TACTIC•ISM
Dedication To my parents, who have supported me and guided me throughout my life and education To my many professors, who have helped me along the way and pushed me towards being the designer and thinker I am today And to Lynnette, who has been by my side these last four years during the all nighters, architecture rants, and many project stresses and has inspired me to persevere through it all
T A C T I C • I S M ESTABLISHING CIVIC OWNERSHIP IN LOST URBAN SPACES
Sean Levesque Master of Architeture Thesis Prospectus Wentworth Institute of Technology Fall 2015
Contents 1.0 Abstract + Key Terms 7 2.0 Introduction 9 2.1 Personal Statement 10 2.2 Book Structure 11 2.3 Thesis Statement 12 2.4 Argument 13 2.5 Relevance 15 3.0 Literature Review 17 3.1 Topic Area 19 3.2 Bibliographic Essay 21 3.3 Criteria 30 4.0 Design Research 33 4.1 Methodology 35 4.2 Frames 39 4.3 Criteria Testing 59 5.0 Case Studies 61 5.1 Rose Kennedy Greenway 63 5.2 The Star 65 5.3 Folly For A Flyover 67 5.4 The Cube 69 5.5 Marsupial Bridge 71 5.6 Arts and Culture Center 73 5.7 A8ernA 75 5.8 Highline 77 6.0 Appendix 79 6.1 Schedule 80 6.2 Bibliography 82
1.0 7
Abstract In the desire to establish a network of regional systems, what has become forgotten is the human-scale experience- something that is often affected through the physical constructs of these infrastructural arrangements. While these networks have certainly influenced the growth of cities, as Stephen Graham and Simon Marvin put it: “One person’s infrastructure is another’s difficulty.” This thesis looks to challenge the traditional top-down approach to city planning and proposes an incremental, or tactical, intervention methodology that are sourced and learned from those who operate at the scale of the neighborhood. Through the use of a phased and engaging approach, the loss of civic ownership that derived itself from the destructive nature of urban infrastructural planning will be returned to the sites where space has been left in a residual state.
Key Terms Lost Space:
Neighborhood:
Residual areas of a city derived from infrastructural neccesities and poor land usage
A localized scale area of a city that fosters a sense of community and exhibits its own uniquie characteristics
Tactical:
Regional:
Deliberate, small-scale actions aimed at creating a longer term change
A larger scale area outside the limits of the urban center that require a networking of services
Infrastructure:
Civic Ownership:
The highways, rail lines, power grids, and other services neccesary for a modern urbanism
A shared sense of community possession that generates a level of mutual responsibility towards a public project
“Key Image” The imposing nature of major infrastrucure projects has taken precedant over the neighborhood scale
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Introduction
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Personal Statement Throughout my education, many precedents have made clear the relationship between the larger urban design and infrastructural moves and the affects that those have on the human scale- a relationship that has not traditionally been considered in the formal city planning processes. Having lived in Boston for the last five years, I have become familiar with the “top-down” projects that have occurred in this city. From the ramifications, both positive and negative, of the Big Dig to the urban renewal endeavors that decimated the West End neighborhood, Boston is certainly one of the many cities that have experienced a shift in its physical forms alongside shifts in its policymaking and civic ideals. Learning about the story of the West End and the associated Federal Urban Renewal programs have been particularly disconcerting to me. Block by block the neighborhood, along with the sense of community that many enjoyed, was razed in city initiatives to “clean up” this part of the city. The opinion of those who lived in the neighborhood at the time were barely, if at all, considered. Ironically, what we experience in the neighborhood today is a lack in appropriately scaled architecture that has more residual space than it did prior. In a discipline that has numerous actors involved in shaping its built form, city planning must account for the constant flux of community ideologies that transform throughout generations in a manner that is both responsive to needs and accessible to all.
Sean Levesque is currently a graduate student in the Masters of Architecture program at Wentworth Institute of Technology in Boston. Prior to that, Sean graduated with a Bachelor of Science in Architecture degree from the same institute concentrating his studies in urbanism and the built environment. During his undergrad career, Sean completed internships with Elkus Manfredi Architects as well as with Campus Planning and Development at Northeastern University, where he has experienced first hand the multiple processes and actors involved in implementing a project.
