerge. Some communities have been expressly designed with separation in mind, and some have grown more or less organically.â&#x20AC;? Johnny Miller, Project Unequal Scenes

242 Future of American Housing

David J Phillip. 2019. Shutterstock.

Bayou / Agencies 243

Town-home Analysis: Distinct Qualities

244 Future of American Housing

Bayou / Agencies 245

Buffalo Bayou Metro Rail Paved Roads

Downtown Houston, TX Infrastructure

246 Future of American Housing

Parks Waterlines Utilities Stormdrains

Buffalo Bayou

Sixth Ward Historic District Houston, TX Infrastructure

Sixth Ward Historic District Paved Roads Parks Stormdrains

Bayou / Agencies 247

Renewable Energy along the Bayou

The lack of zoning in Houston allows for a real opportunity to reshape the way industries and communities position themselves. Investing in renewable energy can generate architectural spaces that allows implementing sustainable infrastructures at the heart of the city. Rethinking the cityâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s urban fabric will largely benefit economic activity, conserve natural resources which will reduce environmental impact, and most importantly this will promote an improved way of life for the concerned communities. The Bayouâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s infrastructure will no longer be viewed as a threat but rather a safe space for clean production and recreation.

Clean energ

Maintain existing units & create affordable housing alternatives

Create public spa

gy production

ace for recreational use

which will reduce environmental impact, and most importantly this will promote an improved way of life for the concerned communities. The Bayouâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s infrastructure will no longer be viewed as a threat but rather a safe space for clean production and recreation.

Bayou / Agencies 249

Industry-Related Infrastructure Vs Residential

250 Future of American Housing

Bayou / Agencies 251

Houston Map of Impacted Areas

Galen

Pleasantville

Greater East End

Manchester / Harrisburg

Rethinking production in industrial zones in a way that promotes recreational space for the neighboring communities. The ability to maintain economic profit and improve social and cultural aspects along the Buffalo Bayou.

252 Future of American Housing

na Park

Greens Port

Blackwell Deer Park Lincoln Place

Bayou / Agencies 253

Existing Fragmentation

Beverly Court Neighborhood

254 Future of American Housing

Manchester / Harrisburg Neighborhood

Bayou / Agencies 255

Industrial and Residential Coexist

Texas is the nationâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s biggest wind energy generator, producing nearly 20 percent of the stateâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s electricity needs. However, very little of it is produced in city centers.

256 Future of American Housing

Clean Energy Production / Impact

Houston currently buys 92% of its power from wind and solar energy and ranks the highest in the U.S. in renewable energy use. However, the cityâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s commitment is poorly represented since most of that energy is bought from solar and wind plants hundreds miles away.

Bayou / Agencies 257

BEACH, n. Miami

The shore of the sea, on which the waves break, the strand; spec. the part of the shore lying between high- and low-watermark. Also applied to the shore of a lake or large river. In Geology an ancient seamargin.

Artificial Paradise Katie Warren

It’s June 12, 1913. Two hundred automobiles drown out the sound of applause as they clatter and clamber across the world’s longest wooden bridge for the very first time. Exhibiting pure enthusiasm for the journey rather than the destination, these motorists, along with four hundred pedestrians and bicyclists, make their way across the bridge—a bridge leading to nowhere. As they reach the end, voyagers jump out of their vehicles, turn the automobiles around by hand, and begin their trip back to the mainland. There are no roads on the island and there is nowhere else to go. The Collins Bridge spans Biscayne Bay, connecting Miami to the barrier island that will quickly become the highly desirable, tourist-rich economy of Miami Beach. In the following decades, Miami Beach is built up from a mangrove-covered barrier sand bar into America’s top vacation destination. Carl Fisher is the man who built it. When he first visited Biscayne Bay in the early twentieth century, Fisher found a half-finished wooden bridge, an offshore-swamp, and John Collins, a washedup tycoon who had run out of money to finish his project. Fisher jumped in, financing the 260 Future of American Housing

