Architecture & Spatial Control

HT 2201 Theories of Contemporary Architecture

Fall 2022

Erik Ghenoiu

In 2003, downtown Columbus, Ohio underwent a substantial revitalization, spearheaded by the expansion and refurbishment of the Greater Columbus Convention Center. Many amenities were being reintroduced such as great restaurants and shops. However, at that time one trip across the High Street bridge into Short North neighborhood, signs of economic decline were evident. Shop fronts were boarded shut, apartments were left vacant, and the streets were riddled with homeless. In 2004 David B. Meleca Architects along with the city of Columbus, and the Ohio department of Transportation proposed a redesign of the bridge to facilitate and allow Short North to reap the economic benefits that downtown was experiencing. According to Jeff Speck author of Walkable City, this project is a resounding success, however the intent of this article is to highlight a different stance on the I-670 cap project. The success of the project will be measured through the lens of Keller Easterling’s book Extrastatecraft: The power of Infrastructure space. Easterling dives deeply into infrastructure space, and the way that it shapes urban forms. She describes how and what makes up the infrastructural matrix in which buildings are suspended from. Specifically, Easterling addresses the infrastructure that is not hidden, rather the opposite. The infrastructure that is visible, Easterling describes it as an operating system that shapes the cities, and their skylines1. The aim of this article is to highlight the attributes that an urban activation renewal project must address to be successful. What are the key factors that a project such as I-670 cap must address for it to affect the urban fabric of a given location?

These types of urban regeneration projects are not new but are increasingly popular due to a variety of movements across the industry that share a common theme of reclaiming buildings, infrastructure such as bridges, and highways2. As these sorts of projects gain more and more momentum, it is imperative to evaluate them critically to understand how they affect the social economic fabrics of their context. Moreover, it is crucial to decipher the project’s point of view in relation to the urban matrix, using Easterling’s material as a reference.

Back in 2003, as downtown Columbus was on its way to revitalization, city planners noticed that the economic boom that was transpiring throughout downtown was not carrying over to the outskirts of the city. Like most north American cities, many neighborhoods were torn down in the 1950s to make way for interstates that would pass through the downtowns, and Columbus was one of many3. Consequently, downtown Columbus is surrounded by interstates, which meant that this economic boom was simply unable to filter through the interstate and into the surrounding neighborhoods, and Short North was no exception. The interstate was acting as an invisible great wall dividing the city, creating islands of economic growth, without the ability of intermixing. The economic boom, which in most cases is pedestrians exiting the convention center, or city center, then shopping in downtown, was partly trapped due to the poor connections between downtown, and Short North. The only connection was made up of a lonesome bridge designed to carry vehicles, with very narrow, and uninviting walkways on either side (figure 2). The bridge at the time was a tear in the urban fabric. Users experienced a lack of comfort when walking across the bridge, because the building height to road width ratio was off. It was off due to the lack of any buildings on either side of the bridge. Downtown & Short North feature building height to road width ratios that are deemed comfortable by the human mind. These comfortable ratios did not exist on the bridge, making it feel uncomfortable and unsafe. That bridge was instantly deemed an uncomfortable experience by the mind. It remained this way until 2004, when Meleca Architects, along with the city, and the Ohio department of transportation intervened, adding two parallel bridges to which retail units were built upon to “patch up” the aforementioned tear, created by the interstate, in the urban fabric (Figure 1). Consequently, pedestrians are now invited by the architecture. to make their way across the bridge without ever knowing that they are crossing a bridge, with an interstate right beneath them. The project has been successful at moving the foot traffic from downtown, and into the Short North4