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Book Structure This thesis proposal ÂŹfirst explores the issue of barriers created through infrastructural constructs and how a shift in cultural trends are encouraging a remediation of these barriers through a tactical and “bottoms-upâ€? design strategy. This exploration and subsequent research then informs a set of criteria to measure for success going forward and is supported by a series of framework-based visuals to test the larger concepts studied here. From this, two methodologies are proposed- an Implementation Methodology and a Design, or Representational, Methodology. An incremental design approach becomes the key factor in understanding how this research comes together. Finally, a series of case studies look at instances that may serve as precedents for arriving at a final architectural outcome
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Thesis Statement Residual urban voids, remnants of a heavy-handed attitude towards infrastructure planning, may serve as sites that reestablish a sense of civic ownership by employing a tactical, phased methodology to neighborhood interventions.
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Argument In order to mediate the physical barriers and urban scars created via an increasingly irrelevant urge to interconnect cities at a regional scale, city planners and private interests must be tactical and purposeful about their methods of shaping the built environment. It is not enough to just remove or hide these pieces of infrastructure, which is often a chaotic and costly process. Instead, these lost spaces must be approached with an opportunistic attitude that perceives these sites as potential catalysts for future, long-term change. To take an incremental approach to a tangible intervention allows for a physical engagement with the community and neighborhood that has the potential to foster a greater sense of civic perception and ownership in previously unappealing spaces.
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Relevance The aging infrastructural systems found in the contemporary built environment, products of traditional top-down planning processes, are becoming increasingly irrelevant to where the urban context is shifting towards in regards to social and cultural forces. In a time where walkability and the human scale are becoming important factors in city design, there still exist pieces of infrastructure and any associated residual spaces that create divides between urban neighborhoods. Recent trends to mediate these barriers have shown a desire to update, bury, or all together remove these elementsas seen in Boston’s Central Artery Tunnel Project. However, these measures emerge as complicated, expensive, and time prohibitive processes and in the end may prove to be ineffective in the long term at providing a reestablished sense of place along these former systems. How to more effectively and economically engage with these problem sites and infrastructure constructs in a purposeful way, engaging outside the stakeholders involved in the formal planning methods, becomes the
end goal of this thesis. As more people move back to the city, an increased pressure is being placed on municipal governments and planning groups to provide a voice for those in neighborhoods where large-scale projects are affecting the experience of the everyday. The emerging concept of Tactical Urbanism starts to address this concern by providing a methodology for urban interventions that occur incrementally and are implemented through the advantageous nature of citizens, private organizations, or neighborhoods groups.The character of this design approach provides a precedent by which a phased implementation process can be employed to better capture the collective needs of a community while a project goes through implementation procedures.
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Literature Review
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Topic Area The research contained here deals with the dichotomy between top-down planning methods and emerging tactical intervention processes. This is a relationship that is rooted in a sense of civic ownership and community engagement that has been shown to be lacking in the traditional city planning and project implementation methods. How to manage the connection between these different urban planning conditions and modes of thinking becomes a major focal point in which this research has been revolving around. Instead of an urban condition planned in the background, removed from any community input, how to engage a neighborhood in new ways becomes the focus of this study. The traditional city planning processes exist within the realm of shaping political, economical, infrastructural, and civic forces into a uniform vision for the future. Large capital projects, planned topdown via government planning agencies, have often not been responsive to the immediate needs of those living within the city and its neighborhoods. Many major urban projects have instead responded to
some larger, regional force in order to tie in the urban center with emerging infrastructures. In the process, the physical ramifications of these projects have, in many cases, ignored the experience at the local scale and created pockets of lost space that often last for several generations. In a contemporary urban condition where designing for the human scale is becoming increasingly prevalent, the structures of the past that have disrupted continuity in the built environment are still major factors that have to be dealt with in some way. There is an emergent trend to approach these residual spaces from the bottom-up, rather than through top-down methodologies that have gotten us to this point. While larger top-down moves can, and have, certainly be employed as a “fix� to these now perceived barriers, they still run the risk of not accounting for the needs of the immediate neighborhoods. Instead, to take a tactical approach to urban design and architecture that allows for an incremental and engaging intervention process.
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Bibliographic Essay Throughout the twentieth century, the urban centers of the United States and the persistent investment in the networking of regional infrastructures as economic, technological, and political forces pushed for a greater efficiency of the movement of people, goods, and information, have only worked to establish a disconnect between the priories of modern convince and that of the immediate local hierarchy. As the regional scale is prioritized, the local or human scale falls to the wayside through the physical division of our built environment due to the construction of highways, subway lines, industrial zones, and other such systems. Apart from the immediate footprint of these infrastructural arrangements, pockets of residual spaces are formed via the need for buffer zones, support services, and engineering necessities that sit as wasted space within the urban fabric and further emphasizes this divide. While in our contemporary society governments and planning groups are attempting to correct what are now being perceived as city planning missteps, the current state of affairs is often expensive and bogged down by bureaucratic processes that tend to exclude the general public. The complete removal or reconfiguration of infrastructure should not be the only response to remediating a divided city. Instead, a tactical and phased approach to urban design and contextual architecture should be implemented that allows for a greater sense of civic ownership thorough the use of community engagement initiatives and scalable intervention methods.
