TAUBMAN COLLEGE architecture + urban planning
University of Michigan
To Detroit, for the endless inspiration
TAUBMAN COLLEGE architecture + urban planning
University of Michigan Master of Urban Design
2015-2016 Š The Regents of the University of Michigan All rights reserved A. Alfred Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning 2000 Bonisteel Boulevard Ann Arbor 48109 www.taubmancollege.umich.edu
DARE
NINE URBAN DESIGN THESES
Table of Contents Introduction
Volume I: DARE Nine Urban Theses for Detroit
Students Manasvi Ashok Bachhav
Travis Crabtree
B-07
Just Kidding
Rust Belt Region
Utopian Campus Converter
U.S.A. | Mississippi State University B. L. A.
Jonathan Adnan Hanna
U.S.A. | University of Michigan B. S. Arch
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China | South China University of Technology B. Arch
Shao-Chen Lu
Taiwan | Tamkang University B. Arch
Nishant Raman Mittal
India | Maharaja Sayajirao University Baroda B. Arch
Luneoufall Vital Gallego U.S.A. | Texas Tech University B. S. Arch
Melia Jae West
U.S.A. | University of Notre Dame B. Arch
Zhe Zhang
China | Suzhou University of Science and Technology B. Arch
Biographies Acknowledgments
Instructor
MarĂa Arquero de AlarcĂłn Associate Professor, Architecture and Urban Planning Director, Master of Urban Design
B-10
Ruhr Region B-24
IBA Emscher Park Mine the Gap A-48
B-34
Ruhr.2010 B-40
Invert City Mengyu Jiang
Learning from the Ruhr & Rust Belt
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A-10
India | Sir J.J. College of Architecture University of Mumbai B. Arch
Volume II: DISCOVER
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Duisburg
Fricticious Realities
Nord Landschaftspark
A-90
Bind-ary A-114
An Island in the City A-134
B-46
B-50
Essen B-54
Zollverein Industrial Complex B-56
Gelsenkirchen B-58
The City and the City A-146
Expresscape A-156
Nordsternpark B-60
Bochum B-62
Dortmund A-194 A-196
Volume I: DARE
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Volume III: DEVISE Field Guides to the Ruhr
Simultaneous Urbanisms
Discourses in Urbanism
Bus Stops to Bandstands
Post/Re Urbanisms
Airborne 48127
Cities: X Lines. Approaches to City+Open Territory Design
D-06
[Ruhr] Appropriation C-68
Play [Grounds] C-78
Big Shelters C-86
Moving Boundaries
E-66
D-10
D-16
E-76
Infra-Eco-Logi Urbanism
A “Motor” City Center
E-88
D-22
Urban Ecology: Detroit and Beyond
The Moving Skyline
C-96
D-28
Postcards of the Ruhr
Radical-con-nexus
E-98
C-100
D-34
Urbanism: Working with Doubt
The Hidden Eye
Reconstructs
Water Urbanism East
C-108
E-106
E-114
D-40
On Landscape Urbanism World of Walls C-112
E-124
An Island in the City D-46
Typological Urbanism Authenticity C-114
E-130
Church Express D-52
Formerly Urban E-136
Germany in Motion C-136
Bind-ary
Conversations
D-58
E-146
C-138 C-140
E-150 E-152
Volume II: DISCOVER
Volume III: DEVISE Table of Contents
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Volume I: DARE
INTRODUCTION Volume I: DARE
This volume showcases the work developed in the master of urban design capstone course (UD742). Last in the degree studio sequence, the work draws upon the intellectual inquiry and design work developed over previous semesters. As part of the year-long focus in Detroit, this capstone course offers a platform for students to advance their personal research agendas through the development of a design thesis project. To support the collective and individual agendas and set a platform for exchange of ideas among students, the course includes three inter-related modules that address modes of practice (through the experiential learning component traveling to Detroit and the German Ruhr Region and engaging with local urban agents), modes of production (through the exposure to techniques and tools of making, and the study of texts and projects), and modes of design inquiry (through the development of a final thesis sited in Detroit). The three modules are staged over the course of the semester to build on each other through the development of different exercises including individual and collective components. Introduction
This first volume, “DARE: Nine urban design thesis for Detroit” initiates the sequence showcasing nine design speculations developed by the students. Operating as a synthesis of the work developed during the semester in the theories and field trip sections, each proposal opens up possibilities to reimagine radical conditions of urbanity for the future of the metropolitan region. The second volume, “DISCOVER: Learning from the Ruhr” establishes a disciplinary conversation between the Rust Belt and Ruhr Regions, building in their industrial past and examining the agency of design in their ongoing transformation. The volume showcases the students’ Field Guides of the Ruhr as recorded during the site visit to the German region. The last volume, “DEVISE: Simultaneous Urbanisms Detroit ” represents nine found urban conditions in Detroit and draw imaginary urban narratives around them. To instigate the larger disciplinary claims of these quick explorations, the volume includes readings on urban discourses and conversations with local practitioners and academics. A-7
A
NINE URBAN
DESIGN THESES FOR DETROIT
This volume showcases nine urban theses for Detroit. The scope and reach of the projects are diverse, tackling issues of governance structure, accessibility and infrastructural reform, provision of education, industrial transformation, landscape rediscovery, and political commentary. In every case, students developed alternative means of representing the city and its many constituencies. The work was developed in the span of four weeks, after the studies on Simultaneous Urbanisms and the trip to the Ruhr Region. The following are nine projects culminating a oneyear study of Detroit and its Metropolitan Region.
JUST KIDDING Nishant Mittal
The best learning always occurs when children spend unplanned and uncounted hours outside investigating, experimenting, exploring, and playing – which is to say - spontaneously and delightfully designing their own curriculum. The learning centers today are separated from their communities by long highways, limited hours, inflexible spaces, and most of all, a blinkered vision about the myriad ways in which schools can and should be a part of the social ecosystem. The current state of Detroit’s public elementary schools renders a fragile condition of the built environment that constructs children’s imagination at early ages. The task of looking ahead at elementary schools is an opportunity to explore new ways of
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envisioning relationships between pedagogy, social agency, and the education of children in the unstable urban environment. The project interrogates the existing infrastructure of Detroit pubic elementary school sites and looks for alternative responses in the delivery of education. The project injects learning spaces within existing schools, and develops mobile learning devices that can travel to locations where children do not have access to education. This redeployment of a device is used for both reconceiving our cities around the exchange of knowledge, and for giving shape to urban form as the reification of that exchange in the long-time condition of shrinkage.
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JUST KIDDING
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FACTS AND FIGURES
Total Population (2010) - 713,777 Population Under 14 - 207,014 Detroit Public School enrolled students- 69,616
2005 - 34 School closed due to meet a $200 million deficit 2010 - 45 DPS out of 179 closed 20
14
21 22
8
2 23 24 25
EXISTING SCHOOLS
26
10
FISHER MAGNET LOWER ACADEMY
CARLETON ELEMENTARY SCHOOL
WAYNE ELEMENTARY SCHOOL
BROWN, RONALD ACADEMY
OAKLAND INTERNATIONAL ACADEMY
CESAR CHAVEZ ACADEMY
THE JAMES & LEE BOGGS SCHOOL
UNIVERSITY PREPARATORY
CHRYSLER ELEMENTARY SCHOOL
BENNETT ELEMENTARY SCHOOL
CESAR CHAVER ACADEMY
CLEMENTE, ROBERTO ACADEMY
NEINAS ELEMENTARY SCHOOL
MAYBURY ELEMENTARY SCHOOL
THIRKELL ELEMENTARY SCHOOL
HENRY FORD ACADEMY
MANN ELEMENTARY SCHOOL
DETROIT LEDEARSHIP ACADEMY
JOY PREPARATORY ACADEMY
YOUNG COLEMAN ELEMENTARY
BAGLEY ELEMENTARY SCHOOL
PASTEUR ELEMENTARY SCHOOL
VERNOR ELEMENTARY SCHOOL
MICHIGAN TECHICAL ACADEMY
RUTHERFORD WINARS ACADEMY
COOKE ELEMENTARY SCHOOL
OLD REDFORT ACADEMY
WRIGHT, CHARLES SCHOOL
JUST KIDDING
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7 28
1 27
26
12 25
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23
22
21
20
15
16
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EXISTING LOCATION OF ELEMENTARY SCHOOLS OF DETROIT
1 MILE SCHOOL RADIUS
1 MILE SCHOOL RADIUS
Black - 82.7% White - 10.6% Latino - 6..8%
DETROIT RIVER
1 MILE SCHOOL RADIUS
1 MILE
DETROIT”S PUBLIC ELEMENTARY SCHOOLS
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POTENTIAL LOCATIONS WHERE THE MOBILE SCHOOLS CAN BE DEPLOYED
1
2
3
1
3
4
1053 CHILDREN BELOW AGE 15
2238 CHILDREN BELOW AGE 15
1257 CHILDREN BELOW AGE 15
1405 CHILDREN BELOW AGE 15
6094 CHILDREN BELOW AGE 15 2
5
ELEMENTARY SCHOOL
1060 CHILDREN BELOW AGE 15
JUST KIDDING
6
3
4
1
2 5
6
AREAS OF MAXIMUM NUMBER OF CHILDREN BELOW THE AGE OF 15 1 MILE SCHOOL RADIUS
FACTS AND FIGURES
1 MILE SCHOOL RADIUS
DETROIT RIVER
1 MILE SCHOOL RADIUS EACH PEAK HEIGHT REPRESENTS THE NUMBER OF CHILDREN .
TRACTS WITH MAX POVERTY
TRACTS WITH MAX CHILDREN POPULATION
EXISTING SCHOOLS
DENSITY OF CHILDREN WITHIN THE HOLLOW CORE 1
2
3
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2
3
4
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1 MILE
SISTER SCHOOL
MOBILE SCHOOL LOCATIONS
MOTHER SCHOOL
JUST KIDDING
DYNAMIC SCHOOL SITES WITH IN THE HOLLOW CORE NETWORK
NOTES - The current state of the Detroit’s public elementary schools renders a fragile condition of the built environment that constructs children’s imagination at early ages. The task of looking ahead at the elementary schools is an opportunity to explore new ways of envisioning relationships between pedagogy, social agency, and the education of children in the unstable urban environment.
EDUCATION VOID
MOTHER SCHOOLS
MOBILE SCHOOL LOCATIONS
TEST SITE MOBILE SCHOOLS
MOTHER SCHOOLS
MOBILE SCHOOL DEPLOYMENT
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EXISTING SCHOOLS
1 MILE
JUST KIDDING
MAXIMUM DENSITY OF CHILDREN BELOW 15
ZONE WITHOUT PUBLIC ELEMENTARY SCHOOLS
DETROIT PUBLIC ELEMENTARY SCHOOLS AROUND THE HOLLOW REGION
1 MILE SCHOOL RADIUS
EDUCATION VOID
DETROIT RIVER
POVERTY AND CHILDREN CONCENTRATION EXISTING SCHOOLS
E
EXPLODED VIEW OF THE DIFFERENT LAYERS
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POTENTIAL LOCATION WHERE MOBILE SCHOOLS CAN BE DEPLOYED POTENTIAL LOCATIONS WHERE THE MOBILE SCHOOLS CAN BE DEPLOYED
1
2
1
5
2
3
4
8 6 9
10
15 11 12 7
15 13 16 14 16
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ZONES WITH MAXIMUM CHILDREN DENSITY EMPTY REGION WITHIN ELEMENTARY SCHOOLS
0
5 Miles 7
8
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One can consider the current situation of public elementary schools in Detroit to be that of a hollow core. After mapping existing elementary schools in Detroit, we find that areas of relatively high population of children are not only severely under served by educational infrastructure, but they are not served at all. The children in these unserved areas are forced to travel great distances by utilizing relatively inadequate public transportation. Instead of forcing children to travel these great distances, why don’t we bring these schools to the children? Due to the lack of funding, brick and mortar schools are an unfeasible method of delivering education. Thus we have purified the spatial experience of education to its fundamental form. This form takes the shape of fence, threshold, corridor as classroom. These are the fundamental building blocks of a healthy functioning of a school. It may run for weeks or on an hourly basis, depending on the demand and the children enrolled within it.
Mobile units inserted within an existing elementary school building
Mobile units inserted in neighborhoods without schools
Different forms of the fundamental building blocks are designed to coalesce with one another in an infinite array of possibilities. Neighborhood block groups or other leading figures in the community, in collaboration with a mother school, decide upon the configuration of fundamental building blocks that will derive their school, thus giving the community the social agency to attain education as per the needs and demands of the local children. Schools mixed with other programs, permanent in nature Nine Urban Theses for Detroit: Just Kidding
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JUST KIDDING EXCLUSION EDGES
FENCING
CONFINEMENT MONOTONOUS ACCESS POROSITY INTERACTION IMPRESSION THIN RIGID
ENTRY
STATIC UNYIELDING EXPANDED PLAYFUL ENGAGING DELIGHTFUL LINEAR
CORRIDOR
ISOLATING CIRCULATORY DISENGAGING MULTIDIMENSIONAL MINGLE DIFFUSIVE ENGAGING STRUCTURED
CLASSROOM
CONFINED PASSIVE IMMOBILE CREATIVE LIBERATING INTERACTIVE DYNAMIC UNINTERESTING BANAL
PLAYSCAPES
UNINSPIRING DETACHED NEW CONNECTED
COMPONENTS OF SCHOOL
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FENCING COMPONENTS OF SCHOOLS
CURVE AND SIT
POROUS
INSIDE OUT
MOUNDS
MODULATED
COVERING
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ENTRANCE COMPONENTS OF SCHOOLS
LE
SLIDE IN
SLIDE
TUBES
MAIZE
THEME
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SCHOOL FRONT
CORRIDOR MOUNDS
COVERING
COMPONENTS OF SCHOOLS
POROUS
ALTERNATE
FRAMED
VOLUME
INTRUSION
PLAY
MEANDERING
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USION
CLASSROOM
OPEN EDGE
COMPONENTS OF SCHOOLS
MED
CHAMFERED
DERING
VOLUMES
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UNDER COVER
ANGULAR
SLOPING ROOF
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ALL
RE
HANG
GULAR
PING ROOF
CLASSROOM COMPONENTS OF SCHOOLS
ER COVER
ALL AROUND
BUNKER
RETREAT
SPACE SHUTTLE
HANGING CUBE
Nine Urban Theses for Detroit: Just Kidding
WORKERS DEN
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POSSIBLE CONNECTIONS OF COMPONENTS TO FORM SCHOOLS
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Components of a mobile school traveling to one of the locations in Detroit.
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School deployed in a community park and neighborhood center.
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Community chooses and customizes school components for their needs.
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Attachment within the existing classroom of a working elementary school.
Nine Urban Theses for Detroit: Just Kidding
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Em
Education
JUST KIDDING
ge er nc
or t
As s
oc ia t io ns
Networking
Networking
Existing Schools
Detroit Public Schools
ds
un yF
Neighbourhoods Nursing Homes
Su
pp
NGO’S
Networking
Learning
Research
Community Centre
Deloyment
Contributors
Teachers Training
Accessibility
Book Supplies
Communication
Delivery Bookings
s
r to en
Assembly
Collection
g
sin
ha rP
e Us
t fe
Sa
y
Food
M
r ra
Lib
y
or W
ps
ho
ks
p
ou Gr
ng
Co
MOTHER SCHOOL NETWORK
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Site Storage
ni
tio
i nd
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Connections
Mother School
MOTHER SCHOOL
The mother school is a critical component from which all services of Just Kidding are disseminated. It acts as both an ephemeral structure - in that it is constantly changing, and also as a temporal one - in that it is the only permanent piece of the puzzle. From the mother school all services are provided, including supplies, scheduling, training of teachers, workshops, libraries, the location where physical structures become recharged and where the logic of dissemination is decoded. The mother schools are critically located in close proximity to existing social programs such as nursing homes, community centers and NGO’s to both feed off of and reinforce existing institutional frameworks, and to create new ones.
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UTOPIA CAMPUS CONVERTER Mengyu Jiang
Universities always occupy a large amount of land in the city. They differentiate themselves from the surrounding area through different social resources, geographic conditions and population types. Wayne State University is one of the most typical examples in Detroit. Located on a central site in Midtown Detroit, Wayne State University has contributed to educational advancement for decades, and to the city’s economic recovery. As part of the education urban strategy, the Wayne State campus continues to expand towards New Center and the surrounding area. By looking at the relationship of campus and city, Wayne State University is a “commuter university”,
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with 88% of students living in remote locations from the campus. Relying on automobiles to access the campus, WSU is socially separated from the city. As the city’s 10th largest employer, the campus will continue to grow, holding a larger percentage of non-taxable land in the city. A strategy is required for developing a more complete and vital community between the campus and the city, promoting the capacity to grow public resources so desperately needed by the citizens. This proposal looks at the enclave-like condition of the WSU campus, and speculates on different operations to address the condition of boundary formation, the notion of permeability and thresholds for more inclusion of a diverse public.
Volume I: DARE
Detroit as a city of enclaves: The image shows Detroit has many different kinds of enclaves, such as industrial fields, cemeteries, and campuses
Detroit is a city with many enclaves, that have always occupied a large amount of land in the city. They are separated from the surrounding area by demographic differences, geographic boundaries, etc.
Nine Urban Theses for Detroit: Utopia Campus Converter
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resources: google map
Important Universities in Detroit
from left to right: University of Detroit Mercy, Eastern Michigan University, Wayne State University: School of Medicine, Wayne State University
By comparing the universities in Detroit, Wayne State University is the most typical in the city. It has occupied more and more land in Midtown over time. Currently, it even goes across the highway. WSU will occupy more and more non-taxable land as it continues to grow.
1950
1960
1970
1980
1998
resources from: 2020_campus_master_plan
Campus growth over time
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Wayne State University site analysis
The image shows that Wayne State University now occupies a large amount of land in Midtown. In addition, there are many art institutions along Woodward Avenue. Nine Urban Theses for Detroit: Utopia Campus Converter
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Urban architecture as represented at Wayne State University A-38
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d war
od Wo Av e enu campus boundary art institutions campus apartment higher income lower income lower education level highway Parking lots and structures
Mapping Wayne State University
Is Wayne State University (WSU) an enclave in Detroit? Mapping the campus and the surrounding conditions reveals striking differences in household income and education levels. While no fences or gates prevent access, WSU functions as a de facto social enclave. Nine Urban Theses for Detroit: Utopia Campus Converter
This project intervenes in two critical locations of contrasting nature: the heart of the campus and its periphery. By sharing the campus’ resources, introducing housing, and extending the connection between campus and the surrounding neighborhoods, the proposal activates this central city area. A-39
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SCENARIO A: THE HEART Learning Playground Located in the center of Midtown, this area has very diverse surrounding conditions, including three elementary schools, a big hospital, the biggest school residential tower and the contemporary art museum. However, it is also the site of a large amount of surface parking lots that serve as an exclusionary perimeter. Learning Playground aims at sharing learning resources with the general city public. This educational and recreational interactive area benefits the surrounding neighborhoods with open campus resources, and also extends the campus’ operating schedule to entice a diverse group of residents and users. Nine Urban Theses for Detroit: Utopia Campus Converter
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Outdoor Art Theater The outdoor art theater is adjacent to the contemporary art center which will attract people interested in art shows and create a space for open air exhibitions.
Student Work Exhibition This program encourages students to communicate with local neighbors and work on community based programs.
Children
Program Using Schedule
Adults
Students
Elderly people
By studying the activity time of different user groups, new programs can be designed to entice other groups at different time periods, activating the campus beyond the academic part-time schedule.
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Meditative Park The meditative park is beside a hospital and provides a quiet space for meditation. It is also a leisure playground attracting people citywide.
Holding
Adhering
Church Yard Playground The church yard provides nursing and learning resources for children from surrounding neighborhoods, including space where they can construct their playgrounds with temporary structures.
Sheltering
Standing
Space Forming Component The taxonomy shows how the open spaces are formed by using different methods
Programs that serve the surrounding neighborhood will be inserted into parking lots through different space forming methods. Not only can they share the resources of the campus to the public, but they also create an interactive area for different groups of people. Nine Urban Theses for Detroit: Utopia Campus Converter
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Lifting
SCENARIO B: PERIPHERY Campus-Hood Wayne State University is a commuter school with 88% of its students living in remote areas, and relying on the highway for their commute. This intervention targets one of the moments in which the campus faces the highway, and creates both an urban marker and an extension. By bridging over the infrastructure, the insertion connects the central campus with the stadium and other recreational facilities. Using the existing parking garages as a plinth, the project inserts additional housing units and a bridge, redefining the north-west boundary of the campus with additional programs. In this way, Campus-Hood creates community identity through the campus embracing the highway as spectacle. A-44
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Nine Urban Theses for Detroit: Utopia Campus Converter
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Community center with landscape pathway across the highway
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Public platform under the apartments
Nine Urban Theses for Detroit: Utopia Campus Converter
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Great Lakes Metropolitan Salt Mining + Shipping
MINE THE GAP
Lake M
Manasvi Bachhav
The greatest rock salt production in the U. S. is obtained from the Michigan, Ohio, and Ontario region and has favored metropolitan mining locations for a century, capitalizing on the abundance of infrastructure. Despite this central location, and the stable demand for salt used in deicing operations, the mines have periodically been in and out of business in previous decades due to economic or structural issues. Approximately 8000 tons of salt are mined in Detroit every year. But, much like Michigan’s mineral wealth, only a fraction of it remains economically viable or environmentally friendly. Tapping into this resource industry, the project acknowledges the vital role of industry for the city’s economic health, and attempts to reconcile the confluence of industry in the heart of the city by hacking into the production processes. This allows for the unusual coupling of the underground productive systems with the vibrant cultures and threatened ecosystems on the surface. While water is identified as a necessary adjacency to REVEAL and ENABLE the production of salt, it also acts as a mode of elucidating the diversity of interactions between the public with the Rouge River, and the constantly shifting landscapes of production. Finally, Mine the Gap, challenges the mono-functional nature of industrial production, by celebrating industry and enabling multiple levels of civic engagement within the city at large. A-48
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Miles One ton of Cargo can can be carried per Gallon of Fuel
The Great Lakes region is a blanket for many underground resources for the North American continent, including salt. These salt mines are huge hidden landscapes of extraction, underground cities within cities, surrounded by vast infrastructural supply networks.
Great Lakes Navigation Fuel Efficiency and Environmental Impact
59 road
202
rail
607
0
Goderich
water
45
180 Miles
90
Detroit
Ojibway, Win
Cost of shipping by road 25 - 15 cents per ton mile Cost of shipping by water
3 cents per ton mile
Lake Huron
Michigan
ndsor
Goderich
Hampton Corners
Depth : 1800 ft 2.1 million tons/year
Depth : 2000 ft 5 million tons/year Lake Ontario
Lansing
Depth : 2300 ft 5.2 million tons/year
Lake Erie
Detroit
Mine Area : 1500 acres Depth : 1100ft
Moment of Intensity
Fairport
Ojibway
Depth : 2000 ft 1.3 million tons/year
Depth : 975 ft 2.7 million tons/year
Cleveland
Depth : 1800 ft 2.5 million tons/year
Great Lakes Salt Deposits
Shipping Route
Un-Operational Mine area
Major Metropolitan Salt Mines
Cleveland
Fairport
Lansing
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Hampton Corners
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Marathon Pet
Cap
Current Industries
appr
Zug Island - US Steel Co.
Current Industries
Carmeuse - Lime and Stone
Marathon Petroleum
Industrial boundary
For the past 50 years, Detroit has been the poster child for the North American post-industrial city. Flight of industry and vacancy have been synonymous with the image of the city. However, contrary to popular belief, a post-industrial city is not completely devoid of industry and Detroit is no different in this regard. The city and its peripheries are home to a number of large and small resource industries, such as Marathon Petroleum, US Steel, Carmeuse Lime and Stone and the Detroit Salt Company. Taking on this provocation, the project investigates the role of industry in a post-industrial city by looking at the Detroit salt mining industry during the life of the industry, and not after its decline.
Capacity approx. 10,410 tons per day
Cap
appr
Tan
appr
Detroit Salt Co.
Carmeuse - Lime and Stone ye Terminal
appro
BP Buckeye Terminal
Zug Island - US Steel Co.
Capacity approx. 123, 000 Gallons per day
Cap
Capacity approx. 1461 tons per day
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Cap
appr
Marathon Petroleum
US Steel
Carmeuse Lime and Salt
Detroit Salt Co. Nine Urban Theses for Detroit: Mine the Gap
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Infrastructures of SALT Mining
r ive
it R
o etr
Site 02 - Reveal
D
Rouge River
Infrastructure
I-94
Roads +Rails Mine Shaft
Adjacent Conditions Residential Industrial
Site 01 - Enable
Institutional
SALT Mine Avg. Depth - 1000 ft
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Landscapes of SALT
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Choreography of SALT
Reveal
Mov eme nt o f
SAL Ta bov eg
rou nd
via Ro ug e
Ri
r ve
Movement of Brine
Rou g
e R iver
Dis
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e nc sta Di es mil - 2
Enable
0.5 miles stance -
M o vem ent o f SA LT
un de rg r ou
Choreographies of SALT traces the movement of salt both underground and above ground between the two interventions that partially Reveal and partially Enable the processes of salt production and distribution. Nine Urban Theses for Detroit: Mine the Gap
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nd
REVEAL
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Salt + Ground + Water ecologies 1
4 2
Salt Harvesting Pool
Brine
1 2 3 4
Brine supply Evaporation cahmber to separate salt and water fresh water collection tank freash water supplied for different uses
Aquaculture Pool
1 3
1 pink salmon
atlantic salmon
mahi mahi
Fresh Water
Aquaculture
Recycled Water
5
Salt Harvested from the pools
blueback herring
Salt Water
Recreational Pools
Water Purification Terraces
Rouge River
Mechanical Evaporation of Salt
3
1 Fresh water 2 Saline water pools 3 platforms for drying and harvesting
catfish
white Bass
lake trout
bluefish
Recreation Pool
1 2
3
1 Cold water Pool 2 Thermal Pool 3 Recreation Grounds
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INVERT CITY Luna Vital
American sociologist Immanuel Wallerstein once said “systems are born, live long lives according to some rules, at some point come into crisis, and then bifurcate, and transform into something else.” Urban and architectural space operates not so differently than these systems. They reach their maximum structural capacity, then they’re reinforced, remodeled, reconstructed or demolished. In addition to the structural capacity of architectural space is the critic of its shrinkage; a question of permanence, and a call for the discipline of design to address time. With the advance in technology and globalization, with everything and everyone interconnected through an online network, architectural space begins to shrink by eliminating functions. Circumstantially, in cities like Detroit, this transformation into something else after crisis has not quite
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happened. The fabric has become static, and in functional distress. The project operates within the patterns and dynamics of the spatial and structural abundance crisis and functional distress of the 2000’s. The grounds of deployment have three things in common. Underused or unstable structures and amorphous grounds, which revolve around the third: Detroit’s interconnected rail lines, specifically the ones around the Inner Circle Greenway, bounded by Dequindre Street, Oakman Boulevard, and Livernois Avenue. Invert City portrays the internalization of urbanism through a system of attraction points in the distressed fabric of a city like Detroit. This system projects a new density of use and reveals dormant systems that rely on the critical instability of architectural space to only then transform into something else.
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Nine Urban Theses for Detroit: Invert City
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CSO outfall
detroit renewable power
Invert City aims to reinterpret existing infrastructure as a network of grounds for play along Detroit’s inner belt, reaching out to neighboring post-industrial sites and amorphous grounds. The Inner Circle Greenway, starting from Dequindre Cut, provides the framework for landing the spatial reconstructions and mobile play prototypes. The following drawing illustrates the territory around which the field of attractor points exist, and their locations respective to the Inner Circle Greenway.
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1
9
2
historic creek | water folly
11 10 10
8
12
3 7 9
new center stamping | steam hijack + deployment site
6
5
pallete supplier | play ground prototype C
11
13 4
4 3 2 1
rail intersect | play ground prototype A/B
14
5
12
6
13
7
Invert City Sites Inner Circle Greenway [existing] Inner Circle Greenway [proposed] District Heating Railway 8
Primary greenway network
14
Industrial Intersect Sites of inquiry 3000’
2.5 miles
5 miles
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PROTOTYPES A | mobile play ground 11
10
8
12
7 9
6
5
13
4 3 2 1
14
convertible shell
track convertible shell ground plane track
ground plane
Prototypes are the play ground modules deployed to less specific sites around the Inner Circle Greenway, within a one-mile radius. These vary in scale; although the physical grounds for their installation do not require extensive preparation, the context in which each prototype is installed has a different set of characteristics. For instance, due to its nature in size and features, the Mobile Play Ground is more flexible to its site. On the other hand, Building Intersect requires the fabric of two buildings at close proximity in order to exist.
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expansion/retraction mechanisms
expansion/retraction mechanisms
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expansion/retraction mechanisms expansion/retraction mechanisms
expansion/retraction mechanisms expansion/retraction mechanisms
d plane
nd plane
expansion/retraction mechanisms expansion/retraction mechanisms
expansion/retraction mechanisms expansion/retraction mechanisms
credit: Caleb Lightfoot
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B | folly 8
13
3
+24
+12
+0
-7 FF
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C | building intersect 8
13
3
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The proposal aims to reinterpret existing infrastructure as a network of grounds for play along the inner belt, reaching out to neighboring post-industrial sites and amorphous grounds. It aims to reverse the common understanding of Detroit as geographies of production, or the idea of revitalization through programs such as maker spaces, live work, cafes, restaurants, and other consumerbased programs. Instead, by hijacking existing district heating lines, historic water creeks, solar energy and wind patterns, Invert City redistributes population clusters and densities of use, where the devices become active agents in the transformation of the surrounding area.
A vertical playground and a steam field. Tracks that hook into the building allow for constant reassembly of playgrounds, and their deployment to other sites through the rail.
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E
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active rail line | resource transfer
skynet access platform
sky net [free jumping]
water tower [interior slide]
ne d
io
iss
m
de co m
ne
l li
ra i
invert city | STEAM FIELD
storage containers
parts transfer line
waste collection grounds
interior slide exit
climbing platforms
assembly tracks
recycling warehouse
device tracks
rry
Fe
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St
Nine Urban Theses for Detroit: Invert City
A horizontal playground and water field. Programmed for water gardens, and dissected at the faรงade for the access point of the spatial reconstructs.
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invert city | WATER FIELD
attachment [climbing wall]
water slides
water tower [storm water storag
water gardens
attachment a/skylight
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ge]
attachment c/ hanging threads
attachment b/scaffold
water gardens
attachment a/ water lines
d fre Al
Nine Urban Theses for Detroit: Invert City
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St
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As a former industrial site and destination for shipping containers, New Center Stamping functions as a site for deployment of devices, carrying recycled resources from industrial remains. At this site, the Invert City devices function as storage and transportation units for recycled components. Furthermore, the site functions as an occasional steam play ground and advertising strategy that hijacks the existing district heating line running underground.
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invert city | DEPLOYMENT FIELD
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Invert City portrays the internalization of urbanism with a system of attraction points in the distressed fabric of a city like Detroit. This system projects a new density of use and reveals dormant systems that rely on the critical instability of architectural space to only then transform into something else.
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Nine Urban Theses for Detroit: Invert City
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FRICTICIOUS REALITIES: CURATING A UNESCO LANDSCAPE Melia West
Capitalizing on the recent designation as a UNESCO City of Design, Fricticious Realities speculates on the role of urban design in the representation of collective identities in the making and remaking of Detroit. From the creative economies to the tradition of making tied to manufacturing, the rich manifestation of cultural production is a hallmark of Detroit’s identity. This capstone aims to use cultural production as the primary driver of physical development in the city - postulating urban design as the unique medium with capacity to hold juxtapositions in a rich coexistence of opposite realities. Frameworks of agencies, spaces and initiatives capitalize on the UNESCO designation, working congruently to create a curatorial infrastructure for the city, allowing her reinvention in the eyes of both local and global publics.