bridge in exchange for two hundred acres of the swamp. He was supposed to be on vacation with his wife. When Jane Fisher learned of her husband’s new business deal, she was not impressed. She recalls the first time Carl brought her to the island: Creatures that made me shudder were lying in wait on the branches of overhanging trees. The jungle was as hot and steamy as a conservatory. The mosquitoes were biting every exposed inch of me. ‘What on earth could Carl see in such a place?’ I wondered as I picked my way through the morass in my white shoes. I refused to find any charm in this deserted strip of land. But Carl was like a man seeing visions. He picked up a stick, and when we reached the clean sand, he began to draw a plan. I know now that he was seeing Miami Beach, in its entirety, rising from that swamp. Miami Beach started as a 1,600-acre sandbar three miles out in the Atlantic Ocean. Carl Fisher borrowed from the surrounding landscapes to transform his own. He hired hundreds of workers to build retaining walls, pump in sand from the bottom of Biscayne Bay,

ship in topsoil from the Everglades, and plant the flowers and palm trees that would transform a swamp into a tropical paradise. By 1939, the island covered 2,800 acres. Today it covers 4,880. This is not a natural landscape. Carl Fisher developed Miami Beach as a playground for the mid-western American elite. He would make it easy for them to get there. A few years after his deal with Collins, Fisher built the Dixie Highway, which stretched from Indianapolis right to the foot of their bridge. When the new millionaires still showed little interest in his swamp, Fisher attracted them however he could. This King of Gimmicks imported culture from around the world in the form of an English polo team and Venetian gondolas. He offered to give away land to whoever would build a mansion on it. He published hundreds of photographs of bathing beauties in tight-fitting swimsuits. He hired Rosie the elephant to hold a tee in her trunk as men golfed from atop her back. “I’m going to get a million dollars’ worth of advertising out of this elephant,” he said, predicting that northern newspapers couldn’t resist publishing his outrageous photographs. They couldn’t.

Before long, the mid-western millionaires could no longer resist visiting Miami Beach. They had to see this place for themselves. Author Helen Muir described Miami Beach as “magnificent nonsense” and the image still fits. Although the island’s culture has ebbed and flowed over time, the themes of international glamour, luxury, beauty, and leisure still define it today. Miami Beach offers a “nature-lite” experience. It is a highly urbanized spit of sand, but it is nestled among wildlife refuges, national and regional parks, and other protected natural areas. The island’s cultural fixtures take their names from the wild spaces that surround them, but they don’t directly connect with that wildness. Today you can swim at the Flamingo Park Pool; in the 1930s you may have lounged at the Everglades Cabana Club. This juxtaposition between synthetic and natural is intrinsic to the character of Miami Beach. The synthetic of Miami Beach is found in its luxury tourism, fashion, international glamour, Art Deco history, and modern architecture. But even in the most synthetic corners of Miami Beach—the clubs, the shopping districts, the Artificial Paradise 261

