PORTFOLIO
“A society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they know they will never sit� -Greek Proverb
28 Lefferts Place #3F Brooklyn, NY 11238 816.752.3188 elmahoney11@gmail.com
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professor lee skabelund & huston gibson | May 2011 My master’s report on the St. Roch neighborhood in New Orleans, LA came as a response to the explosion of vacant lots after Hurricane Katrina. It was a practical approach to redevelop these vacant lots into greenspaces that restore the local ecological processes and develop a sense of self sufďŹ ciency through local food production. The end product was a collaborative process that was broken down into three phases; a planning phase, construction phase, and maintenance phase. In each phase the community at large held some authority or role in moving the project.
https://krex.k-state.edu/dspace/handle/2097/9161
ALPHA: A COLLABORATIVE DESIGN PROCESS The goal of the report was to develop a collaborative process that would involve the community throughout a project’s lifespan. Designers would be more visible in the public to develop a stronger relationship with the community. By decentralizing the design responsibilities, there is more opportunity for residents to develop their own schemes and programs. By giving the community more responsibility, they achieve a sense of stewardship and fulďŹ llment. S The
collaborative process was developed to involve and integrate all parties in a project, and allow them to be more visible to one another. The designer will orchestra and focus the discussion as needed to
ER NIZ A G OR
RS RS IDE UTO C B E I R D NT CO S SOR STS N O SP NALY A
S OR T A ILIT FAC
RS LDE RS EHOOLDE K A H ST KE ING STA ECTCTED TEAMAMS F F A FFE IGN TE ERS ENT E ES OR RCH D AB EA NM L ES s OVER R GO Y G N IT C
DE SIG
ND EC ISIO
N
SH AR DE ED V LIB ISI ER O N AT IO N & SIT
EV ISIT
&E
XP
LO RA T IO N
CO NC EP TIO NO F ID EA
The diagram illustrates the collaboration and interaction between the parties and community groups that are involved in a project’s initial phases. In the same way that ecosystems initially begin to respond after a shock or change in state, this process is designed to react and adapt to shocks and changes throughout the social and built environment in the St. Roch neighborhood. This phase is the initial development, design, and planning process for a
given project’s lifespan. Throughout this phase community organizers, non-profits, and the public come together through the guidance of design professionals to bring their schemes to life. There is an active community engagement process that allows these projects to be made public through workshops, charrettes, site visits, and art installations. The idea is to transition the leadership responsibilities from professionals to the public. These projects are typically small in scale and can be implemented rapidly. Through this process, the public slowly becomes self sufficient in their creative process, and develop a momentum that allows the community to have control over their environment and truly 9 develop their sense of place.
Site selection
Hydrology Suitability
Soil Suitability
Social Composite
ALPHA: A COLLABORATIVE DESIGN PROCESS Site selection is a big part of the collaborative process. Sites can be selected on high visibility to other community assets, and their program needs. For instance, wetlands were selected on water needs, soil quality, and vegetation. The three diagrams to the left show the analysis for each
of the previous categories mentioned. There should be highly visible elements put on each site. Shade structures and fences can be used to show that the site is owned by the community, and should be treated as such to promote safety.
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BUILDING PLACES TOGETHER Constructing these sites provides a real life learning lab to educate the community members of the St. Roch neighborhood. The labor is broken up into three work forces; professional construction crews who will aid in the heavy construction and education, workforce development teams that are searching for job skills, and public volunteers who aid in small tasks. Throughout the process of construction there will be opportunities for public volunteers to participate, learn, and
invest in their community, Workforce teams will be given speciďŹ c projects assigned to their requested job skills to be learned. In this way, the sites can be an example of construction in the
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Community gardens
VEGETABLE PLOTS COMMUNITY IDENTITY
SHADE STRUCTURES
MARKETPLACE
RAIN GARDENS 15
Wetlands URBAN FOREST RESTORATION
BOARDWALK
FLEXIBLE GREENSPACE
NATIVE WETLAND RESTORATION
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Team member: Violet whitney | april 2013 The Apiary is a collaborative nursery operated entirely by residents of the city, so they might foster stewardship and ownership in what the city becomes. Participation is encouraged through fun elements such as merry-go-rounds and hand pumps, which operate like a Rube Goldberg Machine to care for the nursery’s plants.
top 15 finalist FOR THE SIXTY NINE SEVENTY URBAN IDEAS COMPETITION http://www.sixtynineseventy.com/urban-ideas-competition
The apiary The Apiary seeks to revitalize Salt Lake City through this idea of working collectively towards a common goal. By introducing a collaborative nursery operated entirely by the citizens of the city, residents become active participants in what the city becomes. Visitors ďŹ nd appreciation of this venerable morale of stewardship on an intimate level through active participation. Through its implementation, propagation, and ongoing maintenance and production, the Apiary will foster a new sense of stewardship in Salt Lake City.