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The project takes on the reality that Detroit is a city of enclaves with strong cultural flavors existing in pockets. By looking at these cultural geographies, along with other moments of confrontation, the project will operate through scalar, temporal, and programmatic strategies located at various moments of friction and exchange along various thresholds, taking inspiration from Detroit’s contemporary cultural production scene. In addition to imagining the spatial occupation of Detroit through cultural production, the project is a critique on the current conversation surrounding the designation, focused on “style-minded visitors”, Shinola, foodie-restaurants such as Gold-CashGold, and other amenities for an isolated public. While seen as a tool to encourage growth in the creative jobs market, the UNESCO designation is poised to obliterate the design it hopes to honor through cultural gentrification.
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culture // kul-chur the customary beliefs, social forms, and material traits of a racial, religious, or social group (Merriam Webster); manifestations of human intellectual achievement regarded collectively (Google dictionary); myths which remind a group of people what to do at a given time (Virgil)
cultural production // kulchrul pro-duk-shun a process dealing with how person(s) are produced as cultural beings and how this production of persons results in the (re) production of cultural formations (Kevin O’Connor); an intervention in the process of producing meaning (University of Salzburg)
curate // kyu-r-āt to select items from among a large number of possibilities for other people to consume and enjoy (Merriam Webster)
confrontation // kän-frun-tāshun friction between two opposites that simultaneously leads to collective, and maintains unique, identity ( as between material, program, history , occupation, etc.)
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FRAMING UNESCO’S ARRIVAL DESIGNING A GOVERNANCE OF CULTURAL ASSETS Understanding the IBA Emscher Park GOverance of Cultural Assets finding the missing links for longevity European Union
Beginning in 1989, the Ruhr Region of Germany has been working to narrate a new collective identity after decades of disinvestment and loss of industrial prowess and population. The International Building Exhibition (IBA) was a ten-year exhibition that set off a series of design initiatives, using innovative governance structures that worked collaboratively to reimagine the region’s active industrial landscape.
Emsherergenossenschaft
Ruhr Regional Assoc. (RVR)
Lippeverband
Local Gov’t Assoc. (KVR)
NordrheinWestfalia (NRW)
metropoleruhr (Econ. Dev.)
Ministry of Building, Housing, Urban Dev.
metabolon
IBA Emscher park Gmbh
(LLC - 1989-1999)
Project Ruhr (1999-2014) Regionale 2008-2010 Minister of Urban Planning RUHR.2010
route industriecultur
academics
Detroit
Ruhr Region
The effort is worth studying for its ability to curate this new narrative as a collective identity, with continuity spanning both geography and time.
Germany
IBA EMSCHER PARK Dortmund Phoenixsee
120 projects
private development
Naturalization of Emscher River Hausrecycling
infrastructural providers Duisburg Innerhafen
Oberhausen gasometer
Rheinpark + Tiger and Turtle
Wissenschaftspark
17 muncipalities
Reduce Reuse Recycle (exhibition space) Landschaftspark Nord
Bernepark
community groups
stadthauscultur Rheinelbe Forest Property DIY
Zollverein + Kokeri Citizens make the city
key:
Take the Initiative
governing agency
Build it Yourself
creative input
Home-Worker (refugee skills training)
creative output
proposed/needed
financial support
A web showing the governance structure that fosters a curation of cultural assets A-92
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:metabolon One example of the IBA’s accomplishments over time includes a biennale that rotated throughout the region’s various cities, the Regionale. Its goal was to continue to reimagine highly contentious industrial landscapes. One such project was :metabolon, a mono-functional landfill that successfully incorporated recycling, educational, and playscape uses, while remaining an active landfill. Source: Melia West
View of the ascent to the landfills apex
RUHR.2010 Another offshoot effort born of the IBA structure was the successful European Union ‘City of Culture’ designation that held festivities for an entire year - the first polycentric urban form to hold the title. Marketing and event planning efforts were aimed at continuing to reimagine the areas potential through design. One critique was that efforts were too globallyfocused. Source: http://www.modulorbeat.de/work/untitled/ruhrlights/ruhr2010/
RUHR.2010 event
Hausrecycling One public/private agency from the IBA was reinstated in 2011, the Stadtbaukultur, with the mission to advance the agency of architecture in the new collective imagination through various programs. One such program, Hausrecycling, brought awareness to the power of reappropriation through fundraising efforts, using recycled building material for small paperweight gifts. Source: www.stadtbaukultur-nrw.de
Small paperweight gifts made from abandoned structures in the Ruhr Nine Urban Theses for Detroit: Fricticious Realities
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FINDING THE MISSING LINKS FOR LONGEVITY GOverance of Cultural Assets finding the missing links for longevity
vity
Taking inspiration from the Ruhr Region’s creative governance structure, a new cultural governance structure is imagined for the metropolitan region of Detroit for the deployment of a successful mechanism in a UNESCO designation. This governance not only seeks to identify needed agencies that are missing from the current political structure of the city and her cultural assets, but also seeks to address the region’s contentious relationship between city and suburb.
Emsherergenossenschaft
metropoleruhr (Econ. Dev.)
European Union
UNESCO Germany
Lippeverband
Ruhr Regional Assoc. (RVR)
MI Council for Arts + Cultural Affairs
Lippeverband
Philanthropy
Local Gov’t Assoc. (KVR)
metropoleruhr (Econ. Dev.) Metro City Matters Ministry of Building, Detroit InstituteHousing, of Urban Dev. Arts
Detroit Council of Art and Cultural Production
cultural practicioner
Detroit Public Schools art magnet high schools metabolon
IBA Emscher park Gmbh
(LLC - 1989-1999)
metabolon
Likewise, in order for a UNESCO City of Design to hold agency over actual change in the city, and not just be a tool of increased tourism, various programs and exhibitions must be created for the longevity of success in the continued making of Detroit.
Nat’l Endowment of Emsherergenossenthe Arts schaft Wayne / Macomb / Oakland Co.
City of Detroit NordrheinWestfalia (NRW)
Ministry of Building, Housing, Urban Dev.
t Ruhr -2014)
US Dept. of Arts + Culture
MOCAD Project Ruhr (1999-2014)
Detroit Creative Corridor (DC3)
Regionale 2008-2010
CITY OF DESIGN
Minister of Urban Planning
Regionale 2008-2010
Detroit Symphony Orchestra
RUHR.2010
route
academics
industriecultur 5 year
2 year
Detroit
route industriecultur
Ruhr Region Detroit
RUHR.2010
10 year
IBA EMSCHER PARK
PROMOTION THROUGH PROGRAM
CULTURAL CONSOLATES
DESIGN REGIONALE
Dortmund Phoenixsee
Dortmund Phoenixsee
120 projects
120 projects
private development
OPEN DESIGN COMPETITON
graphic + marketing push
Macomb Co. Hausrecycling
2 yr
Hausrecycling Duisburg Innerhafen
re-program liminal spaces Oberhausen gasometer
Rheinpark + Tiger and Turtle
Wissenschaftspark
17 muncipalities
Landschaftspark Nord
Rheinpark + Tiger D-sign and Turtle
Oakland Co.
2 yr
Reduce Reuse Recycle (exhibition Flint space)
2 yr
Landschaftspark Nord
Bernepark
community groups
stadthauscultur
Oberhausen gasometer
establish ambassadors
Reduce Reuse Recycle (exhibition space)
woodward faultline
Rheinelbe Forest
stadthauscultur route of Rheinelbe Forest industrial heritage
Rust Belt Property DIY
2 yr Property DIY
PROJECT GOALS Citizens Take the make the platform for conversion + Initiative city conversation
Zollverein + Kokeri
ded
Naturalization of “stadthauscultur” Emscher River
infrastructural providers
Naturalization of Emscher River
rg fen
Wayne Co.
2 yr
Home-Worker (refugee skills training)
key:
governing agency
Build it outlet for Yourself erased publics
creative input
Zollverein + Kokeri
joint transit
creative output
culture as driver of development
proposed/needed
hack the neoliberal city
pollution cleanup
stormwater/ cso treatment
financial support
financial support
A web showing the governance structure Detroit needs for longevity as a UNESCO City of Design
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newHome-Worker industrial (refugee /skills narrative training) repurpose
A CURATORIAL INFRASTRUCTURE
A disc jockey turntable as visual analogy of a curatorial infrastructure
While the designation of a UNESCO site is rooted in an expanded governance of cultural assets, ultimately, an entire curatorial infrastructure must be imagined for the multiple layers of complexity and opposite realities to have room to operate in the city.
The analogy of a disc jockey (DJ) turntable aids in imagining the possibilities of the city to hold multiple, not necessarily resonant, sounds in a productive overture of rich cultural production.
Nine Urban Theses for Detroit: Fricticious Realities
The DJ turntable designed above allows multiple publics to both, participate in the creation, and enjoyment of culture through a variety of scalar and temporal levels of production, as well as a range of design typology and intensity.
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CONVERSATION CONTINUUM This capstone is rooted and influenced by a series of design practitioners who see design as a powerful tool to further
curate contemporary culture, often in places where cultural production may be hidden or pushed to the margins.
Their practices offer sensitive control, and can be a tool to foster conversation about contemporary social realities.
Design as Curation to curate the cultural and social realities already present in plenitude through design, often through minimal addition
architectural pieces program Source: Melia West
O.N.E. Mile Project; North End, Detroit
landscape
political theory
planning
theatre
anya sirota
Source: www.modeldmedia.com
emboldens existing cultural production in Detroit; combines toil with fun A-96
Source: www.anyasirota.com
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Imaging Detroit project, Perrian Park, Detroit
thomas knünever reimagines delicate landscapes; multifunctional sites Source: Melia West
Source: Rapport sur Partir du Bidonville
Roma consulate; Peru Project, Paris
sebastien thiery designs with resources on ‘precarious’ urban margins; built a consulate for Roma population in Paris
Source: Melia West
Source: Melia West
Slide + trampoline :metabolon landfill, Engelskirchen, Germany
gilles clement curates the landscape mother nature provides; adds no new plant life
Source: www.iledenantes.com
Île de Nantes, France
alexandre chemetoff flexible masterplan for urban dynamics + participatory planning; reveals traces of industrial heritage
Source: www.tumblr.com
Source: https://studies-in-drama-brecht-1.wikispaces.com_ EPIC+theatre!_motherCourage
bertolt brecht
Source: www.thegreencloud.blogspot.com
theater as socially performative, often with minimal sets to discourage mere entertainment
Garden of Resistence Nine Urban Theses for Detroit: Fricticious Realities
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DETROIT AS PALIMPSEST OF CULTURAL CONFRONTATION palimpsest of cultural confrontation
neu
cultural prosperity
Olayami Dabls acts as cultural ambassador
1990
George N’namdi cultivates African American art
Hip Hop and rap scene flourishes
Woodward Dream Cruise celebrates car culture every summer
Techno music scene born in Detroit
1960
Many festivals mark the Detroit calendar year Parliment Funk was born in Detroit’s Northend
Motown Records revolutionized the music scene
Martin Luther King Jr. march and ‘I Have a Dream’ speech in 1963
1930
First African American record label started on Grand Blvd.
The “Arsenal of Democracy” was the fabrication site in World War II Joe Lewis: heavyweight boxing champion
Second Great Migration in the 1940s offered employment and an escape from Jim Crow sharecropping
Albert Kahn’s architecture shaped the city
1900 John Lee Hooker brought Mississippi blues to Paradise Valley
Invention of Vernor’s ginger ale Belle Isle; the first American aquarium and was a favorite spot of leisure
Michigan economy prospered with the lumber trade
1800
Detroit known as the “Doorway to Freedom” in the Underground Railroad
Migration patterns in the Underground Railroad
Fur trader in the Michigan territory
1700 Detroit ‘The Strait’ was founded strategically at
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Detroit is a city whose history is punctuated by a variety of cultural inventions - many of which have forever shaped the American landscape.
However, it is a palimpsest of confrontation - of cultural prosperity and innovation as well as obliteration. This historical map stands as reminder
utral
of the possible threat the UNESCO designation could become to Detroit’s rebirth, and to the sustained cultural prosperity of the city’s residents.
cultural obliteration
Famous Brewster Homes before demolition - many geographies of cultural importance have been erased Residential water shut-offs occured throughout 2015
Deplorable conditions in Detroit Public Schools
Detroit’s police force was known for its brutality in black neighborhoods
Black Labor movement fought unfair wages and working conditions
1967 Race Riot reacting to police brutality, lack of housing and jobs
Razing of the middle-class Black Bottom neighborhood
largest tank
1943 Race Riot responding to competition of resources including leisure spaces
Exclusionary housing covenants made it illegal to sell a house to blacks Black Bottom was the only area southern blacks were allowed to live during the First Great Migration
FHA’s Redlining map
Blacks migrated to Detroit to escape the Jim Crow South
Slave trade in the 18th and 19th centuries Fort Wayne
Image sources: ablogcalledwonk.com; http://arraytheday.com_dream-cruise; http://atlanticblackstar.com_Detroit-12-eohistory.com; http://bentley.umich.edu; http://blog.detroithistorical.org; commons. wikimedia.org; http://coxcorner.tripod.com; discoverynews.tumblr.com; http://experiencedetroit.com; findingeliza.com/st_antoine/blog; www.gettyimages.com; www.histroicdetroit.org; https:// detroitenvironment.lsa.umich.edu; www.detroitnews.com; www.michiganradio.org; www.mlive.com/dpsprotests; www.newsone.com/riot/real; http://northbysouth.kenyon.edu; www.nydailynews.com; www.starforts.com; http://stufffromthelab.wordpress_underground_railroad; www.tripadvior.com/hartplaza; www.voiceofdetroit.com; www. wikipedia.com; www.aotaradio.com; www.artifizz.com; www. businessinsider.com; www.dallyinthealley.com; www.detroitsgreatrebellion.com/Detroit/riot/1943; www.historicstructures.com; www.history.com_slave-ship-interior; www.hourdetroit.com; www.metrotimes. com; www.stcloudstate.edu_detroitido; www.thedailybeast.com; www. yelp.com/motownhistoricalmuseum
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WHEN THE SOCIAL IS PHYSICAL
As mentioned in the introduction, Detroit’s geography can be understood as a reality of racial and cultural enclaves. The physical city exists as a manifestation of social realities, often revealing decades of social injustices. Not only can the city be organized through social juxtapositions, but also through the mapping of cultural assets. Institutionalized cultural production and capital-driven projects operate as a conglomerate, existing almost exclusively in the 7.1 square miles of Downtown and Midtown.
key
key
0 to 4
african american
4 to 9
caucasian
9 to 15
asian
15 to 22
other
race
22 to 42
percent with a bachelor’s degree
key 0 to 20K 20 to 40K key
40 to 60K
cso outfall
60 to 100k
brownfield site
over 100K
average household income
reported dumping
soil and water pollution
key african american low percent bachelors degree below 40k income concentrated pollution
physical realities reflecting social injustices A-100
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Current Cultural Ambassadors
key
key
institution
creative economy
capital driven
design firm
creative economy
capital
key
key
grassroot effort
industrial
street art
architectural
grassroots lack of visible cultural resources
heritage cultural threshold
saturation of cultural resources
key grassroots capital
INSTITUTIONALIZED 1. DIA 2. Museum of Af Am 3. MOCAD 4. DSO 5. Detroit Opera 6. UD-Mercy 7. Wayne State 8. DCDC 9. Hilberry Theater 10. Schaver Music Recital Hall 11. Leonard Simons Bldg 12. Detroit Public Lib 13. Michigan Science Center 14. Cranbrook 15. UM Detroit Center 16. UM Design Center 17. MSU Detroit Center
18. Lawrence Tech Univ. 19. Lawrence Tech Univ. Detroit Studio 20. Cass Tech 21. Western Int’l HS 22. Detroit School of Arts 23. Fox Theatre 24. Center for Performing Arts
CREATIVE 1. Detroit Creative Corridor Center (DC3) 2. College for Creative Studies 3. Shinola 4. Center Galleries 5. Ponyride 6. Sugar Hills Art District 7. Salt + Cedar 8. 201 E Kirby St? 9. One Custom City 10. Ford Research + Innovation 11. GM Research Engineering Bldg 12. Detroit Labs 13. 71 POP 14.dPOP! 15. Model D 16. Signal Return 17. Detroit Lives! 18. Allied Media Projects 19. TechTown Detroit 20. Bizdom 21. Incite Focus, LC3 22. North End Studios 23. Heritage Works 24. OmniCorp Detroit 25. Detroit Artists Market 26. Russell Industrial Center
DESIGN FIRMS 27. ROSSETTI 28. Albert Kahn 29. SmithGroup JJR 30. Integrated Design Solutions 31. Inform Studio 32. McIntosh Poris Assoc. 33. Archive Design Studio 34. Gensler 35. HKS Architects 36. VolumeOne Design Studio 37. Neumann/Smith 38. AZD Assoc. 39. Studio Detroit 40. Hamilton Anderson 41. M1/DTW 42. City Form Detroit 43. Octane Design 44. Zoyes Creative Group 45. Basso Design Group 46. Skidmore Studio 47. Centric Design Studio 48. Patrick Thompson Design 49. Curve | Detroit 50. Building Hugger 51. Wedge Detroit
GRASSROOTS 1. Dabl’s Gallery 2. N’Namdi Center for Cont. Art 3. The Foundation 4. Living Arts 5. The Heidelberg Project 6. UFO Factory 7. Trinosophes 8. The Alley Project 9. The Carr Center 10. Cinema Detroit 11. Magic Stick 12. The Garden Theater 13. The Majestic Theater 14. The Scarab Club 15. Detroit Together Performing Arts 16. Plowshares Theatre Co. 17. PuppetArt Theatre 18. RideIt Sculpture Park 19. O.N.E. Mile Project 20. House Opera Gallerys 21. 555 Nonprofit Gallery and Studios 22. 13100 Klinger St? 23. Cass Corridor Commons 24. Garfield Lofts 25. West End Gallery (future)
ARCHITECTURAL 1. The Guardian Building 2. Fisher Building 3. Michigan Central Station 4. Tiger Stadium 5. Penobscot Building 6. Lafayette Park 7. Motown Museum 8. Palmer Apartments
creative economies heritage
thresholds in the city Nine Urban Theses for Detroit: Fricticious Realities
FREE PRESS 35 BEST OF STREET ART
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CAPTIAL DRIVEN 25. Campius Martius 26. Detroit Experience Factory 27. M@dison Building 28. Ford Field 29. Comerica Park 30. Lil’Caesars Arena
INDUSTRIAL HERITAGE 9. Packard Plant 10. Ford Rouge Factory Tour 11. Henry Ford Museum 12. Ford Piquette Ave. Plant 13. Ford Plant 14. Cadillac Place 15. Chryster Plant 16. GM Detroit-Hamtramck Assembly Plant 17. General Motors 18. Rouge Plant
CONFRONTATION TYPOLOGY: THRESHOLDS IN DETROIT
Based on the mapping of social and cultural realities in the city, a typology of thresholds can be developed that show the various conditions of frictions meeting and coexisting.
Source: geology.about.com/ ravine
Source: www.qz.com
Source: sciencebob.com_oilexperiment
It is these locations where a UNESCO curatorial infrastructure might operate to both accentuate already existing cultural production and to encourage promising energy in a City of Design.
Source: animallife.com/sponge
Ferndale
Grosse Pointe
Eight Mile Rd.
er R
Alt
Detroit
d.
Detroit
This in turn sets up a variety of sites that showcase the ability of urban design to simultaneously hold multiple realities in a rich coexistence.
River Rouge Park Dearborn
WALL
Source: www.nytimes.com
Lasalle Gardens
d an ay ail ighw r h sed d rai were lo
Source: Melia West
Source: http://belgeo.revues.org
Source: thoseotherfish.wordpress. com
Midtown Midtown/ TechTown
GAP
Downtown
POROUS
Source: Melia West
Source: Melia West
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Detroit
VESTIBULE
IMMISCIBLE
Source: www.motorcitymuckracker. com
Source: www.designsponge.com
Source: www.try2see.com
Source: Melia West
Source: http://conservationfund. org
TAXONOMY OF SPATIAL OPPORTUNITIES FOR CULTURAL PRODUCTION
temporary occupation
gamescape
P
festival
‘lots’ of fun
potted plants
installation
rooftop
hvac ducts + pipes
facade
found objects
excess rightof-way
succession landscape
rail-to-trail
‘hot’ summer corners
community event
land marker
unsolicitated
commissioned
reappropriated artifacts
belly of raised rail
reclaimed voids
public or vacant lots
design practice
graphic
Image sources: Melia West; www.huffingtonpost.com;www.freepress.com; www.huduser.gov; www.chicagotribune.com; www.esrawe. com; www.onecustomcity.com; www.archfoundation.org; www.cathlynnewell.com; www.architectmagazine.com
Currently, a variety of tools are in play in Detroit for design and cultural production. To begin to visualize the various methods being used, while
showing additional methods, (drawing on precedent from the Ruhr Region), a taxonomy is developed that can be used to further curate and expand on design
Nine Urban Theses for Detroit: Fricticious Realities
in Detroit today. This can be used to further understand a variety of future projects in a UNESCO landscape.
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APPLICATION: REVEAL // AMPLIFY // CREATE
Through the layering offered by a governance infrastructure; theoretical grounding with contemporary practitioners of curation; the geographic realities of Detroit’s social and cultural production frameworks; and through an understanding of the various threshold typology and taxonomy of cultural production; a variety of sites can be located that begin to suggest the rich contemporary palimpsest of culture and design in the City of Detroit. This layering builds to a complexity
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that does not want to be simplified, for fear that the city will dilute itself and its inhabitants to fit into another place’s preconceived notions of a ‘City of Design’. It is precisely this richness that must be curated, adding opposite realities where appropriate, to further enrich each subsequent reality. These layered complexities will therefore generate, through the medium of urban design, the revelation of on-going cultural production, its amplification, and its creation over time.
Detroit Council of Art and Cultural Production
, cultural practicioner
Detroit Public Schools art magnet high schools
metabolon MOCAD Detroit Symphony Orchestra
Detroit Creative Corridor (DC3)
CITY OF DESIGN
Regionale 2008-2010
PROJECT MAP: LAYERING FOR COMPLEXITY Detroit
RUHR.2010
2 year
5 year
10 year
PROMOTION THROUGH PROGRAM
CULTURAL CONSOLATES
DESIGN REGIONALE
Dortmund Phoenixsee
OPEN DESIGN COMPETITON
graphic + marketing push
Wayne Co.
2 yr
“stadthauscultur” Macomb Co.
2 yr
Hausrecycling re-program liminal spaces
Oakland Co.
D-sign establish ambassadors
2 yr Flint
Reduce Reuse Recycle (exhibition space)
2 yr
stadthauscultur
woodward faultline
governance
route of industrial heritage
Rust Belt
2 yr
Property DIY
PROJECT GOALS
Home-Worker (refugee skills training)
platform for conversion + conversation
outlet for erased publics
joint transit
culture as driver of development
hack the neoliberal city
pollution cleanup
stormwater/ cso treatment
new industrial narrative / repurpose
threshold
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spatial opportunities
REVEAL
AMPLIFY
Nine Urban Theses for Detroit: Fricticious Realities
CREATE
A-105
REVEAL // STITCHING THE GAP
An intellectual segregation currently exists between the educational and cultural enclave present at Wayne State University and Midtown, crossing north to New Center’s creative economic boom. A physical gap created by a sunken highway and raised rail segregates a hub of street art and grassroots efforts to the west. Through the imagination of a three-layered city - under, through, up and over - various opportunities for occupation are imagined that literally invite a variety of publics to “suspend” preconceived notions as they traverse a highly curated landscape of immense talent in the city.
FRICTIONS
maintain opposition in event of cultural gentrification
creative economy // street art neo-liberal public // forgotten public local audience // global audience
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A
A series of frames and murals at varying intervals creates an exciting approach for visitors using Amtrak, building on the cultural legacy of Detroit
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An art installation uses playful motifs, lightscapes, and a climbable playscape to celebrate contemporary cultural production on the site of a current parking lot
C Nine Urban Theses for Detroit: Fricticious Realities
A-107
AMPLIFY // INSTIGATION ALONG A ZIPPER
Detroit’s Midtown has long been home to the treasured Detroit Institute of Arts, along with other institutional forms of culture. This type and scale of culture often can be exclusive to the publics who are not able to afford access. A co-existence and inclusive urban design could be staged that utilizes publicly-owned parking lots for a series of temporary occupations that offer pop-up galleries, playscapes, and community gathering spots, providing access to cultural production by all publics in the City of Design.
FRICTIONS institutionalized // grassroots neo-liberal public // forgotten public large-scale // small-scale
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C
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B
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create wiggle room to include all publics
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A hopscotch race traverses a series of abandoned parking lots
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The temporary use of vacant parcels and an underused alley creates the perfect spot for an afternoon event
C A bench and bandstand are designed using reclaimed wood panels that can be disassembled for use at another site Nine Urban Theses for Detroit: Fricticious Realities
A-109
CREATE // AN IMMISCIBLE LANDSCAPE
At the highly-symbolic border of Detroit with the suburbs, Eight Mile Road, a cultural consulate is imagined, where many publics can co-mingle, both having the desired space to curate their cultural production, while not feeling a need to give up any part of their identity, much like two immiscible liquids. The consulate could become the site of a 10-year Metro Detroit or Rust Belt Regionale, holding exhibitions on cultural agency in a UNESCO City of Design.
FRICTIONS black // white abandoned // reappropriation rich // poor
reprogram preconceived notions of ‘otherness’
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B
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A
Entrance to the Old State Fair Grounds after crossing Eight Mile Road
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Long-term, large-investment landscape design reimagines the use of the old State Fair Grounds creating a 30-foot landmark hill. An amphitheatre is dug into the hill, providing a place to tell stories of erased publics in Detroit.
C Nine Urban Theses for Detroit: Fricticious Realities
A-111
CURATING THE UNESCO CITY OF DESIGN
IN CONCLUSION
A-112
In 2015, Detroit was designated a UNESCO City of Design, based on its cultural legacy and contemporary growth in the creative economy. While this growth and design excellence is well-worth celebrating and curating for its own accomplishments, it is imperative that a UNESCO designation broaden its understanding of ‘culture’ and ‘cultural production’; in order to give room to all of the various forms and publics that create in the culturally-complex city of Detroit. This broadened understanding must first, inform the curation of design and innovation in the city’s legacy - including the cultural wealth and social injustices that remain palpable in the physical realm. Second, this understanding of ‘design’ in the City of Detroit must inform a top-down approach to the curation of both capital-driven and grassroots efforts, never seeking to “institutionalize” the myths and design wisdom that make manifest a shared culture.
Volume I: DARE
The reality that UNESCO has a history of both “saving” cities and “obliterating” any healthy tissue for residents and tourists alike should be owned by those wishing to work on the designation. A careful consideration of Detroit’s layered complexity and juxtaposed publics must be understood in order for its existence as a City of Design to both grow the creative economy - the stated goal of the designation - and to improve the lives of Detroiters on a day-to-day level of access to the creation and enjoyment of cultural production. This needs to be handled on many levels of ‘design’, including the hidden structure of governance that can influence and shape the ability of design to drive the growth of Detroit through a sophisticated curatorial infrastructure.
www .H O P S C OTC HDETR OIT. co m
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Hopscotch Detroit is brought to you by the design team at Wedge Detroit, in collaboration with Imagine Detroit Together and in partnership with the Detroit Design Festival.
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heatre: Museum, Studio & Performance River Ave) pm, 9/21: 12pm - 5pm, 9/22: 1pm - 5pm, 4pm $3. Performances: $10 adults, $5 children
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Nine Urban Theses for Detroit: Fricticious Realities
detroitdesignfestival.com to see the many ddf events not pictured on this map. Source: www.wedgedetroit.com
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Retailer: City Bird & NEST eld St) 9/19-9/22: 11am – 7pm
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Surveying Greatness: The Work of Corrado Parducci Adam Strohm Hall, Detroit Public Library Main Branch (5201 Woodward Ave) 9/19: 12pm – 8pm, 9/20 - 9/22: 10am - 6pm
WASHINGTON BLVD
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Yamasaki Building Tours McGregor Memorial Conference Center, Wayne State University (495 Ferry Mall) 9/20 - 9/21: 6:30pm & 8pm, 9/22: 9am & 10:30am RSVP: yamasaki.eventbrite.com
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a Lot of Space: A Project of Lots of ART! (NE Corner of Cass Ave & Canfield St) 9/19-9/22
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pm 9/23: 9am - 6pm
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Unorganized Beauty: Emerging Artist ption roject Gallery (42 Watson St) 6pm - 8pm
f Beauty: Round table Discussion 30, MSU Detroit Center (3408 Woodward pm
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the Highway: North Corktown Design ultipurpose Room, Michigan State etroit Center ( MSU ) ward Ave) 9am – 4pm s: $25, students: $15.
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miscuity: An Exhibition & Boutique Color, Design, Furniture and Pop Art ong-Sharp | Curis Gallery (1260 Library St) 0pm (Public Event)
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Source: Melia West
@ wedgedetroit # hopscotchdetroit www. hopscotchdetroit. com
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hopscotch Starting BLOCK (Campus Martius) Local artists will create beautiful murals around Cadillac Square. The starting point for a relay race. Starting point for a four-mile-long ultra hop!
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Hopscotch Headquarters & FINISH LINE (Gullen Mall in the heart of Wayne State Campus) Be a record setter and join Wedge for the world's longest hopscotch! Come see chalk murals painted by local artists. Create your own art with free chalk provided by Wedge and Chalkfly. Unleash your inner child during Recess hosted by Playworks complete with games and activities!
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A-113 Source: Melia West
BIND-ARY Zhe Zhang Administrative boundaries are political mechanisms that rule important economic and social codes on the land. The perimeter of the city of Detroit is an exemplary case of the agency of these lines shaping exclusionary policies and cultural constructions. Race, age, income and land occupancy, just a few layers, are enough to render this circumstance visible, and define a sharp divide. Together with these intangible walls, other physical barriers have been erected overtime. Accompanying the demographic divide along the boundary is the uneven distribution of public amenities on the two sides, and the overall disinvestment along the line.
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After decades of confrontational policies and attitudes, each side continues to use its own resources, and the line continues to sharpen the divide. Seeking to create opportunities to challenge the status quo, and ultimately stimulate social interaction between the two sides to erode both visible and invisible walls, Bind-ary maps moments of intense difference and striking similarity, to instill nodes of emergent urbanity with novel types of shared public services. Acknowledging the boundary, there is a frequently high flow in traffic, however it is barely ever inhabited; the growth of public amenities on the boundary will lead to a virtuous cycle of intense occupation.
Nine Urban Theses for Detroit: Bind-ary
A-115
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Mapping six main layers of demographic information along the city border - a quarter-mile width to both sides - reveals the intense contrast existing along the city administrative boundary. Among the three areas with highest degrees of contrast, represented by contrasting saturation, the border between Detroit and Grosse Pointe is the most notorious one. Here, a farmer’s market and plant pots were placed to block Detroiters from going into Grosse Pointe. Currently, different forms of barriers still exist along this section of the boundary.
Nine Urban Theses for Detroit: Bind-ary
A-117
QUESTIONING THE BOUNDARY CONDITION
N2-H V2-P / N2-H
Hidde Visual-Productive Homogeneity Hidden Difference
Cliff-Bare Ground
N1-C Access-Fence
A1-F
QUESTIONING THE BOUNDARY CONDITION
Visual-Mirrored Program
V1-M Modeling and mapping this section of the city administrative boundary reveals multiple layers embedded in the defining boundary. By applying several spontaneous strategies: Mirrored Neighborhoods, Cliff, Hidden Difference, and Productive Homogeneity, the discrepancy between the actual administrative boundary, the border, and perception boundary is revealed. While the main purpose of setting barriers on the border is to block access and visual accessibility to achieve a “safe” neighborhood for Grosse Pointers, there is a possibility that spatial design can challenge the current momentum of the alignment of “safety,” or living boundary, with the administration boundary. A-118
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Visual-Mirrored Program
V1-M
Visual-Mirrored Program
V1-M
Access-To Visual-M
A2-T/V1-M
Visual-One-Sided New Program
V3-O V2-P
Visual-Productive Homogeneity
V2-P
Visual-Productive Homogeneity
en Difference
V3-O PRODUCTIVE HOMOGENEITY V2-P
V2-P V2-P HIDDEN DIFFERENCE
N2-H
V2-P
V2-P
N1-C
N2-H
CLIFF
A1-F
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Topography Mirrored Program
V1-M
V1-M MIRRORED NEIGHBORHOODS A2-T
Boundary Width Adminstration Boundary Most Contrast Area
Nine Urban Theses for Detroit: Bind-ary
A-119
1/4 mi.
transportational
A-120 31
1/2 mi. 3/4 mi.
consumptive 1 mi.
dense
min.sim.age.30
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$$R $$S $S P
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PIXELATING
consumptive
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Calvin Ave.