art museums—palm trees sway overhead. The natural is omnipresent. The natural in Miami Beach can be understood as the altering dunes, beach, and ocean. But its natural history has been consumed by the synthetic, and for most of us, the dunes are little more than a thoroughfare between the white sand and the urban fabric. Even in the most synthetic places, we find the natural, and in the most natural places, we find the synthetic—palm trees planted in the synthetic downtown and dredging along the socalled natural beach. The balance between the natural and the synthetic is constantly changing, and so is the Miami Beach landscape. Carl Fisher’s transformation of the island was astounding, but climate change may present even greater challenges. Global wind and water patterns erode and transform the lands that border them, causing quick shifts in sandy soils found in Miami Beach. And yet, repeated tropical storms and hurricanes amplify these effects. Miami Beach is extremely susceptible to sea-level rise and officially declared a climate emergency in 2019. Experts predict that sea levels in southeast Florida will rise six to ten inches in the next ten years and up to five feet by the end of the century. Miami Beach averages just four feet above sea level. Do we stay? Do we continue to live on Carl Fisher’s artificial island? And if we do, what does life look like on Miami Beach in the second half of the 21st century? The authors of Pamphlet Architecture 36 write, “The choice to stay is born of responsibility, desire, and commitment to preservation—of self and place. Someday, staying will mean floating. While people may be able to inhabit the same position on the earth, their relationship to water will have to be reconfigured.” This is an interesting thought because Miami Beach is physically threatened by climate change. The features that make it desirable, such as its low elevation and expansive coastline, also make it vulnerable. But Miami Beach may be culturally resilient to climate change. The subtle tension between synthetic and natural that has defined its history may help to build its future. Carl Fisher decided to repackage, repurpose, and sell a swamp as a tropical paradise. If it is going to have a future, Miami Beach will have to transform again. In the short term, we may be able to “shore up” 262 Future of American Housing

Miami Beach with elevated streets, architectural redevelopment, and raised foundations. Pipes, pumps, culverts, and canals can channel water. But these are not long-term solutions. Longterm, the water cannot be stopped. Four feet of sea-level rise—levels predicted before the end of the century—leave very little of Miami Beach above water. Miami Beach’s porous limestone bedrock makes holding back rising waters impossible because even if they don’t flow over the sand from the beach, they will seep up through the ground. Miami Beach must learn to live directly with the nature it has lived next to all along. Author Jim Shepard wrote, “There’s always that moment in a country’s history when it becomes obvious the earth is less manageable than previously thought.” Miami Beach is at that moment. Its future requires managing water, but also managing urbanism. Years of engineered solutions have changed ecosystems, altered landmasses, kept out the water, and led us to believe we could control these natural systems. Now, the water is coming. Although it will be wetter, Miami Beach’s future may not be thematically different from its past. By drawing on its history of constant, literal, physical change and embracing its cultural image as a mix of the synthetic and the natural, Miami Beach may live on.

Mia2you, Shutterstock.

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Drifts

Regional Watershed Katie Warren, Davis Millard

264 Future of American Housing

Miami Beach is an impermanent barrier island on the southeast corner of the Florida peninsula. It is highly urbanized, but its cultural image borrows ideas from the wild spaces that surround it. A juxtaposition between synthetic and natural is intrinsic to the character of the city. Miami Beach’s synthetic impermanence began with the development of the early 1900s. Carl Fisher used sand from Biscayne Bay and topsoil from the Everglades to make the island habitable. It grew from a 1,600-acre mangrove swamp to the 4,880-acre city it is today. This is not a natural landscape, but part of the island’s impermanence is natural. Miami Beach is constantly shaped by water and wind. Natural changes lead to even further synthetic, active, artificial intervention in the form of dredging, reformation, and beach restoration. Miami Beach is physically threatened by climate change. It’s low-lying elevation (averaging 4 ft. above sea level) and porous limestone “bedrock” mean rising seas will quickly flood the island. But Miami Beach may be culturally resilient to climate change. The subtle tension between synthetic and natural that has defined its history may help build its future. Climate change is forcing us to naturalize a synthetic urban condition. Miami Beach must find ways to live among and around the sand and water that will infiltrate the city. Miami Beach’s future is not thematically different from its past. By drawing on its history of constant, literal, physical change and embracing its cultural image as a mix of the synthetic and the natural, Miami Beach may live on.

Beach / Drifts 265

Miami Beach is impermanent

266 Future of American Housing

Matias J. Ocner. Beach restoration near 65th Collins Avenue. 2018. Miami Herald.

Beach / Drifts 267

Miami Beach emerged from a synthetic fantasy

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Vintage photograph of Carl Fisherâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s elephant advertising. Date unknown. Mr. Miami Beach.

