Undergraduate/Graduate Undergraduate Category: Architecture - Health and Sustainability Degree Level: Bachelors of Science of Architecture Abstract ID# 311
Landscape
Wellington
Wellington
112
Ten Hills
110
Chelsea
97
Wellington
Winter Hill
Route 16
Mystic River
Route 16
89
South Medford
106
South Medford
Demographics
89
Winter Hill
Assembly Square
Sullivan Square
Prospect Hill
East Somerville
Ten Hills
110
Ten Hills
Prospect Hill
Broadway
McGrath Hwy
Broadway Fellsway
Winter Hill
East Somerville
East Cambridge
Chelsea
116
Charlestown
101
Kendall Square
117
Economics
Assembly Square
111
80
91
Community College
Assembly Square
Binney St
Programmatic Use
South Medford
Charlestown Ave
Ri ve r
Broadway
ea
els
Ch
East Boston
North Station
East Cambridge
East Boston
91
Weekend Shopper
Waterfront
North End
Bridging the Gap - Site influence on the area
Haymarket
Beacon Hill
Downtown
Kendall Square
No
Local Students
de
State Street
iver
Downtown
es R
rl Cha
nod
er am
p
Inne
4
than white Americans earning fourty thousand dollars a year
80% of black residents of NYC would have to move to integrate the city fully $10,000 = 2% An increase in income of ten thousand dollars increases the chance of attending
Mass Turnpike
Seaport Blvd
SL
90% of Home loans goes to white Americans only from 1934-68 74% African American neighborhoods are seventy four percent African American in the 1960’s $75,000 Black American’s making seventy five thousand dollars a year live in poorer neighborhoods
Summer St
Greenway
Visiting Family
ton
Bay Village
I-90
Commuting Professional
Bos
Har
Beacon Hill bor
Back Bay
ma
My
in r am
rC
stic
p
our tya
rd
Cambridge St
Waterfront
cou
rtya
Downtown Crossing
rd
Wa
ram
Res Ce
ram
p
Chinatown
ntra
Res
Co
43.5% of Boston work force is in the service class; living in the outer neighborhoods - predominately mi-
ide
South End I-9
3
Chinatown
nority neighborhoods. Average salary of $33,000
Boston ‘Islands’ - Urban Fragmentation
14.9 % of Boston work force is in the working class; living beyond city limits - predominately minority
Chinatown
l Un
its
e
its
za
+O
ffic
e
its
Assembly Square - Site Layers
1 CT2
l Un
ial
od
l Un
Perception of the City - The Orange Line
neighborhoods. Average salary $42,000
South End
ntia
erc
ntia
l Pla
nN
ntia
ron t
ing
Leather District
Albany St Kneeland St
/5
SL4
Par k
ide
mm
Res
SL4
hoods. Average salary $84,000
tatio
ide
pa
42.5% of Boston work force is in the creative class; living in city center - predominately white neighbor-
TS
p
rkin g
Back Bay
Back Bay
As a result of the analytical process, the discovery of ‘urban forces’ can be transformed directly into a series of architectural design operations. Each force is assigned a unique operation, creating a strict set of rules and design options. This reuse allows for the characteristic strength of urban forces to be transferred to strong architectural operations. The architecture itself now has the potency to effect the urban scale and thus urban problems.
Bay Village
Clarendon St
Massachusetts Ave
Stuart St
Berkeley St
Massachussetts Ave
CUT - Street, Boulevards, Thoroughways
PULL - Landscape
43
POPULATE - Demographics, Economics
DIVIDE - Programmatic Use
CONNECT - Landscape
Assembly Square - Somerville, MA
PRECEDENTS | BACKGROUND
Yokohama Terminal -
Foreign Office Architects
The Yokohama Terminal is designed as an attempt to create new connection between Yokohama City, Japan and the disconnected waterfront area. By innovating a new architectural form, driven by city and site forces, Foreign Office Architects was able to integrate civic functions, with existing urban conditions. The project focuses mostly on circulation as a vehicle for urban design.