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The project seeks to adhere the two sides by finding similarities between the detailed sectors along the boundary, in order to propose spaces to enhance interaction. Then, by mapping the boundary condition with the same demographic items, but with a more detailed censusing scale, the potential and reasonable use and program are identified along the five mile boundary.
BOUNDARY INVESTIGATIO
BOUNDARY INVESTIGATION
Traffic Flow Median Age
Playground / School
$R
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BRIDGING
INHAB
Income
Population Density
Income
Population Density
60 yr. 40 yr. 20 yr. 60 0 yr. 40 yr.
Age Difference
20 yr.
Age Inclusive Area
0 yr. Scripps St.
Essex Dr.
Scripps St.
Fairfax
Essex Dr.
Fairfax
St. Paul
Alter Rd.
E. Jefferson Ave. E. Jefferson Ave.
St. Paul
Vernor Hwy. Vernor Hwy.
Alter Rd.
Age Difference Age Inclusive Area
Income
Income Difference Income
$S $S
$R $R
$R
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$R
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$R
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Density Income Inclusive Area Traffic Flow
Density Highest Density Area
Transit Stations
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Income Inclusive Area R=Restaurant Traffic Flow S=Shop P=Public Services
Transit Stations
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R=Restaurant S=Shop Income Difference P=Public Services
4-1/4 mi.
4-1/2 mi.
4-3/4 mi.
Highest Density Area Location 4.94 mi. Location
3 mi.
max.sim.age.40 3-1/4 mi. 3-1/2 mi.
max.sim.age.40
3-3/4 mi.
4 mi.
4-1/4 mi.
PIXELATING
dense
PIXELATING
dense
BITING consumptive
BITING consumptive
4-1/2 mi.
4-3/4 mi.
4.94 mi.
max.sim.age.40
max.sim.age.40
INHABITING Nine Urban Theses for Detroit: Bind-ary INHABITING
A-121
Pedestrian BridgePedestrian Bridge Multi-Purpose Pedestrian Multi-Purpose BridgePedestrian BridgeSkyway
Skyway
BRIDGING
B
Connection acrossConnection the boundary across withthe bou building, structure,building, and programs structure, and
Multi-Purpose Skyway Multi-Purpose Skyway Courtyard Bridge Courtyard Building Bridge Building Visual Bridge-Surveillance Visual Bridge-Surveillance
OPERATION PALETTE A taxonomy of potential interventions is developed with three main categories: bridging, inhabiting, and pixelating; seeking to connect, thicken and detour program and flow to create more opportunities for social interaction along the boundary. In later scenarios, multiple types of strategies here are applied to the same scenario, with different scales and additional landscape or architectural strategies.
A-122
Volume I: DARE
Paired Program Sport Shop+Field
Program - \ Paired Program - \ Paired Program - Paired Program Paired ProgramPaired Theater+Outdoor Cinema Theater+Outdoor Cinema Sport Shop+Field Restaurant+Beer Garden Restaurant+Beer Garden
INHABITING
INHA
Shared public serviceShared publi thickening and bluring thickening the and bl boundary b
Landscape Park
Landscape Park
Detoured Programming Detoured Programming Scattered Program in Scattered Park Program in Park
PIXELATING
PIXE
Creating exclaves to curate Creating exclaves interaction across theinteraction existing across the adminstrative boundary adminstrative b
Nine Urban Theses for Detroit: Bind-ary
A-123
Intervention Overview
Legend
Balduck M
emorial
Influence Area City Broader
Park 2,0 0 0,0 0 0
sqm
Proposed Landscape Proposed Structures
East Eng lish Villa Prepara ge tory Aca demy
Three scenarios with different contexts along the boundary are identified. Focusing on discussing different issues, these scenarios differ in location, scale, form and intensity of intervention.
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Scenario 2 A-124
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Nine Urban Theses for Detroit: Bind-ary
A-125
Restaurant Studio
Retail
Skywalk
Scenario 1 : Catalytical School
Legend Influence Area City Broader Flow of Detroiters Flow of Grosse Pointers
View Relation
View Relation Proposed Landscape Proposed Structures
A-126
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Library
l / Restaurant Transit Station School
Scenario 1 discusses the issue of adhesive space for children and parents through education facilities, community level public amenities and public spaces. While the students along the border experience longer trips to the nearest school of their own city, a speculative school right on the city administrative boundary serves students from both cities, and provides opportunities for both young students to mix in school; parents have opportunities to communicate with each other as their children do. Community amenities and surrounding public space provide places for parents to stay after walking children to school. This also provides an Nine Urban Theses opportunity for Detroit: forBind-ary a class and racial A-127 mix.
Public Offices
Gallery Restaurant / Retail
Scenario 2 : 24 Hour Safe Zone
Legend Influence Area City Broader Flow of Detroiters Flow of Grosse Pointers View Relation Proposed Landscape Proposed Structures
View Relation
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Gallery
Hotel / Apartment
c Services
Late Night Stores
Skywalk
Cinema
Transit Station
Scenario 2 envisions a space filled with high density public amenities with 24 hour use, some of which are city level amenities, while also serving neighborhoods further away. As a satire to the current illusion and practice of creating a “safe� space by barriers on streets, this scenario uses programming to create eyes on the streets, creating safety by spontaneous surveillance. Therefore, programs are sometimes applied with the pixelating strategy, detoured and connected by skywalks, to create the relation of see and be seen. Forms of building volumes are still responding to the Nine Urban Theses administrative for Detroit:revenue-based Bind-ary logic. A-129
Restaurant
Scenario 3 : Banded Gardens
Legend Influence Area City Broader Flow of Detroiters Flow of Grosse Pointers Proposed Structures
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Scenario 3 imagines a new form of urban garden along the boundary. Instead of the conventional model that places needed urban gardens in Grosse Pointe and common urban farming gardens in Detroit, a striped and horizontally-stacked mixture of urban garden and community garden, with a continuous path across them, speculates on the possibility of making two types of gardens one and creating Nine Urban Theses communal for Detroit: spaceBind-ary for residents of A-131 both sides.
den Gar
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Nine Urban Theses for Detroit: Bind-ary
A-133
AN ISLAND IN THE CITY Shao-Chen Lu
Looking back to the historical formation of downtown Detroit, there is a constant ambition to extend the economic and social energy to the surrounding region through the city’s radial pattern. The Rapid Transit System proposed in 1929 shaped this vision. Followed by the success of the automobile industry, downtown took on a different role – the representation of the ideal of the American Dream. The relationship and the distance between downtown and the area where downtown-workers lived changed dramatically, and a clear boundary emerged around downtown. Downtown Detroit detached itself to serve the daily influx of suburbanites working in the FIRE (Finance, Insurance, and Real Estate) industries, rather than the surrounding area. Along with the highway system around the downtown, users and land owners trace a highly segregated downtown landscape that represents a divergence in social status, economic and even political power between downtown and the surrounding areas. Downtown became an island in the city.
A-134
CONCEPT This proposal focus on the enclavelike nature of downtown to create new islands for social activities along the different boundaries, and form a new network in the downtown. Since the automobile was the symbol of modern ideology, it became the tool to represent economic and political power; it also became the means to secure the territories. The objective of this proposal is to reveal the detached ideology from the idea of “the heart of the city” in downtown Detroit.
CONTEXT By showing the city’s economic and political power, downtown lost its social functions. Huge structures became the objects to show this power, and further became the boundary that isolated the downtown area. This project challenges this situation by mixing a social network into these mega-structures, and tries to find a new relationship between them.
Volume I: DARE
During the semester, the island-like situation of downtown Detroit was interrogated: What kinds of forces support and amplify the boundary condition that makes downtown operate as an island in the city? An initial study in the northwest corner of downtown revealed the role of the highway as a mechanism of exclusion capable of promoting extremely different statuses between its two sides.
Spatial Retaining Bars, Phoenix, Arizona, 1989, by Steven Holl. Retaining bars protect the desert landscape beyond the new urban edge imagined for Phoenix, as compared to uncontrolled sprawl.
Source: Book - Urbanisms: Working with Doubt
Traffic Study, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 1952, by Louis I. Kahn For Kahn, the girdle of expressways and parking towers circling the city center metaphorically recalled the walls and towers that protected the medieval cities of Europe. Kahn’s specific comparison was to the largely medieval town of Carcassonne, in the South of France: just as Carcassonne was a city built for defense, Kahn envisioned the modern city center having to defend itself against the automobile. - Resource from MoMA Source: www.moma.org
Nine Urban Theses for Detroit: An Island in the City
A-135
TOP INFLOW AREA
Scale: 1/80,000 High Income Area Top Workforce Inflow Area Down Town Detroit Highway
Top Inflow Area to downtown Detroit This maps shows that most of the people who work in the downtown area actually live outside of Detroit (suburbs), also reporting much higher income than people who live in the city.
When the automobile started to transform urban life, downtown Detroit detached itself from the city. Abandoning the representation of the “public�, it became progressively at the service of capital accumulation by the financial, insurance and real estate players. The highway system became the tool to maintain the isolated nature of downtown, yet its efficient connection with the suburbs. A-136
Volume I: DARE
POPULATION / TRAFFIC VOLUME
Scale: 1/60,000
High over 100K
50K
20K
10K
5K
Population Density
Medium 20K
1
Traffic Volume
Comparison Between Population Density and Traffic Volume Traffic volume remains stable even when it goes through low density areas, until it reaches the downtown area. The highway is the tool that maintains the connection with suburban areas, and the disconnection with the immediate surrounding neighborhoods.
Nine Urban Theses for Detroit: An Island in the City
A-137
Downtown used to hold the seat for the public administration and the ground to exercise civic representation. Overtime, downtown Detroit transformed into mainly a privately-owned enclave. The highway became the tool to secure or extend the economic power of the new land owners.
A-138
Volume I: DARE
Detroit and the Representation of Capital Six owners actually possess almost half of the land downtown, with the highest value. By mapping their properties, we see their territorialization strategies. Downtown is the playground for these owners to create their own empire.
Nine Urban Theses for Detroit: An Island in the City
A-139
THE WALL CITY
01 PLACE OF EXCHANGE
Site 01 Place of Exchange Ownership: MGM Grant Detroit LLC
This proposal represents the unique situation around downtown Detroit, by proposing a wall city around it. There are three formative elements to the wall: the programs that could represent the capital, the parking structure that could absorb all parking spaces from the downtown area, and the spaces that could be exchanged back to citizens when parking area in the downtown have been released.
Site 02 Place of Relax Ownership: Olympia Development of MI LLC Michael Ilitch
The public administration would sell the air rights over the highway to those big land owners to develop a perimeter wall around downtown. The big land owners and developers could use the wall to show their economic and political power. On the other hand, the city government would build a parking structure as the base of the wall, that would absorb all the parking spaces from the downtown area. The land owners would exchange their parking structures for public use. These mechanisms will free all roads in downtown. Each owner could adopt a new light rail line to serve their empire, and secure their territory, shaping a new downtown Detroit.
M LINE
Site 03 Place of Living Ownership: Greektown Casino LLC Dan Gilbert
By having a wall of parking inserted in the wall, new opportunities for appropriation of the downtown open up, with new potential publics and activities emerging in a new urban landscape.
Site 04 Place of Recreation Ownership: Riverfront Holding Inc. GM
A-140
I LINE
Volume I: DARE
Y D LINE
04 PLACE OF RECREATION
02 PLACE OF RELAX
03 PLACE OF LIVING
D LINE
G LINE
Detroit River Main Waterway
Nine Urban Theses for Detroit: An Island in the City
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Hotel
This site is the most segregated site in the downtown area because of the huge junction near by it. However, MGM Grand Detroit is the casino with the highest revenue.
Food Truck Plaza
New Casino
By building a new extension of the casino and hotel on the proposed wall, an old parking structure could be re-purposed as Western Market.
Olympia Development of Michigan is the largest entertainment company in Detroit, owned by the Ilitch family. They own a large amount of land, used as surface parking, as they wait for new development prospects after they finish the new adjacent arena. Headquaters
Shopping Mall
Sports Park
Parking
By having a new chance to extend their development on the wall, the parking spaces could become the largest public space for citizen.
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Playground
School
Parking
Condo
Greektown Casino is the property owned by Dan Gilbert right next to the residential area, Lafayette Park. By proposing new deluxe condos on the wall with a large amount of parking, the adjacent school could use the open space and former parking structure as their playground and library.
Marina
Parking
Exhibition
GM owns almost all of the riverfront of downtown Detroit, but most of their land is being used as parking to support the need of their headquarters. By having a new exhibition center and even a private marina on the wall, including large parking structures on the wall, they could return the riverfront area back to public use, completing the riverwalk.
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THE CITY AND THE CITY Jonathan Hanna
Seeking a new means of representing the city, The City and the City takes the form of a short story told in the style of Magical Realism, utilizing the literary device of stream of consciousness. The narrative and subsequent work frame questions of urbanity through the lens of speed, altitude or lack there of, and perception. Many references were drawn from Jorge Borges, Julio Cortázar, Italo Calvino and China Miéville. In this case the idea is that, not only can a city be experienced by its people, but that a city too, can perceive and experience its people. We graft our ideas of a world onto our cities; this frames the way we look at and interact with them, and this varies widely from person to person.
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The project proposes a bike trail that follows along the Rouge River, anchored and structured by specific spaces of varying degrees of speed, altitude, and “cross-hatch” or in other words, the area in which one perceives as being a part of “Their City”. The Rouge River was selected as the site due to its inherent traits as a vector: it has a speed, and a direction, it offers some of the greatest topographical differentiation in the entire city, and spans a large area, passing through multiple municipalities, therefore structuring its own set of boundaries. The river was also chosen due to its conception in the public imagination as a polluted, industrial river. It can hardly be accessed due to its industrial nature, further mystifying it in the public imagination.
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Rocamadour, there are some things you need to know about this place, it’s not like Paris, now that you and your mom are here there are some things you should know. Detroit is a city within a city, or, a city outside of a city… uhhhh, you see it’s a bit confusing, it’s always changing, depending on who’s perceiving it, you might consider one portion of the city to be cross-hatched while to others that area is totally off limits. Equally as you perceive the city and determine its form in terms of cross-hatched and non cross-hatched areas, the city is perceiving you and represents itself accordingly. Originally there were two ways of getting around the city, the fast way, by automobile and the slow way, by foot. To the automobile driver, the city represents itself as if the skyscrapers and the streets are made up of paper and plastic, the city is a passive disposable container. And to the traveler commuting by foot the streets stretch into the infinity of the horizon, destination is perceptually unattainable. With inflated insurance costs, and falling wages due to the automation of labor, accessibility to the automobile has declined. And with the constant outward force of suburbanization walking has become unfeasible. This is why the bike has become the preferred mode of transportation. With the city having been developed for the car and walking having been around since the dawn of civilization, the city knows how to represent itself to these groups. This is not true for the bicyclist, both the perception of the individual towards the city and the perception of the city towards the individual are being challenged. Cyclists are perceiving completely new cross-hatched areas. But, the city has yet to figure out how to represent itself to the cyclist and in the meantime the city is in a constant glitch. You know, I still remember when I got my first bike, it was white with red stripes. I clipped my Ken Griffey Jr. card to a spoke on the back tire. I used to sneak out and ride my bike to the salt mounds down on the Rouge River. I never crossed that river when I was young. You see, it wasn’t cross-hatched back then. A dangerous place for a kid like me, now I stayed on my side of the line. I would watch the plume smoke and the hellfire reaching towards the sky on Zug Island and the rest of Carbon Works. But those days are gone and I’m not one for reminiscing. Today, both sides of the river are cross-hatched in certain places. Hell, today we even recognize each other’s humanity, I guess that’s because
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we all lost a lot when the plants moved to full automation. But there’s still some places I wouldn’t venture, too much pollution, not enough cross-hatch. There was an attempt by the cities to expand the cross-hatch by linking the cities with a new connection, utilizing the very thing that anchored the non cross hatched boundaries, the Rouge. They implemented a continuous bike lane connecting the existing network in the Rouge Park down through Dearborn, and straddling the river through Carbon Works. They called it the Industrial Heritage Trail, a cheesy attempt at bringing commonality to non cross-hatched and cross-hatched areas. Anchored to the bike trails are the old industrial sites converted into event spaces, parks, museums and other public amenities and the like. Actually, I’ve heard about it “Rocamadour replied” Let’s give the trail a go I said, I’ll use last month’s federal stipend to buy two bikes, one for me and one for you. We started our ride at the Rouge Park but there is no prescribed beginning or end to the trail as the concept of destination was lost with the production jobs. No work, no where to be, no destination. Time becomes malleable when no one is paying you for it. And on this day we’ll spend it experiencing the glitch of the city on our bikes. Rocamadour raced ahead much younger and more agile than myself, he zipped back and forth along the gravel paths. Rocamadour had no sense of the non cross-hatched boundary yet, it didn’t affect him anyways, he’s Parisian and the non crosshatched folks wouldn’t know him from Adam. “Slow Down Roco” I yelled, “stay within my site, you don’t want to be thrown off course by the glitch do you?”. “I’m going ahead, you’re too slow” he yelled back. “Meet me at the Bike Shop at U of M.” I replied. I knew I could cut through the campus and beat him there by a few minutes. When I got to the shop I bought two Gatorade and a patch kit just in case, I waited there for Rocamadour watching some kids from the college rent some bikes, I wonder if the glitch is holding him up, I wonder if he knows where he’s going? He probably took a shortcut Rocamadour thought to himself as he took a break assuming his step dad wasn’t far behind, I better speed up, there’s something strange about this neighborhood but
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I can’t put my finger on it, that’s probably why he didn’t come this way. I got to the bike shop, he was waiting there with a Gatorade for me and a patch kit. The next portion is channelized, all concrete, and flat straightaways. You should be able to keep up. We made our way through the channel, and that’s when the glitch happened. Everything shifted, the road was on the channel, and a car was barreling towards us. The driver spun the car around with the frenzy of a dog trying to bite its own tail. It rolled over into a muddy ditch with its wheels in the air, the driver got out of the car unharmed, We rode by shaking our fists, wobbling like two equally convincing yet contradictory arguments. He almost killed us. “Gulp down the nourishing sludge which flows from the factories that produced your precious car, you bourgeoisie scum.” When we reach the end of the channelized portion we gotta cross the bridge to get to Marathon Park I said. “You mean the one in oakwood heights” my step-dad said. Yea I guess, I mean it stretches from the old salt mine across the river to Forman Park. He seemed anxious to cut through Oakwood Heights but I couldn’t tell why, must be one of those “non cross-hatched” areas. After the full automation the refinery and salt mine consolidated their footprints and sold the remaining land and buildings to the city for a symbolic 1 dollar to create a new industrial park. I can see the pillar of salt in the distance, we must be close. Well, relatively at least. I mean it is 100 feet taller than the Eiffel Tower. It’s the depth of the decommissioned Mine shaft. My dad raced through the park as quick as he could, I was kind of annoyed, I wanted to climb to the top of the pillar to get a different view of the city they have an observation deck in the pyramid of the obelisk. “Hurry up I want to show you the new bridge he yelled”. I stopped and picked up a deck of baseball cards, clipped one to the spoke of my back tire, and rode down to the salt mounds across the Jefferson Bridge. You know, this is my first bike, it’s white with red stripes. I couldn’t come to recross that bride you see, it wasn’t cross-hatched. A dangerous place for a kid like me, now I’ll stay on my side of the line and watch the plume smoke and the hellfire reaching towards the sky on Zug Island and the rest of Carbon Works.
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001_ Model depicting the new bike kiosk, and rental shop at the University of Michigan Dearborn, This intervention is working on issues of horizontality, and the guidance of direction.
002_ Model depicting the channelized portion of the river dividing the cities of Dearborn and Melvindale, This intervention is working on issues of speed, the role that chance plays in ones life. FOCUS 1
FOC
PEDESTRIAN AND BIKE BRIDGE-ROUGE PARK
7.2 M 11.6 MELVINDALE/DEARBORN BORDERTHE CHANNEL
THE CHANNEL
UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN - DEARBORN
ROUGE PARK
4 MI 6.4 KM
BEGINING OF THE CHANNEL
001
002
NON-CROSS HATCHED AREA 1
NON-CROSS HATCHED AREA 2
STRANGE NEIGHBORHOOD
THE CHANNEL BIKE RENTAL AND KIOSK
PEDESTRIAN AND BIKE BRIDGE U OF M DEARBORN
NON-CROSS HATCHED AREA 3
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003_ Model depicting the pillar of salt on the converted salt mine. This intervention is working on altitude and non-motion. 004_ Model depicting the new Jefferson Bridge. This intervention is working and designing for a known future problem, load, or misuse of a system.
FOCUS 3
FOCUS 4
MI KM
9 MI 14.5 KM
10.5 MI 16.9 KM
MARATHON PARK
CUS 2
MARATHON PARK PARK VIEW FROM FORMAN PARK
NON-CROSS HATCHED AREA 4
003
004
SALT MOUNDS
SHORT CUT BRIDGE TOWER
SALT MOUNDS
JEFFERSON BRIDGE
SCHAEFER BRIDGE
MARATHON PARK NEW JEFFERSON BRIDGE
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RIVER ROUGE LIQUOR
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EXPRESSCAPE Travis Crabtree
What is the role of the expressway today in Detroit’s post-industrial and post-modernization setting? It is a peculiar era of the phenomena of infrastructural failure proliferating, while global trade is increasingly using the highway armatures more than ever. This project questions what urbanism can the highway take on to become a more suitable frontier for the city. What will Detroit’s highways will like in 20 or 30 years? Will we continue to double down on investing in rebuilding the same utilitarian conduits forever? Or could the highway hold multipurpose
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thresholds for political, economic, environmental gains, and invert their traditional spatial perception. This project uses that approach to reimage two moments within the highway. One section of the expressway spatializes international trade transactions, while another portion explores a vision for what an expressway could become after it is decommissioned. Instead of traditional methods of complete removal of the highway artifact, this project uses methods of splicing, hijacking, and hybridizing infrastructure to form a new typology for a future expressway synthesis.
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rivers
expresscape
+ Simultaneous Urbanisms: 9 Site Studies
Nine Urban Theses for Detroit: Expresscape
3
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globalizatio
86,233
DULUTH
193,792
GRAND RAPIDS
2.7 M
CHICAGO
594,883
MILWAUKEE
205,520
GREEN BAY
400,070
MINNEAPOLIS 1951 iron ore mines 19th c. coal movement 19th c. grain movement
21th c. passenger rail 21th c. freight rail 21th c. highway network
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822,553
COLUMBUS
297,517
CINCINNATI
287,128
TOLEDO
594,833
INDIANAPOLIS 1951 iron ore movement
Nine Urban Theses for Detroit: Expresscape
water
258,959
ROCHESTER
1.7 M
PITTSBURGH
258,959
BUFFALO
390,113
CLEVELAND
2.6 M
TORONTO
710,000
DETROIT
highways
Before the 20th century the Great Lakes megaregion used its waterways as the conduit for trade and transportation. Today the amount that water is used for travel has severely reduced. Modernization has replaced water as the means of travel by introducing concrete rivers throughout the Great Lakes landscape.
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In Detroit, the highways are the rivers. The highway is now performing the function that the Great Lakes waterway did two centuries ago. The conduits are for moving people, goods, and capital. Since Detroit is a virtually flat terrain the highways are also acting as the deepest points within the city. This can be realized during a heavy rain when the highways literally transform into rivers of water.
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+ 350 - 375
+ 330 - 350
[ l - 94 ] [ l - 75 ]
[ hwy 10 ]
highways as
rivers
+ 315 - 330
[ l - 96 ]
[ l - 94 ]
[ l - 75 ]
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[Interpretations]
This set of illustrations are documenting the complexity of the highway layers. Specific issues include landscape performance, environmental justice, and spatial configurations. Each speculative drawing uses tactile and objective data research to better break down the ingredients that make up these armatures in the city.
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0 mph 30 20 10 40
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accelerated
perspective
50 60 70 76
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the suburban bump
the suburban bump ll
median sucession
crossroads
grass knoll
raised conduits
median flow
double frontage
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interchange straight bend
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toxicity
neighborhood
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infrastructure hijacking
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EXPRESSCAPE Volume I: DARE
38.1
40.2
43
42.19° N, 83.36° W
Frain Lake
42.28° N, 83.74° W
Dixboro
42.28° N, 83.74° W
Ann Arbor
42.28° N, 83.22° W
Plymouth
+
26.3
42.22° N, 83.19° W
Livonia
+
18.3
ips
+
nsh
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tow
ts
ui
nd
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+ an
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sub
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el
mi
v de un
[ I - 96 ]
42.51° N, 83.04° W
re
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DTW Detroit
n
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+
ba
Nine Urban Theses for Detroit: Expresscape
0.8
42.43° N, 83.10° W
city proper
limit
int
ur
+
Detroit Proper
ffic
cs int.
11.2
42.43° N, 83.13° W
Dearborn Heignts
do r
or ri
al c
tri
du s
in
expresscape
exurban commerical flows
m
tra
industrial logisti
16.4
+
o etr
.
impressions
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floodscape
+ 640.00
city groundtruth
600.00
avg. depth
- 582.00
deepest elevation
- 574.00
utilitarian
typical extrusion
airscape - .01 PM - .01 - 1 T/Y PM 1 T/Y PM diesel emission concentration gasoline emission concentration trucking activity
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trafficscape
1700s
1863
1863
1910
++
1923
++ +
++
+
+
1935
++ +
+ + + + + + ++
++++ + +++
+
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EXPRESSCAPE Volume I: DARE
frequent traffic jamming trucking clustering
20 th c e n t u r y m o d e s o f t r a n s p o r t
+
40,000 - 120,000
8 MI
complex
WAYNE STATE UNIVERSITY
apparatus
NEW CENTER
+
This map illustrates the complexity between the expressway and the central part of Detroit. In most situations, the highway is a divisive instrument separating neighborhoods from the central spine of the city. It could be seen as a hierarchical device that concentrates economic prosperity, while the outer edges decline. This diagram locates the economic and physical attributes of the city while overlaying traffic volumes and air pollution intensities to locate three viable locations for extensions. The site areas provide opportunities to deal with highway decommissioning, spatializing global logistics, and bridging economic flows.
1 mi
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ext. A-173
[city]
ONTARIO, CA
ext. [econ]
[log]
ext.
SOUTHWEST DETROIT [ DELRAY]
LAFAYETTE PARK
+
MULTI - FAMILY HOUSING
1 mi
extension logistics
logistics extension
tri-modal intersection
international logistics center
The Logistics Extension is a landscape for machine synchronization and orchestration. The site amplifies transnational trade by making it easier for all modes of transport to intersect one another. The primary modes of transport include rail, ship, truck, and drone. The main artifact is a megastructure designed for containment. Some containment items include air pollution, shipped materials, and is a post for traveling employees to stay.
loading zone
underground parking
international processing
exporting station
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trucking + frieght bridge
water conduit
Ambassdor bridge
international border
high speed passenger rail
ecological performance zone
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un d
ro
g
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at io
ul
p
an i
m
in g
ar g
ch + ng
ki
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p
g e
ar a
g
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s
m
iu
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m
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la
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p or
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container rail yard
Ontario port
western freeways
site location
city center
ship
industry
rail
network A-176
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road
ground
structures
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Amazon headquarter office drone loading area + flight deck
cargo holding + loading dock vertical loading station co2 algae filter
mexicantown connection high speed passenger rail trucker lodging + amenities
vertical loading station AV charging + parking AV cargo fleet geothermal heating
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city extension The City Extension takes an area with low traffic volumes to play out the scenario of a decommissioned expressway. Instead of extracting the entire infrastructure and erasing what was there, the highway is kept to be the central artifact within the landscape. Three rooms are created along the conduit. The Spectacle room essentially frames the highway as an object and gives the public opportunity to think about the larger question of the highway conceptually. The Playroom uses the Olmsteadian style garden block concept on the residential side of the highway and reappropriates the unfinished prison on the downtown side to be an architectural folly. The Development room extends the building density of downtown, while leaving the other side to be a successional forest.
development
w in do w sc
spectacle
re en
th ea tr e en
s
play
ga
rd
spectacle
+
+
+ +
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+
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+
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+
ja
il
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edge + + + + +
+ + +
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+
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pm
en
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st
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+
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cc
es
sio
n
play
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housing
playground
theater
hostel
entertainment
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garden
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[ spectacle room ] [ play room ] [ development room ]
l - 75
l - 375
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economy extension The Economy Extension is an overlaid urban multi-modal transportation development bridging the economic centers in Detroit. The new Redwings sports complex and the development boom in Midtown has created the opportune moment to be connected downtown investments. The upper platform is designed for civic gatherings and directing flows of people from one side to the other. The intervention acts as a stationing point for the new M1 light rail, city bicycles, BRT, and the metropolitan high-speed rail.
baseball plaza
midtown
downtown
the station hockey plaza the platform the wall
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lti
mu
m
an
l tr
a od
ter
en
c sit
mx
ev
ed
s du
nt
me
p elo
z
pla
rm
tfo
la ap
n
tra
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n
tio
rta
o sp
s
ium
d me
[ HWY 75 ] Little Caesars Arena [ multi model center ] Comerica park
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Ford field
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AUTHORS Manasvi Bachhav holds a Bachelor of Architecture Degree from Sir J.J. College of ArchitectureUniversity of Mumbai, India. She is interested in exploring the potentials of Architecture within the temporality of the urban context through multiscalar interventions.
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Travis Crabtree holds a degree in Landscape Architecture from Mississippi State University. His research focuses on productive landscapes as a formative element within distressed urban conditions.
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Jonathan Hanna is a graduate of the University of Michigan Bachelor’s of Science in Architecture program. Born and raised in Detroit, he participates in the rich tradition of making in the region, and plans on working and living in the city after graduation.
Mengyu Jiang holds a degree in Architecture from South China University of Technology. She is interested in the design of inclusive communities, and the possibilities around new forms of urban governance.
Shao-Chen Lu holds a Bachelor of Architecture degree from Taiwan. His research focuses on the relationship between architecture and urban space. Post-graduation, he plans to keep working on projects that interrogate the role of architecture in the reconfiguration of urban settings.
Nishant Mittal holds a degree in Architecture from the Maharaja Sayajirao University Baroda in India. Interested in the agency of institutions and new forms of governance in the transformation of the distressed central city, he plans to stay in Detroit after graduation to practice as an urban designer.
Luneoufall Vital Gallego holds a degree in Architecture from Texas Tech University and is also pursuing a Master of Architecture from the University of Michigan, starting in Fall 2016. Her interest explores the limits between interpretation and design as agents for speculative futures.
Melia West holds a Bachelor of Architecture from the University of Notre Dame, with a concentration in Historic Preservation. With experience in corridor design plans, and walkable neighborhoods, she is committed to fostering a sense of place by building on existing assets and community initiatives.
