Urban Gap Space by SCI-Arc

Urban Gap Space

design for homeless and community

Graduate Thesis 2022

Keran Duan

Graduate Thesis 2022 Statement Provocations Positions

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Thesis Statement In the post-pandemic era, Los Angeles faces an increase in the number of homeless people. People are forced to live on the streets after losing their permanent housing. The help that the union rescue mission can provide is limited and cannot satisfy everyone to stay there for a long time. The government's housing assistance program for the homeless cannot be built quickly and help most people get out of hardship. The boundaries between urban public and private spaces are being used by the homeless, who have attached their tents to the fences of parking lots, the rolling shutters of stores, or the exterior walls of buildings. Meanwhile, this occupation of public space also affects the appearance of the city and the passage of pedestrians and vehicles. The difficulty of using the restroom, storage, and

Graduate Thesis 2022

daily electricity usage, can be seen as belonging to the homeless group and, on the other hand, to all civic groups. When we walk on the street of Los Angeles, we usually have a hard time finding a public restroom unless we borrow it from a convenience store or fast-food restaurant. Also, it's frustrating when we need to use our phone in an outdoor public place and find that it's dead and there's no way to charge it. These issues also affect each of us in some way. This thesis topic is about how to improve these problems from multiple perspectives. How can the homeless get a relatively stable living space in the urban gap space? How do we balance the use of public and private spaces to facilitate the homeless and citizens? How can urban infrastructure and landscape design be subtly integrated into it?

Graduate Thesis 2022

Provocations

Week 01 The range of urban landscape and landscape architecture is very wide, from large-scale urban parks to single landscape buildings, or roof landscapes, all of which can be designed. What can landscape bring to people? In cities, they can be large green parks that dominate the city center, providing people with daily leisure and entertainment. It could also be the plants that exists on façades and roofs to beautify buildings and cities. The urban landscape can be some functional infrastructure, such as pavilions, public seats; or it can be purely non-functional planting. What does it mean for a city to have good landscape design? Usually, some parks or main road architectural landscapes in-

volving urban features will be given priority attention, while some small corner landscapes are often easily overlooked. Such as street corners or spaces between buildings. What is the relationship between humanand plants? If plants are involved in human life, in what state can they exist in harmony with human beings? Plants are passively implanted in cities because we need them to provide a good environment. They grow attached to buildings or urban infrastructure. How can we design buildings or infrastructure so that plants can be more harmoniously integrated into them?

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1. Cae Lique Dolest Abo 2. Green facade and roof 3. Villa M by Triptyque Architecture

Week 02 Ecological coexistence. Coexistence of human and the natural environment. While humans develop effective spaces in cities, they also create many negative spaces. Areas that cannot be used are gradually abandoned. It is worth thinking about optimizing the gray area to make people living in cities more comfortable coexistence with animals and plants.

Mill River Park and Greenway: rehabilitate the originally polluted areas in the city and create an ecological environment suitable for humans, animals and plants. BIT.BIO.BOT by ecoLogicStudio: The installation is an urban laboratory that combines advanced architecture with microbiology to build an artificial habitat, managed by a collection of systems which enable the cultivation of microalgae in the urban realm.

Graduate Thesis 2022

2. MILL RIVER PARK AND GREENWAY. The design led to a significant drop in pollution and debris resulting in an immediate influx of indigenous wildlife. 3. BIT.BIO.BOT by ecoLogicStudio, a prototype dwelling and collective experiment in biotech architecture Home office workstation, Hungary by Hello Wood

Week 03 Design in the Pandemic and Post-Pandemic Era. Different lifestyles with social distancing. With the spread of COVID-19, the way people live and socialize has changed. Independent living and working space can effectively prevent the spread of the virus, but also provide a more private place for individuals to live. Can these tiny spaces that scattered throughout the city be designed to serve other functions? And do we need these spaces to help specific groups of people in the post-pandemic era?

