City of the Future - portfolio

CITY OF THE FUTURE: A DESIGN AND ENGINEERING CHALLANGE 2008

39221 Woodward Avenue Bloomfield Hills, MI 48304

CUP

Proposal The three C U P projects presented in the attached portfolio represent a range in relative scale of project to setting. All three are examples of a methodology that focuses on creating user-appropriate spaces and phases the projects into the future. This Methodology applies directly to our City of the Future application, and the possibility of speculation that can become a reality. Our Question: What is “Real”, what is Possible, can that which is Virtual become Actual? In other words, can the type of transformation we hold in question become routine for the city and its inhabitants? Dreaming lies at the center of our process. In fact, throughout our past work, dreaming persists as a vital factor, the "living" element that nurtures the project into reality. A city can become reality only by way of the dream. Can the dream…and the city of Washington D.C.…continue to metamorphose?

Our team, C U P, convenes specifically for this project and turns its attention to Washington D.C. Our team includes Laurel McSherry (Washington D.C.), Helene Renard (Phoenix, AZ), Galia Solomonoff (New York, NY), Terry Surjan (Blacksburg, VA) and editoral contribution from Ann McCullough, (Blacksburg, VA). We assemble as a group of architects, landscape architects, and academics whose aggregate experience has taken us around the world. Our endeavors include designs that ascended to the finals in the Flight 93 National Memorial Competition and in Envisioning Gateway: Public Design Competition for Gateway National Park. Both of these projects involve sites that encompass thousands of acres and our design process folded in histories that look both backward and forward over multiple decades. These projects make contact with the most intrinsic of human experiences, using common elements such as a fence as memorial and a set of postal stamps as a history lesson for the users. The Aarhus Harbor Masterplan sits somewhere between the two previous projects both in terms of scale and international setting. The project uses two elements, islands and urban lagoons, which use the idea of unit/multiple to produce a collective nature for the city.

Tactics for Competition: C U P’s methodology serves to lay the groundwork for the "indeterminate unfolding life of the site." Any of the operations below can be performed either in an analog or digital approach. The tactics continue to oscillate in order to discover the qualitative nature of the project.

M.A.T. Gardens - Land Mosaics M.A.T. Gardens, (M.A.T. - Material About Time) is our approach for projecting Washington D.C. years into the future.

The approach will involve three techniques: Flat & Deep, Figure-Field and Cut & Fill.

1. Flat & Deep: An idea of vision, to see the city as new again both through pattern and texture.

2. Figure-Field: An idea of mixing & blending, how can unit/multiple or repetition and non-standardization be built within the city.

3. Cut & Fill: An idea for re-reading landscapes. Can a reversal of the subtractive & additive construct natural and artificial environments.

PEOPLE

new york galia solomonoff

phoenix helene renard blacksburg terry surjan

population born in

laurel mcsherry helene renard

population live in

5,077

581,530 334,563

galia solomonoff terry surjan

washington laurel mcsherry

1,3000,000 2,768,772

39,573

2,873,331

8,214,426

PROJECTS

aarhus,denmark

new york,new york shanksville,pennsylvania

city population acreage of project

flight 93 national memorial

250 2,200

aarhus masterplan 14 envisioning gateway

296,368

26,607

8,214,426

Flight 93 National Memorial Competition Shanksville, Pennsylvania National Park Service 2005 2200 acres

Fields, Forests, Fences Three elements construct the project and the site: fields, forests, and fences. The three elements combine to distinguish the site’s five inherited regions. Within the landscape of the site, fences act as barriers, markers, and memorial. Fence as barrier is specific to the Sacred Ground, allowing access for family members and the growth of a birch grove within and beyond its limits over time. Fence as marker occurs within and beyond the debris field. Cast urns, spread throughout, suggest the extreme density once occurring there and serve as reliquaries for the rendered hemlock mulch; a constant remembrance of events witnessed by the site. Fence as memorial serves as a place of public tribute for visitors and guests of the site. A memorial fence and footpath, positioned along the military crest, overlook both the debris field and the Sacred Ground. Distinguished by the opportunity to attach aluminum tags to its surface, the memorial fence is seen as a site of accumulation, personal and ever changing as the memories of the events are for each individual.