Authors' Biographies
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Zhe Zhang holds a Bachelor of Architecture degree from Suzhou University of Science and Technology. Interested in Asian cities with high density, he is returning to China to practice as urban designer and architect, also doing research on the relationship between urban culture and urban form in Jiangnan cities.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Craig Borum
Harley Etienne
Professor of Architecture University of Michigan Principal, PLY Architecture
Assistant Professor, Urban and Regional Planning University of Michigan
Scott Campbell
Robert Fishman
Associate Professor, Urban and Regional Planning University of Michigan
Interim Dean and Professor, Architecture and Urban and Regional Planning University of Michigan
McClain Clutter
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Associate Professor of Architecture University of Michigan Principal, Master of None
Sharon Haar
Margaret Dewar
Erik Herrmann
Professor, Urban and Regional Planning University of Michigan
Taubman College Fellow in Architecture University of Michigan
Volume I: DARE
Chair and Professor of Architecture University of Michigan
Thomas Knünever
Claire Leavengood-Boxer
Virginia Stanard
Principal Knüvener Architekturlandschaft Local partner in the Ruhr
Master of Architecture Graduate, 2016 University of Michigan
Jeffrey Kruth
Jen Maigret
Assistant Professor of Architecture & Director, Master of Community Development Program University of Detroit Mercy Partner, City Form Detroit
Senior Urban Designer Cleveland Urban Design Collaborative Kent State University
Associate Professor of Architecture University of Michigan Partner, MAde Studio
Larissa Larsen Associate Professor, Urban and Regional Planning and SNRE University of Michigan
Julia Sattler T U Dortmund Fakultät Kulturwissenschaften Institut für Anglistik und Amerikanistik
Ana María León
Anya Sirota
Assistant Professor, College of Literature Science, Art History and Department of Romance Languages and Literature
Assistant Professor of Architecture University of Michigan Partner, Akoaki
Acknowledgements
Geoffrey Thün Associate Dean for Research and Creative Practice, Associate Professor University of Michigan Principal, RVTR Sean Vance Assistant Professor of Architecture University of Michigan Principal of Sean Vance Architecture
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TAUBMAN COLLEGE architecture + urban planning
University of Michigan Master of Urban Design
2015-2016 Š The Regents of the University of Michigan All rights reserved A. Alfred Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning 2000 Bonisteel Boulevard Ann Arbor 48109 www.taubmancollege.umich.edu
To Detroit, for the endless inspiration
TAUBMAN COLLEGE architecture + urban planning
University of Michigan Master of Urban Design
2015-2016 Š The Regents of the University of Michigan All rights reserved A. Alfred Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning 2000 Bonisteel Boulevard Ann Arbor 48109 www.taubmancollege.umich.edu
DISCOVER LEARNING FROM THE R’s
Table of Contents
Volume I: DARE
Introduction
Students Manasvi Ashok Bachhav
Travis Crabtree
Nine Urban Thesis for Detroit
Learning from the Ruhr & Rust Belt
A-07
B-07
Just Kidding
Rust Belt Region
A-10
India | Sir J.J. College of Architecture University of Mumbai B. Arch
Utopian Campus Converter
U.S.A. | Mississippi State University B. L. A.
Jonathan Adnan Hanna
U.S.A. | University of Michigan B. S. Arch
A-34
China | South China University of Technology B. Arch
Shao-Chen Lu
Taiwan | Tamkang University B. Arch
Nishant Raman Mittal
India | Maharaja Sayajirao University Baroda B. Arch
Luneoufall Vital Gallego U.S.A. | Texas Tech University B. S. Arch
Melia Jae West
U.S.A. | University of Notre Dame B. Arch
Zhe Zhang
China | Suzhou University of Science and Technology B. Arch
Biographies Acknowledgments
Instructor
MarĂa Arquero de AlarcĂłn Associate Professor, Architecture and Urban Planning Director, Master of Urban Design
B-10
Ruhr Region B-24
IBA Emscher Park Mine the Gap A-48
B-34
Ruhr.2010 B-40
Invert City Mengyu Jiang
Volume II: DISCOVER
A-64
Duisburg
Fricticious Realities
Nord Landschaftspark
A-90
Bind-ary A-114
An Island in the City A-134
B-46
B-50
Essen B-54
Zollverein Industrial Complex B-56
Gelsenkirchen B-58
The City and the City A-146
Expresscape A-156
Nordsternpark B-60
Bochum B-62
Dortmund A-194 A-196
Volume I: DARE
B-64
Volume III: DEVISE Field Guides to the Ruhr
Simultaneous Urbanisms
Discourses in Urbanism
Bus Stops to Bandstands
Post/Re Urbanisms
Airborne 48127
Cities: X Lines. Approaches to City+Open Territory Design
D-06
[Ruhr] Appropriation C-68
Play [Grounds] C-78
Big Shelters C-86
Moving Boundaries
E-66
D-10
D-16
E-76
Infra-Eco-Logi Urbanism
A “Motor” City Center
E-88
D-22
Urban Ecology: Detroit and Beyond
The Moving Skyline
C-96
D-28
Postcards of the Ruhr
Radical-con-nexus
E-98
C-100
D-34
Urbanism: Working with Doubt
The Hidden Eye
Reconstructs
Water Urbanism East
C-108
E-106
E-114
D-40
On Landscape Urbanism World of Walls C-112
E-124
An Island in the City D-46
Typological Urbanism Authenticity C-114
E-130
Church Express D-52
Formerly Urban E-136
Germany in Motion C-136
Bind-ary
Conversations
D-58
E-146
C-138 C-140
E-150 E-152
Volume II: DISCOVER
Volume III: DEVISE Table of Contents
B-5
B-6
Volume II: DISCOVER
INTRODUCTION Volume II: DISCOVER
This volume showcases the work developed in the master of urban design capstone course (UD742). Last in the degree studio sequence, the work draws upon the intellectual inquiry and design work developed over previous semesters. As part of the year-long focus in Detroit, this capstone course offers a platform for students to advance their personal research agendas through the development of a design thesis project. To support the collective and individual agendas and set a platform for exchange of ideas among students, the course includes three inter-related modules that address modes of practice (through the experiential learning component traveling to Detroit and the German Ruhr Region and engaging with local urban agents), modes of production (through the exposure to techniques and tools of making, and the study of texts and projects), and modes of design inquiry (through the development of a final thesis sited in Detroit). The three modules are staged over the course of the semester to build on each other through the development of different exercises including individual and collective components. Introduction
The first volume, “DARE: Nine urban design thesis for Detroit” initiates the sequence showcasing nine design speculations developed by the students. Operating as a synthesis of the work developed during the semester in the theories and field trip sections, each proposal opens up possibilities to reimagine radical conditions of urbanity for the future of the metropolitan region. This second volume, “DISCOVER: Learning from the Ruhr” establishes a disciplinary conversation between the Rust Belt and Ruhr Regions, building in their industrial past and examining the agency of design in their ongoing transformation. The volume showcases the students’ Field Guides of the Ruhr as recorded during the site visit to the German region. The last volume, “DEVISE: Simultaneous Urbanisms Detroit” represents nine found urban conditions in Detroit and instigate imaginary urban narratives around them. To instigate the larger disciplinary claims of these quick explorations, the volume includes readings on urban discourses and conversations with local practitioners and academics. B-7
B
LEARNING FROM THE R’
’S: RUST BELT / RUHR REGION Located in the heart of the Great Lakes Region, Detroit is a paradigmatic case of Rust Belt Urbanism, characterized by acute dynamics of city depopulation, yet stable suburbanization. While Detroit represents an extreme case by the intensity and massive scale of this phenomena, many other former industrial cities in the Rust Belt and abroad confront similar depopulation trends. After deepening the investigation around Detroit during the year, this studio interrogates the many simultaneous urbanisms reshaping post-industrial territories in the Global North, and uses the case of the Ruhr Region, in Germany, as a productive relational case with the Rust Belt. Learning from the experience of Germany in the IBA Emscher Park, and subsequent initiatives, the class will consider the role of the landscape as medium to spark infrastructural innovation and address cultural identity in the transformation of postindustrial territories. The investigations of the Ruhr + Rust Belt Regions look at different themes like geography, social and political structures, economies and infrastructures, dynamics of urbanization, and issues of cultural identity. This component also looks at specific projects, locating them within the constellation of cities in the region (Duisburg, Essen, Bochum, Gelsenkirchen, Dortmund), and in relationship with the Emscher River, and the narratives around its recovery. Together with these components, this volume includes the field guides developed by students upon their return from the Ruhr Region. In their accounts, students included personal observations, objects, interviews, annotated drawings and photos documenting the trip. During their stay in Germany, the group visited and documented the sites and projects, and met academics and practitioners involved in their planning and design.
RUST BELT REGION LAKE SUPERIOR
WI
LAKE HURON
MI
LAKE MICHIGAN
FLINT 102,434
DETROIT 680,250
LAKE ERIE
CHICAGO 2,695,598 GARY 80,294
TOLEDO 287,208
CLEVELAND 396,815 YOUNGSTOWN 66,982
LAFAYETTE 67,140
IL
IN
PITTSBUR 304,391
OH
CINCINNATI 296,943
WV
MAIN WATERSHED RUST BELT - GREAT LAKES RUHR - RHEIN, EMSCHER, RUHR RIVER
RUHR REGION
SCHLESWIGHOLSTEIN
HAMBURG
BREMEN NIEDERSACHSEN
LAKE ONTARIO
RHINE RIVER DUISBURG
NY
GELSENKIRCHEN 257,651
SYRACUSE 144,669
SACHSENANHALT
NORDRHEINWESTFALEN
485,465
DORTMUND 580,511 BUFFALO 258,959
BOCHUM 361,876
THÜRINGEN
HESSEN
RHEINLANDPFALZ
RUHR, GERMANY
PA
RGH
RUST BELT, UNITED STATES
ESSEN 573,784
SAARLAND BAYERN RHINE RIVER BADENWÜRTTENBERG
MAIN PRODUCTION RUST BELT - STEEL RUHR - COAL
CITY DETROIT POPULATION 680,250
0 25 50
100
200 miles
RUST BELT REGION B-B12
Volume II: DISCOVER
RUHR REGION B-B13
AU T AU OMO TO TIV MO E TIV E
RUST BELT REGION
MI N MI ING NIN G
LS TA METALS ME
CHICAGO CHICAGO
PITTSBURGH PITTSBURGH
COLUMBUS COLUMBUS
DETROIT DETROIT
metro pop. metro9.7 pop. million 9.7 million
metro pop. metro2.3 pop. million 2.3 million
metro pop. metro1.9 pop. million 1.9 million
metro pop. metro5.3 pop. million 5.3 million
properproper pop. 2.7 pop. million 2.7 million
SYRACUSE SYRACUSE
properproper pop. 138,560 pop. 138,560 metro pop. metro732,117 pop. 732,117
properproper pop. 1.7 pop. million 1.7 million
properproper pop. 822,553 pop. 822,553
CLEVELAND CLEVELAND
TOLEDO TOLEDO
metro pop. metro2.1 pop. million 2.1 million
metro pop. metro651,426 pop. 651,426
properproper pop. 390,113 pop. 390,113
B-14
properproper pop. 287,128 pop. 287,128
Volume II: DISCOVER
properproper pop. 710,000 pop. 710,000
BUFFALO BUFFALO
properproper pop. 258,959 pop. 258,959
metro pop. metro1.1million pop. 1.1million
MILWAUKEE MILWAUKEE
properproper pop. 594,833 pop. 594,833
metro pop. metro1.5 pop. million 1.5 million
CINCINNATI CINCINNATI
properproper pop. 297,517 pop. 297,517
metro pop. metro2.1 pop. million 2.1 million
YOUNGSTOWN YOUNGSTOWN FLINT FLINT properproper pop. 72,925 pop. 72,925
metro pop. metro570,704 pop. 570,704
properproper pop. 124,943 pop. 124,943 metro pop. metro443,883 pop. 443,883
650 miles
GEOGRAPHY
45
watershed
250 miles
cultivation
40 woodlands
geology
urbanization
1879 - 1907 Iron Ore Flows
Rust Belt Geography
1879 - 1907 Grain Flows
The Rust Belt is defined by the Great Lakes Watershed. Industrial activity once used the waterway for transporting and trading raw materials like lumber or iron ore. This meant that the cities within the mega region established themselves on the waterway. What once started off as small settlements grew into a series of metropolises. Urbanization and agricultural production has taken over most of the land cover in the Rust Belt. Minerals are still mined from the Appalachian Mountains to the east, but not in the same capacity of the mid-twentieth century.
Learning from the R's: Rust Belt Region
B-15 Image source: pintrest.com
rust belt collage
RUST BELT REGION
Source: www.phmc.state.pa.us_pennsylvania_barn_oley_valley_berks_county_c_1820
early 1800s
Source: www.wikipedia.org
1825
German, Dutch farms
Source: geography.about.com
Source: www.memorialhall.mass.edu_loving1914_migration
1913 Ford’s assembly line
1920s, 1940s
Source: www.shalereporter.com
1900
First + Second Great Migrations
1950s Suburbanization begins
Source: www.newrepublic.com
2008 Great Recession + Foreclosure Crisis
2000s Rust Belt ruin porn 1910
1920
Civil War steel weaponry
Source: www.beltmag.com
Source: www.placemanagement.org
1970-2010 Continued loss of population 1800
Source: www.gunauction.com
1861
Erie canal built
1930
1940
1950
m oo gb n sin tio ou iza r h ban l wa ur na II st ub rse W Po d s s eA W an egin th ing b s k e m ma on co y, ati be ac igr it cr M ro o et em y eat D D nr r o of eap d G n w co on Se essi r ep D at re eG an Th es se Jim on m ati fro igr s M ave at sl re xG fe h rst o ut Fi flux so in w o Cr d es an niz cle io hi lut ve vo he re st e n nt li ve ly y in mb str rd se du Fo e as ries in try el th cto us te ry n fa s s o l ind p i gin ea so be w ie ar gin eg l W be n rn ivi er io Ca r C fell ct fo ke tru c ns ral Ro co atu il ra f n nd g o l a in na rad Ca e t ie ot s Er om rce pr sou re Image sources: www.theatlantic.com; commons.wikimedia.org; en.wikipedia.org; geography.about.com; www.battleofthehomestead.org; exhibits.musuem.state.il.us; libcom.org; www.shalereporter.com; www. todayslifestyle.com; www.gunauction.com; www.memorialhall.mass.edu; www.phmc.state.pa.edu; www.newrepublic.com; www.cnn.com; www.globalpolicysolutions.org
B-16
Volume II: DISCOVER
HISTORY / TIMELINE
Source: http//exhibits.museum.state.il.us/exhibits/athome/1890/ sideby/newcomers.htm
Source: http//battleofhomestead.org/images/view-of-mill
late 1800s German, Irish immigrants
1875 First steel mill in Pittsburgh
Source: www.libcom.org/GM-strike
1970s Steelers dynasty
Source: Melia West
2010s More press on possible comeback 1970
1893 Columbian World Expo
Source: www.wikipedia.org
Source: www.todayslifestyle.com
1970s American Worker’s Movement
1960
Source: commons.wikimedia.org
1980
1969-1999 Deindustrialization; loss of jobs
Source: www.cnn.com-black-lives-matter-exlarge-169
2015
2014 Black Lives Matter movement 1990
2000
2010
Source: globalpolicysolutions.org
Flint Water Crisis
2015
es m co be t, lin ity e tal su in F ru is g in e b ed lic ten son , Po igh oi yn he ad p gan okl o i Le h c Br i st M s in nal Ru k io g ac at in eb n liz m ore ita co m rev s an rk o n s rb pa t w U c. s tion nto use s et ten dow is ca me o at lt st ris h Be e C heir ighe the r t e su se s h nc e i clo lo se s re to n tes rn Fo ds sio ra po 08 an ces ent in e 20 us m R o ru th eat ploy of r n em io un 30s izat h G
19 tis Fe
ck ra s e C tie th . ci of U.S ng n ni ic i gin m of Be ide all ss er lo Ep ov n; th io wi reg bs o j is e ris th nd d l c in a ee e on lan d e St eclin lati ite s elt d pu m cau B po , li g st or sin Ru re lab es e tu n oc av ul io r le p cc d un al to ni an s, tic es co s xe er ori s i an Ta d v act te ric ea e an rst f cr m fi es n nA i cit tow rica o M Af of uth yo
Learning from the R's: Rust Belt Region
B-17
RUST BELT REGION
Source: www.census.gov
The First Great Migration 1910-1940
The First Great Migration 1940-1970
Great Migration The Great Migration was a movement of six million African Americans from the rural Southern United States to the urban Northeast, Midwest, and West between 1910 and 1970. They moved mainly from 14 states of the South, especially Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana and Texas, to the other regions of the United States.
Some historians differentiate between a first Great Migration (1916-1930), which saw about 1.6 million people move from mostly rural areas to northern cities such as Detroit, Chicago and other industrial cities, and a Second Great Migration (19401970), which began after the Great Depression and brought at least 5
million people to the north, and other western states. These movements not only supported the industrial productions in Rust Belt regions, but also changed the social structure dramatically.
Source: www.moma.org One Way Ticket: Jacob Lawrence’s Migration Series
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Volume II: DISCOVER
SOCIAL STRUCTURE DETROIT BUFFALO TOLEDO
CHICAGO
CLEVELAND PITTSBURGH
CINCINNATI Races Distribution in Rust Belt Area
Detroit
Cleveland
The flourishing of the industrial manufacturing in the Rust Belt region was caused in part by the close proximity to the Great Lakes waterways, and an abundance of paved roads, water canals and railroads. After the transportation infrastructure linked the iron ore found in northern Minnesota, Wisconsin and upper Michigan with the coal mined from the Appalachian Mountains, the Steel Belt was born. Soon it developed into the Factory Belt with its great
Source: demographics.coopercenter.org
Source: demographics.coopercenter.org
1850
American manufacturing cities such as Chicago, Buffalo, Detroit, Milwaukee, Gary, Cincinnati, Toledo, Cleveland, Youngstown, and Pittsburgh among others. Because of the huge industrial production, the Rust Belt region for decades served as a magnet for international immigrants from Austria-Hungary, Poland and Russia who provided the industrial facilities with inexpensive labor resources. The preferred term today is the “Freshwater Belt.”
1940 WI
WI
IRELAND NY
MI
GERMANY IA
IRELAND IL
ITALY
NY
1910 WI
IL
NJ
OH
POLAND
PA
NY WI
NY
MI
MEXICO
RUSSIA
IA
NY
MI
DOM REP.
IA IL
PA
IN
NJ
OH
IN
2000
CANADA
GERMANY
NY
MI
IA
PA IN
CANADA
GERMANY
AUSTRIA
OH
NJ
IL
INDIA IN
NY
Learning from the R's: Rust Belt Region
OH
PA
RUSSIA
NJ
Top Country ofNYBirth Among U.S. Immigrants
B-19
RUST BELT REGION Industrial Legacy Source:southsidepghpa.com
Steel + Grain
Source: keyword-suggestions.com
Automobile
Steel
Source: thedeathingot.com
Contemporary Industry
Buffalo
Finance
Detroit
Aeronautics
Cleveland
Biomedical Tech Machines + Eds-Meds Chicago
Gary Source: atlanticsteelprocessing.com
Processing + Packing
Source: lakeviewcapitalllc.com
Steel
Source: lakeviewcapitalllc.com
Rubber
Chicago
Manufacturing +Real Estate + Tech
Toledo
Akron
Polymer Manufacturing 04
Steel
Source: rustwire.com
Source: rustwire.com
Steel
Cincinnati
Corporate Headquarters
0
45
0
90
180 Miles
180 Miles
Source:siteselection.com
Airport
Youngstown
Pittsburgh B-20
Robotics + Manufacturing
Volume II: DISCOVER
Infrastructure
Source: nbcnews.com
Steel + Meatpacking
59
Source: googleearth
ECONOMY AND INFRASTRUCTURE
Highw
Buffalo
Detroit
Since the 1980s, presidential candidates have devoted much of their time to the economic concerns of the Rust Belt region, which contains the popular swing states of Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Michigan. New types of R&D-intensive nontraditional manufacturing have emerged recently in the Rust Belt, such as biotechnology, the polymer industry, info-tech, and nano-tech.
Toledo
Cleveland
Youngstown
Akron
Despite a boom in the tech industries, the manufacturing culture and expertise of the Rust Belt is still prevalent, and has been channeled to support the incoming industries, such as Cleveland’s manufacturing of machines to support the biomedical technology industry. Lately, analysts suggest that restructuring the manufacturing industries could be a comeback for the region.
Pitsburgh
Cincinnati
National Highways Railways - Passenger + Freight
Source: googleearth
National Highways
Source: peoriapublicradio.org
Amtrak - Passenger Rail Ridership - 29 million
Source: googleearth
Source: .railway-technology.com
Freight Rail
Source: googleearth
Learning from the R's: Rust Belt Region
Source: .googleearth
B-21
Freigh (natio
Amtra
Total (natio
RUST BELT REGION Unemployment Rate The politics and urban dynamics of the Rust Belt are characterized by racial, economic, class, and ideological segregation. This state of segregation is further stratified by the defunding of urban public school systems by state governments. This gives rise to the charter school model of privatized schooling, giving only those who have the economic means the opportunity to gain access to an education. This stratification of access to basic human necessities has been exemplified in the Rust Belt since the dawn of the industrial revolution giving rise to cities such as Buffalo, Pittsburgh and Flint. This inaccessibility to basic human needs influenced the labor movements and formalized the concepts of unions. The development of cities was driven by industrialists seeking cheaper land
away from the city centers, attempting to stay one step ahead of the unions. With the New Deal of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, came the Federal Housing Act (FHA) loan which subsidized home ownership. In conjunction with the Federal Highway Act and the rise of the automobile, cities in the Rust Belt began to suburbanize rapidly. The Suburbanization of Rust Belt cities was not made possible for all, however. The trend of stratification persisted via practices such as red lining, which restricted African Americans from receiving FHA loans and unequal pay by employers for people of color, limiting who could and who could not afford a car, further perpetuating unequal suburbanization.
1950
Source: Social Explorer
1970
Source: Social Explorer
1990
Source: Social Explorer
2010
Source: Social Explorer
Source:insideevs.com/
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Volume II: DISCOVER
0-5% 5-10% 10-15% 15-20% 20-25% 25-30% 35-40%
URBAN DYNAMICS Total Population Source: Social Explorer
Many Rust Belt suburbs adopted a separate but equal Jim Crow policy to regionalism, but with the abundance of land and more affluent class of people, it was anything but equal. Suburbs provided property tax abatements to incentivize the relocation of urban manufacturing. As Rust Belt cities declined, their people become stuck in poverty traps and food deserts.
1950
Source: Social Explorer
Furthermore, the urban poor were targeted by the U.S. Federal War on Drugs, a program that incarcerated large amounts from urban poor populations. This polarization between city and suburb has made regional planning nearly impossible. Cities have been stigmatized by their suburbs and suburbs are distrusted by their cities, leading to an urbanism of stagnation.
1970
Source: Social Explorer
1990
Source: Social Explorer
= 500 people
2010
Source: Wayne State University
Learning from the R's: Rust Belt Region
B-23
85 miles
RUHR REGION KreisRecklinghausen KreisRecklinghausen
85 miles
River Lippe
KreisWesel KreisWesel
KreisWesel
River Lippe
Bottrop
River Rhein
kirchen
Bottrop Duisburg Ober-
Duisburg hausen
Duisburg
Mulheim a.d. Ruhr Mulheim a.d. Ruhr
Essen
The Ruhr region is one of the five largest conurbations in Europe and is home to approximately 5.2 million people. Over decades, the The regionitself is one of the five and largest conurbations in Europe and regionRuhr has transformed from a coal steel industrial site to a service and culture-oriented home to approximately 5.2 million people . Over decades, the Theis Ruhr region is one metropolis. of the five largest conurbations in Europe and region has transformed itself frompeople a coal and steel industrial is home to approximately 5.2 million . Over decades, the and metropolis. region hasculture-oriented transformed itself from a coal and steel industrial site to a service and culture-oriented metropolis.
Oberhausen
Hagen
County-level city Population: 209,292 Oberhausen Area: 77.04km2 County-level city Pop. Density: 2,717/km2 Population: 209,292 Area: 77.04km2 Pop. Density: 2,717/km2
Bochum Dortmund
Essen Bochum River Ruhr
EnnepeRuhrEnnepeKreis RuhrKreis
EnnepeRuhrKreis
Hagen Hagen
Hagen
51°30′N Metro Area: Population: Highest Elev. : Lowest Elev. : Climate:
Essen
2,717/km2
Dortmund
site to a service
County-level city County-level city Population: 580,511 Population: Dortmund 580,511 Area: 280.37km2 Area: 280.37km2County-level city Pop. Density: 2,071/km2 Pop. Density: 2,071/km2 Population: 580,511 Area: 280.37km2 Pop. Density: 2,071/km2
County-level city
Herne
Hamm
Dortmund
Bochum
River Ruhr
River Ruhr
209,292 Oberhausen 77.04km2
Recklinghausen Gelsen- River Emscher Kreis-Unna kirchen Herne Gelsen- River Emscher kirchen Herne
Essen
Mulheim a.d. Ruhr
Population: Area: Pop. Density:
Recklinghausen
Ober- Bottrop Recklinghausen hausen Oberhausen Gelsen- River Emscher
River Rhein
Dortmund
Kreis-Unna
KreisRecklinghausen
River Rhein
Dortmund
Kreis-Unna
River Lippe
Population: Area: Pop. Density:
Essen County-level city Population: 573,784 Area: 210.38km2 Pop. Density: 2,727/km2 Population:
Essen
Area: Pop. Density:
Population: Area: Pop. Density:
County-level city 186,716 160.36km2 1,164/km2
Hagen Population: Hagen Area: Pop. Density: Population: Area: Pop. Density:
County-level city 573,784 210.38km2 County-level city 2,727/km2 573,784 210.38km2 2,727/km2
Duisburg Population: Area: Pop. Density:
Hamm County-level city 186,716 160.36km2 County-level city 1,164/km2 186,716 160.36km2 1,164/km2
Population: Area: Pop. Density:
Duisburg County-level city 485,465 232.81km2 2,085/km2
County-level city 176,580 226.24km2 780/km2
Population: Duisburg Area: Pop. Density: Population: Area: Pop. Density:
County-level city Bochum
485,465 Cou Population: 232.81km2 Area: County-level city 2,085/km2 Pop. Density:485,465 232.81km2 2,085/km2
Herne
Hamm Population: Hamm Area: Pop. Density: Population: Area: Pop. Density:
Population: Area: County-level Pop. Density:
Cou
city 176,580 226.24km2 County-level city 780/km2 176,580 226.24km2 780/km2
40 miles 40 miles
40 miles
GEOGRAPHY
Hamm
a
Hamm
Waterways
40 miles
a
Waterways
Waterways
Waterways
Forest Forest
Forest Forest
Transportation Transportation
Transportation
51°30′N 7°30′E Metro Area: km2 51°30′N4,435 7°30′E Population: 5.2 million Highest Elev. : 441 m Metro Area: 4,435 km2 Lowest Elev. : 13 m Population: 5.2 million Climate:Elev. : Oceanic Highest 441 m Lowest Elev. : 13 m Climate: Oceanic
N 7°30′E 4,435 km2 5.2 million 441 m 13 m Oceanic
Transportation Urbanization Urbanization
Urbanization
51°30′N 7°30′E
ea: on: Elev. : lev. :
unty-level city 361,876 145.43km2 2,488/km2
4,435 km2 5.2 million 441 m 13 m Bochum Oceanic Population: Bochum Area:
unty-level city 154,608 51.41km2 3,007/km2
m
:
ity:
n:
County-level city 361,876 145.43km2 2,488/km2
County-level city 154,608 51.41km2
Pop. Density: Population: Area: Pop. Density:
Urbanization
Ruhr Geography Ruhr Geography Ruhr Geography The coal seams reach the surface in a strip along the River Ruhr
County-level city 361,876 145.43km2 County-level city 2,488/km2 The coal seams reach the surface in a strip along the River Ruhr 361,876 and the dipcoal downward from the river and dip downward from the river to the north. Beneath the River Lippe, 145.43km2 seams lie at a depth of 600 to 800 metres. seams lie at a depth of 600 to 800 reach the 2,488/km2
to the north. Beneath the River Lippe, the coal in a strip along the River Ruhr and dip downward from the river to the north. Beneath the River Lippe, the coal seams lie at a depth of 600 to 800 metres.
The coal seams
Gelsenkirchen Population: Herne Area: Pop. Density:
Population: Herne Area: Pop. Density: Population: Area: Pop. Density:
County-level city 257,651
Gelsenkirchen
104.86km2 County-level city 2,457/km2 154,608 51.41km2 County-level city 3,007/km2 154,608 51.41km2 3,007/km2
County-level city Source: Metropoleruhr.de / Citypopulation.de Population: 257,651 Gelsenkirchen Area: 104.86km2 County-level city Pop. Density: 2,457/km2 Population: 257,651 reach the Area: 104.86km2 Pop. Density: and dip downward2,457/km2 from the river
The coal seams
metres. surface
Ruhr Geography Source: Metropoleruhr.de / Citypopulation.de
in a strip along the River Ruhr Source: / Citypopulation.de to the north. Beneath the Metropoleruhr.de River Lippe, the coal seams lie at a depth of 600 to 800 metres.
Gelsenkirchen Population: Area:
County-level city 257,651 104.86km2
surface
RUHR REGION
Source: Quaderns - Jorge Mestre and Ivan Bercedo
1890
Rusty factories of Meiderich
Source: Quaderns - Jorge Mestre and Ivan Bercedo
1920 French soldiers during occupation
2005 1800
Source: Topos 26 - Callwey Munchen
Krupp factories
Source: Quaderns - Jorge Mestre and Ivan Bercedo
1930 Levin Mine, Essen
Source: Under the open sky - Regionalverband Ruhr
Nordstern Park
1900
1910
2010 1920
Source: Quaderns - Jorge Mestre and Ivan Bercedo
1930 Essen
Source: Under the open sky - Regionalverband Ruhr
Rheinelbe Science Park
1930
1940
Source: Quaderns - Jorge Mestre
Meiderich Ironworks
1950
of n tio . uc ure own str ct d on tru se ec as clo r r nfr s e wa al i in st tri l m e a Po us ad d co m in re rst Fi sa ne hi s ac trie r m us wa Ind ’s n er p itl up sio H Kr es nt at i r in ep po nds on, % 0 D h r sta f i 6 at ig re its h ent n o s by o e e G es ym ti uc Th ch plo duc red a re em Pro oal n U %. & c 32 el ste d s an isi cr on of acti sion ns in es sig ry pr ra de and rst Fi mpo mic on Te ono f ir on o ati ec n io gr ct mi n du im tio ro y uc st s p av od re as he pr he M el; t l ee o ste t t s e d nt d lac an ale ne sp al iv bi ke co qu m ’s t e co n ta hr os pe o Ru lm ro ati a r g i is Eu r of ss m uh a M eR th nd n ela ei in gin Rh en as am n ste ow . kn lia rst s Fi ine n is pha m gio est Re d W an B-26
Volume II: DISCOVER
HISTORY / TIMELINE
Source: Under the open sky - Regionalverband Ruhr
Source: Under the open sky - Regionalverband Ruhr
r fo d ee to ms s n als or se n ef es sio y r pr es rg ex of e n pr en se d nt Es oun me an pe m ple ro im Eu d te re lec tu se Cul he t is n of or f se l a . ds Es it p % n e 33 Ca k ll ar n fa r P tio res he n sc inve sha Em re ring A n’s u IB gio fact of u re to of re tu ut an fu s o ion M he et rat s r t s s e pe fo n en ca p gio reg ds ho re n an ks ial o l l or tr as ria sful W us de st s i u d in are ind ucce el ks r sh sty s te o po ingl es, s p w e p em oy ru se pl e K wn of em th do ite by at ut sp sts on sh e In ote cti urg lin pr rodu uisb dec p D all in over th wi is ris on i l c eg ee r of St the nd lt l a esu in oa a r f c as g o ies lin tr ca us . ns ind ces ow g or D nin et f i m ark m
B-27
Learning from the R's: Ruhr Region
2015 2010 2000 1990 1980 1970 1960
Duisburg Park climbing center
2010 Zollverein Park 2008 Duisburg-Bruckhausen
1967 Concordia pit 1960 Children walk past spoil tips 1945 Krupp factory destruction
Source: Topos 26 - Callwey Munchen Source: Topos 26 - Callwey Munchen Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Ruhr
RUHR REGION
IRELAND The Ruhr region has had a tremendous concentration of work, technical and industrial development, accumulation of capital, and also social conflict and war. In the late 1930’s, Krupp Industries produced Hitler’s war machines in the region. A third of the population of Essen, the region’s largest city, was economically dependent on the Krupp factories. The bombing raids at the end of World War II did not prevent the continuing development in this area, but only led to a short period of inaction.