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Miami Beach is constantly shaped by water and wind

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Hurricane Irma hitting Miami Beach, Florida, USA. 2017. EFE News Agency.

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st. Curt Teich & Co., 1937. https://www.kathyspostcardemporium.com (June 2020).

Thomas R. West. Vintage Postcard. 1937. Curt Teich & Co.

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Atlantic Ocean Detail

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MiamiScapes. https://www.miamiscapes.com/miami-snorkeling.html (June 2020).

Everglades from 200,000 feet

Google Earth Pro (June 2020).

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Karla Utting. Birds of Holbox. Smithsonian Magazine, August 1, 2010. Photo of the Day. https://www.pinterest.com/pin/189291990560257460/ (June 2020).

Biscayne Bay from 20,000 feet

Daniel Di Palma. Miami Beach - Sand Dunes Flora - Green Plants and Bushes in South Beach. Wikimedia, February 2, 2017. https://commons. wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Miami_Beach_-_Sand_Dunes_Flora_-_Green_Plants_and_Bushes_02.jpg (June 2020).

Miami Beach beach from 2,000 feet

“Do we want to stabilize biophysical conditions that are actually unstable?” Rosetta Elkin. “Imagining Retreat”. Future of the American City. Podcast audio, June 27, 2019.

Beach / Drifts 275

Rand McNally and Company. Florida. Chicago: Rand McNally, 1889. David Rumsey Historical MapCollection. https://www.davidrumsey.com/ (June 2020). National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. 11013 Atlantic Ocean Straits of Florida and Approaches. NOAA Office of Coast Survey. https://charts.noaa.gov/ (June 2020).

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Mark J. Davis, dir. Mr. Miami Beach. 1998. PBS “American Experience.” https://vimeo.com/225482432.

Vintage photograph of the unfinished Collins Bridge. Date unknown. Mr. Miami Beach.

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Global Pattern of Wind and Water

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â&#x20AC;&#x153;The choice to stay is born of responsibility, desire, and commitment to preservation - of self and of place. Someday, staying will mean floating. While people may be able to inhabit the same position on the earth, their relationship to water will have to be reconfigured.â&#x20AC;? Christopher Meyer, Daniel Hemmendinger, and Shawna Meyer. Buoyant Clarity: Pamphlet Architecture 36. New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2018.

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The Ocean Reclaims Miami Beach

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Miami Beach: 4 feet of sea level rise

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Miami Beach: 2 feet of sea level rise

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Miami Beach: 4 feet of sea level rise

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Buoyant Neighborhoods

Miami Beach: 2 feet of sea level rise

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Miami Beach: 4 feet of sea level rise

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Miami Beach Drifts

Phase one Phase two

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Phase three

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Miami Beach: 2 feet of sea level rise

Buoyant Neighborhoods

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Power Generation Type A

Power Generation Type B

Water

Industrial

Mangrove Swamp Forest

Cropland/Productive Landscape

Park/Leisure Landscape

Native Meadow/Dunescape

Community/Commercial

Housing Units Type A

School/Recreation

Housing Units Type B

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North Beach Area

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Biscayne Bay Area

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South Beach, 5th Street: Low South Beach, 5th Street: Medium

South Beach, 5th Street: Low

0 100

300

500

The above map shows a “low” sand dune integration into South Beach, with a focus on shoring up the existing beach dunes and extending them inside the urban facade.

N 1:2,500

South Beach, 5th Street: Medium

0 100

300

500

The above map shows a “medium” sand dune integration into South Beach, with a focus on integrating sand dunes as a viable infrastructure in the city, becoming one with it.

N 1:2,500

The above map shows a “low” sand dune integration into South Beach, with a focus on shoring up the existing beach dunes and extending them inside the urban facade. The above map shows a “medium” sand dune integration into South Beach, with a focus on integrating sand dunes as a viable infrastructure in the city, becoming one with it. 294 Future of American Housing

South Beach, 5th Street: High

ach, 5th Street: High

500

hows a “high” sand dune integration into South Beach, this ned beach front with an exaggerated sand dune height.