The site’s combined natural and constructed elements characterize experiences encountered after one’s vehicle is left at the Visitor’s Center. A shuttle loop delivers visitors to and from the Ridge and memorial fence. Visitors can return by shuttle or wander along footpaths back to the Visitor’s Center. An Archive Facility is positioned near the three mine drainage ponds, which now serve as reflecting pools for each of sites of September 11, 2001. The facility serves as a point of connection for the three sites and the individuals who acted so bravely.

The evolution of site fences and natural landscapes reflect and honor the passengers and crew of Flight 93 and their commitment to personal freedom.

The Gateway orients visitors to the national memorial site. A Visitor’s Center and parking for memorial visitors and guests is located here. A van shuttle departs and returns to this location.

Comprised of natural and reclaimed landscapes, the Approach emotionally and visually prepares visitors for experiencing the Sacred Ground and the Memorial Fence/Footpath.

Groves of hemlock and birch, threaded through and along roads and paths, guide visitors to the base of the Ridge. NPS offices are located in the rehabilitated shower house. The internal experience of the approach would be discreet, but a monument to the valley bottom.

With views to the Sacred Ground and birch grove, the Ridge comprises higher ground west and the northeast of the Bowl. Vans deliver and retrieve visitors from point on its eastern edge. The draglines would be removed.

Inspired by the coincidental beauty of the temporary memorial, the fence marks a footpath where visitors might appropriate wander and leave mementos from the heroes to the memories left by those who honor them. Emerging from the practical need to distinguish between the site’s hallowed grounds and its adjoining landscapes, the materiality of Memorial Fence will evolve and change over time, concentrating color, moisture, vegetation, soil, and history. From a distance the fence appears simple, but on approach visitors discover a surface of remembrance. It will be a protective gesture. Built by local craftsman to maintain the region’s vernacular style, the fence combines the permanent, semi-permanent, and ephemeral, forging a link between the historic and the contemporary. By adopting a deliberately slow pace, it will be possible to introduce gently into the public domain the concept of a national memorial. The fence sits quietly and gently along the military crest. The way they will be added to and taken away from by visitors over the years. The fence initially is empty, an armature, whose intention is to be filled in, in time, by the way the people use them. The fence will concentrate the feelings and emotions of the visitors, and over time, as people walk that path and work with the fence it will reflect their moments together.

A grove of native birch occupies the Sacred Ground and portions of the debris field, delineating the final resting place of passengers and crew of Flight 93. Access to the grove is limited to family members and authorized personnel. Together with the lower meadow and hemlock forest, the grove is a place of solace and reflection. Within it, forty stone steles mark the names, hometowns, and birth dates of passengers and crew.

Placement of these features markers influenced primarily by decisions previously made by farmers and stewards.

The project is big and discreet because one can only see a small portion of it at a time.

That is an important part of the work. That is critical to an ephemeral piece—you are only seeing one small part of a much bigger work.

All Day I Was With Trees Across wild country on solitary roads Within a fugue of parting, I was consoled By birches' sovereign whiteness in sad woods Dark glow of pines, a single elm's distinction -I was consoled by trees.

In February we see the structure change -Or the light change, and so the way we see it.

Tensile and delicate, the trees stand now Against the early skies, the frail fresh blue, In an attentive stillness.

Naked, the trees are singularly present, Although their secret force is still locked in.

Who could believe that the new sap is rising And soon we shall draw up amazing sweetness From stark maples?

All day I was with trees, a fugue of parting, All day I lived in long cycles, not brief hours.

A tenderness of light before new falls of snow Lay on the barren landscape like a promise.

Love nourished every vein.

Mary Sarton

from Collected Poems (1930-1973)

Aarhus Harbor Masterplan Aarhus, Denmark

2006 60,000 square metres

Park, Port, Pelago

This award wining entry for an international competition was submitted in collaboration with Danish architect, Bjarke Ingles. Looking for a solution to its segregated state, the city of Aarhus organized a competition to redefine its industrial port areas, integrate it with its residential zones and expand its recreational parts.