Many of these small houses are for private use, and they are placed in beautiful groves or parks. Should we also consider designing spaces for special disadvantaged groups in the current environment? Or help people in emergencies? Flexible small pods can be placed in all corners of the city. Maybe one day you don’t have to run around to find a virus testing station. Maybe homeless people don’t have to sleep on the streets. Perhaps a small vendor no longer has to look around for a place to operate. Such mini-pod can become part of the urban infrastructure, and their existence offers endless possibilities.

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1. Ideal working environment and leisure space 2. My Room in the Garden by Boano Prišmontas 3. OVERCAST HOUSE by Office S&M

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1. wine-bar, Cae“Take-out” Lique Dolest Abo simple and effective solutions during the Covid-19 pandemic

Week 04 Thinking about the urban gap space and the people who live there. With the rapid development of the world, the continuous concentration of population in cities has become an inevitable trend. Architecture is no longer a residential machine; it has become an important part of people's life interaction together with public space. Gap space in the city is in the ambiguous area of the boundary between public space and private space. Under the condition of rational use, these inconspicuous spaces can play a huge potential to promote the interaction between the city and its neighbors. From an objective point of view, the impact of urban crevice space is not always positive. Constrained by space constraints, people may feel depressed in a small space. At the same time, it also faces health and health problems, and it will even evolve into the birthplace of crime

and become a gray area of the city. Therefore, it is worth thinking about how to turn the disadvantage of the gap space into an advantage, and how to turn the negative into the positive. In many countries, regulations define strict limits on the distance between buildings, and separate buildings cannot share the same wall. Due to the continuous reduction of the land area that can be developed and the continuous increase of the price, it has become the goal that people pursue to make the most of the base area that can be constructed. Therefore, after the subdivision of the plot, there is always a narrow gap between the buildings, which is the urban gap space. In addition, abandoned buildings and infrastructure due to early planning mistakes and the replacement of old and new in the city will also create urban gaps.

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1. OMOKEN PARK by Yabashi Architect & Associates 2. OMOKEN PARK-regenerate the ruins of buildings damaged by the 2016 Kumamoto earthquake 3. LOVE² HOUSE by Takeshi Hosaka Architects

The people living in these small corner spaces are mainly the homeless and low-income people, who usually have difficulty getting a good living environment in the city. How can these gap spaces in the city be effectively used to improve the quality of life for these people and build a home? For instance, Los Angeles has seen the rise of "tent encampments" in recent years, extending along neighborhood sidewalks, freeway embankments, parks and high streets to some of Los Angeles' most affluent neighborhoods. With the outbreak of the covid pandemic, the living environment of these spaces has a negative impact on the people who live in there and the city. Thinking and designing a mini-space for the vulnerable groups to live in, which can be easily inserted into every corner and gap space of the city.

Why choose urban gap space for design? There are many abandoned spaces in the city that can be used. After being transformed, it can not only provide a better living environment for the homeless, but also improve the appearance of the city. Choosing an empty site for homeless shelter design is also an approach, but it will cost more. Although the gap spaces are small, it can be designed flexibly such as prefabricated movable house.

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Week 05 Position: Urban gap space Abandoned corner Target user & founction: (Multi-functional space) House for the homeless Epidemic test station for the further outbreaks Emergency medical aid station for citizen Temporary shops for small traders

Feature: Small and flexible Prefabricated Movable to wherever needed Single unit normally, also can be formed as connected group in special needs. Environmentally friendly Integrate into the urban landscape and infrastructure