Seattle Sculpture Park -
Weiss/Manfredi
The Seattle Sculpture Park is a good example of addressing city wide conditions through architecture. The design strives to connect the Seattle waterfront to the rest of the city by creating a large park, spanning a large highway and train system that currently act as a strong dividing force. The form of the project and integration of landscape, circulation and other urban forces make it a successful “bridge”.
EWHA Women’s University -
Riv
terf
Leather District
top public university by two percent
DESIGN | RESULTS
McGrath Hwy
91
Charlestown
borhoods based on race known as “red lining”
Prospect Hill
East Somerville
Broadway Fellsway Assembly Sq Drive
89
East Somerville
Seasonal Tourist
Sullivan Square
Ten Hills
Prospect Hill
Neighborhood divisions create inequality in our cities. Neighborhood profile, and housing conditions, have far reaching cultural, economic and racial implications.
Assembly Square
Winter Hill
North End
1934 Franklin Roosevelt and the government implement racially biased housing policies - Defining neigh-
Mystic River
Everett
Ferry
THE PROBLEM | DATA
South Medford
Everett (not to scale)
93
My research has been focused on understanding the forces that connect and fragment the city into its island like neighborhoods. Once these forces are identified and understood, they can be reused in a more conscious, intentional manner through architectural intervention to restore cohesion to the city. The identification of urban forces, and their reimplementation, empowers designers with a new design methodology. Architecture, its form, use and intent, are re-focused; architecture becomes the driving force for reclaiming our cities. As the urban forces define the architecture, the architecture now has the potency to affect the urban forces themselves and address the city-wide divergence. Architecture is the bridge to solving urban inequality.
119
80
The contemporary city is defined by series of districts; Paris has twenty arrondissements, New York has boroughs, Boston its neighborhoods. These divisions, although formally defined, are subjective; the true beginning and end of neighborhoods is blurred. A city goer defines neighborhoods not by their official boarders but by a process of experiential mapping. Often as a result of an unguided urban development, factors such as architectural aesthetic, programmatic and spatial use, landscape intervention and socio-economics, give districts a unique character, so much so that a city becomes fragmented into inherently imbalanced parts. The contemporary city is comprised of self-contained, experientially defined entities, neighborhood-islands. These dividing urban forces work in a symbiotic relationship with one another, amplifying or reversing one another. Fragmentation, disengagement and gentrification have come to define the urban landscape. The contemporary city is now identified by neighborhoods; spatially, aesthetically, economically, and racially unequal.
I-93
ABSTRACT
Street, Boulevards, Thoroughways Mystic River
A New Design Methodology for Urban Fragmentation
Mystic River
I-93
BRIDGING THE GAP
ANALYSIS | METHOD
Through a process of experiential mapping, the map of the city can be redrawn; the seams of the city are revealed and the urban forces of the city can be distilled. By examining these fragmenting factors we can learn from their relative strength, influence, or subtlety and begin to understand the cause or urban inequality.
Conclusion | Acknowledgements Dominique Perrault
The power of Perrault’s EWHA Women’s University is its radical reimagining of urban space, landscape and traditional space organization. Perrault seamlessly integrated these aspects through a bold design of creating a single “valley” The program is oriented around a single street, or “valley”. The entire program area is sunken and the roof becomes a continuous urban plane, acting as a large civic park.
Through a bold reexamination of our cities, we can begin to understand their true character, their strengths, and ultimately, their deficiencies. With this analysis and new awareness architects of the present and future can begin to remediate these issues and innovate a more self-aware, powerful architecture and urban landscape.
Charles Garcia - Instructor, Landscape Urbanism Studio, Northeastern University Propublica - Nikole Hannah-Jones - http://www.propublica.org Atlantic Cities - Richard Florida - “Class-Divided Cities: Boston Edition” - http://www.theatlanticcities.com
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