transportation, or communication systems have with each other and, perhaps more importantly, with other relevant infrastructural systems, can be argued as being a major characteristic of the contemporary built environment. The primary goal of networking all these systems together is to find ways in which to bring elements of the urban context, as well as the people who inhabit these areas, into dynamic and shifting relationships that would otherwise have been unachievable. By virtue of what it means to network infrastructural constructs, the building of these relationships has allowed cities to expand outward further than ever, providing for the development of metropolises and creating the means for people to feasibly live outside the city center in larger numbers. However, the side affects of a networked system are that “they unevenly bind spaces together across cities, regions, nations, and international boundaries whilst helping also to define the material and social dynamics, and divisions, within and between urban spaces.�1 Infrastructure as a physical construct has the potential to ignore or overlook the needs of the space these systems are physically occupying in space in the pursuit to branch out to larger sections of the region. On one hand, this connectedness between systems has allowed for places separated by large physical distances to become more readily accessible. But, as infrastructural networks have grown more prominent, a sense of local disconnect at the urban center is occurring between those who may be physically close but are otherwise severed via economic and social distances between people Infrastructure networks have been key components and places. What this ultimately has done is start to and assets in the expansion of the modern city and eliminate physical consistency among the immediate how they function.The relationship that energy, water, or local scale of the urban context and divide up USGS aerial photos of Boston in 1955 (top) and 1969 (bottom) during Urban Renewal projects
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Pockets of residual space. Inner Loop HighwayRochester, New York
portions of our cities through the construction of highways and other such systems. What this disparity between the regional and the local has created is residual, or lost, space within the urban fabric. Lost spaces are understood as being the undesirable urban areas, or “antispaces” that make no positive contribution to the overall larger context. These spaces are not well defined, are without measurable boundaries, and fail to connect other elements within the city. Examples include surface parking lots, the “no-man’s-land” along highway overpasses, and abandoned or underused waterfronts, train yards, or industrial zones. These become remnants of a larger planned move that were left undeveloped for some reason or the other. This dilemma of modern open, or public, space can be attributed to several leading factors: urban renewal programs, the Interstate Highway construction initiatives of the 1940’s, zoning and land-use policies, and the attitude of architects of the Modern Movement towards open space.2 What gets lost, however, is not simply this sense of physical continuity. Beyond the iconic landmarks of a city, there is a collective memory that is vital to the identity of a particular place, and the potential for a revival of lost space within a community can have a major impact on the collective identity of a neighborhood. 3
theories exhibited during the 1950’s and onward gave way to the ideals of “pure architecture,” or architecture for architects. In the mindset of the Functionalists, public space simply served as a way to get to from point A to point B. Space, in essence, has had the potential of becoming “lost” within the public realm. This process of urban development treated buildings as isolated objects and not part of a larger fabric of built form and open space; three-dimensional relationships or human behavior were typically not considered. Changing economic, industrial, and employment patterns have further developed this issue of lost space in the built environment as major gaps in the built form disrupt the continuity of the city.4 Meanwhile, the increasing prevalence of the automobile in the post-war period and the development of other societal forces has seen a turning away from the urban context as regional networks were developed to meet this new demand. As open spaces more and more have been given over to infrastructure in an attempt to connect into this developing networking of systems, the concepts of designing public open space has been lost within the traditional forms of planning processes. Further, an inability or perhaps unwillingness of public institutions to manage or control the physical construct of the city has resulted in the further erosion of a collective framework and physical continuity.
