LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE PORTFOLIO 2013-2015
SHUNKUANG SU MASTER OF LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE SCHOOL OF DESIGN, UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA
TABLE OF CONTENTS ACADEMIC WORK Year 2013-2015
LANDSCAPE AS TSUNAMI ARMATURE Waterfront Civic Park Design
01
Valparaiso, Chile
FROM VACANCY TO PRODUCTIVE LANDSCAPE Post-industrial Site Revive Strategy
02
North Philadelphia
LANDSCAPE AS ASSEMBLED INSTALLATION Casino Pedestrian Plaza And Path design
03
Las Vegas, Center City
LANDSCAPE AS CULTURAL RECEPTACLE Post-industrial Suburban Park Project
04
Shanghai, China
NATURE SIMULATION-WINDY ISLETS Nature Simulation Course Design
Delaware River Waterfront,Philadelphia
05
LANDSCAPE AS TSUNAMI ARMATURE Waterfront Civic Park Design, Valparaiso, Chile Instructor: David Gourveneur Semester: 2015 Spring
The project site is located in Valparaiso, which is a historical harbor city in Chile with both historical UNESCO site and international port. This city is facing multiple critical issues such as economic decline, postindustrial vacancy and nature hazards like forest fire and tsunami. In this project, landscape architecture methodology is a detailed resolution for a large scale city rehabilitation concept which try to redevelop the post-industrial site and turn it into an economic driver of the city and a tsunami infrastructure. But landscape is not only a resolution to deal with the problems in our living world like economic and nature hazard, but landscape should also be a solution of cultural identity preservation. Especially project site is in Valparaiso which is a city play significant role in human history. Try to use landscape design as a tool to represent the aesthetic and poetic characteristic of Valparaiso is also a critical mission of this project.
Valparaiso is in danger of the Pacific Ocean tsunami, which is predicted 7-meter height and 100-years possible to flood. Fortunately, the Valparaiso city is 5 meters higher than the sea level, it means only 2 meters tsunami flood our design need to figure out. Base on research to 2011 Japan tsunami, most of coastal infrastructure such as tsunami wall seem to be unefficient for tsunami protection. Consider the damage of tsunami include flood and floating objects, this project propose three types of strategies in order to reduce the damage by tsunami. Firstly, evacuation is the most significant strategy to decrease the loss caused by tsunami. In this project, three pedestrian bridges will be proposed in order to enhance the accessiblity and provide tourist a way to go across the existing highway and rail road. Secondly, tsunami protection forest is designed in this project, which can efficiently decrease the impact of tsunami and capture the floating objects like ships. And by bring back the local tree species can also recover the ecological system of waterfront. Finally, a 4-meter height tsunami retaining wall is proposed in this waterfront area, different from normal and traditional retaining wall, the retaining wall of this project are constructed with landscape consideration which can programming the wall and provide amenities for tourist.
The project site locates at the intersection of the largest ravine in Valparaiso and the Pacific Ocean. So that an ecological concern about ravine water remediation is critical in this project because the ravine water will directly run into the ocean and the quality of this water will effect the life of coastal habitats. The project proposes a landscape strategy which use wetland vegetation species to purify the ravine water and create a remediation landscape contains various programs and allow human activities to happen in the site.
As the site is tend to be the largest public space in Valparaiso, how to provide recreational and commercial programs should be considered in the design. Here we propose a series of programs from the city to the waterfront area, the commercial activities will be closer to city to attract consumers, and the valuable waterfront area will be opened to the public as recreational space. All of the programs mentioned above will be combined with tsunami infrastructure like retaining wall and tsunami woodland through landscape methodology. Infrastructure here become part of the landscape.
FROM VACANCY TO PRODUCTIVE LANDSCAPE Post-industrial Vacant District Revive Strategy, North Philadelphia Instructor: Nicholas Pevzner Semester: 2013 Fall
Nowadays, many of the industrial cities in Unite States like Philadelphia and Detroit are facing the issues of vacancy, high unemployment rate and high crime rate which are caused by economic decline. The solutions to these kinds of issue are always about policy changes or economic promotion which we could hardly notice their impact on the physical world. In this project, I try to apply landscape and urban design methods to invoke and unveil the potential of the site. I consider that place making is like a chessboard for different actors to play their role on it, it is a meeting point for local residents, city government, transportation infrastructure enterprise and education institutes can put their resources and requests on the table and negotiate. By phasing construction of the landscape or urban design movements , this project is tend to bring up the conversation between different social groups and break down the barrier. Finally trying to achieve social equity.
Philadelphia is the 6th largest city in U.S, but after 1960 the manufacture industry started to decline, the population of Philadelphia also kept reducing during the last fifty years. As a symbol of American industrial city, Philadelphia suffers the same pain as other industrial city, such as vacancy, low employment rate and criminal issue. The vacancy includes two types of vacant lots, postindustrial and residential. The issue of high unemployment rate and criminal rate seems like a vicious circle and aggravated cause of low revenue and lack of basic infrastructure like monitor and police service. The concept of this project is about seeking multiple actors in the city scale and design a system to let these agencies can work together and utilize their resource to make a big move in these city’s development. As a landscape architect, the methodology and strategy of this process will finally become a physical, spatial and detailed solution.