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Week 06 Skid Row is a neighborhood in Downtown Los Angeles. The area is officially known as Central City East. As of a 2019 count, the population of the district was 4,757. Skid Row contains one of the largest stable populations (about 4,200–8,000) of homeless people in the United States and has been known for its condensed homeless population since at least the 1930s. Its long history of police raids, targeted city initiatives, and homelessness advocacy make it one of the most notable districts in Los Angeles. By the 1930s, Skid Row was home to as many as 10,000 homeless people,

alcoholics, and others on the margins of society. Skid Row was established by city officials in 1976 as an unofficial "containment zone", where shelters and services for homeless people would be tolerated. The ACLU(American Civil Liberties Union )sought a compromise in which the LAPD would be barred from arresting homeless people or confiscating their possessions on Skid Row between the hours of 9:00 p.m. and 6:30 a.m. The compromise plan, which was accepted by the city of Los Angeles, permits sleeping on the sidewalk except "within 10 feet of any business or residential entrance" and only between these hours.

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Paths That Lead To Being Unhoused

People experience homelessness for many different reasons. They include, in part, 1) The middle class before the financial crisis was bankrupt during the financial crisis due to excessive consumption, and was bankrupt due to inability to repay loans. Some of those who fail to file for bankruptcy face debt avoidance. 2) Veterans with PTSD, since their symptoms are so severe that they can't take care of themselves, and don't have the skills to support their life. Most of their families doesn't have people to take care of them and they can't live in Veterans Affairs Medical Center for long. 3) People who dropout of school without a full education and give up discipline at home. 4) Retirees who didn't save their pension before retirement and ended up losing their house due to alcoholism or other reasons. 5) People who do not have enough money to pay rent after being released from prison or drug addict. 6) Family changes, such as divorce, disaster, or physical disability due to accident.

How Many People Are Unhoused in L.A. County?

There are currently at least 63,706 people experiencing homelessness in Los Angeles County, according to a count by LAHSA in 2020 — a 13% increase from 2019. (The 2021 count was cancelled due to COVID-19, but is scheduled to resume in 2022.) In the city of Los Angeles, LAHSA says there are 41,290 people experiencing homelessness. The numbers are an estimate of people experiencing homelessness on any given night in Los Angeles. Advocates believe the numbers are higher

1. LAHSA data graph 2. L.A. County population estimates come from the U.S. Census Bureau's 2019 American Community Survey 1-Year Estimates. 3. News media crowd Skid Row as the Los Angeles Police Department begin its sweep of the area on June 5, 1987.

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LA County's Unhoused by Race & Ethnicity, 2020

Racial and ethnic characteristics of people experiencing homelessness (sheltered and unsheltered) vs. the population overall for Los Angeles County.

Men Are Overwhelmingly Unsheltered

Why homelessness is more visible? It’s partly because of COVID-19. At the onset of the pandemic, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommended that people living outdoors should be allowed to shelter in place because forcing them to relocate could lead to disease spread. The CDC also advised shelters to decrease their capacity by 50% so residents could practice social distancing. LA County's Unhoused by Gender, 2020 Gender characteristics of people experiencing homelessness (sheltered and unsheltered) vs. the population overall for Los Angeles County.

Men are the majority of people experiencing homelessness. According to the Gerontology Program at the University of Missouri at St. Louis, reasons why men are prone to homelessness is because they are less likely than women to be married or caring for children, which means they are less likely to receive social services. Women also usually have fewer histories of substance abuse and are less likely to encounter the criminal justice system, according to the Washington University School of Medicine. That means they tend not to have felony convictions that can be a hindrance to them obtaining shelter.

Week 07 Although it is legal to camp on skid row, weekly road clearing can leave many homeless people without the only things they have. Union shelters are hard to live with for a long time, and stealing problems are everywhere. Health and safety issues are the most severe difficulties. The government has constructed tiny villages for the homeless to solve the housing problem, but this requires a long construction period and cannot get most people

out of trouble quickly. Why can't these housings be on the streets of the city center but in remote areas away from the city center? Is it possible to improve the living environment in the city center? Is a city center with relatively more resources a better place to live for the homeless?