During the height of the Modernist movement, the design of public open space was often derived as a byproduct and relegated to the in-between zones from one building or parking lot to the next. Functionalism became a prevalent ideology in city planning. Utilitarian in nature, the urban design
The traditional urban planning processes have had, and at times still exhibit, a lack of an effective process of engagement with the community and other neighborhood or institutional actors. The typical “top-down” approaches to planning strategies have shown to be mostly counter-intuitive to evoking
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Pop-up beer garden at Tennessee Brewing Company sparks future development of a historical site
meaningful change within the built environment. Historically, public engagement within these planning processes has been a secondary measure that has been introduced only when it has been deemed necessary. “The city built in the postwar automobile era never fully developed an effective model for civic engagement beyond regular elections and statutorily required public meetings.”5 However, a recent shift in trends is starting to chip away at this. Younger generations are driving less than previous generations and car ownership has dropped one-third since 1980 and public transportation options are becoming more prevalent while traditional means of transportation are becoming less relevant. At the same time, as this shift is happening, more people are moving back to the city placing more demand on the providing of municipal services. The current formal processes of bringing issues to attention and suggesting potential solutions as a means to facilitate some desired outcome are proven to be unsatisfactory. Citizens are finding that these processes are cumbersome, out of date, and far too time consuming to make it worth the effort and are proving frustrating as people are starting to feel that they have little to no control over the physical changes that are happening within their neighborhood and beyond. It is important to not assume what a community or larger urban context needs for it to grow further and occasionally this means that “doing nothing” is the best course of action. In Curitiba, Brazil, a planned public works project to realign the unpaved streets of a neighborhood was halted when a neighborhood association voiced their concerns about the work potentially covering up a small natural stream.6 The project was ultimately put on hold when the planners
involved took this concern into consideration and begins to show the benefit of having this dialogue between the city and it’s citizens within the context of the built environment. When community input is involved from the beginning, a sense of civic ownership is fostered from implementation and further builds all the way through to project completion. Ultimately what this allows for is an iterative process where qualitative and quantitative data can be derived from the community engagement and further implemented into the longterm projects that are meant to be the end goal. To start at “Phase 0”, or with placeholder projects, takes what it learned from the community input and carries the momentum into the formal planning process while the project goes through capital budget processes, funding, project delivery tasks, and so forth. This incrementalism, or piecemeal technique, may prove to be more important than a singular, top-down and overarching design or infrastructural decisions. The temporary project typology can start to play a role here in maintaining or starting to establish a sense of continuity within a neighborhood and starting with the small scale can be beneficial to the long-term goals. These “pinpoint” urban projects may lead to broader cultural changes over time. The planning process of cities takes time, and has too, due to the number of different actors and guidelines involved. A simple yet focused intervention has the potential to elicit new ways in which to engage with a space that motivates others to engage with a community-oriented planning process.7 When the primary outcome of the Modernist Movement of urban planning was to stimulate private interests,
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“Umbrella Sky Project” Art instillation in Agueda, Portugal by Sextafeira Produções.
where a sort of “island urbanism” of spaces inbetween sites disappear from the public view, these breaks in continuity can start to be remediated via a fresh and responsive take of a disparate site.8 The emerging concept of “Tactical Urbanism” serves as the testing ground for providing insight into a community-driven design methodology. “Tactical urbanism is an approach to neighborhood building and activation using short-term, low-cost, and scalable interventions and policies.” This intervention method does not propose a one-size fit all solution, but rather, intentional and flexible response. Relying solely on solutions, in fact, remains as the fixation of numerous and overlapping disciplines in urban development fields. This stems from the idea that cities in their entirety can be controlled. To be responsive, however, is to reject this notion and understand the city as a dynamic force with multiple influences coming from multiple directions. The influences, or the actors, of tactical urbanism projects include citizens, developers or entrepreneurs, advocacy organizations, and in some instances government agencies. These types of projects allow for an immediate reclamation, reprogramming, and redesign of public space by those who are immediately impacted by urban projects. Tactical urbanism also allows for developers to collect design intelligence from the markets they serve and sets precedent for what is possible to gain public and political support. 9 This effectively creates a learned response to the slow, conventional planning processes that this new form of urban design is countering. As a community-led response, this sits in between the sanctioned, or the governmentsponsored projects, and the unsanctioned “tactical”
responses of citizens to their environments. Flexibility can begin to occur, however, where the projects that fall under the heading of tactical urbanism can often inspire a sanctioned outcome that are derived from an unsanctioned physical response or event. Tactical Urbanism sees design, much like city building, as being a dynamic process where final solutions are rarely met. In our contemporary cities, the current situation of regionally networked infrastructural systems is an aspect of the built environment that is a fact of today’s urbanism. While these systems have allowed for cities to grow and develop, in the interim how this affects the local scale has been forgotten. In a condition of shifting societal trends, however, the state of these infrastructures- now considered by many to be barriers in several regards, are starting to lose their relevancy within the local setting. While a total reworking or removal can and has been done, it has been shown that this is an expensive and time consuming methodology that still fails to establish a sense of place within the neighborhood scale.