In the 1960’s, many Ruhr region children used to walk past spoil tips on their way to school; the peculiar air of the industrial conurbation was notorious at the time, giving rise to Willy Brandt’s plea “Make the Ruhr’s sky blue again”. The current residents of the Ruhr region have to take part in guided tours of the industrial monuments to come into contact with coal and steel processing, as at the old Thyssen blast furnaces in Meiderich.
KreisWesel
Duisburg
SPA
Source: Quaderns - Jorge Mestre and Ivan Bercedo
Krupp factories 1890 B-28
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Source: http://www.alamy.com/stock-photo-aerial-view-rheinelbe-science-park
Rheinelbe Science Park 2015
east prussian provinces
UNITED KINGDOM
SOCIAL STRUCTURE
D
KreisRecklinghausen Hamm
Kreis-Unna
POLAND
Recklinghausen
Bottrop
Gelsenkirchen
Herne Dortmund
Oberhausen
FRANCE
Bochum
Essen
EnnepeITALY RuhrKreis
Hagen
AIN
surrounding region
Mulheim a.d. Ruhr
TURKEY
1870’s
While the Ruhr was an agricultural area before 1880, the industrial age brought with it many changes in almost all walks of life. By the end of the century, the Ruhr had become one of the most important industrial regions of the newly established German Reich. In the mining and metal production industries, there was an increased need for manpower, not fully met by people from the surrounding areas. From the 1880s onwards, mass immigration from European countries started.
A variety of factors encouraged immigration from the East Prussian provinces. The population was growing rapidly, especially the Polishspeaking population. The area was to a large extent agricultural and there were no significant industrial areas. At this time, agriculture mainly employed seasonal workers on wages; jobs were insecure and soon there was seasonal migration to Saxony. But this later led to migration further away: to the Ruhr area and also outside Germany.
Source: Muller, Lars. “Looking for work”. http:/historiana.eu. Web. May 2016.
Learning from the R's: Ruhr Region
The region experienced a delayed restructuring due to a variety of reasons, some of which was property development being held up by private companies, in fear of competition. Additionally, educational opportunities were very limited and the first university did not open until 1964. Only in the late 1900’s the region gained the knowledge base necessary for rebuilding. Lastly, before the 2000’s the regional image of the Ruhr was submerged in low wages and poor housing conditions, preventing investment and the income necessary to attract qualified human capital. B-29
RUHR REGION
Rhine
er
Emsch
Gelsenkirchen
Bochum Essen
Duisburg
Ruh r
Public Transportation
Within Region: Trains: Verkehrsverbund Rhein Ruhr (VRR) Tarifraum MĂźnsterland/Ruhr-Lippe (VRL)
en.wikipedia.org
VRR in Ruhr Region
Within City: Bus Tram Subway
www.youtube.com
VRL in Ruhr Region
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Since most cities have their separate transport associations, coordination remains a challenge. The region is well connected by train; within each city, bus, tram and the underground system provide a reliable network. Most cities in the Ruhr blend into one another, and riding public transit gives you unique insights on the regional landscapes. If you are short on time, use the S-Bahn or Regional-Express.
ECONOMY AND INFRASTRUCTURE
TU Dortmund
Ruhr-Universität Bochum
Dortmund
Evonik Industries
ThyssenKrupp
RWE
Universitätsklinikum Essen Highway Main road Railway Main road
Universität Duisburg-Essen
Green Infrastructure National Park & Green Belts “Blue sky above the Ruhr”
1912
IBA Emscher Park Emscher Landscape Park
www.eesc.europa.eu/resources/docs/gi-050515-10-muhlenfeld-speech.pdf
Green Infrastructures in Ruhr Region
Renewal Emscher River Green Urban Development Green Infrastructure by bike Energy Efficiency Climate Change Innovation City Ruhr
2022 Learning from the R's: Ruhr Region
www.eesc.europa.eu/resources/docs/gi-050515-10-muhlenfeld-speech.pdf
Renewal Emscher River System
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RUHR REGION Change from traditional industrial base to knowledge-base economy Structural changes in the Ruhr Region Policy Changes of the public institutions at various levels Transition of work practices Role of Main Actors and Institutions
RESTRUCTURING The Landscape
Source: www.staedtebauleitplanung.de
RESTRUCTURING Policy During the 1960s to the mid-1980s, the region was in a period of “re industrialization and lock-in�. Until the 1970s, planning initiatives at the federal and state level supported the existence of traditional industries in the region. From the mid-1980s large enterprises started to diversify. In the 1990s, the Federal Government pursued an active modernization policy, which was matched with bottom-up initiatives. B-32
Source: www.staedtebauleitplanung.de
The Ruhr region consists of a plurality of differently-sized and differently-dense built spaces which are intertwined in complex ways with each other or, as in the image, separated by ruptures of infrastructure; their respective cores and connecting areas have special urban qualities. Volume II: DISCOVER
URBAN DYNAMICS
Land Agglomeration
2001 1922 1960
- First and Second World Wars, economic depression, dismantling of product lines after the Second World War. - End of product cycle in coal mining
2001
- Large-scale coal mining and development of coal chemistry - Mass production of iron and steel - Foundation of large enterprises - Heavy immigration
1960
- Small coal mines, iron and textile factories, and agricultural areas with low population density
Employees in Mining and Steel
Main Stages of Structural Changes
Employment structure
Population Change
The Ruhr Agglomeration shows a polycentric structure of 53 municipalities, with eleven major cities among them; there is no clear, dominant functional center. 1963
5.67 Million
1987
5.26 Million
2013
5.05 Million
13.6% Agri, Mining 61.3% Industry 36.3% Services 2.5% Agri, Mining 33.3% Industry 65.4% Services
Source: http://en.landschaftspark.de/
1800 - 1930 growth pattern
545k Mining
84k Steel 390k 263k 39k 52.6k
Source: www.staedtebauleitplanung.de
- Crisis in coal mining and closure - Absorption of workers into other sectors (1960s) - Still locked into steel- and coal-based industries until the mid-1980s
- New frontiers in knowledgebased economy, renewable energy, eco‑industry. - Industrial heritage- End of product cycle in coal mining Source: www.staedtebauleitplanung.de
The existing polycentric settlement structure of the region plays a key role in complex urban dynamics Learning from the R's: Ruhr Region
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THE INTERNATIONAL BUILDING EXHIBITION (IBA)
Source: leipzigshrinkingcity.wordpress.com
IBA Emscher Park. Master strategy
Background to the Emscher - A region in crisis The International Building Exhibition (IBA) Emscher Park was a ten year program of the Land NordrheinWestfalen, Germany, between 1989 and 1999. It was designed to initiate restructuring in the heart of the Ruhr region, which had been suffering the most from economic, environmental and social decline for many decades. In the past, the regions that had carried out an Internationale Bauausstellung (Darmstadt 1901, Leipzig 1913, Stuttgart 1927, Berlin 1957 and 1984) mainly aimed at architectural improvements and highlights, whereas the IBA Emscher Park aimed at an holistic approach by restructuring a former industrial region, the Ruhr, with outstanding B-34
urbanistic, architectural, cultural, ecological and economic incentives. As an initiative conducted by the state government, the IBA Emscher Park implemented a strategic approach to link urban development and landscape, and to combine private investment and architectural quality, implementing systematic cross-border planning of 17 municipalities in the northern part of the Ruhr region. Over 120 projects were completed, with a total investment value of â‚Ź2.5 billion. Since the year 2000, the cities and municipalities in the area have continued to work on IBA themes such as the regional Emscher Landscape Park and the changing of the Emscher System.
Volume II: DISCOVER
Large-scale industrialization, the coal and steel industries along the Ruhrgebiet were the economical backbone of every city for decades. The mono-structural economy and the lack of innovative activities for the labor force caused a high urgency for a spatial-economic transition of the area. Industrial closures led to empty, unused brown fields, causing huge fragmentation between certain parts of towns and the natural landscape. Decades of heavy industrial production and mining had caused severe ecological and geological problems in Emscher Park.
EMSCHER PARK, GERMANY
Source: http://beyondplanb.eu/projects/project_emscherpark.html
Source: http://en.landschaftspark.de/
Source: http://en.landschaftspark.de/
The river Emscher was polluted when the mining companies used it as a dumping ground for sewerage. It then became a symbolic icon of the challenge to transform the area.
Source: http://en.landschaftspark.de/
Learning from the R's: IBA Emscher
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Em nal
erne-Ka
Rhein-H
Ruh
r Ri
ver B-36
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er
Riv
INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION
[1806]
[1787] s
r che
[1856]
The Emscher river canaled for sewerage and waste The first steam engine used in the Ruhr mines was employed in removing water
COKE + STEEL PRODUCTION
COAL MINING STARTS
Stone tools found in the 20th century inside of the Emscher Valley
Settlements in Dortmund, Bochum, and Hagen are the first recorded within the region
[1580]
MIDDLE AGES
[695 - 1486]
Higher influx of immigrants from southern Europe arrive
COAL TRANSPORT
MEDIEVAL ERA
[22,000 yr]
EMERGENT LANDSCAPES
[22,000 yr]
[80,000 yr]
The Ruhr river is used for the transportation of coal
Rhein River
NEANDERTHAL ERA
ICE AGE
[2.4 M yr]
[300 M yr]
CARBONIFEROUS PERIOD
Melting glaciers formed rivers and deltas that pushed sediment along the edges of northwest Germany
Image source: pintrest.com
Emscher River collage
In 1901 a typhus epidemic killed over 200 people in Gelsenkirchen
DEAD ZONE
Industry collapsed all over the world, steel and coal plants began to shutdown
RENATURALIZATION
EMSCHER RIVER
[1991]
[1989]
Sediment banks were the most polluted areas along the river and were fenced off in the 20th century
[1950]
GREAT DEPRESSION
[1930]
Emscher river is declared biologically dead
I.B.A EMSCHER PARK
Region installed piping and began renaturalizing the river for an estimated amount of 4.5 billion dollars
The Internationale Bauausstellung Emscher Park gives a new identity to the Ruhr through the use of the river
Coal will no long be subsidized by the government after 2018 More art installations are added along the river
Nordstern Mine is converted into the Landschaftspark Nordsternpark.
Europe’s Dirtiest River : The Flow of the Emscher For 100 years, it was used by the Ruhr area as a sewer for industrial waste Flows 50 miles through coal fields, steel mills, and slaughterhouses Contains heavy metals, hydrocarbons, tar sands, pathogens Known as Europe’s dirtiest river River Ruhr the “artery” / Emscher served as a vein
Three treatment plants exist along the river, creating the most modern sewerage system in the world It runs 73 km, serving Dortmund to Emscher. Uses water elevators and cleaning robots Has catchment area of 430 square miles serving 1.8 M people
Learning from the R's: IBA Emscher
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Source: http://beyondplanb.eu/projects/project_emscherpark.html
IBA EMSCHER INITIATIVES The IBA initiative was designed to instigate integrated development and regeneration in the region, with architectural competitions playing an important role. This implies development that considers not only the usual economic and job creation factors, but also criteria such as society, the environment and culture.
All projects were required to be affiliated to one of six guidelines: Renovation of the Emscher Landscape Park The aim was to form continuity between the still vast, albeit disconnected, areas of green space in the region and create an ecological system. Ecological improvement of the Emscher River The aim was to re-convert the Emscher River from the open sewer it is today to its natural state. New utilization of industrial buildings It was an attempt to put derelict sites, formally occupied by mines, iron and steelworks, to new uses. Development of new working locations The initiative sought to take advantage of the abundance of traditional worker’s housing in the Ruhr.
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Development of new housing and municipal districts It sought to preserve and put to new use many of the most important buildings and monuments to the region’s industrial past. The motivations behind this initiative were: to retain the link with the past, to give new uses to old buildings rather than dismantling them, and to provide a backdrop to the promotion of cultural activities. Social initiatives, employment and training The aim was to involve local people & utilize their experiences and knowledge in order to bring direct benefits to them. Employment and training initiatives were established to find work for young long-term unemployed people; privately organized city neighborhood initiatives were encouraged to try and promote structural change and improve social infrastructure.
Actions
ART AND LANDSCAPE
Inspired by the IBA Berlin, Dr. Christoph Zopel, minister of Urban Development in the NRW, pushed the announcement of an IBA Emscher in 1988. In December 1988, The IBA Emscher Park GmbH was founded. The area was divided into several units; one east-west corridor and seven north-south corridors with their own priorities and committees. This was to achieve high quality projects and design competitions; these were held to attract investors for the future.
Source: www.ruhrundercover.de
In 1996, the IBA was the German architectural contribution at the Venice Biennale. HOUSING
The long-term unemployed were hired for casual work and to retrain their skills and mindset.
Source: www.ruhrundercover.de
Effect
INDUSTRIES WORKING
The IBA and Masterplan are now internationally known references in the study of the transformation of a region. The city of Essen was appointed as the European Capital of Culture in 2010 . ‘Zeche Zollverein,’ an old coal mine in Essen, became a UNESCO World Heritage Site. In spatial and cultural terms, the identity and quality of the area has improved enormously.
Source: www.ruhrundercover.de
Learning from the R's: IBA Emscher
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RUHR.2010: EUROPEAN CAPITAL OF CULTURE
Overview
Themes
In 2010, the Ruhr Region became the first polycentric urban form to earn the designation of the year-long European Capital of Culture. The Ruhr Region split festivities between the 53 cities, each city hosting events for one week, and Essen running a year-long presentation. The initiative was treated as a continuation of the major effort to reimage the postindustrial region, with goals centering on economic regeneration, community cohesion, and promoting new structures of governing, all through a demonstration of the power of cultural production.
Ruhr Mythology Efforts were made to showcase the history of the region, focusing on the culture that has grown up from principles rooted in industrialization, namely, hard work and solidarity. The effort was seen not only as telling the region’s story for posterity’s sake, but for trying to let it inform its future.
Metropolis Redesign Directly building on the IBA’s Emscher Park, RUHR.2010 sought to give more exposure to the innovative landscapes that have been generated through architecture and landscape from old industrial infrastructure.
Moving Europe RUHR.2010 saw itself as not only aspiring to showcase cultural production for the sake of the region, but as a unifying and visionary force for all of Europe. Efforts were made to create artistic and intellectual dialog throughout the EU, with special emphasis on issues of migration, identity and education.
Stats
10.5 MILLION VISITORS 5500 EVENTS $79M OR 60M EURO IN EXPENSES
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WELCOME TO THE BLAST FURNACE OF CULTURE.
Source: http://www.modulorbeat.de/work/untitled/ruhrlights/ruhr2010/untitled
Source: www.gettyimages.com
Learning from the R's: Ruhr.2010
Source: http//dasjanding.de/2010/10/finale-essen-c-m-duschner-ruhr
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Source: muschelschubserin.wordpress.com
CHANGE THROUGH CULTURE, CULTURE THROUGH CHANGE. Source: www.alamy.com/kids-eat-chips-on-the-cultural-festival-ruhr-2010
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“The [Ruhr] Region is emotion epitomized.” -Wolf-Dietrich Sahr, Cities and Fascination: Beyond the Surplus of Meaning
- StillLife A40:
Program The three themes were explored through six lenses, with their aggregation giving vision to the possibility of change through culture: 1. Discovering Images 2. Changing Stages 3. Living Music 4. Exploring Language 5. Boosting Creative Industry 6. Time to Celebrate
The main highway arterial (A40) was shut down for one day and people were invited to stage performances or parties along the 60 km stretch of road. - Sing! Day of Song: 600 concerts were staged around the region for one day, and many encouraged people to sing-along. - Love Parade Music Festival: Tragically, one of the program events, a electronic music dance festival in Duisburg, saw 21 deaths, 500 injured due to crowd panic and suffocation.
Events
Results
Over 5000 events were planned by four art directors, each one in charge of the following ideas to help direct efforts toward the region’s rebranding: City of Arts, City of Cultures, City of Possibilities, City of Creativity.
Overall, the extensive collaborative efforts and heavy programming are viewed as a success, although the collaborative governance model is criticized for a seeming lack of authority to hold accountable, including how communication was handled. Other critiques include the fact that despite efforts to make it a bottom-up approach, money was unjustly distributed, and local artists didn’t always feel represented.
Example events: - Shaft Signs: 300 yellow balloons flew 80 meters in the air marking the location of previous coal mine shafts.
Source: www.akpublics.de/ruhr2010
Learning from the R's: Ruhr.2010
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DUISBURG THE APPROPRIATION OF THE FORMER INDUSTRIAL LANDSCAPE
Duisburg, Tiger and Turtle
Duisburg Nord, Landscape Park
DUISBURG Population: 485,465 Area: 232.82 km2 (89.89 sq mi) Density: 2,100/km2 (5,400 /sq mi)
Source: www.ruhr-guide.de
Historic photo of Duisburg Inner Harbor
Located in the western part of the Ruhr Area, Duisburg has the world’s largest inland harbor, and has become an important venue for commerce and steel production. Like many other cities, today’s Duisburg is a result of numerous incorporations of surrounding towns and smaller cities. It is the fifteenthlargest city in Germany, and the fifthlargest city in North Rhine-Westphalia with 486,855 residents at the end of 2013.
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The city is renowned for its steel industry. The last remaining coal mine closed down in the summer of 2009, but Duisburg has never been a coal-mining center to the same extent as other places in the Ruhr region. All blast furnaces in the Ruhr are now located in Duisburg. In 2000, 49% of all hot metal and 34.4% of all pig iron in Germany were produced here. It also has a large brewery, the König Brauerei, located in Duisburg-Beeck, which makes the König Pilsener brand.
Volume II: DISCOVER
History The city’s name goes back to the Germanic word “dheus”, which means something like “wet area” or “flood plain”. Duisburg therefore could mean “fortified place in the floodplain”. Another interpretation assumes that the name is derived from the Old German “duis” which means “hill”. Duisburg could mean something like “castle on the hill”. Thus, a place on a hill overlooking the Rhine, that could refer to the area of the present Town Hall.
01 DUISBURG-NORD LANDSCAPE PARK Rhine 02 THE GREEN PATH Rhein-Herne Canal
Baldeneysee
03 INNER-HARBOUR COMMERCIAL PARK / RESIDENTIAL LIVING
Rhine
Source: Book - International Building Exhibition Emscher Park The projects 10 years later
01 Duisburg-Nord Landscape Park
Source: Book - International Building Exhibition Emscher Park The projects 10 years later
02 The Green Path Learning from the R's: Duisburg
03 Inner Harbor Commercial Park B-47
01 COMMERCIAL PARK
02 RESIDENTIAL LIVING
INNER-HARBOR COMMERCIAL PARK 1828 - 2007 1828 Construction of the Rhine Canal 1991 International policy and programming competition for the harbor
Source: www.fosterandpartners.com
Duisburg, in the heart of the Ruhr valley, has had to reinvent itself, following the decline of its traditional heavy industries. In 1991, an international competition was held to establish a masterplan for the renewal of the Inner Harbor – the largest inland waterway in the world. It provided an opportunity to test, at a larger scale, ideas about mixed use and sustainability, then being developed for the nearby Microelectronics Park.
Master Plan of Inner-Harbor
Source: Book - International Building Exhibition Emscher Park The projects 10 years later
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INNER-HARBOR RESIDENTIAL LIVING 1998 - 2006 1998 Construction of the canal, senior center opened.
Source: www.fosterandpartners.com
The canals between residential units.
Source: www.e-architect.co.uk
The canals between residential units.
Beside the new office and business spaces that were developed on the Duisburg Inner-Harbor, a new innercity residential quarter was established in a second row of buildings behind the historic warehouses. Three new canals were constructed in accordance with the master plan designed by Foster + Partners as central design elements for the new quarter. The water level of the harbor and canals was raised in order to increase experience of the water element. The canals function as reservoirs for the rainwater that accumulates on the neighboring residential structures. Electricity is supplied to them by photo-voltaic panels mounted on the roof of the former administration building. Apartments for varying and changing types of residential lifestyles and uses were created in this quarter, including: flats spanning multiple levels, penthouses, terraces, and rooftop gardens; special urban-style living spaces such as studios and lofts; and designs for different types of occupants (families, singles, seniors, students). A total of approximately 700 residential units were planned. Six companies built 472 rented and freehold flats between 1998 and 2006.
Source: Book - International Building Exhibition Emscher Park The projects 10 years later
Residential units for different types of occupants.
Learning from the R's: Duisburg
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DUISBURG-NORD LANDSCAPE PARK
Source:Under the Sky , Emscher Landscape Park
Duisburg-Nord Landscape Park was the showcase of the IBA, which sponsored some hundred art and landscape projects from 1989-1999.
Source:Under the Sky , Emscher Landscape Park
Size: 43.5 sq. miles (70 sq.km.) Designer : Latz + Partner The project is a transformation of a formerly industrial site into a landscape of natural and cultural experiences. The sheer size of the park led Latz (designer) to organize the park in four different independent layers that interlinked: the Blast Furnace + the Rail Park + Water Park + Vegetation. Although the park was conceived as a piece-meal design, visitors experience the four parts as a landscape of experiences. The awesome structures evoke associations, emotions and an aura of mystery that inspired Latz to construct narratives and stories that alluded to a mythic past.
Source:ruhrgebiet-industriekultur.de
Blast Furnace
Source:flickr.com
Lighting Design
Source:flickr.com
Water Park B-50
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Source:ruhrgebiet-industriekultur.de
Rail Park
Source:flickr.com
Carefully curated vegetated park
Simulating Experiences: Baroque formations of ornamental plants, abundant fields of aromatic sage, grapevines and birches all help to simulate the senses.
Source:ruhrgebiet-industriekultur.de
Master Plan
Cultural Relevance: The spaces within the complex are designed as courtyards, and are used as venues for cultural events and performances.
Source: baukunst-nrw.de
Event courtyard
The ironworks’ relics are not given the feel of romantic-pastoral ruins in historic gardens nor is any attempt made at re-interpreting the encountered objects as artistically elevated sculptures. Rather, using only minimal intervention, the relics become readable as important levels of landscape formations. The old Emscher, which during the ironworks’ active phase ran underground, has been designed as a straight, clear water canal with natural vegetation on its banks.
Source:flickr.com
Rock Climbing wall
Source: baukunst-nrw.de
Gasometer
Source:flickr.com
Learning from the R's: Duisburg Landscape Park
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ESSEN THE CULTURAL INDUSTRIAL LANDSCAPE
Zollverein, landscape intervention
Ruhr Museum
Essen is the sixth largest city in Germany, and is located in the state of Northrhine-Westphalia. Through the industrial revolution, Essen became one of Germany’s most important cities in regards to coal and steel production. Essen was the home to most of the armaments manufacturing for both the First and Second World Wars. The leader of this manufacturing sector was the Krupp family. Steel manufacturers by trade, they rose to become the largest company in Europe, riding the wave of German imperialism and backing the rise of Adolf Hitler.
ESSEN Population: Area: Pop. Density:
566,862 210.40km² 2,694/km²
It is estimated that during WWII, 90% of Essen was destroyed by Allied bombings; the city was subsequently captured by the British in 1946. During the Nazi Third Reich, Essen was home to one of the countries greatest institutions, the Museum Folkwang, which was a world leader
Source: Jonathan Hanna
Was Ist? Street mural by unknown artist; exemplifies the post-industrial condition “What is?”
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in Modern art, housing works by Paul Cézanne, Henri Matisse, and Edvard Munch. Most of the Folkwang Collection was seized by the Nazis for being degenerate works. They were subsequently sold off to fund the war efforts, or burned. The museum has regained its prominence, and spurred many other cultural endeavors alongside the landscape plan for the Emscher Park. Projects include the Helene Colliery Sport and Health Center, an old industrial building originally build for the Krupp Company that was in a dilapidated state, and converted into a sports facility. Altenessen Forum and Colliery Clark Machine Hall is a former coal mine converted into a cultural center. The Zollverein Coking Plant is a cultural monument to an industry come and gone, and a model for postindustrial redevelopment.
Source: zechen-im-ruhrgebiet.de
Zeche Helene
Source: David Chipperfield Architects
Folkwang Museum, David Chipperfield Addition
Schurenbach Slag Heap, by Richard Serra
Source: maschinenhaus-essen.de/
Source: aalto-musiktheater.de
Altenessener forum und maschinenhaus zeche carl
Essen Opera House by Alvar Alto Learning from the R's: Essen
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In 1930, Zollverein was the most up-to-date coal mine in the world; today, it holds the significance of a magnificent cathedral in terms of industrial history. As a result of conversion measures, its Shaft XII complex houses a center for design, cultural and industrial history.
ZOLLVEREIN INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX
The complex is a complete infrastructure of an historical coalmining and coke-manufacturing site. It also includes 20th century buildings regarded for exceptional architectural merit and Bauhaus style. This unique site chronicles both the evolution and
Source: Zollverein Industrial Complex, Jennifer Chandler. Web. June 2016
Zollverein Park model B-56
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decline of the essential coal mining industry of Germany over the past 150 years. The Zollverein colliery has been preserved as a testimony to one of the region’s largest industries. The complex includes the NordrheinWestfalen Design Centre, which occupies the enormous boiler room. The colliery is surrounded by the Forest of Industry, a natural park where industrial remains are scattered among the vegetation, interspersed with sculptures.
Source: Youtube-Zollverein Eisbahn. Jochen Tack. Web. June 2016
On 12 December 2001, UNESCO added Zeche Zollverein to the list of world heritage industrial monuments, partly on the basis of the OMA masterplan, which respects the site’s original identity. The masterplan is developed in close collaboration with heritage specialists and conservationists.
The masterplan develops a band around the historic site. New roads and the extension of an existing highway through a tunnel servicing the site allow for easy access. The rail tracks inside the site have been reconverted into public space, and connect the main buildings. The sky bridges for transporting coal are opened for visitors, who can also visit a former mine 1,000 meters deep.
Source: OMA. “Zollverein Masterplan”. http:/oma.eu. Web. May 2016. Learning from the R's: Zollverein
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Panorama of Gelsenkirchen
GELSENKIRCHEN
Population: Area: Pop. Density:
257,651 104.86km² 2,457/km²
Gelsenkirchen is located in the northern part of the Ruhr area. It was the most important coal mining town in Europe in the early 20th century. The city was also called the “city of a thousand fires” for the flames of mine gases flaring at night. The tallest chimney in Germany (302 m) was also located in Gelsenkirchen-Scholven. With the closing of collieries, the city searched for its new image. In 1997, the Federal Garden Show was held on
Population Statistics Gelsenkirchen B-58
Now, the city has Germany’s largest solar power plant. Since 1999, when Shell Solar Deutschland AG took over production of photo-voltaic equipment, the city has been working on presenting itself as a center of solar technology. Now, several other large businesses are headquartered in Gelsenkirchen.
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Gelsenkirchen#/media/File:Population_Statistics_Gelsenkirchen.svg
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Gelsenkirchen_subdivisions.svg
Gelsenkirchen Subdivisions
unused Nordstern coal mines in Horst; this helped catalyze the transformation of industrial landscapes.
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Source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Gelsenkirchen_Altstadt_Panorama.jpg#/media/File:Gelsenkirchen_Altstadt_Panorama.jpg
Bundesgartenschau NATIONAL GARDEN SHOW The Bundesgartenschau (abbr. BUGA) is the biennial federal horticulture show in Germany. It also covers topics surrounding landscaping. Taking place in different cities, it took place in Gelsenkirchen in 1997. Several projects were completed as catalysts for new development.
Wissenschaftspark
Workers’ housing
Solar Powered Innovation Office Event center
Solar Powered
Nordsternpark/ National Garden Show 1997
Nordsternpark Commercial Area
Fusion of industrial and landscape Reuse of industrial structures
Fusion of commercial and landscape
Eastern/ Western landscape
Conversion of storehouses
Lanf Stream
Kuppersbusch Housing redevelopment
Rainwater management Waste water canal
Source: International Building Exhibition Emscher Park: The projects 10 years later
Learning from the R's: Gelsenkirchen
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Integrative open space Neighborhood organization
NORDSTERNPARK Nordsternpark is a park in Gelsenkirchen, Germany. It is located on the compound of the former mine of Zeche Nordstern. After the closure of the mine in 1993 the area was redeveloped. In 1997, the Bundesgartenschau (Federal Garden Exhibition) took place here.
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gelsenkirchen#/media/File:Population_Statistics_Gelsenkirchen.svg
North of the River Emscher, on a narrow isthmus between the Emscher and the Rhine-Herne Canal, south of the channel, a commercial and landscape park has been set up on the old colliery site of Mine I / II, integrating old buildings of the coal mine, historic dumping grounds, and various relics. In 1997, the Federal Garden Show was held in this park - the first to date on a former industrial brownfield. Following this, the Nordsternpark became a permanently free and accessible, not to mention popular, landscape park with playing facilities, gardens and viewpoints, existing as we know it today. Besides the obvious winding towers, one can find partially hidden relics of the coal mine, such as the foundation of a cooling tower, slag heaps or a switchboard in hedges or trees.
Area: 1.4km² 1993 - Closure of the mine 1997 - National Garden Show 2004 - New office B-60
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The former storehouse was completely gutted, and converted into a central hall, with stairs, transparent lifts, and toilet facilities; it is now a space for exhibitions and cultural events, and offices were arranged in three upper levels. This conversion added significantly to the quality of the entire transformation of the former mine site. The structurally qualitative facade contrasts with steelframed buildings, which had been conceived as temporary structures with a high need for flexible use. In 2007, around 92% of the commercial space was being rented by 18 companies. The entire number of people employed in the Nordsternpark is approximately 1,100.
Nordstern tower with attached floors and viewing platform
Remains of a cooling tower
Coal bunker and conveyor belt as a relic of a coker
Amphitheater with floating stage on the Rhine-Herne Canal
Symbols and landforms that indicate Railway Artificial climbing rocks at the northern edge of the heap Emscher
Source: https://www.ruhrgebiet-industriekultur.de/nordsternpark.html
Learning from the R's: Nordsternpark
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Essen Population: Area: Pop. Density:
Duisburg Population: Area: Pop. Density:
County-level city 573,784 210.38km2 2,727/km2
County-level city 485,465 232.81km2 2,085/km2 Source: International Building Exhibition Emscher Park: The projects 10 years later
BOCHUM
Bochum Population: Area: Pop. Density:
Population: Area: Pop. Density:
361,876 145.43km² 2,488/km²
County-level city 361,876 145.43km2 2,488/km2
Bochum is a centrally located city in the Ruhr Region, well connected by train along the line from Duisburg to Dortmund. Bochum was a heavily industrial city, with industries mainly of coal mining and steel production. After the economic decline of the region, and the closing of most of the industrial Gelsenkirchen operations, the city has invested in County-level city the high-tech industry and education Population: 257,651 fields. Area: Pop. Density:
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104.86km2 2,457/km2
Source: Metropoleruhr.de / Citypopulation.de
The Mechtenberg Landscape The park connects the area with footpaths, bicycle routes and bridges. Citizens were directly involved in the implementation of many projects. There is an 80-meter high hill with various elements, including: - Agricultural operations - Wetlands in former mining sinkhole area - Small woods - Two cement stream beds - Field for artists to experiment. Source: International Building Exhibition Emscher Park: The projects 10 years later
Holland Colliery Commercial & Residential Park
A new residential area and an ecologically-oriented commercial park were developed on the site of a historic colliery. Contaminated soil has been cleaned, and innovative businesses have relocated here. A pond-like rainwater reservoir functions as a transition area between the new commercial site and new housing zone.
Source: International Building Exhibition Emscher Park: The projects 10 years later
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Source: International Building Exhibition Emscher Park: The projects 10 years later
DORTMUND
Dortmund Population: Area: Pop. Density:
Population: Area: Pop. Density:
580,511 280.37km² 2,071/km²
County-level city 580,511 280.37km2 2,071/km2
Dortmund is the eighth largest city in Germany. Since the city’s postindustrial decline, the population has decreased. Dortmund has adapted from heavy industry to a high technology economy, including robotics, biomedical technology, micro-systems technology, engineering, tourism, and finance. The region has shifted Essen to education and services as well. In County-level city 2009, Dortmund was classified as a Population: 573,784 Node City in the Innovation Cities Area: 210.38km2 Pop. Density:
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2,727/km2
Index. Dortmund is also home to a number of medium-sized information technology companies, many linked to the local university TU Dortmund, or at the Germany’s first technology center, “Technologiepark Dortmund,” having opened in the 1980s. The city works closely with research institutes, private universities, and companies to commercialize science initiatives.