While many practitioners and leaders in the design industry consider this project a success. It can be argued that Keller Easterling does not. In Easterling’s book, it is argued that cities are “no longer made up of singularly crafted enclosures, uniquely imagined by an architect, but reproducible products set within similar urban arrangements”5. This repeatable formula of space is what Easterling claims to be Infrastructure space, which in turn is making up the current urban context of cities. This infrastructure space acts as an operating system for shaping the city6. Easterling describes the two types of forms in cities, one being the object form and other being the active form. The object form is described as what architects are most accustomed to designing, which is usually buildings. The active form, on the other hand, is what empowers the object from. The active form is the binding agent that dictates the formulaic arrangements of how the objects forms are multiplied, organized, and circulated. For example, in suburbia, the active form is the multiplication factor of all the single-family homes. Easterling argues that key people have exploited their positions of power and the active form for the sake of reaping economic gains and incentivizing investments in a variety of forms such as the free zone. Furthermore, she urges designers to regain control of the active form, as well as employ the active form in the same manner. Easterling makes it clear that it is the duty of the architect to understand and manage spatial phenomena and manipulate them to generate a shift in the way active form is deployed in the city.

Meleca architects have exploited the dark matter of the active form to their advantage, to create an object form that reconstructs the connections between neighborhoods. Meleca architects have remedied the urban tear by adding retail buildings with appropriate building height’s to better match the width of the road, which greatly improves pedestrian comfort. The presence of these buildings also creates uninterrupted store frontage between downtown and Short North neighborhoods, creating moments of normal urban life along the bridge and increasing the comfort of pedestrians even further (figure 6). Lastly, the colonnade of the project street further enhances the functionality of the project as the colonnade provides shade from various weather conditions, allowing for greater utilization throughout the year.

Easterling also points out that “Just as the car is a multiplier that determines the shape and design of highways and exurban development, the elevator is a simple example of a multiplier that has transformed urban morphology”7. In essence, while the I-670 cap project is a step in the right direction, it does not employ the active form’s strongest attribute, the multiplier effect. A city will only adapt and change “because of the multipliers that circulate within it”8. Therefore, it is logical to conclude that to create real change, a cluster of similar projects will most certainly trigger a shift in the archaic urban morphology. In Easterling’s point of view, the I-670 cap project is simply the tip of the iceberg. A possible scenario where the active form is utilized to its fullest potential, is if all of the bridges that are connecting surrounding neighborhoods to downtown were remedied in the same fashion as was the North High street bridge.

In Conclusion, it is important to be cognizant of the powers & limitations that object forms present. Moreover, it is crucial for designers to also comprehend the power that active forms present. Active forms offer designers with unprecedented amounts of control to expand the potential dispositions that an object form could hold over a city’s infrastructure space. The most successful object forms are often ones that employ the matrix’s strongest attribute mentioned above. Successful projects in this realm therefore are the ones that end up creating ripples and shifts in urban environments.

Bibliography

4 Ways to Make a City More Walkable | Jeff Speck. YouTube. YouTube, 2017. https://www. youtube.com/watch?v=6cL5Nud8d7w.

Bruntlett, Melissa, and Chris Bruntlett. Curbing Traffic: The Human Case for Fewer Cars in Our Lives. Washington, DC: Island Press, 2021.

Easterling, Keller. “Chapter 1 - 6.” Essay. In Extrastatecraft: The Power of Infrastructure Space. London: Verso, 2016.

Gandy, Mathew. The New Blackwell Companion to the City. Edited by Gary Bridge and Sophie Watson. Chichester: Wiley-blackwell, 2013.

Project profile: The Cap at union station. FHWA. (n.d.). Retrieved November 29, 2022, from https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/ipd/project_profiles/oh_cap_union_station.aspx

SPECK, J. E. F. F. (2022). Walkable City: How downtown can save america, one step at a time. PICADOR.

Keller Easterling, “Extrastatecraft”. YouTube. YouTube, 2015. https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=SaKoIP5qH8E&t=3813s.

Keller Easterling: “Extrastatecraft”. YouTube. YouTube, 2014. https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=03xqKvwcAF4.

Marohn, Charles L. Confessions of a Recovering Engineer: Transportation for a Strong Town. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2021.

Marohn, Charles L. Strong Towns: A Bottom-up Revolution to Rebuild American Prosperity.

Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2020.

Meleca, David B. “I-670 Cap.” David B Meleca, 2004. http://www.melecallc.com/portfolio_ page/i-670-cap.