Tiny Home Village is now open in North Hollywood with a concept that has the potential to reduce homelessness. Each 64-square foot unit comes with a bed, heater, and AC but the village provides much more support including job training, job placement, mental health, and substance abuse services. The white units are used as bright objects, carefully composed to shape the communal exterior spaces between, creating a series of smaller village communities along the long site. The 8’x8’ Tiny Homes are swift to assemble and provide self-contained, conditioned space for each resident that can, crucially, be locked by the occupant for a greater (and often newfound) sense of safety, autonomy and privacy on the road to permanent housing.

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Week 08 Homelessness Charrette : Introduction, Presentation & Panel 1 (January 11, 2019) In LA county almost 53,000 people experience homelessness on any given night. When we speak about homelessness we are speaking about our values. Sometimes a moral crisis can spur bold and compassionate action and that’s precisely what is warranted that happened in March of 2017, voters reached into their hearts and into their wallets and they voted resoundingly to approve a quarter-cent sales tax. What is Measure H? Measure H, the “Los Angeles County Plan to Prevent and Combat Homelessness” creates a one-quarter of a cent sales tax, which generates funds for the specific purposes of funding homeless services and short-term housing. It’s proof that people in this county place value on serving the least among us, and it’s a measurable set of values that matter. Measure H has provided government and nonprofits the ability to scale-up infrastructure, scale-up compassion, scale-up innovation, and that’s what was required and thanks to measure H in the county’s public and nonprofit partners gearing up to house 45,000 men, women and children over the next five years.

How do we accomplish this? We accomplished it through the multi-different disciplinary, multi-faceted teams and approaches into weaving the tried and the true strategies ranging from coordinated street outreach teams and client-centered interim housing affordable supportive housing and a compendium of wraparound services. The conversation around homelessness must be interwoven with the conversation around affordable housing, 2/3 of most homeless individuals are unsheltered. The homeless crisis is occurring against a backdrop of escalating rents, and the shortage of affordable housing. Most households as you may already know pay more than half of their income towards rent and in Los Angeles, we have a deficit of over 1/2 million affordable units that’s just in LA county alone, and when we think about the county and the city. We are trying to work toward integrating and coordinating our collective effort in terms of investments in affordable and supportive housing. Last fall the county released almost 100 million dollars and that’s including major aid funds to build the new supportive house.

Graduate Thesis 2022

How many supportive houses we need to build? 21,000 of those special units we need to build for the permanent housing, and we still need to build an additional 3500 shelter pieces. The reason why the shelter numbers smaller than the supportive housing number is that one shelter bed can serve more than one person per year, and it should be more than one person per year if we fix supportive housing on the other side. For the homeless people, bathrooms are very treasured commodity by folks and helps people feel like they have the privacy and stability. It would be helpful if we provided more functional units like bathroom in the neighborhood. We can provide these shelters in the street

with utilities like restroom, storage locker, large billboards, or bus stations. The government is usually the funder of public facilities and infrastructure, Some businesses will also invest in billboards, which can be placed anywhere from bus stops to building roofs or facades to parking lots. Can we put forward a possibility that the businesses that pay for advertising can provide shelter for the homeless with part of the funds? At the same time, as a cover, its advertisements can cover the existence outside the shelter. This transformational thinking allowed us to scale the Tiny House down to the size of a billboard. Including but not limited to the role of advertising.

"Home for Hope" by USC Students

Rolly by Maria Ceja and Alexxa Solomon

Interior of Home for Hope

Participating USC students

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A German city has created sleep pods for the homeless. The pods are made from wood and steel and are both windproof and waterproof. They're designed to keep up to two people protected from the elements, including rain, frost and humidity.

Week 10 Public facilities and infrastures are often used as a resting place for homeless people, such as park benches, stairs, even public toilets or trash cans. But some cities' public facilities are also designed to prevent homeless people from staying there. There are several examples of hostile architecture that target people who are homeless. These designs imply that public space is not where homeless people should be.