The new landscape in Phoenix See
Phoenix See
Phoenix See is a large urban renovation project in Dortmund. Sitting in a former steelworks site, it has been rehabilitated into a mixed income residential and recreational area. An artificial lake provides the main landscape amenity, with most of the affluent housing developments situated around the lake. Also central to the landscape intervention in the area is the restoration project of the Emscher River. It is rendering initial results of improved water quality, and an accessible system of paths along the river. Learning from the R's: Dortmund
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FIELD GUIDE
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ES TO THE RUHR
Depicted in this section, each student was prompted with creating a “field guide�. A means of representing the explorations undertaken in the Ruhr Region and expressing characteristics examined, relative to each students thesis formulation. This took the format of sketches, narratives, post cards, constructs, and videos. Each student designed the presentation of their field guide, as well as curated the artifacts, drawn, or photographed. B-67
FIELD GUIDE on post-industrial on [Ruhr] appropriation Travis Crabtree
post - industrial
sites documented
Tiger & Turtle Duisburg- Angerhausen 51.2234° N, 6.44° E
gasometer Oberhausen 51.2938° N, 6.5214° E
Rhinepark
51.2440° N, 6.4458° E
Bottrop bernepark 51.3017° N, 6.5638° E
Landshaftspark Duisburg-Nord 51.2850° N, 6.4702° E
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51.4818° N, 7.2162° E
51.4556° N, 7.0116° E
51.5291° N, 6.9447° E
sites visited
: BOCHUM
: ESSEN
: BOTTROP
: OBERHAUSEN 51.5291° N, 6.9447° E
: DUISBURG 51.4344° N, 6.7623° E
: GELSENKIRCHENEN 51.517° N, 7.0857° E
[Rhur] appropriation
[Ruhr]appropriation is a collection of documenting territories in the Ruhr Region that have formerly been landscapes of utility, but have undergone transformations that engage the civic through new forms of urban intervention, while innovating in landscape performance. Each project has an element that celebrates the former utility of the place through materiality, scale, and program. Each project finds methods of joining in a cohesive narrative through networks of adapted public space along a conduit. The purpose of the guide is to understand how to better approach designing a linear territory made for utility with similar attributes in the Rust Belt region.
: LUNEN : MENDEN
: SCHWERTE 51.48° N, 7.5668° E
: ARNSBERG 51.4073° N, 8.0528° E
51.4377° N, 7.7953° E
: DORTMUND 51.5136° N, 7.463° E
51.6105° N, 7.5285° E
Tetraeder
51.314° N, 6.57° E
Himmelsstreppe
51.2914° N, 7.216° E
Phoenix Lake
51.298° N, 7.3046° E
Schurenbachhalde 51.3045° N, 7.0109° E
Ruhr Field Guides: [Ruhr] Appropiation
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WATER CONDUIT : Similar to Detroit, the Ruhr region is fragmented and development is sprawled. It is complicated to find what or where the true urban core is. Essen to Duisburg, growth spreads horizontal and has forced planners in the region to think critically about how the region can connect. Water has been the agent for doing that. The Emscher River was known as the most polluted river in Germany during the 20th century, carrying effluent and industrial waste to the Rhine.
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The Emscher IBA has helped to give the river an alternative and has created a conversation about re-naturalization. Today, the river is complimented with a series of landscape urbanism-type interventions. Most projects involve a formerly industrial object as an art element, with natural landscape placing it. The RhineHerne canal runs parallel with the Emscher to share the projects. Programs along the waterways vary from profit generating solutions to projects solely for identity making. The corridor can be traveled by bike or foot with little disruption of vehicular traffic making for a sublime urban experience.
Ruhr Field Guides: [Ruhr] Appropiation
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POST INDUSTRIALIZATION POST MODERNIZATION Big infrastructure best describes the Great Lakes Rust Belt and Ruhr Regions in the 20th century. While their industrialization and modernization eras were simultaneous, the Ruhr operated longer. In fact, industry just abandoned the region over the last three decades. Although both regions suffered the burden of the heavy legacy left by industries and their infrastructures, the Ruhr has been rapid in responding. The IBA Emscher Park in 1989 was the catalyst for this impetus, placing a conversation around the “shrinking cities� phenomenon and associated problems. Revitalization is mainly executed through the transformation of industrial territories into civic and performative landscapes. Operation as a regional collaborative has been the most powerful attribute of the project, and has driven a powerful narrative for the restructuring of the Ruhr Region through the reimagination of its landscape.
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LESS IS MORE, GREEN IS MORE Landschaftspark is arguably the best example of industrial and landscape synthesis. The minimalist design approach is what makes it so dynamic. The site is a former coke plant with about every big infrastructure that one could fit into an industrial site. The abandoned railways, blast furnaces, coal bunkers, and waste water turbines were ideal qualities to landscape architect Peter Latz. He used the abandon infrastructure and successional vegetation as an instrument for making space in the park. In plan, it is noticeable that he uses all the same geometries created for the plant’s original purpose. In aggregate, the urban void created by the site has been replaced with a location for gathering, recreating, passage, lounging, and reflecting. Landschaftspark being designed as an industrial reflection space is a thesis that helped set the tone and identity for regional direction.
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trash?
RECYCLED LAND Space for waste is a common urban issue cities in the Rust Belt are encountering. High demolition rates in post-industrial cities, like Detroit or Essen, generate large quantities of deconstruction material. A landfill outside of the Ruhr region known as Metabolon, or “Black Mountain” as it is known to the local community, has found a way to reconfigure the traditional landfill to have performative and interactive attributes. It is an active recycling center and public landforms that people can climb. Most significantly, Metabolon allows people to connect with their trashscape. A closer connection might have positive implications on community consumption patterns. Deploying interactive programs completely shatters a traditional perspective of a landfill, and would be an applicable idea for some of Detroit’s trash.
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RIVER HIGHWAYS Rivers have been conduits for transport since cities have emerged. The settlement logic for the Great Lakes and Ruhr region was based on the geography of the water system for that reason. As highway and rail infrastructures become extraneous to manage, movement by water seems to be a viable mode of travel again. The Rhine River at the Cologne harbor uses water for mass transport of goods, but also activates the edge of the river to form two types of civic space. The east grasslands are managing flooding while making a destination nature park, and the other side is a culmination of historical and contemporary development demonstrating with a new public promenade. The promenade operates in a peculiar way: in Cologne, the cargo ships are docked adjacent to a concentration of high end real estate. It is an interesting juxtaposition since these two items traditionally would be overtly partitioned. However, this current layout makes for an interesting product, by allowing the public to engage with industrial logistics.
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CITY TO THE RIVER Former industrial cities, for the most part, have a buffer that disconnects the city from the river. In Duisburg, the new Rhine park is a reaction to collect that missing piece. Its industrial character, size, dilapidated condition, and context match a similar narrative to harbors along the Great Lakes. The park exemplifies what creative landforms and recycling material can do in delineating a civic spatiality. Landforms make elevated views, and forms a series of rooms against the river. Overall, the main objective of this project is to connect the river with the city. The fragmented relationship that industry forced hid the Rhine River from the public, which caused a lack of care of the river quality. Renewed access to it has initiated a conversation based on the river’s future care.
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BACK TO EARTH The experience of climbing the Bramme for the Ruhr is unparalleled. The project is a spoil tip over 100 meters high. The rubble mountain isn’t noticeable because of the forest growing on the perimeter of it. The top is what tells the story. The peak is black rubble, with a steel slab wedged in the middle of it. Richard Serra, the artist for the project, made a sculpture representative of the region by emulating the silhouette form of a smokestack. The materiality is the other symbolic feature. It is a steel slab wedged into the mountain. The top material connects, through display, the materials mined for the products made. The Bramme for the Ruhr sits on the skyline with other smoke stacks to forever commemorate the Ruhr narrative.
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:PLAY /noun
activity engaged in for enjoyment and recreation, rather than a serious or practical purpose.
:[GROUNDS] /verb
give (something abstract) a firm theoretical or practical basis.
Luna Vital
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In a city continuously regenerating its grounds, its landforms can be read as a datum for playfulness, facilitated through elements such as platforms, ramps, tubes, nets, swings, kinetic objects, and many other elements yet to be explored. Most playgrounds are custom made to fit specific audiences, and predict specific sets of movements. However, playful grounds facilitate activities without any formal speculations as to how these grounds are to be used. The hanging guide examines these through categories of custom-made and appropriated field conditions. Each character holds certain features specific to the nature of their existence and use. For instance, appropriated play grounds tend to be more dynamic considering its physical properties were not initially designed for their current use.
Ruhr Field Guides: Play [Grounds]
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essen
water [grounds] //generator
bottrop
water tends to carry the inherent physical properties necessary to activate any ground conditions alone.
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topo [grounds] //generator similarly, topographical changes enable playful grounds, whether they are natural, or artificially formed.
The Ruhr performs as a testing field for playgrounds and the host of experiential qualities they sponsor. As it readjusts its environment from a production era into a time for open-ended playfulness, the region attracts an audience of explorers, designers, and critical minds ready to dissect the industrial heritage to the best of their understanding, hoping to experience its unique atmosphere. The Ruhr region’s playgrounds have a sense of ludicrous behaviors, a narrative of humor and fun its residents and newcomers can hold on to as the essence of its postindustrial fabric.
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c o n d i t i o n s
- landschaft + metabolon
f i e l d
appropriated
activity engaged in for enjoyment and recreation, rather than a serious or practical purpose.
:barrier /noun a fence or other obstacle that prevents movement or access.. Today, these barriers enables movement and access to higher grounds in the park.
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:embed /verb fix (an object) firmly and deeply in a surrounding mass. Objects embedded to its contexts acquire new functions and purposes, serving also as playful [grounds]
Ruhr Field Guides: Play [Grounds]
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:play
- duisburg
c o n d i t i o n s
:spontaneity
custom made
f i e l d
/noun
the condition of being spontaneous; performed or occurring as a result of a sudden inner impulse or inclination and without premeditation or external stimulus.
a change or the process of change by which an organism or species becomes better suited to its environment.
:adjacenct
[grounds]
/noun
/verb
activity engaged in for enjoyment and recreation, rather than a serious or practical purpose.
give (something abstract) a firm theoretical or practical basis.
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:adaptation
/noun
/adjective some custom made play [grounds] tend to locate adjacent to an edge of significant relevance, whether it’d be history, water, or remnants in the city.
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:kinetic
/adjective
:dynamic
of or relating to the motion of material bodies and the forces and energy associated therewith
/adjective
system characterized by constant change, activity, or progress.
:adjacenct /adjective some custom made play [grounds] tend to locate adjacent to an edge of significant relevance, whether it’d be history, water, or remnants in the city.
Ruhr Field Guides: Play [Grounds]
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BIG SHELTERS Mengyu Jiang
Essen
Duisburg
fence
Church Courtyard
Duisburg Innenhafen
Metabolon
Ruhr Museum
Landschaftspark
Gasometer
Rheinpark_Playground
Rheinpark_Riverfront
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open space
street
Gelsenkirchen Dortmund
Bochum
tree
sand
grass
bushes
hydro
recycle
railroad
industrial legacy
Ruhr Field Guides: Big Shelters
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Duisburg Innenhafen was an industrial harbor for shipping. Nowadays, the water has been cleaned, office building has been set up along the harbor as a bckground. The buildings and historic city wall enclose an open space for children.
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Rheinpark was an industrial site which transformed into waterfront landscape park. It provides a natural space for children.
Ruhr Field Guides: Big Shelters
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Gasometer Oberhausen was an industrial gasometer which has been transformed into an exhibition space. It is now an educational and recreational space for children.
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Rheinpark was an industrial site which transformed into waterfront landscape park. It provides a natural space for children.
Ruhr Field Guides: Big Shelters
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Church in Cologne is in a neighborhood which has a kindergarten at its backyard. It provides a safe neighborhood space for children.
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Zollverein was a coal mine before which has been transformed into
Ruhr Museum. It is a museum
which shows the history of ruhr area for children.
Ruhr Field Guides: Big Shelters
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Landschaftspark_Nord was a
coal mine before which has been transformed into an recreational park. It is a adventure space which uses industry as culture character for children.
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:Metabolon is a new model for landfill projects. It integrates waste management, energy producing, landscaping and community interaction.
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MOVING BOUNDARIES Shao-Chen Lu In the Ruhr Region, heavy industry drove the production of the entire area, and dictated the urban pattern, experience, and even memories. It created several boundaries to secure the ownership and increase efficiency. Moving Boundaries reveals the relationship between new uses and former edge conditions, showing how people occupied the area and redefined the new boundaries, further redefining urban memories.
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Ruhr Field Guides: Moving Boundaries
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POSTCARDS OF THE RUHR Jonathan Hanna An experiment in the production of a written and visual narrative of the Ruhr Region in the style of Magical Realism.
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Ruhr Field Guides: Moving Boundaries
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Ruhr Field Guides: Postcards of the Ruhr
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Ruhr Field Guides: Postcards of the Ruhr
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Ruhr Field Guides: Postcards of the Ruhr
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Ruhr Field Guides: Postcards of the Ruhr
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Leppe Rhein
Ruhr
Emscher Landschaft Park Duisburg-Nord Gasometer
Spoil Tips Spoil Tip - Schurenbachhalde Essen Zollverein Coal Mine
Metabolon Garten der Technik
Field Guide Ruhr Region - Germany 05.24.2016
- 06.01.2016
HIDDEN EYE Manasvi Bachhav Hidden Eye is a taxonomy of spaces and territories of the industries in the Ruhr region, and their re-appropriation within the postindustrial landscapes. The images are a collage of photographs and linework that reveal the spatial and material quality of the infrastructure through Sections and Photographs. They also capture the interventions at different scales from the architectural scale with the Gasometer to the urban scale with the spoil tips, to realize the impact of the IBA initiatives in response to the post-industrial scenario.
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Landscapes of Play
Landscape of Production
Landfill Park
Spoil Tips
Metabolon- Garden of Technology Metabolon is an exemplary landscape of learning and production that celebrates a geography of trash. Mountains and walls of trash, make for not such trashy landscapes.
Spoil Tips are heaps of dead rock from the coal mines, that have identified as sites for landmark sculptures for the region during the IBA.
Ruhr Field Guides: Hidden Eye
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Bunkers
Infrastructures
Duisburg Nord Landschaft Park
Landschaft Park Duisburg- Nord Capturing a moment of confluence between vehicular (rail, highway and bike)and pedestrian infrastructures and their resolution at different levels.
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The bunkers under the tracks were once used for storing coal, now act as activity pockets and hold landscapes for remediation for the poltued materials
Bunker
Gasometer
Ruhr Museum- Zollverein
Oberhausen
The Gasometer (gas holder), a remnant of the region’s indutrial past has been converted into a space that allows for unique exhibitons due to its distict volumetric proprotions.
The different levels of the museum are connected through a feature staircase that transforms the dark, robust and highly functional space of the old factory to an enticing interior experience.
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Zhe Zhang
While the shape of the landfill can hardly be called a wall, and the main focus of the design is to reveal the potential value of previously ignored urban components, the playground on the top reveals one characteristic of walls - the creation of asymmetric visual accessibility. While it is perceived as a green hill from the bottom of the landfill, it is perceived completely differently from the top. The top and even inside of walls therefore gain certain autonomy.
Walls in the form of earth art, created by level differentiation, can also create asymmetric accessibility, both visually and physically. Moreover, this type of landscape-style wall fluctuating the ground plane brings programmatic implications. Subjectivity to flooding from this asymmetry is certainly a factor in proposing programs, if there are any. According to this, the program of other walls is subject to their levels.
WORLD OF WALLS
Walls do not even have to utilize their characteristics of dimension. In this case, they can become figurative as other shapes do.
Walls do not necessarily always serve as divides. They can become simply objects with certain dimensions that can be climbed upon and interacted with. In this sense, wall buildings or structures can bear both interior programs and exterior programs without necessary connection.
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Walls can be simply frames without actual "designed" contents, a void waiting for temporal activities. This will provide flexibility and finally provide vigor to the area.
Walls with interruptible time scale, specifically based on plants, can grow over time and be edited to specific shapes to serve the needs, usually related to accessibility. If we replace the plants with flexible structures as walls around the target that interacts with people, the flexible structures may serve different goals over time due to its flexibility.
Change of programs and values of walls throughout time enables walls to survive after their “designed� life spans end. By designing or redesigning, walls are enabled to achieve eternal existence with rich values embedded.
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WORLD OF WALLS
Walls as foreground or background can interact with their context. Succession plants create a different atmosphere than gridded plants as foreground of deserted industrial structures. Similarly, the materiality, figure and scale of architectural walls will also create a corresponding atmosphere to their context.
a u t h e n t i c i t y //
a field guide to the Ruhr region
AUTHENTICITY
Purpose
Melia West
Many similarities can be drawn between the Ruhr region and the American Rust Belt, also suffering from decades of disinvestment, industrial pollution, and a declining population. By studying the initiatives of the 1989 IBA, one can draw lessons of success and failure to apply to the Rust Belt, opening up possibilities for her re-imagination.
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Landschaftspark
Zollverein + Kokeri Rheinelbe + Wissenschaftspark
Gasometer
Bottrop Gelsenkirchen Oberhausen
Campus
Krefeld
Bernepark
Duisburg
Essen
Bochum
Dortmund
Phoenixsee Innerhafen Rheinpark + Tiger and the Turtle
Düsseldorf Route der Industriekultur
Metabolon
Köln
Engelskirchen
Context Historically the largest producer of coal and steel in Europe, with mining operations existing since the 17th century, Germany’s Ruhr Region has long been defined by its industrial production. The fifth densest settlement in Europe, it has maintained a polycentric urban form, with industrial infrastructure strewn throughout the landscape. Beginning as early as the 1950s, the Ruhr region saw the decommissioning of industrial factories, and a slow erosion of its economy and population.
In 1989, the state of Northrhein-Westfalia called for a tenyear International Building Exhibition (IBA) to re-imagine how the region might be restructured in a holistic manner, addressing the growing need for a spatial-economic transition of the region. The initiative sought to address the area’s problems through urban, architectural, and ecological solutions and economic incentives.
view from blast furnace, Landschaftspark, Duisburg North Ruhr Field Guides: Authenticity
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IBA Emscher Park The IBA focused 120 projects around six guidelines, allowing architectural competitions to play a major role in project commissions. Guidelines focused on ecological initiatives, including cleaning the Emscher River (a contemporary open sewage canal), growing jobs, and finding new uses for abandoned industrial buildings. Upon visiting the ‘Route of Industrial Culture’ that snakes alongside the River, the re-imagined region is striking for its ability to capture a continuous narrative, giving the projects power to generate a renewed collective identity - all while maintaining a sense of authenticity of place.
Innerhafen, DĂźsseldorf
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culture//
cultural production//
authentic//
the customary beliefs, social forms, and material traits of a racial, religious, or social group (Merriam Webster); manifestations of human intellectual achievement regarded collectively (Google definition search); myths which remind a group of people what to do at a given time (Virgil)
a process dealing with how person(s) are produced as cultural beings and how this production of persons results in the (re)production of cultural formations (Kevin O’Connor); an intervention in the process of producing meaning (University of Salzburg);
not false or imitation; true to one’s own personality, spirit, or character (Merriam-Webster)
Overview The success of the IBA to capture and re-appropriate historic sources of collective identity and cultural production in the Ruhr - while not being nostalgic - are lessons to be applied in the re-imagination of Detroit. Four elements play a key role in this sense of authenticity of place:
1. weathering // palette of materials giving tactile and visual experience to a place
(prevalent material . texture, especially through aging . color . light)
2. confrontation // friction between two opposites that simultaneously leads to collective, and maintains unique, identity
(material . program . history . occupation)
3. pressure // role of industrial heritage in regional redefinition
(process . product . economy . social)
4. boundary // formal and programmatic elements that mediate a range of industrial to post-industrial edge conditions
(architecture . landscape architecture . art . physical . imagined) conveyor belt, Zollverein, Essen Ruhr Field Guides: Authenticity
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1 // WEATHERING
Rust stains along traces of water flow; Landschaftspark, Duisburg Nord
palette of materials giving tactile and visual experience to a place
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weathering on corrugated steel; Landschaftspark, Duisburg Nord
ivy growing on dilapidated concrete wall; Landschaftspark, Duisburg Nord
stained tile; bunkers at Landschaftspark, Duisburg Nord
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cotton seeds,ground cover at Zollverein Kokeri
weathered statue at Cathedral; Cologne
colored glass at Bramme for the Ruhr; Schurenbachhalde
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curated graffiti, skate park at Rheinpark, Duisburg
elevated gas tubes; Zollverein Kokeri
gabion weir; storm-water catchment canal, Phoenix West, Dortmund
friction between two opposites that simultaneously leads to collective, and maintains unique, identity
MACHINE // VEGETATION
2 // CONFRONTATION
patterns of succession on rusted rail; Landschaftspark, Duisburg Nord
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PROTECTION // OBLITERATION
POLLUTION // PLAY
LIFE // DEATH girls catching tadpoles, coal bunker, Landschaftspark, Duisburg Nord
child plays in water near historically polluted canal, Landschaftspark
Ruhr Field Guides: Authenticity
World War II bunker on the site of a destroyed synagogue, Ehrenfeld, Kรถln
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trampolines at the summit of metabolon landfill, Engelskirchen
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LEISURE // WORK
TREASURE // TRASH
OLD // NEW tension between historic and contemporary building techniques
continuous green way along the Emscher, adjacent to working industrial sites
Emscher River, an open sewer since industrialization
RIVER // SEWAGE
MIGRANT // RESIDENT “Solidarity”, Zollverein miner’s Polish pin; exhibited in Ruhr Museum
Emscher River, an open sewer since industrialization
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Landschaftspark, Duisburg North
3 // PRESSURE role of industrial heritage in regional redefinition photo credit: luna vital
SCALE //
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the gargantuan proportions of industrial machinery compared to an operator’s human hands
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ENERGY //
the historic role of energy production through coal has been re-imagined through solar energy plants
Alabaster panels, DĂźsseldorf
Food Lovers Fest, Zollverein, Essen
GATHERING //
industrial heritage sites remain central to cultural production through events
CRAFTSMANSHIP //
Ruhr Field Guides: Authenticity
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manipulation of steel and rock remain central to artisan ingenuity
Gasometer as exhibition space, Oberhausen
Krefeld
PRODUCT //
from raw to finished product: rocks of the Rhine watershed processed as aggregate
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RE-APPROPRIATION //
a plethora of creative uses occupy previous industrial structures
pressures causing slow genMARKET // market trification, leading to new program
process as visualized in the slow consolidation and settling of a landfill
and dislocation
SENSES //
auditory and olfactory station, Ruhr Museum, Essen
consolidated trash, Metabolon landfill, Engelskirchen
historic meat storefront-turned-artist’s studio; real estate pressure, Ehrenfeld
TIME //
sensory pressure helps define the region in natural and artificial environments
Ruhr Field Guides: Authenticity
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4 // BOUNDARY formal and programmatic elements that mediate a range of industrial to post-industrial edge conditions
LIGHTING/
night, Landschaftspark, Duisburg North C-130
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GARDEN/
LAND USE/
former sewage filtration tank, Bernepark, Bottrop
transformation of harbor to offices, Innerhafen, Duisburg
ART/
ascent to spoil tip, Richard Serra piece, Schurenbachhalde Ruhr Field Guides: Authenticity
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WATER/
naturalized Emscher River, Phoenixsee, Dortmund
RECREATION/
recreation path on former rail r.o.w., Rhine Herne Canal
EDUCATION/
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science incubator on former steel factory, Wissenschaftspark, Gelsenkirchen
TOPOGRAPHY/
WALL/
FAITH/
recreation and educational center, Metabolon landfill, Engelskirchen
ARCHITECTURE/
stair in former coal bunker, Zeche Zollverein, Ruhr Museum, design by OMA Ruhr Field Guides: Authenticity
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APPLICATION //
Looking to the Capstone Playing on Virgil’s understanding of culture as a set of collective memories that can give direction and meaning in a specific moment, it is important to note that culture cannot be imposed or “institutionalized”, but must be built up slowly on wisdom gained in experiences of high pressure. The ability of the Ruhr region and IBA Emscher Park to capture a collective narrative rests on its strength to let juxtaposed realities coexist, while maintaining their patina. In December 2015, Detroit was declared the first U.S. City of Design by UNESCO. Unsure how to utilize the designation, the capstone project will seek to give vision to the physical reality of a City of Design through urban design.
Similar to the IBA Emscher Park agenda, themes of industrial heritage, cultural production, and curating a collective identity will be central to the project - all while acknowledging, if not addressing, solutions for the ecological, economic, and social tensions in Detroit. Attention will be placed on the weathering, confrontations, pressure, and boundaries that exist in Detroit to render more fully her existing richness. As seen in the documentation of the Ruhr region, urban design has the ability to hold opposite realities in a fruitful juxtaposition. _____________________ How can the culture of Detroit, now recognized as a City of Design, drive the city’s development and re-imagination, while staying true to its identity?
skate park, Rheinpark, Duisburg C-134
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GREEN OVER RUST // GEOGRAPHICAL COMPARISON
Detroit
RUHR REGION
Ruhr Field Guides: Authenticity
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Ruhr Region Field Trip
Impressions
Places as institutions of learning & joy
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RUHR IN MOTION Nishant Mittal
Video - Germany Field Trip MUD 2016 Duration - 3.34 min Music credits-David Garrett & Michael Giacchino Link - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7aVOBvR5vPA
Ruhr Field Guides: Ruhr in Motion
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AUTHORS Manasvi Bachhav holds a Bachelor of Architecture Degree from Sir J.J. College of ArchitectureUniversity of Mumbai, India. She is interested in exploring the potentials of Architecture within the temporality of the urban context through multiscalar interventions.
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Travis Crabtree holds a degree in Landscape Architecture from Mississippi State University. His research focuses on productive landscapes as a formative element within distressed urban conditions.
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Jonathan Hanna is a graduate of the University of Michigan Bachelor’s of Science in Architecture program. Born and raised in Detroit, he participates in the rich tradition of making in the region, and plans on working and living in the city after graduation.
Mengyu Jiang holds a degree in Architecture from South China University of Technology. She is interested in the design of inclusive communities, and the possibilities around new forms of urban governance.
Shao-Chen Lu holds a Bachelor of Architecture degree from Taiwan. His research focuses on the relationship between architecture and urban space. Post-graduation, he plans to keep working on projects that interrogate the role of architecture in the reconfiguration of urban settings.
Nishant Mittal holds a degree in Architecture from the Maharaja Sayajirao University Baroda in India. Interested in the agency of institutions and new forms of governance in the transformation of the distressed central city, he plans to stay in Detroit after graduation to practice as an urban designer.
Luneoufall Vital Gallego holds a degree in Architecture from Texas Tech University and is also pursuing a Master of Architecture from the University of Michigan, starting in Fall 2016. Her interest explores the limits between interpretation and design as agents for speculative futures.
Melia West holds a Bachelor of Architecture from the University of Notre Dame, with a concentration in Historic Preservation. With experience in corridor design plans, and walkable neighborhoods, she is committed to fostering a sense of place by building on existing assets and community initiatives.
Authors' Biographies
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Zhe Zhang holds a Bachelor of Architecture degree from Suzhou University of Science and Technology. Interested in Asian cities with high density, he is returning to China to practice as urban designer and architect, also doing research on the relationship between urban culture and urban form in Jiangnan cities.
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Many thanks to our experts: Scott Campbell Associate Professor, Urban and Regional Planning, University of Michigan For his inspiring introduction to the Ruhr Region in preparation for our trip.
Thomas Kn체never Principal Kn체vener Architekturlandschaft For providing incredible support, knowledge and guidance in our exploration of the Ruhr Region... and for the most incredible two days biking along the Emscher and through Duisburg. We made it! Julia Sattler T U Dortmund Fakult채t Kulturwissenschaften Institut f체r Anglistik und Amerikanistik For joining us in the exploration of the Zollverein Plant and surroundings and sharing the many hidden secrets of the site.
Acknowledgements
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TAUBMAN COLLEGE architecture + urban planning
University of Michigan Master of Urban Design
2015-2016
To Detroit, for the endless inspiration
TAUBMAN COLLEGE architecture + urban planning
University of Michigan Master of Urban Design
2015-2016 Š The Regents of the University of Michigan All rights reserved A. Alfred Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning 2000 Bonisteel Boulevard Ann Arbor 48109 www.taubmancollege.umich.edu
DEVISE SIMULTANEOUS URBANISMS
Table of Contents
Volume I: DARE
Introduction
Students Manasvi Ashok Bachhav
Travis Crabtree
Nine Urban Thesis for Detroit
Learning from the Ruhr & Rust Belt
A-07
B-07
Just Kidding
Rust Belt Region
A-10
India | Sir J.J. College of Architecture University of Mumbai B. Arch
Utopian Campus Converter
U.S.A. | Mississippi State University B. L. A.
Jonathan Adnan Hanna
U.S.A. | University of Michigan B. S. Arch
A-34
China | South China University of Technology B. Arch
Shao-Chen Lu
Taiwan | Tamkang University B. Arch
Nishant Raman Mittal
India | Maharaja Sayajirao University Baroda B. Arch
Luneoufall Vital Gallego U.S.A. | Texas Tech University B. S. Arch
Melia Jae West
U.S.A. | University of Notre Dame B. Arch
Zhe Zhang
China | Suzhou University of Science and Technology B. Arch
Biographies Acknowledgments
Instructor
MarĂa Arquero de AlarcĂłn Associate Professor, Architecture and Urban Planning Director, Master of Urban Design
B-10
Ruhr Region B-24
IBA Emscher Park Mine the Gap A-48
B-34
Ruhr.2010 B-40
Invert City Mengyu Jiang
Volume II: DISCOVER
A-64
Duisburg
Fricticious Realities
Nord Landschaftspark
A-90
Bind-ary A-114
An Island in the City A-134
B-46
B-50
Essen B-54
Zollverein Industrial Complex B-56
Gelsenkirchen B-58
The City and the City A-146
Expresscape A-156
Nordsternpark B-60
Bochum B-62
Dortmund A-194 A-196
Volume I: DARE
B-64
Volume III: DEVISE Field Guides to the Ruhr
Simultaneous Urbanisms
Discourses in Urbanism
Bus Stops to Bandstands
Post/Re Urbanisms
Airborne 48127
Cities: X Lines. Approaches to City+Open Territory Design
D-06
[Ruhr] Appropriation C-68
Play [Grounds] C-78
Big Shelters C-86
Moving Boundaries
E-66
D-10
D-16
E-76
Infra-Eco-Logi Urbanism
A “Motor” City Center
E-88
D-22
Urban Ecology: Detroit and Beyond
The Moving Skyline
C-96
D-28
Postcards of the Ruhr
Radical-con-nexus
E-98
C-100
D-34
Urbanism: Working with Doubt
The Hidden Eye
Reconstructs
Water Urbanism East
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E-106
E-114
D-40
On Landscape Urbanism World of Walls C-112
E-124
An Island in the City D-46
Typological Urbanism Authenticity C-114
E-130
Church Express D-52
Formerly Urban E-136
Germany in Motion C-136
Bind-ary
Conversations
D-58
E-146
E-150 E-152
C-138 C-140
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Volume III: DEVISE Table of Contents
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INTRODUCTION Volume III: DEVISE
This volume showcases the work developed in the master of urban design capstone course (UD742). Last in the degree studio sequence, the work draws upon the intellectual inquiry and design work developed over previous semesters. As part of the year-long focus in Detroit, this capstone course offers a platform for students to advance their personal research agendas through the development of a design thesis project. To support the collective and individual agendas and set a platform for exchange of ideas among students, the course includes three inter-related modules that address modes of practice (through the experiential learning component traveling to Detroit and the German Ruhr Region and engaging with local urban agents), modes of production (through the exposure to techniques and tools of making, and the study of texts and projects), and modes of design inquiry (through the development of a final thesis sited in Detroit). The three modules are staged over the course of the semester to build on each other through the development of different exercises including individual and collective components. Introduction
The first volume, “DARE: Nine urban design thesis for Detroit” initiates the sequence showcasing nine design speculations developed by the students. Operating as a synthesis of the work developed during the semester in the theories and field trip sections, each proposal opens up possibilities to reimagine radical conditions of urbanity for the future of the metropolitan region. The second volume, “DISCOVER: Learning from the Ruhr” establishes a disciplinary conversation between the Rust Belt and Ruhr Regions, building in their industrial past and examining the agency of design in their ongoing transformation. The volume showcases the students’ Field Guides of the Ruhr as recorded during the site visit to the German region. This last volume, “DEVISE: Simultaneous Urbanisms Detroit” represents nine found urban conditions in Detroit and instigate imaginary urban narratives around them. To instigate the larger disciplinary claims of these quick explorations, the volume includes readings on urban discourses and conversations with local practitioners and academics. D-7
D
SIMULTANEOUS URBANISMS
The following pages display nine existing conditions found across the geography of Detroit. Each area, contained in a 1/2 square mile, was modeled and analyzed for specific urban parameters. Each student was prompted to derive a speculation for the site, and to represent it utilizing different mediums: digital fabrication, drawings and a written narrative. The resulting speculative proposals led to a larger narrative for the rest of the semester.