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Endnotes 1. Stephen Graham and Simon Marvin. Splintering Urbanism: Networked Infrastructures, Technological Mobilities, and the Urban Condition (New York: Routledge, 2001), 11. 2. Roger Trancik, Finding Lost Space: Theories of Urban Design (New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1986), 6. 3. Jamie Lerner, Urban Acupuncture: Celebrating Pinpricks of Change that Enrich City Life, (Washington DC: Island Press, 2014), 43. 4. Trancik, Finding Lost Space, 1-4. 5. Mike Lyndon and Anthony Garcia. Tactical Urbanism: Short Term Action for Long-Term Change. (Washington DC: Island Press, 2015), 81.
6. Jamie Lerner, Urban Acupuncture, 21-22.
7. Jamie Lerner, Urban Acupuncture, 3.
8. Philipp Oswalt and Klaus Overmeyer, Urban Catalyst: The Poser of Temporary Use, (Berlin, Germany: DOM Publishers, 2013). 10-11.
9. Lyndon and Garcia, Tactical Urbanism, 2-3.
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Design Criteria Process Criteria
The project will be implemented with a continued dialogue between community and designer where the transition between each intervention phase allows for lessons to applied to the next through a rapid, iterative process.
Formal Criteria
Human-scaled continuity in the built form is reestablished through a strategic and deliberate infill of residual space otherwise claimed by infrastructural systems.
Architectonic Criteria
Materials and details used in the interventions will recall neighborhood characteristics and tectonics and shall be relatable to scale and datum lines of existing built forms.
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The intervention will foster a sense of civic ownership in the neighborhood it operates in at both the project scale and the community scale. This feeling of ownership will be derived via a participatory model and comes from a conglomerate of individual experiences.
The project allows for the inclusion of community engagement through a phased approach that builds intrest and a continued neighborhood investment while the design, approval, and funding proceses are occuring.
The regional scale is no longer the prevailing factor within the neighborhoods where existing infrastructural elements intrude upon. Infrastructure now becomes an opportunity, not a problem, and serves as the structural basis for a proposed intervention.
The regional scale is no longer the prevailing factor within the neighborhoods where existing infrastructural elements intrude upon. Infrastructure now becomes an opportunity, not a problem, and serves as the structural basis for a proposed intervention.
The project will employ interactive features, particularly in the earlier implementation phases, that act as a focal point to highlight the potential usages of a residual site and create intriguing responses to the existing conditions.
A strategy for a scalable tectonic language will be developed that can be translated from one design phase to the next in a manner that is consistent and relatable to itself.
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Design Research
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Methodology The approach and design strategies to be used in this thesis fall into two different categories- Design Methodology and Implementation Methodology. The Design Methodology, used as a tool to arrive at a final architectural product, is an approach that will employ a certain design language throughout Thesis Studio. On the other hand, the Implementation Methodology that is defined here will work to inform how the design tools established are used in an effective manner. In the communication between both established methodologies, the incremental process of reaching a final product will become an important measure of success going forward. In an effort to recognize that any built work is inherently experienced through a personal and physical presence within a space, the primary toolset used in the Design Method will focus primarily on understanding architecture through perspective. Traditional drawing conventions such as plan and section, views that are rarely experienced in built architecture, should come as resultants of efforts to understand the atmospheric character of an
intervention. The graphic style of photo-collaging, similar to some of the images used here in this Thesis, will aide in understanding the experience of being placed within a space. In looking towards the Implementation Methodology, the final architectural project shall be derived from a three-phased approach that ensures a level of neighborhood engagement that allows for the focused development of a long-term design solution. The project becomes an incremental endeavor that works to prove the larger potential of a residual site. Following the initial visioning or master planning of a project, a temporary placeholder project on the site will allow for a hands-on engagement with the community that serves to build interest and civic investment. Taking the lessons learned from the first phase, the site should enter into a one to three year pilot program that tests semi-permanent interventions at a more approachable and efficient scale. Finally, the permanent deign solution should be implemented with the input and observations from the previous phases.
“The Brooklyn Bridge” David Hockney November 1982 Photo-Collage
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TEMPORARY <1 YEAR
PILOT
1- 3 YEARS
PERMANENT LONG TERM
COMMUNITY EVENT INTERACTIVE KIOSK LIGHTING DESIGN
OUTDOOR PUBLIC ART SPACE SEATING FEATURES DESIGNED PAVING SYSTEMS
PUBLIC-USE BUILDING LARGER PARK SYSTEM PLAYGROUND
Implementation Methodology flow chart
“30 Frames Per Second” Study of Vechicular Movement In Charlestown
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Frames Exploring design research through a series of frameworks has allowed for a constant testing of ideas and concepts throughout this semester. Working with the idea of Site, Systems, and Program, a number of visuals and models have been created to respond to a series of literature encountered while developing this thesis. The work contained in this section starts off with understanding the problem of infrastructural derived barriers have on the urban fabric through the framework of Site. Moving to Systems, the Temporary-Pilot-Permanent Methodology that has been established is tested in a series of diagrammatic studies. Finally, a further look at Program starts to create a dialogue between existing residual space and the opportunity these sites have to be something more.