Ranging from slanting benches to metal spikes, hostile architecture occurs when elements of the built environment are specifically designed to curtail “undesirable” use. Usually, the groups targeted by hostile architecture are homeless people looking for somewhere to rest or teenagers looking for somewhere to play. Not only does this practice contradict the main tenets of public space (i.e., accessibility, freedom of usage, inclusivity), but it is likely to also lower the quality of the space in general.

1. Leaning Bars in New York City, USA

2. Sectioned benches

3. Uncomfortable sitting area

4. Steps covered with raised stainless steel

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Public toilets are also a big problem for homeless people.

At night on Skid Row, nearly 2,000 homeless people share just nine toilets. The skid row area facing the ‘awful’ lack of bathroom facilities reality, affecting the health and dignity of residents at the sprawling LA homeless encampment. Actually, this contravenes a standard laid out by the United Nations for long-term refugee camps, which specifies one toilet for 20 people at the most. Los Angeles is therefore meeting only about 10% of the need. Skid Row’s hygiene problems could hardly be more pressing. In the latest count, Los Angeles County saw a 23% increase in the number of homeless people, to 57,794. “Our infrastructure hasn’t caught up,” said Alisa Orduna, homelessness policy director in the mayor’s office. “This is the No 1 issue that residents talk about.” The report says there is an immediate need for 100 portable toilets available 24 hours a day, and also advocates for staffed, mobile toilet kiosks. Orduna said the city was budgeting an extra $500,000 of funding for such mobile solutions, and is investing in permanent bathrooms in two parks, though they will be closed at night.

What’s A Mobile Pit Stop? There are two types of mobile pit stops: some are covered with green metal and are at fixed locations; the others resemble larger porta potties and are picked up every night. The current Mobile Pit Stop Program evolved from a 2018 pilot program by the city council in response to a Hepatitis A outbreak in Los Angeles County, and it soon expanded locations. There are currently 19 mobile pit stops in Los Angeles, all staffed with attendants, most of which are open for 12 hours per day, seven days a week. Three locations are open 24 hours. The city’s chief administrative officer used data from the Department of Public Health and the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority to determine where bathrooms were needed. Jesus Gonzales, an unhoused man who lives in downtown Los Angeles, said “They should put more of the [pit stops],” “They should be on every corner.” If mobile pit stops appeared on every corner, they would come with practitioners, who are part of the appeal for many unhoused people. Many of the practitioners who work the mobile pit stops are also formerly incarcerated or unhoused and trying to get back on their feet to make a better life for themselves.

Week 11 Skid row site visit

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There are mainly two types of tents in the skid row area. One is a freestanding tent, usually with a support structure that can be placed anywhere. The other needs to be fixed on the building or parking lot fences. Usually, there is no fixed shape constraint in this way, and the size of the enclosed space is more flexible. The closed shop front, the parking lot fence side, and the facades of buildings that are not the main entrance are the main

camps for homeless people. Many of the parking lots on Skid Row are chronically under-saturated, with empty spaces that have not been used for a long time. As a private parking lot, we may not have the right to interfere too much with its internal layout, but are there opportunities for proper renovation on those borderlines? What can we do to make it more orderly as a public area like a sidewalk or a parking strip?

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Positions

Week 13 The boundaries between urban public and private spaces are being used by the homeless, who have attached their tents to the fences of parking lots, the rolling shutters of stores, or the exterior walls of buildings. These homeless people stay in these areas without a relatively stable and safe space. Meanwhile, this occupation of public space also affects the appearance of the city and the passage of pedestrians and vehicles. How can this situation be improved in many ways? Parking lot edges are usually the main locations for homeless people, who are located above the dividing line and occupy part of the public walkway. How to use these boundary lines to provide shelter to the homeless while improving the overall visual effect of the street? Can parking lots be converted into spaces that can be used for public services? Converting existing parking lots into green parking lots while also considering how to coexist with homeless shelters. How can natural resources be efficiently converted? Adding greenery and permeable pavement at the boundary can provide water for public restrooms after collecting and filtering rainwater.