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83° 15’ 27.44’’ W
42° 25’ 02.46’’ N
+
URBAN PARAMETERS FAR
GROSS FLOOR RATIO AREA....................................................... 0.29
floor area / plan area GSI
NET FLOOR RATIO AREA............................................................ 0.40 GROUND SPACE INDEX................................................................ 0.24 OPEN SPACE RATIO........................................................................
built area / plan area OSR
PERCENTAGE OF PUBLICLY OWNED LAND...................... 58% RANGE OF FLOORS........................................................................
plan-built area / floor area
1.9
LAND USE MOST PREVALENT
RESIDENTIAL
LEAST PREVALENT
INDUSTRIAL
49.7%
1.3%
CENSUS DATA: POPULATION
1950
1970
1990
2010
22,487
18,558
14,334
11,749
Simultaneous Urbanisms: Bus Stops to Bandstands
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1-4
BUS STOPS TO BANDSTANDS Jonathan Hanna There is power in expression: expression of form, place, identity, and self. Bus Stops to Band Stands is an installation piece as much as it is a permanent infrastructure. It attempts to give people the power to transform their immediate public space by coopting the street and transforming it from a place of circulation to a place of inhabitation. A lightweight kit of parts can easily be assembled and disassembled for moving. On a typical day, the installation acts as a bus shelter protecting people from the elements, and offering a place to sit while waiting for the bus. But the shelter can be converted into a place of performance, by expanding the
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seating to create an elevated stage; an ephemeral space which gives people reason to linger. When not in use for the Sidewalk Festival, I imagine that the shelter would be used by patrons of DDOT while waiting for the bus. But, my hope is that sporadically people deploy the stage and utilize it for its alternative purposes, whether that be for speeches, music, performance, or simply to understand how the mechanisms of the shelter work. I image that as time passes the back of the shelter will act as an art canvas, a space for political propaganda, and a community posting location.
Simultaneous Urbanisms: Bus Stops to Bandstands
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RED GR
AN
DR
IVE
RA VE
NU
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ENUE GREYDALE AV
FO
RD
STR
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LAHSER ROAD
ORCHARD STREET
100X
10X
0X
Simultaneous Urbanisms: Bus Stops to Bandstands
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83° 07’ 27.71’’ W
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42° 17’ 25.52’’ N
URBAN PARAMETERS FAR
floor area / plan area GSI
built area / plan area OSR
GROSS FLOOR RATIO AREA.......................................................
0.62
NET FLOOR RATIO AREA............................................................
0.79
GROUND SPACE INDEX................................................................
0.05
OPEN SPACE RATIO........................................................................
0.49
PERCENTAGE OF PUBLICLY OWNED LAND...................... industrial 34% RANGE OF FLOORS........................................................................
plan-built area / floor area
1- 4
LAND USE MOST PREVALENT
LEAST PREVALENT
commerical
industrial
INDUSTRIAL
COMMERCIAL
32%
4% commerical
CENSUS DATA: POPULATION
1950
1970
1990
2010
5,331
2,256
2,605
2,365
Simultaneous Urbanisms: Airborne 48127
D-17
AIRBORNE 48217 Travis Crabtree Southwest Detroit will make you sick, literally. It is Michigan’s most polluted zip code. Each year, about 1.6 million pounds of chemicals are released in the area, triggering the highest pediatric asthma rates in the state. Located at the intersection of the regional wastewater treatment plant, the industrial portion of I-75, the Marathon gas refinery, and the mischievous Zug Island, the Delray neighborhood is the most prone to this air pollution exposure.
The collection of those byproducts is then used for feeding organisms like algae and other bacteria in return for fresh oxygen. Inside of the wall is high oxygen yielding vegetation. Residents who were once exploited through air, now have the most abundant supply of clean air in Detroit.
This speculation responds to the toxic environment through the construction of a massive living machine that acts as an air filter, and a dividing mechanism for a small enclave in Delray. The machine collects sulfur dioxide from the wastewater plant and carbon, nitrous oxide, and particulate matter from the freeways.
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CO2
SO2
NO x
Simultaneous Urbanisms: Airborne 48127
D-19
breathing skins
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The living machine structure exhales large quantities of oxygen canceling-out emissions from adjacent polluters. For decades, this area has been a contested territory for living standards. The filtration walls give residents a form of environmental justice that they have long deserved.
Simultaneous Urbanisms: Airborne 48127
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83° 04’ 19.29’’ W
42° 22’ 06.04’’ N
+
URBAN PARAMETERS FAR
GROSS FLOOR RATIO AREA....................................................... 1.27 NET FLOOR RATIO AREA............................................................ 1.92
floor area / plan area GSI
GROUND SPACE INDEX................................................................ 0.74 OPEN SPACE RATIO........................................................................ 0.14
built area / plan area
PERCENTAGE OF PUBLICLY OWNED LAND...................... 41%
OSR
RANGE OF FLOORS........................................................................ 1-26 plan-built area / floor area
LAND USE MOST PREVALENT
COMMERCIAL
LEAST PREVALENT
MED. DEN. HOUSING
46.6%
0.2%
CENSUS DATA: POPULATION
1950
1970
1990
2010
17,865
8,095
4,384
4,836
Simultaneous Urbanisms: A Motor City Center
D-23
A “MOTOR” CITY CENTER Melia West During the 1920s, with no perceived end to Detroit’s continued growth and prosperity, it was thought that a second downtown was necessary and lucrative, in hopes of alleviating overcrowded conditions and stretching the City’s geographic wealth. The heart of this “New Center” was the intersection of Woodward Avenue and Grand Boulevard. The buildings embody the unlimited optimism and swagger of Detroit’s venture capitalists. However, the Great Depression halted all plans. NEW
MOTOR CITY
Net FAR
CENTER CENTER 1.9 7.6
Parking lot SF
1,220,000
0
Built SF
8,860,000
35,000,000
Percent Vehicle 25.8% to People SF
6.5%
D-24
Ironically, the aspirations for the Motor City’s new downtown, driven by General Motors and the Fisher Brothers, has only materialized into a landscape for the very object that produced New Center’s wealth: the motor vehicle. Now, the remaining architectural gems swim in a vast sea of asphalt.
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In my speculative modeling, I have merely emboldened New Center’s existing reality, imagining a second downtown of high rise towers. The views and prime real estate is reserved for Motor City residents - vehicles that is. A parameter for the speculation draws on one of the healthier Rust Belt downtowns, Pittsburgh’s Golden Triangle. The floor area ratio (FAR) is increased from 1.9 to 7.5. All parking lot square footage is transferred to the tops of these towers; the programming for people occupies the lower floors. While staging a provocation in making the car king, it activates the pedestrian zone, by pushing commercial and residential land uses closest to the street. The Amtrak station is rebuilt with playful architectural expression enticing passenger trains to stop.
Motor City Skyline
Current Condition, highlighting parking lots and parking structures
MOTOR CITY: Diagram showing the parking lot square footage transfer to the top floors of the second downtown Simultaneous Urbanisms: A Motor City Center
D-25
Halting: Formal explorations of possible ceilings in the new Amtrak terminal
Parking Pent House: Elevations showing the privileged real estate reserved for motor vehicles (next page) D-26
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Simultaneous Urbanisms: A Motor City Center
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83° 3’ 34.16’’ W
+
42° 20’ 59.41’’ N
URBAN PARAMETERS FAR
floor area / plan area GSI
built area / plan area OSR
plan-built area / floor area
GROSS FLOOR RATIO AREA.......................................................
1.2
NET FLOOR RATIO AREA............................................................
1.73
GROUND SPACE INDEX................................................................
0.37
OPEN SPACE RATIO........................................................................
0.36
PERCENTAGE OF PUBLICLY OWNED LAND......................
30.5%
RANGE OF FLOORS........................................................................
1-14
LAND USE MOST PREVALENT
INSTITUTIONAL
LEAST PREVALENT
RESIDENTIAL
31%
12.4%
CENSUS DATA: POPULATION
1950
1970
1990
2010
38,659
16,010
9,262
6,905
Simultaneous Urbanisms: The Moving Skyline
D-29
THE MOVING SKYLINE Nishant Mittal Art thematizes spaces, and through critical commentary, transforms them. Art not only plays an important role in the re-evaluation of urban areas; it reveals hidden narratives and promotes awareness and discussion of the found conditions on site. Building on this capacity, the project explores architecture’s artistic expression to trigger imagination around notions of urban domesticity, ownership, and permanence. The Moving Skyline aims to puncture the envelope of exclusion through the ‘blighted’ houses of Detroit. Today, the skyline of Detroit represents the capitalist corporations that still dominate Detroit; most of the decisions and development patterns are still under their control.
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The intervention in the half mile by half mile portion of Midtown aims to ‘bury’ the new infrastructure (the downtown centric Q line), which is associated primarily with a certain pool of creative class, to create a series of public spaces above the newly buried infrastructure. Moreover, the intervention takes charge of the 50year old ‘Nail and Hammer’ building by incorporating a slide, a new kind of entertainment that combines the reality and fiction of architecture, and triggers a tactical re-occupation of abandoned buildings in the city. Using the slide as a space-reclaiming strategy, the project fosters the incremental transformation of parking structures around the building into porous ephemeral gathering spaces.
The Moving Skyline attempts to generates a polemic from the current social situations around inhabitation in Detroit Simultaneous Urbanisms: The Moving Skyline
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Suspended Domesticity
Q Line
Urban acupunctures The Slide
Frames Festivalization of Midtown Burying infrastructure
Porous courts Interfering Platforms
Simultaneous Urbanisms: The Moving Skyline
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83° 3’ 38.94’’ W
+
42° 22’ 29.30’’ N
URBAN PARAMETERS FAR
floor area / plan area GSI
built area / plan area OSR
plan-built area / floor area
GROSS FLOOR RATIO AREA.......................................................
0.38
NET FLOOR RATIO AREA............................................................
0.62
GROUND SPACE INDEX................................................................
0.21
OPEN SPACE RATIO........................................................................
1.25
PERCENTAGE OF PUBLICLY OWNED LAND......................
42%
RANGE OF FLOORS........................................................................
1-7
LAND USE MOST PREVALENT
INDUSTRIAL
LEAST PREVALENT
28.22%
COMMERCIAL
4.5%
CENSUS DATA: POPULATION
1950
1970
1990
2010
16,637
4,480
1,552
1,511
Simultaneous Urbanisms: Radical-con-nexus
D-35
RADICAL-CON-NEXUS Manasvi Bachhav
D-36
Radical-Con-Nexus builds on the concept of a modern acropolis over the city’s infrastructure of rails and highways at the intersection of Chrysler Freeway and Grand Boulevard. It attempts an unusual bridging of uses, through buildings with a radically inflated FAR, over the underused sites adjacent to rail and road lines. The linearity of the structures draws from the linear movement of the infrastructure itself.
a cultural narrative as a place for the collective.
The crossover of industrial, residential and commercial axes defies the monouse of the infrastructure below, by having a gradient-like transition of uses from one side of the freeway to the other. Meanwhile, at the convergence, the complex embodies
At the high speeds of the freeway and railway, the complex is designed to be conceived as a continuous object; however, a pedestrian would experience it as a collection of buildings.
Volume III: DEVISE
Parts of the complex have modular elements that add to the transformational aspects of the proposal. The modules play a role in either constructing the buildings from the beginning, in relation to market growth, or they can be added to the facades as emergent connections between different uses within the buildings.
The nexus speculates on the concept of Mixed-Use buildings through vertical and horizontal crossovers. Simultaneous Urbanisms: Radical-con-nexus
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industrial
Commercial
neighborhood
Commercial
commercial Simultaneous Urbanisms: Radical-con-nexus
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83° 3’ 41.742’’ W
+
42° 22’ 20.6148’’ N
URBAN PARAMETERS FAR
floor area / plan area GSI
built area / plan area OSR
plan-built area / floor area
GROSS FLOOR RATIO AREA.......................................................
0.39
NET FLOOR RATIO AREA............................................................
0.51
GROUND SPACE INDEX................................................................
0.18
OPEN SPACE RATIO........................................................................
1.60
PERCENTAGE OF PUBLICLY OWNED LAND......................
43%
RANGE OF FLOORS........................................................................
1-8
LAND USE MOST PREVALENT
INDUSTRIAL
LEAST PREVALENT
COMMERCIAL
92%
3.3%
CENSUS DATA: POPULATION
1950
1970
1990
2010
12,249
285
701
1,565
Simultaneous Urbanisms: Reconstructs
D-41
RECONSTRUCTS Luna Vital The three-dimensional speculations study the formal instances that allow different operational arrangements to form from existing conditions. Spatial reconstructs are playfully rearranged to replace outdated infrastructure or building parts, or to hang from dissected buildings. They are ready to be deployed to landfills, cogeneration plants, recycling warehouses, or denser sites as temporal installations. The most permanent circumstance includes the reconstruct as anchor for action, of unspecified programs.
D-42
In terms of composition of the device, a structural frame supports the combination of two similar components that inherently create the greater complexity of the reconstruct. In its articulation, four volumes perform as the catalyst and point of connection for the following data. The sequence of lines are the innermost parts of the device and are generators of its unique identity. The translation of data and mapping is defined within the intensity and patterns of these lines. Also, the vertical surfaces mediate
Volume III: DEVISE
the interrelation of the datum and the series of lines. A chain process - one event leads to the next. A duplicate component, a planometric overlap, a rotational movement; actions are merely methods for the greater purpose: reconstruction of space, with no additions nor subtractions, just an ongoing process of two stories fully intertwined, whose connections are beyond physical, simply a resultant.
Simultaneous Urbanisms: Reconstructs
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0.25 mile
83° 3’ 41.4’’ W
+
42° 19’ 52.6’’ N
URBAN PARAMETERS FAR
GROSS FLOOR RATIO AREA....................................................... 1.22 NET FLOOR RATIO AREA............................................................ 1.93
floor area / plan area GSI
GROUND SPACE INDEX................................................................ 0.39 OPEN SPACE RATIO........................................................................ 0.32
built area / plan area
PERCENTAGE OF PUBLICLY OWNED LAND...................... 41%
OSR
RANGE OF FLOORS........................................................................ 1-25 plan-built area / floor area
LAND USE MOST PREVALENT
COMMERCIAL
LEAST PREVALENT
INDUSTRIAL
51%
0.4%
CENSUS DATA: POPULATION
1950
1970
1990
2010
18,323
4,909
4,336
4,336
Simultaneous Urbanisms: An Island in the City
D-47
AN ISLAND IN THE CITY Shao-Chen Lu Exemplified by the highway system around Downtown Detroit, the city is segregated by huge infrastructure that occur at different scales, densities and even uses. The area between Downtown and Corktown is a good example of an area containing extremely different scales, on two ends of the spectrum. This divergence can represent a difference in social status, economic, and even political power.
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To represent and feature this situation along the boundary of Downtown Detroit, extremely different scales come together in one model: almost six blocks of Corktown fit on the rooftop of the MGM Grand Detroit. This operation reveals the social, economic and political imbalance along the downtown perimeter, and exposes new mechanisms that could challenge the existing situation.
Simultaneous Urbanisms: An Island in the City
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Simultaneous Urbanisms: An Island in the City
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83°02’18.3”W
42°20’16.4”N
+
URBAN PARAMETERS FAR
floor area / plan area GSI
GROSS FLOOR RATIO AREA......................................................
1.03
NET FLOOR RATIO AREA...........................................................
1.73
GROUND SPACE INDEX................................................................ 0.36 OPEN SPACE RATIO.......................................................................
built area / plan area OSR
0.40
PERCENTAGE OF PUBLICLY OWNED LAND...................... 43% RANGE OF FLOORS........................................................................ 1-30
plan-built area / floor area
LAND USE MOST PREVALENT
LEAST PREVALENT
HIGH DEN. RESIDENTIAL
GENERAL SERVICE
42%
6%
CENSUS DATA: POPULATION
1950
1970
1990
2010
12,026
6,264
6,020
6,734
Simultaneous Urbanisms: Church Express
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CHURCH EXPRESS Mengyu Jiang Churches in Detroit have proven to be the most stable institutional landscapes over time. Dispersed throughout the urban fabric, yet strongly connected to the suburbs through the many highways that crisscross Detroit, churches perform as social anchors and active places of congregation and worship.
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To celebrate the urban resilience of these tax exempt social nodes, this proposal speculates on the coupling of church and highway, creating a hybrid condition that maximizes the use, visibility and access to the church, by negotiating the highway air rights for redevelopment. The testing site bridges Downtown with Lafayette Park, and includes a school, a casino, an office building and
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some parking structures. The church is deconstructed and reassembled over the highway. Through aggregation of programs, the project suspends a mini-city; the ring from the church’s dome becomes a pedestrian circuit connecting both sides. Along the loop you can encounter several minichurches, learning rooms for children, a gas station, retail and viewing towers.
Simultaneous Urbanisms: Church Express
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0.25 mile
82° 54’ 56.2’’ W
+
42° 24’ 35.4’’ N
URBAN PARAMETERS FAR
floor area / plan area GSI
built area / plan area OSR
plan-built area / floor area
GROSS FLOOR RATIO AREA.......................................................
0.26
NET FLOOR RATIO AREA............................................................
0.35
GROUND SPACE INDEX................................................................
0.21
OPEN SPACE RATIO........................................................................
1.13
PERCENTAGE OF PUBLICLY OWNED LAND......................
37%
RANGE OF FLOORS........................................................................
1-3
LAND USE MOST PREVALENT
LEAST PREVALENT
RESIDENTIAL
INSTITUTIONAL
54%
3%
CENSUS DATA: POPULATION
1950
1970
1990
2010
1,563
1,546
1,209
1,264
Simultaneous Urbanisms: Bind-ary
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BIND-ARY Zhe Zhang The contrast between Detroit and Grosse Pointe renders through the residential fabric, a difference of completeness, with the Detroit side seen as blight by the other side. The boundary between the two cities becomes a buffer to protect Grosse Pointe residents, though they need to cross it to access services in Detroit frequently. With one wide, divided two-way avenue, enormous amounts of asphalt-paved parking lots and several commercial boxes with huge footprints, the current boundary condition distinguishes itself with a different urban fabric, and enhances the contrast between the two sides. In fact, the underlying tension is far from being fully revealed. With half of the road closed and reclaimed, new interventions occupy the boundary between the two cities.
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In this newly reclaimed space, new interventions deploy seeds of urbanity through playful and expressive artifacts of different dimensions and characteristics, creating a distopic landscape. The proposal builds on the notion of a wall as both a mechanism of segregation and inclusion, protection and occupation, reacting to surrounding pressures and urban needs. Walls become spatial activators by defining, containing, and stitching new public spaces. With the new walled urbanity in place, the long-time invisible wall of exclusion between the two cities can be challenged and dissolved because of the unavoidable penetration by Grosse Pointe residents, under the economical mechanism of land value difference between the two sides.
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E
PRACTICES AND
D DISCOURSES ON URBANISM
The following pages compile a series of contemporary practices and discourses around urbanism. At times presented in opposition to each other by their practitioners and followers, this section examines their core ideas and most representative projects in operation simultaneously, as productive drivers in the formulation of future urbanities worldwide. Global in scope, the different approaches generate many possible approaches, in any given territory. As such, Detroit is a fertile ground for experimentation on the many ideas and polemics these different urbanisms represent. Throughout the semester, the studio hosted conversations with a variety of design professionals based in Detroit. We learned about their larger agendas, and engaged in conversation about their work in legacy cities. Each designer approaches the post-industrial landscape in a way sensitive to the found contextual conditions. These conversations were an influential part of our design development and critical for understanding the agency of urban design under complex political, economic, and social circumstances.
an anti-urban understanding of the built form; a conception of space/time as matter/flow, fragmentary and continuous; no single condition of origin
POST
01
URBA
Source: http://dip9.aaschool.ac.uk
If not further annotated, all images are from Post Urbanism and Re Urbanism by Michigan Urban Debates, edited by Roy Strickland
RE
ANISM
a rediscovery of urban form; urbanism is a condition with no stylistic categories as in architecture; comprised of fundamentally constant spatial elements
At the turn of the twenty-first century, the University of Michigan sponsored a series of debates among various strands of contemporary urban design. One such debate was held pitting two ideologies as opposites in how they approach the existing fragmentary nature of our cities: Post urbanism versus re-urbanism.
Source: lib.berkeley.edu
jacques derrida
Peter Eisenman
Source: novusordonapoleonis.tumblr.com
Source: www.gettyimages.com
Colin Rowe Source: www.datuopinion.com
robert venturi Source: http://coffeewithanarchitect.com
manfredo tafuri
Source: http://crosspollenblog.wordpress.com
others
Source: www.arch2o.com
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Source: http://darinhurst.wordpress.com
Source: www.zigersnead.com
LINEAGE OF THEORISTS While neither party would label themselves with their respective assigned titles, Peter Eisenman took on the position of the post-urbanists, rooted in urban theory shaped by the writings of Jacques Derrida and Manfredo Tafuri. Littenberg/Peterson understand an urban theory rooted in their experience as practitioners. All three were greatly influenced by Colin Rowe at Cornell University.
richard meier Source: www.richardmeier.com
Barbara Littenberg + Steven Peterson
milton keyes new town Source: www.pilotcities.eu
Source: www.imagesofbirmingham.co.uk
Source: www.wikipedia.org_murcia_cathedralsquare1
Discourses on Urbanism: Re/Post Urbanism
Source: www.machado-silvetti.com
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others
URBANISM Both Eisenman and Peterson/Littenberg’s proposals made the cut for top six finalists in the design of the World Trade Center Memorial. Adding to the debate’s richness, their proposals were presented to illustrate their theoretical understanding of urbanism. Eisenman’s project focused on preserving the scar left in the urban tissue as part of the Word Trade Center memorial, not trying to hide anything or fake a polished image on the site of a terrorist attack. Littenberg/Peterson (following spread) took the opposite approach by offering a “stitching together” of the urban fabric, with emphasis on pedestrian connectivity newly afforded by the destruction of the towers which were designed as a super block.
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WORLD TRADE CENTER PROPOSAL - EISENMAN
+
motivated by generating culture and advancing the “critical project” maintains tower footprints; green open space commemorates tower shadows fingers of influence into the city memorializes pain from national tragedy
amorphous urban space uncontained leaves ‘wound’ of Lower Manhattan
Discourses on Urbanism: Re/Post Urbanism
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-
URBANISM WORLD TRADE CENTER PROPOSAL - LITTENBERG/PETERSON
+
motivated by improving connectivity reknit urban fabric design for New Yorkers sequence of green spaces
presumptuous : healing according to whom baroque urban forms seem static or applied “uninspiring architecture”
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urbanism
+ Source: http://wikimedia.org
photo source: Melia West
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Source: www.dr4ward.com
Source: http://w-dog.net
A DEBATE: SO WHO WON? Regardless of diverse publics and cultures, plural points of origin, or our ability to utilize technology, data, and advancements in materials, the “subject� of architecture and urbanism is still the human person. Certain urban forms continue to relate to the proportion of the human body in familiar patterns. While it is crucial to debate who has a right to shape the city, and for and according to whom, the city remains to be operated upon by individuals in spite of their brokenness, in hopes of improving the quality of life. In fact, this is the very ingredient which makes the urban condition so rich.
Discourses on Urbanism: Re/Post Urbanism
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02
CITIES: X LINES LINE 04 / Joan Busquets and Felipe Correa
RECONFIGURED SURFACES
According to Busquets and Correa, the book editors, Cities: X Lines catalogs the significant shifts designers have made in their projection of the city over the past decades, with new techniques in working the built environment, as deployed across the globe. The editors present ten approaches to contemporary urban design, two of which are Reconfigured Surfaces and Recycling Territories.
This line discusses four operations: restructuring, reconstruction, rethinking and improvement of residual spaces as described by Joan Busquets and Felipe Correa. The following projects are examples of these operations manifest in the built form.
Olympic Sculpture Park, Weiss-Manfredi
Source: :Cities X Lines: A new lens for the urbanistic project - Joan Busquets, Felipe Correa
Source: :Cities X Lines: A new lens for the urbanistic project - Joan Busquets, Felipe Correa
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APPROACHES TO CITY AND OPEN TERRITORY DESIGN
1
2
restructuring of fine grain open space, often derelict or outdated and in need of reprogramming
reconstructing residual spaces created by various infrastructures in the form of interventions focused on urban mobility
Cheonggye-Cheong Restoration, Multi-partner public organizations
Source: :Cities X Lines: A new lens for the urbanistic project - Joan Busquets, Felipe Correa
Source: :Cities X Lines: A new lens for the urbanistic project - Joan Busquets, Felipe Correa
Discourses on Urbanism: Cities X Lines
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3
rethinking geography of residual spaces and techniques with which they are reworked
Passeio Atlantico, Manuel de Sola-Morales
Source: :Cities X Lines: A new lens for the urbanistic project - Joan Busquets, Felipe Correa
Source: :Cities X Lines: A new lens for the urbanistic project - Joan Busquets, Felipe Correa
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improvement of collective spaces, often embedded in high density urban conditions
Privately-Owned Public Spaces, Jerold Kayden
Source: :Cities X Lines: A new lens for the urbanistic project - Joan Busquets, Felipe Correa
Source: :Cities X Lines: A new lens for the urbanistic project - Joan Busquets, Felipe Correa
Discourses on Urbanism: Cities X Lines
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LINE 07 / RECYCLING TERRITORIES
1
decentralization as response to the new metropolitan scale
Source: :Deccan Traverses - Anuradha Mathur, Dilip da Cunha
Source: :Deccan Traverses - Anuradha Mathur, Dilip da Cunha
Source: :Deccan Traverses - Anuradha Mathur, Dilip da Cunha
Source: :Deccan Traverses - Anuradha Mathur, Dilip da Cunha
Source: :Deccan Traverses - Anuradha Mathur, Dilip da Cunha
Source: :Deccan Traverses - Anuradha Mathur, Dilip da Cunha
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Deccan Traverses, Anuradha Mathur + Dilip da Cunha Architect and planners Anuradha Mathur and Dilip da Cunha have developed methods of mapping and categorizing field conditions that keep the history and features of a place visible in the representations. Each map receives a name specific to its physical and geographic condition, which in turn fits into one of the four mapping categorizations described below.
botanizing. uses the public garden in the city as a point of departure for a visual narrative that conveys the city’s botanical matrix
Source: :Deccan Traverses - Anuradha Mathur, Dilip da Cunha
Discourses on Urbanism: Cities X Lines
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triangulating. documents the first set of urbanistic actions, which defined the foundation and growth of Bangalore
Source: :Deccan Traverses - Anuradha Mathur, Dilip da Cunha
surveying. reconstructs the multiple geodesic expeditions that traversed this territory and singles out their agency in establishing an infrastructural framework
Source: :Deccan Traverses - Anuradha Mathur, Dilip da Cunha
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picturing. engages picturesque painting as an art form that is both an aesthetic and a scientific practice, and redefines it as an effective device able to isolate, archive and transplant elements within the landscape
Source: :Deccan Traverses - Anuradha Mathur, Dilip da Cunha
Discourses on Urbanism: Cities X Lines
Source: :Deccan Traverses - Anuradha Mathur, Dilip da Cunha
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2
reclaiming these territories aims for coherent integration and correction, and very precise gauging of the capabilities of the given territory and its natural systems
Caen Industrial Park, Dominique Perrault
Source: :Cities X Lines: A new lens for the urbanistic project - Joan Busquets, Felipe Correa
Source: :Cities X Lines: A new lens for the urbanistic project - Joan Busquets, Felipe Correa
Source: :Cities X Lines: A new lens for the urbanistic project - Joan Busquets, Felipe Correa
Source: :Cities X Lines: A new lens for the urbanistic project - Joan Busquets, Felipe Correa
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highlights projects of site reclamation developed in the last two decades, with the emergence of specific terms such as “terrain vague” and “derelict”, focusing on borderline, transitional spaces
Fresh Kills, Field Operations
Source: :Cities X Lines: A new lens for the urbanistic project - Joan Busquets, Felipe Correa
Discourses on Urbanism: Cities X Lines
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Source: :Cities X Lines: A new lens for the urbanistic project - Joan Busquets, Felipe Correa
Bordeaux Riverfront, Michel Desvigne
Source: :Cities X Lines: A new lens for the urbanistic project - Joan Busquets, Felipe Correa
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4
with the consideration of human settlement as part of a larger ecological system, the view of nature as something external to the urban settlement is now flexible
Duisburg Park, Peter Latz & Partner
Discourses on Urbanism: Cities X Lines
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INFRA ECO LOGI URBANISM RTVR
KEY CONCEPTS
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THE MEGALOPOLIS
LOGI
Megalopolis (sometimes called a megapolis; also megaregion, or supercity) is typically defined as a chain of roughly adjacent metropolitan areas.
Logi refers both to logics and logistics. Logi deals with the active role of protocols and spatial practices of production and operation, by investigating the territories and architectures that are traditionally considered the “back-stage” of cities.
INFRA
URBANISM
Infra stands for the infrastructure as a framework that underlies and manages the built environment as a physical, organizational, and operational structure shaping its forms and flows. The infrastructural systems of energy and mobility are conceived of as platforms to be rescripted and expanded, and as spaces that urban architecture might inhabit.
Urbanism is the materialization of society upon territory. RTVR argues that it is not limited to cities.
ECO
SCALING UP
Eco is the prefix shared by the words ecology and economy. Eco refers to the operational paradigm that is rooted in the ecological theories of systems thinking and in this vein, economies can be understood to operate through the principles of ecology.
The decline of a region must be seen as the initial phase of one more cycle of decline and renewal that has characterized the Great Lakes Megaregion (GLM). The book draws deeply on the region’s historic strengths - scaling up and connectivity - and showing how these strengths can be mobilized in new forms.
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A PROJECT FOR THE GREAT LAKES MEGAREGION
SPECULATIVE URBANISM: THE GREAT LAKES MEGAREGION FUTURE In the [ecological] paradigm, the relationship from parts to whole is reversed. The properties of the parts can be understood only from the dynamics of the whole. In fact there are no parts at all. What we call a part is merely a pattern in an inseparable web of relationships - Fritjof Capra
Source: :Infra Eco Logi Urbanism - RTVR
Discourses on Urbanism: Infra Eco Logi Urbanism
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SYSTEMS While Shed Cartographies are productive in revealing the relational fields of geographies, networks, flows and interactions within the territory, a different method of analysis is necessary to provide an understanding of how urban space is structured. On the ground, we are concerned with the physical artifacts and objects that literally figure the urban and shape the spatial relations within it.
Source: :Infra Eco Logi Urbanism - RTVR
EnviroShed
Source: :Infra Eco Logi Urbanism - RTVR
CommodityShed E-90
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Source: :Infra Eco Logi Urbanism - RTVR
GeoShed
Source: :Infra Eco Logi Urbanism - RTVR
CommuterShed
STRUCTURE
CODE
The highway and the interchanges that enable flows act as a strategic site where design interventions might possess agency.
The way in which structures, infrastructures, and cities operate over time is only partially due to their physical form, and more often a result of the legal, social and economic practices and frameworks that surround these situations.