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The Problem: Destructive Boundaries From Left to Right: Charles MGH Station, Downtown Boston, East Boston, Alston Railyards
When the paths of existing infrastructural elements are highlighted and simplified to their figure-ground spatial qualities, it starts to become clear the power these systems have on the urban fabric. Looking at four seperate areas of Boston, this set of frames identifies the problems associated with the present day boundaries that exist within the city. The disruption of continuity in the urban form creates an unappealing exlusionary relationship between neighborhoods.
The ideal situationdirect connection to the waterfront
The interruption in the continuity and connection
The existing condition- barrier between landmark and community
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Disruption In The Human Scale Outside the confines of a plan view perception of the problem infrastructural systems can have on the urban fabric, understanding how the quality of space can be affected by these monumental barriers becomes important. There is a level of frustration that starts to exist as a major elevated highway, for example, disrupts the route to the major destinations or landmark of a neighborhood. This set of frames explores this very issue and begins to relate it to the experiance of the residential areas of the Charlestown neighborhood of Boston. Here the connection to the waterfront and historic Charlestown Navy Yard becomes inturpupted by a double decker elevated highway, to the point where this section of the neighborhood no longer feels like a part of this area of the city.
EXISTING CONDITIONS
RESIDENTIAL
TEMPORARY LEARNING FROM COMMUNITY
SIDEWALK
DECATUR ST.
SIDEWALK
ROUTE 1 OVERPASS & BUFFER ZONE
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Temporary-Pilot-Permanent: Exploring The Incremental In putting the Implementation Methodology laid out earlier into a visual, this next set of frames starts to put this approach into practice in a diagrammatic sense to begin to test this method. Starting with documenting the existing conditions, the Route 1 overpass in Charlestown, Massachusetts, each phase is then explored to show the scaler increase and system of intervention that will occur with each step.
SIDEWALK
CHELSEA ST.
SIDEWALK
Existing Conditions
Tempoary Project
PILOT
ESTABLISHING PLACE
PERMANENT
CREATING LONG-TERM CHANGE
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Pilot Project
Permanent Project
An observation deck provides new views of the city skyline.
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Opportunity + Program
In these residual sites and spaces, there begins to be an opportunistic attitude in the way in which a new program may be intervened within the existing. How to use this attitude in a way that becomes an a catalyst for perceiving previously overlooked sites in a new way becomes a major indicator in how a renewed sense of place may be fostered. The following framework beings to sketch ways in which the existing stuctural organization of these pieces of infrastructure may serve as a basis for developing new public program.
A public paillion provides space for communitybased activities.
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A public walkway suspends itself from the existing structure of an overpass.
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Process Criteria Incrementalism The project will be implemented with a continued dialogue between community and designer where the transition between each intervention phase allows for lessons to applied to the next through a rapid, iterative process.
The Tempoary-Pilot-Permanent framework should create a process of design that creates incremental measures to test the project in real-time with the future end users of the final architectural outcome.
Ownership The intervention will foster a sense of civic ownership in the neighborhood it operates in at both the project scale and the community scale.This feeling of ownership will be derived via a participatory model and comes from a conglomerate of individual experiences.
Through a purposeful inclusion of the community through neighboorhood volunteers and interactive projects, the intervention should foster a level of engagement that recalls an individual farmiliarity with the project itself towards a new community perception of the site the project intervenes within.
Investment The project allows for the inclusion of community engagement through a phased approach that builds intrest and a continued neighborhood investment while the design, approval, and funding proceses are occuring.
Including measures to engage the neighborhood during the formal design process though temporary or longer-term interventions will allow for a community investment in the site that helps to inform the permanent intervention. The site, in its residual nature, serves as the testing ground prior to reaching the final solution.
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Formal Criteria Continuity Human-scaled continuity in the built form is reestablished through a strategic and deliberate infill of residual space otherwise claimed by infrastructural systems.
The project must return a sense of continuity within the context of the neighborhood scale. Repairing and filling these residual spaces rapidly and with a strategic purpose will allow the project to maintain an early foothold in the site.
Adaption The regional scale is no longer the prevailing factor within the neighborhoods where existing infrastructural elements intrude upon. Infrastructure now becomes an opportunity, not a problem, and serves as the structural basis for a proposed intervention.