There is always plenty of sunshine in California, and we can consider installing solar panels in outdoor parking lots with huge open areas. Solar energy can serve a variety of purposes, not only for charging points in parking lots, but also for powering shelters along the street. When LADWP is responsible for municipal electricity consumption, it needs to consider the electricity consumption of streetlamps. Some streetlamps or signal lamps use solar energy. In the skid row area, the public lighting situation at night is not good, and the dark environment will provide more possibilities for crime. Effective and reasonable arrangement of solar streetlights can effectively improve the street environment, and the collected solar energy can also provide electricity for public toilets or public charging devices. If the LA government's funding on the homeless issue is used to provide solar energy facilities, it may be a measure to improve the city's public space and homeless living environment.

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Greening Paking Lots A Green Parking Lot includes Green Infrastructure (GI), incorporating elements found in natural areas into a parking lot area. GI is the living network that connects impervious areas to landscape areas, natural areas, and waterways. GI captures rainfall; cools buildings and pavement; and creates natural pathways for wildlife. GI includes Low Impact Development (LID) techniques, which mimic nature to capture and treat stormwater as close to the source as possible. When implemented, GI creates living green parking lots that capture, store, and infiltrate stormwater to treat it as a resource and improve the County environment. Trees in parking lots are sometimes confined to small planting areas where they struggle to reach a mature size or live a long life. Through the use of Structural Soil, Structural Cell, or Suspended Sidewalk techniques, soil volumes and space for tree roots to grow uninhibited can be greatly increased. These techniques also allow for more water and air to reach the tree roots.

Types of permeable pavement

permeable concrete pavers

pervious concrete

porous asphalt

porous rubber

decomposed granite pathway

boardwalk

This graphic provides an example of how several different techniques may be combined for Green Parking Lot implementation.

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Solar Energy

The EcoBox by AccessPub in Rabat, Morocco. This contraption appeared to provide at least three public services: you could dispose of trash through two slots on either end of the dumpster, surf the Internet via its WiFi setup, or top up your cellphone’s battery by connecting to one of the electrical outlets (even if cybersecurity experts and common sense highly discourage plugging your electronics into random USB ports).

Covering parking lots with Solar Panels, providing Shade, and Generating Electricity to charge Electric cars. Installing solar panels in open parking lots might be one way to provide electricity to public utilities. It could provide more street lighting, public charging ports, or power for bathrooms.

Homeless people have limited access to information, and many may not have cell phones or couldn't charge their phones. Using solar energy can provide them with convenient and cheap electricity.

Honeycomb-Shaped Sleeping Pods for NYC Homeless

Framlab’s proposal would see a repurposing of the unused gable walls of high-rise buildings all throughout the city (often present in vacant corner plots or on unused tracts of land) into foundations for honeycomb-shaped sleeping pod structures. There is already an abundance of these windowless walls throughout New York, and good use could be made of them to benefit the homeless population. A scaffold would be constructed outside

the walls so as to not infiltrate the buildings themselves. Afterwards, the prefabricated pods would be hung from the scaffolding. The pods would be accessed via a series of staircases built into the scaffolding, which would weave their way between the wall and the back of the pods. The benefit of this system is that is can be assembled and disassembled with relative ease and moved to another location if necessary.

Graduate Thesis 2022

The space located in the gap of the building is a good choice, with the walls on both sides providing a good Windowless

facades

provide

vertical

support structure for fixed the pod.

spaces, solve the difficulties caused by limited road area Tents that rely on roadside shops are often at risk of being cleared, portable and mobile are essential.

Roofs are also suitable for consideration

The possibility of parking strip being used Street corner location will produce crowd gathering effect, how to combine with the reasonable use of public facilities.

Urban Gap Space

Articles inside

Provocations

Positions

Statement