BLOCKS SIXTY-NINE SEVENTY
WIDEN PEDESTRIAN SPACE
PRESERVE CULTURAL ELEMENTS
RECONNECT THEM
WITH VERTICAL GARDENS
CONCEPTUAL SKETCH
CREATE IDENTITY
SITE PLAN
The Apiary be completely operated by the people and visitors of Salt Lake City, rather than hired hands. The goal is to incorporate maintenance and operation in such a way that any visitor to the site will be encouraged to participate in the procurement and propagation of The Apiary’s plants. By mechanizing this process, visitors explore The Apiary as a Rube Goldberg machine, playing with inputs whose outputs help care for the plants. From this open interaction, all users who come to the site will have an invested interest in Salt Lake City, and will be encouraged to return. The Apiary is malleable by all types and sizes of groups. An office employee can tend his sapling till it grows to a mighty tree, a family can plant a group of wildflowers that will be transplanted to their neighborhood, and even an entire class from Washington elementary can develop an tire grouping of plants that will help restore habitat areas around the city. Goldberg Machine to care for the nursery’s plants.
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Main St. gardens The production spaces feed into Main Street, which acts as market space for the nursery, but also for other local venders. The amount of vehicular circulation is minimized to a single lane way with no parking. This creates a more vibrant streetscape for pedestrians, rather than the automobile. In this way, more interaction between the retailers and pedestrians can occur, restaurants can have more spacious outdoor seating, and the theaters will have more ample spillover space before and after shows. Main Street will regain its traditional Main Street appeal again. The collaborative experience continues throughout Main Street as well. Amid the hexagonal structure there are projectors that exhibit ideas, questions, images, that anyone can text to exhibit their ambitions and concerns. The apiary becomes a more vibrant space that exposes real time information and issues from anyone passing by allowing the question of what Salt Lake City becomes to be constantly evolving by its participants.
Apiary systems The alleys, vacant lot and open spaces of 69 70 will be the main production areas for the nursery. Mechanical water pumps will shower various vast areas of vertical gardens, creating a sense of curiosity in the visitor. Merry-go-rounds are attached to gears which slowly
rotate the vertical gardens, allowing all plants to reach sunlight and allowing plants to be moved and maintained on the ground plane. All of these mechanics harvest kinetic energy for use in the outdoor furniture.
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kinetic elements
water pump
overhead structure
vertical gardens
merry-go-round attached to vertical gardens
charging station
lounge
laptop station
shade
community gardens
kiosk
performance platform
The apiary plaza Laptop and cell phone hookups add another layer for participation with the machine. Alleys become quiet gardens, a space for someone to retreat from work during lunch to ďŹ nd solace, whereas larger open spaces become areas for high activity and collaboration. These areas will house large lounging benches for people watching and a plethora of other community geared furniture.
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professors blake belanger & jon hunt | may 2009 The Denver Metro Studio was one of the more intensive studios in the Kansas State curriculum, but the challenge was one of the appeals of this project. The site was an old medical campus in the Denver downtown area that had been uprooted and moved to Colorado University’s campus. The first phase of the project was a masterplan for the entire site. Some of the dilemmas presented in this first phase were integrating the two different grids north and south of the site along with breaking up the superblocks effectively. The second phase was a focus area, such as a plaza or streetscape to detail further, in which some design detail was required.
SITE INVESTIGATION wind
walk
ideas
rise sun
sunse t
sun
The site for the Denver Metro Studio is located at the intersection of 9th & Colorado in downtown Denver. The purpose of the project was to create a urban inďŹ ll project that responded to its context and create new and meaningful spaces in Denver’s urban fabric. The issues with the site were various and pertained to recreating a neighborhood amenities that had long been blocked by the old hospital. This site is a critical piece of real estate in the Hale neighborhood of Denver. The above diagrams and sketches provide initial thinking in developing the overall masterplan to the right.
Existing hospital sketch
12th av
e.
The masterplan seeks to reintegrate the site with its context. By developing a central green space that is centered around the most historic buildings of the Veterans Affairs Medical Center, it allows the history of the site to become an integral part of the new development, creating a staple of the site. The ďŹ rst critical issue to address was the massive size of the original block. The original block was consumed by the hospital, and appeared massive at the pedestrian scale. In this plan, retail is brought out in storefronts, and mixed with highly trafďŹ cked streets and open space.