The intrusive nature of the built constructs of infrastructural systems will no longer pose as large of a perceived imposition on the site. Claiming the existing structure for a new use will allow for a different perception of the space.
Re-Use The regional scale is no longer the prevailing factor within the neighborhoods where existing infrastructural elements intrude upon. Infrastructure now becomes an opportunity, not a problem, and serves as the structural basis for a proposed intervention.
The intrusive nature of the built constructs of infrastructural systems no longer poses as large of an imposition on the site. Claiming the existing structures for some new use will allows for a different perception of the space that otherwise had negative connotations associated with it.
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Architectonic Criteria Contextual Materials and details used in the interventions will recall neighborhood characteristics and tectonics and shall be relatable to scale and datum lines of existing built forms.
Materials and scale relatable to the existing neighborhood fabric should be reinterpreted in new and interesting ways rather than a total replicating of an existing tectonic. The physical quality of the proposed interventions should respond to a larger site and neighborhood history.
Interactive The project will employ interactive features, particularly in the earlier implementation phases, that act as a focal point to highlight the potential usages of a residual site and create intriguing responses to the existing conditions.
An interactive design should be used as a way to respond to an existing site and reinterpret that response in an engaging way that works to highlight new opportunities within a space. In the Temporary Phase of the process, interactivity should play a major part in how the intervention operates.
Scalable A strategy for a scalable tectonic language will be developed that can be translated from one design phase to the next in a manner that is consistent and relatable to itself.
In the jump from the Temporary to Pilot to Permanent, a consistent architectural language should be developed. This language should be flexible to community input, but still maintain a coherent underlaying system.
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Case Studies
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Rose Kennedy Greenway The Rose Kennedy Greenway in Downtown Boston is the resultant of many years worth of work on the Central Artery/Tunnel Project, or the Big Dig, as it has become unofficially known. The Greenway replaces what was once a major elevated highway slicing though the city that has been hidden below and rerouted into a tunnel system. The project has received much public criticism and scrutiny following a construction that was plagued with massive budget overruns, huge expenditures of time, and instances of engineering missteps. The end result in the Greenway is by and large agreed upon as being a much-needed improvement over what existed and has worked to start reintegrating formally divided neighborhoods back into public perception. When the Greenway opened to the public in 2007, the response to this new green space was rather critical of its lack of programming and sense of destination. Ironically, what has made the Greenway more successful in later years has been the inclusion of public art instillations, movable furniture, food trucks, and other such small-scale endeavors. What this starts to show is that simply providing green space in what was formally a primary example of urban lost space is not enough to infuse a sense of place into the site.
Location: Boston, Massachusetts Completed: 2007 Program: Public park
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The Star Designed by artist Jun Hao Ong as part of the 2015 Urban Xchange public art festival, the Star is a light installation in an unfinished building in Malaysia Comprised of steel cables and stings of LED lights, the piece appears to pierce through the floor slabs of the building. As descried by the artist, the piece emerges as a â&#x20AC;&#x153;manifestation of the sterile conditions of a once thriving industrial port.â&#x20AC;? In using site in a very explicit way, this instillation shows how a small intrusion into the residual built forms of our cities, be it through an urban or an architectural scaled intervention, may serve as a catalyst for the potential of a larger rethinking of urban spaces otherwise lost in its public perception.
Artist: Jun Hao Ong Location: Penang, Malaysia Completed: 2015
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Folly For A Flyover Folly For A Flyover is a nine weeklong project that transformed the disused underpass of a freeway in Hackney Wick, London into an arts venue and public space where local residents and visitors came together and watched, performed, and ate while becoming involved with community workshops and theatre. The project hosted outdoor cinema, performances, and plays as well as café spaces, boat tours, and other events. The Folly itself was designed as a “giant construction kit” and was built using community volunteers of multiple skill and commitment level. At the end of the project’s life span, the brick used in the project was deconstructed and used elsewhere.The success of the project persuaded the London Legacy Development Corporation to invest in a permanent infrastructure to maintain the site as a public space.
Architect: Assemble Location: London, England Completed: 2011 Time Span: Six Weeks Program: Outdoor arts venue and public space
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The Cube A site less structure, The Cube is a pavilion designed to house a pop-up restaurant, dining room and lounge that can be placed in dramatic and unexpected locations- often placed atop rooftops of significant structures. Suitable for up to eighteen guests at a time, the structure is intended to stay at a given location for a period of four and twelve weeks. The project has been conceived as a module that can be taken down relatively easily, is suitable for all climatic conditions, and expresses a maximum in living comfort with its high-quality aesthetics and materials. This project exhibits a tectonic endeavor and a system of intervention that begins to play with the relationship between site and architecture. While the locations that this modular unit has been located on are already significant and monumental structures that hold a meaning in public perception, the temporary grafting on of the Cube allows for a unique take on these sites through its temporary nature.