The above map shows a “high” sand dune integration into South Beach, this shows a re-imagined beach front with an exaggerated sand dune height.

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Pre-Existing Beach

Proposition

we see the existing beach, flat and devoid of natural vegetation, the age height above see level is only four feet, leaving the whole of mi beach prone to flooding and sea level rise.

Here we see the existing beach, flat and devoid of natural vegetation, the average height above see level is only four feet, leaving the whole of Miami beach prone to flooding and sea level rise.

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1:50

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Co-Habitation

street scape could look like at Miami beach, two g sand dunes and the sand dunes supporting

ght look like with more than one layer of sand the built environment and how life inside could

This shows what a new street scape could look like at Miami beach, two large resorts supporting sand dunes and the sand dunes supporting their own ecosystems. What a street scape might look like with more than one layer of sand dunes implemented into the built environment and how life inside could be.

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Dunes as Park

re is providing a new playscape for leisure, adding the beach and the urban fabric while increasing

ccupants, the dune ecosystem is entirely natural, ation nature takes over. It is not exaggerated as rows with the tide and time.

The dune infrastructure is providing a new play-scape for leisure, adding another layer between the beach and the urban fabric while increasing resiliency. There are no human occupants, the dune ecosystem is entirely natural, without human occupation nature takes over. It is not exaggerated as the dune shrinks and grows with the tide and time. Beach / Dunes 299

Impact on Insured

Miami beach’s residents who’s astructural strategies will not be lting from these strategies.

Based on current insurance policies, Miami beach’s residents who’s buildings are not adapted to new infrastructural strategies will not be compensated for the consequences resulting from these strategies. The oceanfront resort is engulfed by the new sand dune, adding to the strength of the dune, while the resort must adapt to a new way of existing.

he new sand dune, adding to the t must adapt to a new way of

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Un-Cultivating

nimum human cultivation, the to provide access to the beach to

Flora is allowed to flourish with minimum human cultivation, the cultivation that does take place is only to provide access to the beach to continue tourism.

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Desires

Housing Typologies Joan Dalton, Kailey Olbrich, Chia Omotosho

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Miami Beach is an artificial façade. Through cultural imaginaries, Miami Beach projects a façade of desirability. Images of luxury and extravagance portray a sub-tropical paradise for the wealthy. By observing housing typologies, we study the relationship between culture, image, and environment. From its founding, Miami Beach sought to create an image of desirability appealing as a playground for affluent tourists. As the city grew, booms in population brought new housing types to the beach. The mixture of these typologies carries an iconic representation of diversity in Miami Beach. However, as cycles of decay and revitalization have reshaped Miami Beach, housing diversity has diminished. The façade of exaggerated wealth has transcended into housing. Preservation efforts have saved Miami Beach’s aesthetically valued architecture styles, but archetypes that responded to the beach’s climate have disappeared from the landscape. As Miami Beach faces tidal flooding and rising sea levels, the existence of housing is threatened. This dilemma creates an opportunity. Existing properties will be replaced by new housing typologies that respond to the demands of the environment and exist in water. On the urban scale, Miami Beach can take advantage of rebuilding the city to adapt to rising waters. The key to Miami Beach’s highest priced and most desired properties with a view. Zoning to give widespread access to spectacular light-filled, water views can be achieved by gradually staggering building height limits from lowest on the island’s perimeter to highest for interior properties. New housing typologies can both adapt to the climate and provide accessibility to Miami Beach’s desired façade.

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Miami Beach is a faรงade of desirability

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The FaĂ§ade of Miami Beach

Label and Annotations

Images of Desirability

Photo, Back Deck of 75â&#x20AC;&#x2122; Lazzara LSX Yacht from Prime Luxury Rentals, Miami. 2020.