The proposed project integrates industry, residences and urban recreation in a series of concentric rings and provides new access to its amputated waterfront. It proposes the introduction of two different morphologies: islands and urban lagoons. Through them Aarhus at once gains, diverse domains, and particular identities. To reconnect the city, permanent and performative public art installations are placed at precise infrastructural interchanges to act as links and to activate the new productive totality.

Each island can explore the potential of its unique position in the port or the city, and exploit its relationship to the water or the infrastructure. Each island can cultivate its own landscape, materials, styles, programs or architecture. The islands are conceived as a way of defining neighborhoods, guaranteeing open spaces and generating a foundation for the creation of local identity and awareness through time. The water and the roads are the connective tissue that unifies the urban archipelago. The urban lagoons act as a reversed Central Park, guaranteeing fresh air and providing for profitable future growth around its periphery.

Envisioning Gateway: Public Design Competition for Gateway National Park New York-New Jersey harbor Van Alen Institute 2007 26,607 acres

Landmarks, Seamarks, Ciphers Our work, a field guide to the landscapes of Gateway, provides tangible connections to pre-existing, ongoing, and emerging site conditions. Three types of connections –– marks –– are suggested to guide the revival of local and regional landscape knowledge: landmarks, 1 seamarks,2 and ciphers. 3 Located 1000 feet apart along cardinal directions, a field of sixty-two seamarks guide wanderers and inform observers of the locations and heights of future landform modifications. Varying in shape, size, and height, seamarks guide the creation of a midden –– a near-continuous landform traveling the width of the site from the Gateway Marina to Mill Basin. Formed incrementally over a span of 11 years from local channel dredge, the midden serves as index (vertical) of the former Irish Channel bathymetry, datum both within and outside the site, and surrogate for the experience of an otherwise inaccessible landscape. The landmark field situates Gateway’s’ constructed landscape within the context of other national parks and monuments under the care of the Department of the Interior. The proposed series of stamp issues serves as cipher for the reading of Gateway’s local and regional landscapes.

1

land-mark (lānd'märk') n . 1. A monument or material marker or fixed object used to designate a land boundary on the ground. 2. Any prominent object on land that may be used to determine a location or a direction in navigation or surveying. 3. A prominent identifying feature of a landscape. 4. A building or site with historical significance, especially one marked for preservation by a municipal or national government.

2 sea-mark (semark) n. 1. A landmark visible from the sea, used as a guide in navigation. 2. The mark along a coastline indicating the upper tidal limits. In a wider sense the word sea mark is often understood to include all kinds of landmarks, structures and devices that can be used to provide warning and guiding signals to mariners.

A sea mark can be and often is located on dry land. Examples of land-based sea marks are various signal lights and leading marks. The latter are mainly used to indicate the centerline of a fairway in narrow passages. A sea mark, also seamark and navigation mark, is a pilotage aid which identifies the approximate position of a maritime channel, hazard and administrative area to allow boats, ships and seaplanes to navigate safely. There are two types of sea mark: beacons - fixed to the seabed, and buoys - consisting of a floating object that is usually anchored to a specific location on the bottom of the sea or to a submerged object. Sea marks are used to indicate channels, dangerous rocks or shoals, mooring positions, areas of speed limits, traffic separation schemes, submerged shipwrecks, and for a variety of other navigational purposes. Some are only intended to be visible in daylight (daymarks), others have some combination of lights, reflectors, bells, horns, whistles and radar reflectors to make them usable at night and in conditions of reduced visibility. Marks are shown on nautical charts, using symbols that indicate their color, shape and light characteristic, and are usually identified by name or number.

3 ci-pher or cypher (sahy-fer) n. 1. a secret method of writing, as by transposition or substitution of letters, specially formed symbols, or the like. 2. Writing done by such a method; a coded message. 3. The key to a secret method of writing. 4. A cryptographic system in which units of plain text of regular length, usually letters, are arbitrarily transposed or substituted according to a predetermined code. 5. A message written or transmitted in such a system.

SCALE

blacksburg washington

phoenix new york

washington DC

blacksburg

68.3 square miles

19.4 square miles

new york

468.0 square miles

phoenix

515.1 square miles