EX URBAN TRANSFORMATIONS: RE DESIGNING AN AGING SUBURB
Volume I: Analysis ARC_307-2018 SYRACUSE ARCHITECTURE
Assoc. Prof. Lawrence Davis
ARC_307 Fall 2018 School of Architecture Syracuse University Ex Urban Transformations: ReDesigning and Aging Suburb Volume I : Analysis Lawrence Davis Assoc. Professor
Students: Abad, Katrina S. Crean, Dylan De Gracia, Patrick Doherty, Erin Doshi, Dhvani Ketan Gomes, Akanksha Hu, Fei Kwak, Daniel Lei, Kun Marroun, Bader Mclaughlin, Luca F. Michell, Stephanie Neumann, Kyle A. Ocejo Vivanco, Julia Young, Eryn B.
Editor: Lawrence Davis Editorial Assistants: Mitesh Dixit Special Thanks: Micahel Speaks, Dean Julia Czerniak, Assoc. Dean Publisher: TBD Copyright ©2019 Lawrence Davis & Syracuse Architecture Design: Lawrence Davis + DOMAIN Office Print: TBD Paper: TBD Type: Minion Pro ISSN 0000-000 ISBN 000-0-000000-00-0 soa.syr.edu
Contents
Introduction
Lawrence Davis
Group 1
Katrina Abad Erin Doherty Dhvani Doshi
Group 2
Dylan Crean Stephanie Michell Julia Ocejo
Group 3
Akanksha Gomes Kyle Neumann Eryn Young
Group 4
Fei Hu Chris (Kun) Lei Morroun Bader
Group 5
Joshua de Garcia Luca McLaughlin
F o r w a r d
Since their beginning all cities and other built environments have gone through generational transformation. This is natural and ultimately healthy, but never easy. Like much of the United States and Canada, its exurban environment is at the beginning of such a change. Nearly indiscernible that it is filled with potential but also controversial in social, economic and environmental terms. In the fall of 2018 in the School of Architecture of Syracuse University a third year studio made attempts to speculate on the spatial and urban implications of subtle changes occurring in postwar exurbia. Mattydale, New York, a traditional inner ring aging working class suburb of Syracuse, was offered to students as laboratory to investigate the domestic and civic design possibilities to be found in the transformation of such a community. Built along the region’s principal north-south road and near, now closed, manufacturing plants, Mattydale is a similar less systematically produced version of Levittown, Long Island, Maryvale, Arizona or Parma, Ohio. In the fall of 2018, according to Zillow.com over 50% of the homes for sale are in foreclosure or pre-foreclosure. While stressful in many ways for current residents this soft financial environment is not unique in the long arc of a city’s history and provides opportunity to reconsider the town’s future. Mattydale, and other older postwar communities offer exiting utility infrastructure, proximity to urban centers, airports, mass transit and highway networks. Students initially worked in groups to investigate Mattydale’s history, territorial relationships, postwar housing typologies and current zoning and related spatial practices. These same student groups also examined a set of innovative exurban projects by MVRDV, xyz abc,. These became reference points and inspiration to think in original ways about the future of exurbia. Finally the groups developed five basic strategic themes that most used as starting points for their individual designs in the second half of the semester. In the group and later individual design phases students were challenged to rethink a typical 300 foot by 400 foot block of Mattydale. They were to consider a new mix of programs, physical, functional and social densities and the development of “public-ness” in a diffuse and typically private built environment. Over half of the students did not grow-up in an exurban environment. This lent fresh eyes to a world that is taken for granted by both champions and critics of “the ‘burbs.” This also may explain the formidable range of solutions that emerged from the set of young and diverse students. Perhaps the most common quality of the schemes was an investment in developing the center of their block into some
sort of shared space. Community centers, small retail, gathering and even religious programs were salted into the core of blocks to enhance collective purpose and identity. This congestion of function and newly inserted public life cuts across the conventional private and exclusively residential use of space in North American exurb. In many cases this flipped the front-back relationship of existing houses and encouraged the student designers to consider increasing density and complicating the programs of individual residential units, their lots and the functional and material treatment of the surfaces that interconnect them. Though no scheme attempted this, one imagines putting this public center on the edge of a block might engage it with multiple blocks in ways that would trigger rethinking of common functions, space and construction as they all thread their way through the entire neighborhood. Ultimately the student schemes suggest a way forward for designing a future for this common but pregnant existing built resource that is scattered across the periphery of the metropolitan areas of North America. More abstractly and pedagogically for the students and other who reflect on the definition of the city ad what is urban, (or not), the Mattydale Studio offers a chance to understand urbanity by developing it from what is not yet urban suggesting that strategically and in many modes, the future of the mono functional and programmatically segregated exurb is in the introduction of new shared functions, the reconsideration of space between buildings and the modification of nature as ingredient of public life. (discuss nature as an element that crossed culture and will continue to be a part of the identity of this type of less physical dense urban development.)
Students: Abad, Katrina S. Crean, Dylan De Gracia, Patrick Doherty, Erin Doshi, Dhvani Ketan Gomes, Akanksha Hu, Fei Kwak, Daniel Lei, Kun Marroun, Bader Mclaughlin, Luca F. Michell, Stephanie Neumann, Kyle A. Ocejo Vivanco, Julia Young, Eryn B.
ARC_307 Fall 2018 Ex Urban Transformations: ReDesigning an Aging Suburb Volume I: Analysis Lawrence Davis Assoc. Professor School of Architecture Syracuse University