By using GIS technique and mapping skill, I mainly focus on the North Philadelphia station area which is mostly vacant factory and abandon infrastructure. Looking for a sustainable urban development model in order to create safer and better living condition for local people.
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Two kinds of public realm are proposed in this project, the north part of renewed buildings will be a landscape-transportation system which railway and truck road will combine with landscape elements and public space. Through topographic design, amenities and recreational programs will be split from productive logistic system but still keep the visual connection. And the resilience landscape design like water management could reduce the negative impact of industrial production and create an environmental friendly apparel manufacture industry.
At the mix-use program interface of this proposal, the ground floor programs will be divided into several small scale spaces for rent out. The vacant lots in front of the building will be reconstructed as a public plaza for the surrounding neighborhood. The plaza could become a new hub of community activities and the interface between existing community and new campus community.
LANDSCAPE AS ASSEMBLED INSTALLATION Casino Pedestrian Plaza And Path Design, Las Vegas, United States Instructor: Jerry van Eyck Semester: 2014 Spring
Other than the previous common idea that Las Vegas is a symbol of American city which is car dominated, this project try to unveil another aspect of Las Vegas which is walkable and pedestrian oriented city. As more and more visitors are interesting to visit along the Las Vegas boulevard by walking, how to turn these tourist on the boulevard to the customers of casino is a main topic of this project we need to focus on. The criteria of this studio is that each student choose one casino as their site and try to design a walkable and pedestrian friendly public space in front the casino to enhance the pedestrian accessiblity of Las Vegas boulevard. My project mainly focus on the City Center area which is one of the newest casino development on Las Vegas boulevard. How to apply landscape architecture idea and technique to construct an environmental friendly and commercial outdoor space is the major research topic of this project.
My selected site locates at City Center project on the west side of Las Vegas boulevard, which is one of the most recently casino development on the strip. But it is different from the traditional Las Vegas casino pattern that one casino is a unity and monument, City Center project have different functional building include hotel, casino, residential apartments and shopping mall which are belong to different develper.
The strategy for above issue is try to create public realm and pedestrian accessibility. Pedestrian ramp and steps are two types of strategy to create space for public use and also enhance accessiblity.
How to design a sustainable public realm to adapt any urban uses? It is my major research topic of this studio. Inspired by LEGO, I started to consider about the possibility to divide landscape components into pieces with different functions and install them when we need certain function. In this public space design project, I set up a basic scale of different function bricks, which is 12’, 6’ and 3’ width in order to construct a flexible landscape which can adapt to climate or function change.
LANDSCAPE AS CULTURAL RECEPTACLE Post-industrial Suburban Park Project, Shanghai, China Instructor: Valerio Morabito Semester: 2014 Fall
Pujiang Suburban Park is located in Shanghai China, which is one of the five large suburban park projects in Shanghai and my site I is the riverside part of the park. The main research topic of studio is not about park design, but it is much more about developing student’s design theory about art and landscape. Mapping is the major tool we use to map our thinking process, which can tracing the idea about art base on our knowledge background and memory. Consider about the complexity of the site, which has abandoned industrial storage and ferry, agricultural fields, nursery woodland and new residential developments, these products of agricultural and industrial periods have the potential to be rehabilitated and turned into a place with cultural identity. Nowadays, it is difficult to describe the difference between the modern cities like Shanghai or Tokyo, and this modernization process is the reason of the lack of local identity. As landscape used to play a significant role among the social, ecological and cultural part of a city, how to create identity and provide various daily life possibility for citizen are two major concerns of this project.
The diagram on the left describes the complex and diverse existing landscape opportunities of the site. The site is a chaos mixture of industrial and agricultural elements generated from different history period. The visitors’ perception of time are confusing in the site because the scenes from different period would occur in the same time, the chimney and traditional water town housing can be seen in the same view. It is an opportunity to provide people not only a recreational place but a place could represent memories of old time and evoke visitors’ enthusiasm to reconsider their city and life.
Inspired from traditional agriculture rice field in East Asian, the rice field can become a landscape pattern of this site. The field could be constructed as a receptacle for landscape components like woodland, pool and wetland, and also a receptacle for activities like picnic, gathering and performance. The edge of field can be the pedestrian system and guide the view direction of certain field.
As a research about the relation between landscape architect and art, in this project I zoom into detail landscape place making and try to find out a new way to design poetic landscape. In order to avoid the traditional method to literally translate the poetry meaning to space, I started to consider what new methodology we could be inspired by poetry. How to refer rhetoric idea to landscape design is the major design strategy I focus on. A Chinese poem called Qingming was chosen and translated in rhetoric way to the reality landscape.
sushun@design.upenn.edu