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Miami Beach fosters disparity

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Letâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Roam Miami, FL 2020

Colombo, Matteo. Photo, Aerial of Ocean Drive. Architectural Digest, 2020.

Beach / Desires 307

Miami Beach is inaccessible

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The Faรงade of Miami Beach

Ritz Carlton Miami Beach Print Ad. Source: https://lgdcom.com/clients/the-ritz-carlton-residences-miami-beach/

Cultural Imaginaries

Lissoni, Piero. Print Advertisement, The Ritz-Carlton Residences Miami Beach. 2016.

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Colombo, Matteo. Photo, Aerial of Ocean Drive and Miami Downtown at Dusk. Getty Images, 2020.

310 Future of American Housing

Miami Beach needs to utilize available land. The socioeconomic issue of affordability of housing has hit Miami Beach hard primarily due to the abundance of tourism increasing the cost of living, driving the impoverished away. This disparity between high and low-income housing caters to the wealthy, creating an ideal spot for affluent vacationers but not one for those with lower incomes. Affluent individuals who travel to Miami Beach are drawn to the luxurious condos with sensational views of the beach, upscale shopping centers, renowned spas, diverse food and culture as well as the nightlife of the clubs and bars. Among these popular spots, numerous vacant and underutilized lots hold vast potential to those seeking to develop increased affordable housing in the area. To address the issue of affordability, the City of Miami Beach is looking to implement new strategies as part of a master plan, such as rehabilitating existing buildings and constructing thousands of new units every ten years. However, these strategies will not be enough to deliver a long-term and practical solution to the issue. The real concern is the overlooking of neglected public areas by local governments, including available land with the potential to offer new social and living spaces. The city needs to address these smaller, underutilized lots, as many of them could benefit from the introduction of new affordable housing and public amenities. The creation of these public amenities will help introduce varied social spaces to these undesirable areas. Spaces like community gardens, parks/playgrounds, public markets, entertainment space, daycare centers, and transportation services will encourage a renewed sense of community that was not previously there. This will become the foundation for new affordable housing in Miami Beach.

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Lot Vacancy

Total Available Area: 4,395,992 Sq. Ft. N

Available vacant lots of varying sizes dispersed throughout Miami Beach that can be used to build more small businesses as well as more affordable housing.

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North Beach

Eighty Seven Par

N 0

100

300

500

Housing Density Sample of North Beach

Cultural Imaginaries Contrasted

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Beach

Mid-Century Modern Elevation, North Beach

i Beach Housing Typology

ury Modern

odern

HOTEL

Waterside Hotel, 7310 Harding Avenue, 33141

Mid Century Modern Elevation, North Beach Waterside Hotel, 7310 Harding Avenue, 33141

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Diversity of Housing

Miami Beach Housing Typologies

Mission Style Bungalow

Bahamian/Conch House

Art Deco

Mediterranean Revival

Mid-Century Modern

Diversity of Housing

Beach / Desires 315

North Beach

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Mid Beach

Luxury Condominiums and Private Beaches. Source: https://www.miamipropertiesandparadise.com/mid-beach-condos-for-sale?active=171&page=5&page_171=6

Photo, Luxury Condominiums and Private Beaches, Mid Beach.

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Mid Beach

Publically Available Land

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1,875

3,75

ng Typologies

Paskal, Kirk. Photo, Waterside Hotel, North Beach. 2018.

Waterside Hotel in North Miami Beach. Photos by Kirk Paskal, unless otherwise noted Source: https://www.1stdibs.com/blogs/the-study/miami-modern-mimo-architecture/

ern (MiMo)

Beach / Desires 319

South Beach

Publically Available Land

320 Future of American Housing

1,875

The Faรงade of Miami Beach

Images of Desirability

Fontainebleau Hotel Pools. Source: https://www.fontainebleau.com

Photo, Fontainebleau Hotel Pool, Miami Beach. 2019.