11th ave.
birch st. square
st. birch all rian m
pedest
Colorado ave.
art museum
masterplan
9th ave.
clement st.
central green
open air market
On the eastern portion of the site, there is a major pedestrian spine that is angled to reconcile the grids to the north and south and sow them together. This spine is lined with shops as well as different plazas to provide different programs and various time intervals maintaining a constant activity on site.
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The scale of the site is meant to increase density without overwhelming the surrounding neighborhoods. The building heights are taller along Colorado Ave. and to the east adjacent to the remaining hospital. To the north and south, the buildings step down to reintegrate into the existing neighborhoods. There is a mix of uses that have been missing from the
surrounding neighborhoods. There is opportunity for new retail and leisure spaces like a movie theater, shopping district, and farmer market spaces. The uses are meant to mingle and build off one another creating a new synergy.
land use
floors 9+
floors 7-8
floors 5-6
floors 3-4
ground floors
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CULTURAL BUILDINGS
RETAIL
SEASONAL USES TEMPORARY PEDESTRIAN SPACES
chinook st..
PLAZA BORA birch st.
Birch St. Square
The focus of the open space was to create lively, active pedestrian space that engages residents at all times of the year. The context of plaza bora is cultural and retail space that ows out into the street. In winter there are opportunities for seasonal uses, such as temporary ice rinks, holiday shopping and activities. In the summer there are street festivals mixed with gallery exhibits on ďŹ rst Fridays.
11th ave.
OUTDOOR SEATING
bora st,
Plaza Bora and Birch St. Square are meant to bring new identity to the neighborhood, and serve as the cultural infrastructure to bring people together.
Plaza bora
e. 9th st,
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BIRCH ST. SQUARE IDENTITY
FARMER’S MARKET
VENUE SPACES
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smithgroupjjr | ongoing PHX Renews is an ongoing collaboration between Keep Phoenix Beautiful, Collier International, and the City of Phoenix. The site is 15 acres of vacant land in the heart of Phoenix. The result has been a mix of community gardens, temporary greenspace, learning spaces, and a testing ground for how we develop vacant lots in the City of Phoenix moving forward.
AZ forward environmental award honorable mention new york times covers phx renews
conceptualization
concept 1 SmithGroupJJR was approached to develop a master plan for the site as a pro-bono project. What started as a simple planning exercise grew into one an extensive project that had us planning out each part of the site as partners of the project bought into the site. Above are the initial concept diagram exercises to develop the masterplan.
concept 2
concept 3
schematic design
Master planning the site proved to be tricky because of the constant motion of the project. There are constantly changing components and partners coming and going across the site. To ďŹ t all of them in an efďŹ cient and orderly matter required setting up a framework that would support that. The most important thing for us was to develop a solid circulation system that would provide a skeleton for new programs to build on-site and take down as needed. The masterplan to the right illustrates the full buildout of the project as it was intended a year ago. Much has changed since then, but the overall circulation system has stayed in place.
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The aerial best illustrates the main promenade as it would be on a active day. The idea is that this main drag can be a place for vendors and farmers to sell their goods and interact with the community in a pedestrian friendly environment. The original idea was to include a tree farm with the existing irrigation, thereby using this space as a depot for nurseries across the city as well as
provide tree inventory that could be donate to community spaces. In the background there is the Public Works site the came along early this year. It is a demonstration for several different sustainable techniques, most importantly landďŹ ll divergence.
PHX RENEWS AERIAL
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main promenade
The main promenade is the central spine of the site and provides access between the different partner areas throughout the site. This image illustrates the site on a festival day with people enjoying shade under boxed trees and gutted storage containers. The site is completely temporary and must vacate in 180 days should Collier International decide to develop their land.
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REALIZATION On September 21, Keep Phoenix Beautiful organized with several different partners to get volunteers to come together to build the site. Several hundred people showed up to demonstrate their support for the project. PHX Renews represents the current largest redevelopment of a vacant lot into community gardens in the country. The people of Phoenix have demonstrated that this is something they want to continue to happen with their city as it pushes to become more environmentally friendly.
42% of Phoenix land is Vacant
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While at SmithGroupJJR, I worked on several design teams from Schematic Design into Construction Documentation. Projects included sites in Phoenix, AZ, Tucson, AZ, Fayetteville, AR. I was also able to help develop the Phoenix Campus Community Waterfront studio’s graphics by instructing courses on Sketchup, and Vray. In some instances, I worked on interview teams to develop designs and graphics quickly to help win projects.