Architect: Park Associati Location: Undefined Completed: 2011 Project Type: Pop-Up, Modular Program: Restaurant and dinning
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Marsupial Bridge The Marsupial Bridge is a pedestrian walkway that uses the structure of an existing viaduct in Milwaukee. Originally engineered to support trolley cars, a use abandoned with an increased automobile usage, the Marsupial Bridge hangs from the unused space of the viaduct and activities it as new public space while reconnecting residential neighborhoods with the Milwaukee River and the downtown and commercial districts. The projectâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s undulating concrete deck acts as a counterpoint to the rigid steel structure of the existing viaduct that weaves through the established construction. The concrete deck is then finished with wood details in response to the docks that formerly lined the industrial stretch of the river. This new relationship between the old and the new is derived from an opportunism that comes from a renewed interest in reinterpreting underused structures.
Architect: La Dallman Location: Milwaukee, WI Completed: 2008 Program: Pedestrian bridge and urban plaza
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Arts and Culture Center Sighted under the Keihin railway tracks in a former red-light district of a neighborhood in Yokohama Japan, this new arts and culture space serves as one of many measures by the government to transform the unsavory character of the area. Five architects were invited to work along a stretch of this elevated railway to create a new, yet “eclectic,” hub of activity that redefines the obsolete space into gallery, café, studio, and exhibit spaces. Pitched roofs peaking from under the railway gives the project an identity while serving as a way to cut down on the noise from the infrastructure above.
Architects: Jun Yanagisawa, Studio 2A, Hiroshi Takahashi, Masao Koizumi Location:Yokohama, Japan Completed: 2013 Program: Galleries, studios, cafe, and exhibit hall
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A8ernA In the early 1970â&#x20AC;&#x2122;s, a new highway over pass cut through a small village near Amsterdam, creating a â&#x20AC;&#x153;brutal cutâ&#x20AC;? in the urban fabric. What was once a passive attitude towards this infrastructural construct has since taken on a sense of optimism in the potential the subsequent residual space has. With input and suggestions from the surrounding community, this space has taken on a large number of mixed-use programming including a skate park, supermarket, flower shop, mini marina, soccer field, basketball court, panorama deck, and more. The large number of programmed spaces found here highlights the potential these broader stroke intervention projects may have on residual space. In this instance, this highway overpass has been transformed from a being perceived as a disaster in urban continuity to an excitement about what this space can actually provide fro the neighborhood.
Architect: NL Architects Location: Koog aan de Zaan, Netherlands Completed: 2003 Program: Mixed-use public progam
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New York City Highline New York Cityâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Highline Park is a repurposing of an abandoned elevated railway in the Meatpacking district. Established in 1999, a nonprofit group Friends of the High Line was formed to advocate for the rail lineâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s preservation and reuse as public open space. Their work to draw attention to the potential of this abandoned infrastructure helped to build community support of a public redevelopment for pedestrian use- government support soon followed. The success of the project has had a major impact on the area, with many high profile projects being developed that have revitalized the neighborhood. Other cites have since considered a similar repurposing of track systems, including Philadelphia and Chicago. While the tectonic and architectural qualities of the Highline are certainly something to consider, in regards to this thesis, the bottom-up investment in the potential of this underused piece of infrastructure, as well as the affects it has on the surrounding area, becomes the major frame by which to explore this project further.
Architect: Diller Scofidio + Renfro Location: New York City, New York Completed: 2014 (Phase 3), 2011 (Phase 2), 2009 (Phase 1) Program: Public park
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Appendix
APPLY FOR JOBS
FEBRUARY 1
COMPLETE TEMPORARY PHASE
JANUARY 18
CONCEPT FOR PERMANENT PROJECT
JANUARY 6
SPRING SEMESTER STARTS
RESUME + PORTFOLIO
DECEMBER 8
THESIS PROSPECTUS DUE
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80
SITE ANALYSIS COMMUNITY RESEARCH
APRIL 23
COMMENCEMENT
APRIL 18
FINAL REVIEW
APRIL 14-20
FINAL EXAM PERIOD
MARCH 14
COMPLETE PERMANENT PHASE
MARCH 5-11
SPRING BREAK
FEBRUARY 15
COMPLETE PILOT PHASE
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PRODUCTION PROJECT COORDINATION
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