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Typologies of Underutilized Land Typologies of Underultized Land

Small Green Space (residential)

Large Green Space (residential)

Abandoned Green along the Beach

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Wide Parking Lot

Narrow Parking Lot

Vacant Green in the city

Green Space (outskirts)

1,250

2,500

5,000

Beach / Desires 323

Typologies of Underutilized Land Typologies of Underultized Land

Corner Green (Residential)

Corner Lot (city)

Abandoned Lots

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Empty Lots near Highway

Along the Coast

Between Condos

Parking Garages

1,250

2,500

5,000

Beach / Desires 325

Narrow Parking Lot Elevation

7135 Harding Ave, Miami Beach, FL Elevation

1623 Meridian Ave., Miami Beach, FL Elevation

Vacant Green (city) Elevation Narrow Parking Lot Elevation

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62.5

125

250

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Mid Beach

Mediterranean Revival Elevation, 4465 Meridian Avenue, Mid Beach

South Beach

Mediterranean Revival House

Art Deco Elevation. 1200 Collins Avenue, South Beach

North Beach

Art Deco Architecture

Mid-Century Modern Elevation, North Beach

Mid Beach South Beach North Beach Mid-Century Modern

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North Beach

Mid-Century Modern Elevation, North Beach

North Beach

Mid-Century Modern

Mid-Century Modern Elevation, 4351 Post Avenue, 33140

Miami Beach Housing Typology

Mid-Century Modern

H O T E L

Waterside Hotel, 7310 Harding Avenue, 33141

Miami Modern

North Beach North Beach Miami Beach Housing Typologies

Beach / Desires 329

References

Albert Pope, “It’s Time to Vacate the 100-year Floodplain,” Houston Chronicle, September 24, 2017. https://www. houstonchronicle.com/opinion/outlook/article/It-stime-to-vacate-the-100-year-floodplain-12224946.php Anuradha Mathur and Dilip daCunha, Mississippi Floods (Yale University Press, 2001). Bill McKibben, “How Extreme Weather is Shrinking the Planet,” The New Yorker (2018). https://www.newyorker. com/magazine/2018/11/26/how-extreme-weather-isshrinking-the-planet Blakemore, Erin. “How the GI Bill’s Promise Was Denied to a Million Black WWII Veterans,” in History, June 21, 2019. https://www.history.com/news/gi-bill-black-wwii-veterans-benefits. Burton, Tim. Edward Scissorhands. DVD. United States: Twentieth Century Fox, 1990. Carol Burns, “Housing: Raise High the Roof Dreams,” Boston Society of Architects, Sept. 1, 2017. https://www. architects.org/stories/second-look-1-1 Christopher Meyer, Daniel Hemmendinger, and Shawna Meyer, Pamphlet Architecture 36: Buoyant Clarity (Princeton: Princeton Architectural Press, 2018). Daniel Ibanez, Clare Lyster, Charles Waldheim, Mason White, Third Coast Atlas: Prelude to a Plan (Actar, 2017). Davis, Mark J., dir. Mr. Miami Beach. 1998. PBS “American Experience.” https://vimeo.com/225482432. Debord, Guy. “Chapter 3: Unity and Division Within Appearances.” Essay. In The Society of the Spectacle, 24. Black & Red, 1967. Eisenman, Peter, and Aldo Rossi. The Architecture of the City. MIT Press, 1982. Elkin, Rosetta. “Imagining Retreat.” Future of the American City. Podcast audio. Accessed June 27, 2019. Jeffrey S. Nesbit, LANDYards: Speculations of Inactive Navy Shipyards (University of North Carolina at Charlotte, 2017). Kate Orff and Richard Misrach, Petrochemical America (New York: Aperture Books,2014). Krumwiede, Keith. “As the American Dream Dies, We Must Rethink Our Communities,” in The Architect’s Newspaper, December 29, 2017. https://www.archpaper.com/2017/04/american-dream-keith-krumwiede/. Kruse, Kevin Michael, Thomas J. Sugrue, and David M Freund. “Marketing the Free Market,” in The New Suburban History. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006, 11–30. Krumwiede, Keith. An Atlas of Another America: an Architectural Fiction. Zürich: Park Books, 2016. Learning, Lumen. “US History II (American Yawp).” Accessed August 1, 2020. https://courses.lumenlearning.com/ ushistory2ay/chapter/the-rise-of-suburbs-2/. Lewis, Ann-Eliza H., and Brona G. Simon. Highway to the Past: The Archaeology of Boston’s Big Dig. William Francis Galvin, 2001. 330