UNIVERSITY OF ARKANSAS CHAMPIONS HALL Fayetteville, AK | Education Building | 3 Acres Project Manager: Mike Faulkner The University of Arkansas Champions Hall is a general classroom that includes classrooms and labs for the math and sciences. The University of Arkansas is located in the Boston Mountains of the Ozark bioregion, which provided significant topography challenges for ADA and cost. The campus standards were explicit abount minimizing the amount of retaining walls and hardscape elements used. Since there was an elevation change of 40 feet over a 300 foot run we were required to make up grade as efficiently as possible. Our team started with a charrette to flush out ideas and sketch different scenarios. What followed was a rigorous schematic design phase with the architects to develop site schemes for each of the different massing strategies that they developed. The images on this page illustrate the final sketches for each of the building options.
CONCEPT 1
CHARRETTE SKETCH
SITE SECTIONS
CONCEPT 2
CONCEPT 3
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In the design development phase we combined the three schemes into one design based on feedback from presentations with the client and students. We developed the entry plaza and restored the adjacent Oak Ridge running through the Northeast corner of the site. Our planting strategy was
DESIGN DEVELOPMENT
to recreate existing native ecosystems found throughout the Boston Mountains. The plant palette consists of Oaks, native understory plants, and native grasses. The hardscape is reminiscent of the local character and campus.
4TH FLOOR OUTDOOR SEATING We also worked with architects and structural engineers to develop outdoor spaces for students over structure. The sections located below were further investigation into how to treat the topography along the site.
SITE SECTIONS
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PERMIT SET The project is currently out to bid. For our permit set we developed details further, while also maintaining the project within budget. The plan above
CONSTRUCTION DOCUMENTATION
demonstrates the hardscape and layout plan we developed. Our details were designed to minimize the amount of retaining wall used throughout the site.
PERMIT SET DETAILS
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SCOTTSDALE RD. SCENIC CORRIDOR STREETSCAPE Scottsdale, AZ | Trail & Revegetation Project | 7 miles of Rd. Project Manager: Rick Jones The Scottsdale Rd. scenic corridor revegetation and trail restoration project is 7 miles of scenic road in the high desert of North Scottsdale. We worked alongside Civil Engineers and the City of Scottsdale to identify vegetation typologies and areas of disturbance from vehicles off-roading. SmithGroupJJR was commissioned to develop the trail alignment, intersection treatment, and methodology for revegetating areas of disturbance.
Saguaro Carnegiea gigantea
Creosote Larrea tridentata
In the initial site investigation we went out to the site and inventoried the vegetation. This included photographing and tagging signiďŹ cant trees, saguaros, and other specimen vegetation. This also included outlining the areas where revegetation
was necessary as well as deďŹ ning the change in plant types throughout the corridor. Three typologies were developed from the initial landscape inventory which guided our plant selection and quantity for the revegetation plans.
Buckhorn Cholla Cylindroptunia acanthocarpa Foothill Palo Verde Parkinsonia microphylla
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LANDSCAPE INVENTORY AND ANALYSIS The graphic below is an excerpt from the inventory and analysis from our initial investigation phase.
SITE PHOTOS
Senna Senna Artemisioides
Scottsdale Rd looking north
Scottsdale Rd looking south
Specimen Saguaro
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We were required to develop a trail alignment that preserved specimen vegetation while also minimizing the need for excessive grading. The team also developed intersection
treatments for major streets. There was also a need to design the trail and treat it for equestrians, biking, and pedestrians.
Our team developed standard details for the streetscape based off previous streetscape projects in the area, as well as developing utility cabinet designs to house the existing and proposed utility boxes to be placed along the corridor.
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PARK CENTRAL HEALTH AND WELLNESS COMMUNITY Phoenix, AZ | Mixed Use Urban Infill | 60 Acres Project Manager: Mark Soden & Paul Johnson Park Central is Phoenix’s first mixed used development in the uptown neighborhood of Phoenix. The site study covers the adjacent St. Joseph Hospital, the 1950s Park Central mall, and several high rise buildings from Phoenix’s 1980s oil boom. We were commissioned by the Pederson development group to envision an urban development that values walkability and a healthy holistic lifestyle. The site combines distinct districts that focus on shop, live, work, play, and heal.
LOCAL GROCERY
SCHOOL OF MEDICINE PARK
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DISTRICTS
HEAL
WORK
SHOP
LIVE
HEAL
SHOPPING PLAZA
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