Lydia Kallipoliti, “Zoom In, Zoom Out,” At the Border, e-flux Architecture, April 29, 2020.https://www.e-flux.com/ architecture/at-the-border/325754/zoom-in-zoom-out/ Luedtke, Barbara E. The Archeology of Thompson Island. Boston: Anthropology Faculty Publication Series (14), 1996. Meyer, Christopher, Daniel Hemmendinger, and Shawna Meyer. Buoyant Clarity: Pamphlet Architecture 36. New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2018. Neeraj Bhatia, Maya Przybylski, Lola Sheppard, and Mason White, Pamphlet Architecture 30: Coupling, Strategies for Infrastructural Opportunism (Princeton: Princeton Architectural Press, 2011). Neeraj Bhatia, New Investigations in Collective Form (Barcelona: Actar, 2019). Nina-Marie Lister and Chris Reed, Projective Ecologies (Barcelona: Actar, 2013). Rosetta Elkin and Jesse Keenan, “Retreat or Rebuild: Exploring Geographic Retreat in Humanitarian Practices in Coastal Communities,” W. Leal Filho, (ed) Climate Change Impacts and Adaptation Strategies for Coastal Communities (Switzerland: Springer International Publishing, 2018). Sauer, Carl O. “Chapter 17.” Essay. In The Morphology of Landscape, 303-43. University of California at Berkeley Press, 1925. Schneiderman, Matt. “William Levitt: The King of Suburbia - The Real Deal,” in The Real Deal New York, April 30, 2008. https://therealdeal.com/issues_articles/william-levitt-the-king-of-suburbia/. Stan Allen, “Infrastructural Urbanism”, in Points + Lines: Diagrams and Projects for the City (Princeton: Princeton Architectural Press, 1999). Shepard, Jim, qtd. in Jeff Goodell. The Water Will Come: Rising Seas, Sinking Cities, and the Remaking of the Civilized World. United States. Little, Brown. 2017 The Boston Foundation, and J. Cedric Woods. “Native Americans in Massachusetts: New Homecomings and Ongoing Displacements.” Essay. In Changing Faces of Greater Boston, 41–48. Boston Indicators, 2019. Unified Sea Level Rise Projection for Southeast Florida (Sea Level Rise Work Group, 2015). Welsh, Nancy H. (2018). “Racially Restrictive Covenants in the United States: A Call to Action,” Agora Journal of Urban Planning and Design, 130-142. Zezima, Katie. “Banned in Boston: American Indians, but Only for 329 Years.” The New York Times. Nov. 25, 2004.

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Future of American Housing investigates the role of climate change as it relates to providing alternative design strategies for housing and its impact on the public realm. This abbreviated summer design research studio investigates the natural environment and its future challenges faced amongst contemporary issues surrounding climate change, social equity, and affordable housing in the United States. As a design research studio, the work attempts to build upon the rising discourse centered around two primary challenges in the contemporary American city: the politics of environment and the economics of housing. Therefore, Future of American Housing reorients the traditional architecture design studio to one situated between research and scenario planning for a better and more equitable future. Reviewers and Advisors: Jose GamĂŠz, Derek Hoeferlin, Cesar Lopez, Joshua Nason, Mercedes Peralta, Samir Shah, Julia Smachylo, Antje Steinmuller, Alex Wall, and Peter Wong