Source: :Infra Eco Logi Urbanism - RTVR
Source: :Infra Eco Logi Urbanism - RTVR
Source: :Infra Eco Logi Urbanism - RTVR
Discourses on Urbanism: Infra Eco Logi Urbanism
Source: :Infra Eco Logi Urbanism - RTVR
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CONDUIT URBANISM The book presents a series of fragmentary utopic proposals set within the context of the GLM. The proposals are not complete urban schema, nor a totalizing vision; rather, it is a network of architectural interventions, simultaneously prototypical and specific, intertwined within existing urban infrastructures.
Source: :Infra Eco Logi Urbanism - RTVR
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THE GATEWAY, TORONTO
Source: :Infra Eco Logi Urbanism - RTVR
Discourses on Urbanism: Infra Eco Logi Urbanism
Source: :Infra Eco Logi Urbanism - RTVR
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THE CROSSING, DETROIT - WINDSOR
Source: :Infra Eco Logi Urbanism - RTVR
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Source: :Infra Eco Logi Urbanism - RTVR
Source: :Infra Eco Logi Urbanism - RTVR
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THE EXCHANGE, CHICAGO
Source: :Infra Eco Logi Urbanism - RTVR
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Source: :Infra Eco Logi Urbanism - RTVR
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04
URBAN ECOLOGY Kyong Park
The author was born in Korea and moved to the United States at the age of twelve. He received a BS in Architecture from the University of Michigan in 1978, and participated in a post-graduate independent program at the E-98
Institute of Architecture and Urban Studies in 1979. As an architect, artist, urban theorist and activist, Park’s research and artistic practice focuses on the city. He is particularly interested in the conditions which give Volume III: DEVISE
rise to shrinking cities (Detroit, for instance) and expanding cities (as in Asia) and to the formation and reconfiguration of border cities (such as San Diego/Tijuana).
Co-founder of the International Center for Urban Ecology (iCUE) nomadic laboratory for future cities
Source: Book - Urban Ecology Detroit and Beyond
What is the book about? The book is a compilation of projects and essays on Detroit and many other moving cities around the world. It projects Detroit and its issues onto existing or developing global contexts. It examines the post-industrial city from a fresh perspective and articulates the ironies of Detroit’s current condition. It builds upon previous projects and exhibitions that demonstrate that architecture and cities are not commodities to be used and discarded.
Source: content.time.com
Why Urban Ecology? Kyong Park uniquely conceives work on urban ecologies suggesting a much broader approach to the city than might first be offered, especially considering that the term ecology is largely assumed to deal only with green or sustainability practices.
Source: www.63alfred.com
Aerial image Detroit 1949
In the satellite photos from the center of Detroit, one can see that it is actually as green as the farm land beyond the suburbs; a condition where even wild animals, like deer and coyote migrate to the city. When the center depopulates, nature enters the city and replaces the people. This combination of natural and artificial ecology gave him the idea of urban ecology. It is not only based on the idea of green, but its considered that a city has an ecology of its own, just like the natural world lives in its own method of ecological behavior. This leads to the argument that a city is an organism, rather than a machine. Aerial image Detroit 2015
Why Detroit and Beyond ? ‘Beyond’ was added to explain that the condition of Detroit is not an isolated one. Detroit is one of many examples of the problems of contemporary cities. Detroit is one of the most intriguing examples to understand the notion of urban ecology and moving cities, as well as helping to understand many active ingredients, and/or a general principle for other cities in other nations, territories and continents. ‘Beyond’ means exploring the expansion of these principles in all places, globally. The book also contains work that Park has done in Europe, especially in East Germany.
Discourses on Urbanism: Urban Ecology
Source: en.wikipedia.org
Mexico–United States border - To the right lies Tijuana, Baja California, and on the left is San Diego, California.
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Source: Book index - Urban Ecology Detroit and Beyond
Why other voices in the book? The book has 26 other urban theorists who are difficult to categorize in one artistic sector. There are many disciplines that are engaged simultaneously in multi-disciplinary practices. Kyong Park tries to show that he is a part of a larger movement, where different disciplines and individuals are, unofficially, connected to one another. In this network, or self-generating movement, in which many people are participating, it is mutually constructing this new urban practice. All of these people work in, and are involved with, different cities in different continents.
Why define the effort as Guideline 1? Urban Ecology : Detroit and Beyond is the first of the guidelines that focuses on the explicit manifestation of eccentric urban culture, and the emergence of unconventional architecture and design by-products. An even larger portion of the built environment today is shaped by a building industry that is economically wedded to industrialized mass production standards, which by and large, ignore local culture, and environmental or topographical conditions. Guideline 1 aims to provide a stage for strategic approaches, targeted towards leftover topics and areas. Alternative ideas presented in the book raise questions, not necessarily conclusions. E-100
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Source: Book - Urban Ecology Detroit and Beyond
OVER MY DEAD CITY Peter Lang The city , if this term is still to hold any meaning, should be considered a vibrant manifestation of intense constructive and destructive energies, released from centric poles or linear alignments. The new urban conglomerations behave unpredictably, flipping rapidly from congested to decongested states, stretching perimeters, dropping centers. The city is becoming a metabolic work in progress that spills through space and time, chaotically reorganizing itself as it responds to an infinite number of economic and social pressures. International art exhibitions, along with similarly inspired architecture showcases, are taking place periodically in various cities, and have ultimately succeeded in engaging impressively large transnational audiences. “It seems high time to cast a more than superficial glance at artistic representations of [the] contemporary city.”
Source: Book - Urban Ecology Detroit and Beyond
Tokyo is characterized by its sense of lightness, the rapid cycles of building/demolition, and thus by a high degree of ephemerality.
SURVIVING TO CREATE Stephen Vogel Detroit, one of the richest regions in the USA, has suffered the ultimate in shrinkage. This condition however, creates an open laboratory for social and physical experimentation that attracts hardy residents, expanding corporations, self-reliant urban pioneers, artists and musicians. Often those seeking a different way of life than that advertised daily in the mass media as “the American way of living”. It is a city of contrasts: of hope and despair; of potential and frustration. The city is ripe with opportunities for cultural experimentation - with or without the approbation of government. Source: Book - Urban Ecology Detroit and Beyond
Empty Sign boards in the City of Detroit
Discourses on Urbanism: Urban Ecology
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THE URBAN ECOLOGY OF GLOBALIZATION Kyong Park
Disposable Cities The deurbanization of Detroit is a state of dramatic loss of population and economy. It has been taken over by an ecology of globalization.
Moving Cities Detroit is not simply shrinking, it is also moving: from the point of its origin towards its peripheries. Similar is the case for East Germany. Moving cities, following the vectors of capital dynamics, therefore gain new territories and leave non-transformative physical elements, such as architecture, behind to nature. The city no longer remains a place of settlement, but rather one of movement. A globalized financial system, or “Paper enterpreneurialism”.
Source: thedesignevangelist.com
Michigan Theatre, Detroit, USA
Cultural Impacts of Moving Cities Urban ecology of capitalism, the essence of investment is disinvestment: - Dominance of economic space over life space; resources are no longer counted as cultural or social accumulation - Temporariness of the city becomes permanent
Source: leipzigshrinkingcity.wordpress.com
Shrinking cities world wide
- Homogenization of the built landscape destroys the unique urban cell; it is designed to accommodate homogenized labor and capital
Shrinking Nations Like cities, the founding nation-states of the EU are actually shrinking, with a de-economization caused by depopulation. The idea of the state is not only being challenged by multinational corporations, but also by migrations from economically excluded zones and colonial territories. New supranational and de-territorializing regimes are defined by constant flows of movement (money, technology, people and goods) along the circuits of productions and exchange, in the wake of the demise of the nation-state, along with social and political principles.
Source: www.gizmag.com
Domínguez’ concept depicts compactly planned cities atop vast mobile structures, capable of crawling to new locations
A Genesis A movement in architecture and urbanism has been developing outside of architecture and urbanism. Architecture is the new political effigy; site and object of violent social reactions. Source: www.gizmag.com
Suburban planning E-102
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24260 THE FUGITIVE HOUSE iCUE Escaping Detroit, where over 200,000 homes have been set on fire or demolished since 1960, the Fugitive House’s survival comes with a condition. It must be invited for only temporary visits, always finding another host city to be reconstructed. It is both produced by the temporality of modernism, and discarded by modernism. Source: Book - Urban Ecology Detroit and Beyond
Source: Book - Urban Ecology Detroit and Beyond
Orleans , France 2001 Sindelfingen , Germany 2001 The Hague, The Netherlands 2002-04 Hamburg, Germany, 2002 Karlsruhe, Germany 2003 Dessau 2003-05 Sheffield , UK 2004 London, UK 2004 Leipgzip, Germany 2005
Source: Book - Urban Ecology Detroit and Beyond
Source: Book - Urban Ecology Detroit and Beyond
Discourses on Urbanism: Urban Ecology
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THE SLIDE FOR HOTEL NEUSTADT Thalia Theatre Hotel Neustadt was an international festival, with 23 contributions, submitted by 153 international artists, including the Thalia Theatre. It dealt with city shrinkage, life in a tower block, life in a hotel, and the integration of neighbors. The cooperation between architecture and theater created a possibility to change urban rules, and to establish new forms of communication.
Source: Book - Urban Ecology Detroit and Beyond
Source: Book - Urban Ecology Detroit and Beyond
Source: Book - Urban Ecology Detroit and Beyond
THE SLIDE saved Halle Neustadt
18 floors - new kind of entertainment
Source: Book - Urban Ecology Detroit and Beyond
Source: Book - Urban Ecology Detroit and Beyond
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Source: Book - Urban Ecology Detroit and Beyond
WORDS, IMAGES, AND SPACES: A LANGUAGE FOR A NEW CITY iCUE A Language for a New City was inspired by an anonymous street sign with the word "Economy" that pointed at nothing. iCUE posted eighteen signs with different words on telephone poles and empty houses. Forward Memory Create Community Future Imagine
Dream
Inspire
ECONOMY Construct Ecology
Utopia Will
Evolve Sustain Visions Protect Truth
Source: Book - Urban Ecology Detroit and Beyond
Source: Book - Urban Ecology Detroit and Beyond
Source: Book - Urban Ecology Detroit and Beyond
Source: Book - Urban Ecology Detroit and Beyond
Discourses on Urbanism: Urban Ecology
Source: Book - Urban Ecology Detroit and Beyond
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05
URBANISM: WORKING WITH DOUBT Steven Holl
In this book, Steven Holl tries to focus on the macro scale of cities through the lens of architecture. Using his own projects, he illustrates his ideas about how the fusing of landscape, urbanism, and architecture has become a new ground for exploration.
THEMES: 1. GEO-SPATIAL 2. EXPERIENTIAL PHENOMENA 3. SPATIALITY OF NIGHT 4. URBAN POROSITY 5. SECTIONAL CITIES (TOWARD NEW URBAN VOLUMES) 6. ENMESHED EXPERIENCE: PARTIAL VIEWS 7. PSYCHOLOGICAL SPACE 8. FLUX AND THE EPHEMERAL 9. BANALIZATION VERSUS QUALITATIVE POWER 10. NEGATIVE CAPABILITY 11. FUSION: LANDSCAPE / URBANISM / ARCHITECTURE
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BRIDGE OF HOUSES New York City, NY 1979
Existing superstructure of an abandoned elevated rail link. New character of the area as a place of habitation. Offers a variety of housing types.
Source: Book - Urbanisms: Working with Doubt
Sections
Provides a collection of housing blocks offering the widest possible range of social-economic coexistence. At one extreme are houses of singleroom-occupancy type, offered for the city’s homeless; at the other extreme are houses of luxury apartments.
Source: Book - Urbanisms: Working with Doubt
Source: Book - Urbanisms: Working with Doubt
Bridge of Houses shapes a public promenade, 1979
West 21st Street toward the Hudson River
Discourses on Urbanism: Urbanism
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Source: Book - Urbanisms: Working with Doubt
Protected desert landscape beyond new urban edge compared to uncontrolled sprawl E-108
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SPATIAL RETAINING BARS Sectional Cities Phoenix, Arizona 1989 A series of spatial retaining bars infer an edge to the city, and a beginning to the desert. The loft-like living areas in the structures’ upper arms hang in silent isolation, forming a new horizon with views of the desert sunrise and sunset. Communal life is encouraged by entering and exiting through courtyards at grade. Work is conducted electronically from loft-spaces that adjoin dwellings. Cultural facilities are suspended in open frame structures.
Source: Book - Urbanisms: Working with Doubt
Flexible cultural building frame
Source: Book - Urbanisms: Working with Doubt
Sectional urbanism
Source: psssm.tumblr.com
Discourses on Urbanism: Urbanism
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Source: Book - Urbanisms: Working with Doubt Flexible cultural building frame
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LINKED HYBRID Sectional Cities + Urban Porosity Beijing, China 2003-2009 The project formulates a porous urban space, inviting and open to the public from every side. As a “city within a city,” the new place has a cinematic urban quality; around, over and through multifaceted spatial layers. The project has programs that vary from commercial and residential to educational and recreational, providing a threedimensional public urban space. The ground level offers a number of open passages for residents and visitors to walk through with small-scale shops. On the intermediate level of the lower buildings, public roof gardens offer tranquil green spaces. At the top of the eight residential towers, private roof gardens are connected to the penthouses. A series of elevators act like a “jump cut” to another series of passages on higher levels. The project goal of the public sky-loop and the base-loop is to constantly generate random relationships; functioning as social condensers, offering a special experience of city life to both residents and visitors.
Source: Book - Urbanisms: Working with Doubt
Sketch of the project
Beijing 1900 (1) shaped by the ancient rule: that new buildings could not be tall enough to look over the walls of the Forbidden City. Together with the giant block size set in the grid, this gave birth to the hutong courtyard typology. After 1980 Beijing grew vertically and outward (2). With isolated towers and “gated communities” (3) Horizontally connected and porous buildings.
Source: Book - Urbanisms: Working with Doubt
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Source: Book - Urbanisms: Working with Doubt
Three public circulation loops: at ground level, on top of the lower buildings, and the loop of skybridges
Source: Book - Urbanisms: Working with Doubt
A variety of functions in the semipublic bridge loop connecting eight towers via eight bridges Discourses on Urbanism: Urbanism
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WATER URBANISMS: EAST
Kelly Shannon and Bruno De Meulder, editors
WHAT IS WATER URBANISM? The ambition of water urbanism is to contribute to a base of the city, where hydrological issues are dealt with in a natural, integrated and socially-just way.
Qunli Stormwater Park
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Painting on Chinese Traditional Cities along a River
Why is water critical? Whether in cities, villages or otherwise, the settlement of man requires the tapping of water sources for distribution in one way or another: consumption, pollution, drainage and so forth to be organized, maintained and managed.
Why Asia? Waterways were important for transportation, defense and livelihoods. They represent profits, power and danger, while they were centers of public life. The vast scale of urbanization in Asia is a challenge. Asia has a deeply rooted habit of using rivers as collectors and carriers of waste. Today, water is again a part of a more integrated approach to the urban condition in which the natural force of water is combined in constructive interplays with the civilizing character of cities.
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PART 1: CONTEMPORARY POSITIONS Part 1 consists of several case studies at different scales in China, Thailand, Indonesia, and Vietnam. They are organized around the narration of the destructive impact of engineering-centered approaches on the environment, in dealing with water management.
Case Study: Sanlihe River, China As industrialization and urbanization progressed, the Sanlihe suffered the same fate as other rivers throughout China. Beginning in the 1970s, it became the city’s backside, a neglected space, a sewer and waste-disposal site that no longer resembled a river. The water disappeared and its meaning as a life source vanished.
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Sanlihe Greenway: Recovery of the Mother River An ecologically-sound recovery of the Sanlihe River became the catalyst for improving existing and establishing new urban development. Under the high embankment of the Luan River, a pipe controls flow to the Sanlihe and a riparian wetland system. Flooding is mitigated while storm water runoff is collected, purified and disseminated throughout the wetlands.
Everyday Recreational Space Project amenities include everyday recreational space, and access to fishing sites because it is a popular local pastime. Likewise, native grasses and wild flowers require little maintenance along the riverbanks and recreational trails.
“Big Foot” Aesthetics The Sanlihe Greenway’s luxurious vegetation is representative of “big foot” aesthetics, rooted in productive landscapes and everyday cultural practices, as opposed to “little foot” or traditional Chinese gardens and ornamental urban horticulture. The metaphor references the ancient practice of foot binding. Big foot aesthetics celebrates the beauty of the natural and ordinary.
Step-Stones to Tree Islands The Sanlihe Greenway’s water-centered public spaces integrate stormwater management, habitat restoration, and pedestrian and bicycle paths. Streams flow around tree islands and preserved plantings. Paths of stones organize pedestrian access to particular areas. Pictures of Sanlihe Project Discourses on Urbanism: Water Urbanisms
Source: Water Urbanisms East
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PART 2: PRACTICES REVISITED Part 2 explores three main topics: The role of water in the landscape. How those circumstances create the need for better water management. How whole cultures were based on those water practices.
Case Study: Subak in Bali, Indonesia The traditional human-nature system is dependent on syncing natural cycles with biophysical processes. Take for example the original rice growing calendar. The introduction of pesticide and an expansion in the tourist industry triggered interruptions to the original cycle of rice paddies, causing water pollution and aquifer privatization.
The Subak Rice Growing Calendar The 180-day rice growing cycle has been adapted over millennia to optimize seasonal precipitation levels and rice productivity. Balinese cultural and ceremonial life is completely intertwined with the growing of rice and its seasonal cycles.
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The Subak Nutrient Cycle Monsoon rains falling on Bali leach nitrogen, phosphate and potassium from the volcanic soils of the sacred mountains to provide fertilizer transported via the subak irrigation canals.
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The project sought to: Retrofit ancient agrarian landscapes with bio-cultural conservation and educational programs that translate across the scale of watersheds. By coupling the micro-scale design of interpretive experience and climate comfort amplification with the macro-scale design of livelihood preservation and ecological conservation, once myopic tourism interventions will perform multiple functions. Retrofit underutilized museums by adjusting boundaries that extend visitor perceptions into the landscape as the spiritual and ecological are enfolded with this new museum territory. Physiological manipulations cool environs to increase visitor comfort in extreme conditions. Landscape interventions create responsive microhabitats that amplify the interpretive ancient archaeological and sacred cosmological experience. By choreographing a series of landscape interventions that engage the river, sacred views, wind, ambient sounds and other atmospheric conditions, physiological changes reinforce the other-worldly nature of the experience. An understanding of ecological relationships and species symbiosis assists farmers in producing organic rice and supporting the rejuvenative subak rice terrace cycle. Discourses on Urbanism: Water Urbanisms
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PART 3: EXPLORATIONS AND SPECULATIONS Part 3 includes several short design projects. They focus on the design aspect of hydrological urbanisms. These designs generate new approaches to integrating water, nature, and urbanized areas into a single system.
Case Study: Ecological Shoring, Bangladesh Rising sea-levels are causing conflicts of competing land uses for agriculture, industry, housing and economic growth. In Bangladesh, this is mitigated through innovative design: the re-growth of mangrove trees and the restructuring of the brick industrial landscape is envisioned as a functioning constructed wetland. Each pocket of space within the woven design serves a purpose for marshland, water distillation, fish ponds, clay mixing, brick drying, agricultural growth or pedestrian circulation.
The Sundarbans Mangrove Forest
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MECHANISMS: Policy, Root Structure, Tides, Ecological Systems, Soil Erosion, Patternings, Infrastructure, Landscape Ecologies, Agriculture
The brick industry of Bangladesh converts mangrove-lined shores into flood-prone industrial sites
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Cellular Network of programmatic modules with water as the linking medium
Natural Habitat Program module along the shoreline
Programmatic modules
Phasing a cellular wetland along the Rupsha River, Khulna which accretes existing brick field kilns and drying areas Discourses on Urbanism: Water Urbanisms
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EVALUATION Water urbanism is one articulation of landscape urbanism as it uses the structuring capacities of the landscape. It is at the same time ecological urbanism in that its ecological function is only one of the layers that the water system carries. It aims to generate social, cultural and economical values.
River City Banjarmasin, 1916 Since its foundation in 1526, Banjarmasin, located near the confluence of the Barito and Martapura rivers, has been a water-based city. According to legend, the city once had 107 rivers, creeks and canals. E-122
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ON LANDSCAPE URBANISM
Center 14: On Landscape Urbanism is a book which calls for the field of Landscape Urbanism so be considered as its own discipline. The book is divided into three parts: Origins, Essays, and Assays.
Architecture
Urban Design
Landscape Urbanism
Urban Planning
The book is of pivotal importance to the thought paradigm of utilizing landscape as the primary framework element of our cities. Landscape Architecture
I: ORIGINS
This section re-presents sixteen original articles considered by the editors to be foundational to the discipline. The articles are presented chronologically, and embody a wide ranging discourse, covering topics in ecology, criticism, methodology and urbanization. Most are written by authors who did not and could not know that their work might one day be appropriated within the present discourse. These articles have
Dean Almy
Editor of Center 14 : On Landscape Urbanism Associate Professor of Architecture, Director of the Graduate Program in Urban Design Professional degree in architecture at Cornell University, and a postprofessional degree in architecture and urban design at The University of Texas at Austin Walter B. Sanders Fellow at the University of Michigan in 1989 Partner of Atelier Hines Almy Architects
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been frequently cited in literature and are both distinct from and complimentary to the recent series of exploratory articles that attempt to codify landscape urbanism’s current definitions; brought together for the first time in a single source ready for textbook use. The hope is that the diffusion of the landscape urbanism meme, which has embedded itself into studios and seminars throughout the academy, will thus be expanded.
A DISCUSSION ON THE INDIVIDUAL IN THE CITY Joachim Schneider “Landscape is primarily... The sensual impression a person has that is created by a section of the surface of the earth including the sky above.�
According to Schneider, landscape has been romanticized as being the antithesis of city; it is comprised of rolling hills, trees, and rocks. He argues that we must discover the city as landscape. We must question if people are a part of the landscape. Landscape is not a mechanism by which cities are generated due to economic reasons, but is instead a glue or binding agent that occupies the inbetween space. Schneider argues that landscape is not an afterthought of city making, but actually thrives in this liminal capacity. Discourses on Urbanism: Landscape Urbanism
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II. ESSAYS The second section is comprised of a series of articles that attempt to bridge the divide between theories of landscape urbanism and its practice. These articles range from illuminating precedents for a reinvented practice, to the documentation of new spatial propositions.
“We have chosen not to reprint material that has been widely disseminated and available through other journals. Some of the authors’ work is primarily on the ground, outside academia; the work of others is firmly entrenched within it, or is attempting to position itself at the intersection, perhaps even looking to redefine professional practice.�
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PRECEDENTS FOR A NORTH AMERICAN LANDSCAPE URBANISM Charles Waldheim Waldheim argues that landscape is the fundamental building block to city-making, not architecture. Considers landscape urbanism as a city in the landscape as opposed to landscape in the city. Explains two projects to make this case: Broadacre by Frank Lloyd Wright and New Regional Pattern by Ludwig Hilberseimer. Explains that Broadacre City was a critique of the capitalist-centralized industrial city, and that Frank Lloyd Wright advocated for de-centralization. New Regional Pattern was on the forefront of de-centralization and the building of federal highways arguing for a low density pattern of settlement units following the highway system. Both projects were in response to the economic injustices and unhealthy conditions of the industrial city. Outside of the socio-political context of these projects, both examined the role of representation. His critique of these projects is that there is too much responsibility put onto the architect by society; they lack in the dimensions of ecological discourse.
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III. ASSAYS “In March 2002 we invited five teams of practitioners, each comprised of landscape architects and architects, to Austin and gave them twenty-four hours to investigate an interdisciplinary and collaborative approach to the problem of the margins of our city. The intention of this demonstration was not to arrive at solutions, but simply to expose some of the underlying assumptions and methodologies behind the work of contemporary Landscape Urbanism.
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Center 14: On Landscape Urbanism is not meant to be definitive. Its aim is to supplement the existing literature of the discipline, and to expose its roots. We hope that it demonstrates the potential behind the methodologies landscape urbanism might employ to address the most difficult design and planning dilemmas presently facing the urban project.�
THE GOVALLE DEMONSTRATION PROJECT MICRO-MANIFESTOS, AGENCIES AND REPRESENTATIONS Anuradha Mathur + Dilip Da Cunha
The primary objective for Mathur and Da Cunha was to challenge the concept of landscape as merely being an infrastructure projecting a scene. They also challenged the “urb” of the urban condition by questioning what other settlements are available to designers. They did not acknowledge the edge condition, but saw it as a lace in its own right. They claim that Landscape Urbanism is less about a specific landscape and more about suspending it within the particularity of place.
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TYPOLOGICAL URBANISM Lee and Jacoby, editors
Image source: www.wiley.com
Book Cover
www.gsd.harvard.edu Image source:Typological Urbanism Projective Cities. Architectural Design
Christopher’s Additional Typologial Researches
www.gsd.harvard.edu
www.serie.co.uk
www.gsd.harvard.edu
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TYPE & TYPOLOGY In the editor’s introduction, they explain the nuance of typology: “There are three essential predicaments of the relationship between architecture and the city. Firstly, architecture merely responds to the rapid changes of urbanism. Secondly, urbanism forms in emerging mega cities in developing countries are very different from the Western models. Finally, architecture is incentivized by market economy. So the relationship between city and architecture has to be rethought.”
Typology is a discourse, theory, treatise (method) or science of type. Its reduction to categories of use is limiting, as buildings can change their functions over time. The essential quality of change and transformation, rather than its strict classification or obedience to historical continuity, endows type with the possibility to transgress its functional and formal limitations.
Type is an element, an object, a thing that embodies the idea. Type is abstract and conceptual rather than concrete and literal. This notion of type as model, graphically reducible to diagrams, introduced precepts, classification, taxonomy, repetition, differentiation and reinvention. Durand and Quatremere classified buildings into diagrams or models according to their genres.
Image source:Typological Urbanism Projective Cities. Architectural Design
Bolam Lee, Multiplex City Seoul, South Korea, Diploma Unit6 Urban Strategy for Design
Image source:Typological Urbanism Projective Cities. Architectural Design
Max von Werz, Open Source Fabric, Bilbao, Spain, Diploma Unit6: Urban Plan
Image Source:Typological Urbanism Projective Cities. Architectural Design
Urban Plan Fragment
Image source:Typological Urbanism Projective Cities. Architectural Design
Bolam Lee, Multiplex City Seoul, South Korea, Diploma Unit6
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THE CITY AS PROJECT: TYPES, TYPOLOGICAL OBJECTS, TYPOLOGIES Marina Lathouri In “The City as Project: Types, Typological Objects and Typologies” Marina Lathouri provides a critical and historiographical discussion of type’s role in defining the architectural object and its relationship to the city.
Cities (including suburbs) have different stakeholders. Typology is a response to the city context. OMA, Toyo Ito, and SANAA’s recourse to typology is necessary in dealing with urban context. Typological Urbanism, in conclusion, brings together arguments and projects that demonstrate a commitment to the empowerment of the architect to once again utilize his or her disciplinary knowledge. It is a re-engagement with architecture’s exteriority and architectural experimentation, governed by reason and (re)inventions,
underpinned by typological reasoning, answering not only “how to”, but also “why do”. Urbanism is the expansion of human settlement, driven primarily by economic pursuits, while the city is the consolidated, concentrated settlement that precedes the “urb”.
“Building as an element of ‘permanence’ is able to act as the typological repository of a city’s history, construction and form.”
Image source: Typological Urbanism Projective Cities. Architectural Design
Yifan Liu, The Great Flight Forward, Chengdu, China, Diploma Unit6: Urban Plan of Airport E-132
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PENANG TROPICAL CITY, MALAYSIA, OMA João Bravo da Costa Distinct building types are grouped together to form “islands of exacerbated difference” as yet another enactment of Koolhaas’ idea of the ‘Cities within the City’ developed with OM Ungers in 1977.
differentiated urban environment by allocating architectural and urban types. Architectural types (hotel, apartment tower, parking garage) are concentrated in clusters. Starting form a simple set of typological rules, each cluster can be further developed by a different architect.
Typological distribution of program is a method of giving shape to a
“The urban environments are
characterized by typological combinations (not individual buildings). This is a method focused on types rather than on objects - a typological thinking concentrated on an intermediate scale of operation, reaching into infrastructural generality as well as architectural specificity.” -João Bravo da Costa
Image from Typological Urbanism Projective Cities. Architectural Design
Image from Typological Urbanism Projective Cities. Architectural Design
Image from Typological Urbanism Projective Cities. Architectural Design
Image from Typological Urbanism Projective Cities. Architectural Design
Discourses on Urbanism: Typological Urbanism
Image source:Typological Urbanism Projective Cities. Architectural Design
Program Diagram
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SINGAPORE BUONA VISTA MASTERPLAN COMPETITION Toyo Ito and Associates In writing about their own project, the architecture firm Toyo Ito and Associates explain that: “[The] project develops the use of prototypical elements - albeit in a more ‘fluid’ manner - that bears traces to his preoccupations with the problems of collective form that typified the Metabolist movement of the 1960s in Japan.”
Image source: Typological Urbanism Projective Cities. Architectural Design
Design Masterplan
Continuing:
“In [the] proposal, the city is envisioned as aggregating into a continuous whole, fusing infrastructure, building, open spaces and services into an integrated piece of architecture.”
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Image from Typological Urbanism Projective Cities. Architectural Design
Image source: Typological Urbanism Projective Cities. Architectural Design
Concept Diagram
Image source: Typological Urbanism Projective Cities. Architectural Design
HNC Typical Plan
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FORMERLY URBAN Julia Czerniak, editor
FORMERLY URBAN questions what the formerly urban condition means for architecture today: What are the challenges Rust Belt cities face? How can citizens, communities, municipalities, legislators, institutions effectively operate in a post-industrial setting? How can emergent landscapes be a generator of new cultural forms or conditions?
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AUTHORS MCLAIN CLUTTER is an architect and writer who teaches at the University of Michigan Taubman College. His recent essays have appeared in Grey Room and MONU, and the work of his design practice, Master of None, has been exhibited internationally. JULIA CZERNIAK is a Professor of Architecture at Syracuse University and the inaugural director of UPSTATE: A Center for Design, Research, and Real Estate. She is also a registered landscape architect and founder of CLEAR, an interdisciplinary design practice. Czerniak’s design work, complemented by a body of writing, focuses on urban landscapes. DON MITCHELL teaches urban, cultural, and Marxist geography at Syracuse University. He is the author of The Right to the City: Social Justice and the Fight for Public Space (2003) and, most recently, They Saved the Crops: Labor Landscape and the Struggle for Industrial Farming in Bracero Era California (2012). EDWARD MITCHELL is principal of Edward Mitchell Architects and co-founder of Komanda, an architectural research group. He is an Associate Professor at the School of Architecture at Yale University, where he teaches theory and design and is director of the post-professional M.Arch. II program. HUNTER MORRISON is Executive Director of the Northeast Ohio Sustainable Communities Consortium, a regional planning coalition. He has been the Director of the Center for Urban and Regional Studies, Director of Campus Planning and Community Partnerships at Youngstown State University, and Planning Director for the city of Cleveland. MARC NORMAN has a master’s degree in Urban Planning from UCLA, and is vice president at Deutsche Bank in its Community Development Finance Group. In this position, he provides loans and investments to organizations serving low-income communities throughout the U.S. MARK ROBBINS is former Dean of the Syracuse University School of Architecture and the university’s Senior Advisor for Architecture and Urban Initiatives. He was previously Director of Design at the National Endowment for the Arts, Curator of Architecture at the Wexner Center for the Arts, and an Associate Professor in the Knowlton School of Architecture. He received a fellowship in the visual arts at the Radcliffe Institute and a Rome Prize from the American Academy in Rome. His book Households was published by Monacelli Press. DAVID GRAHAME SHANE is a critic, historian, and Adjunct Professor of Architecture at Columbia University and Cooper Union, both in New York. He has lectured extensively in Europe, the United States and Asia, and published widely in architectural journals. His books include Recombinant Urbanism: Conceptual Modeling in Architecture, Urban Design and City Theory (2005) and Urban Design Since 1945: A Global Perspective (2011). CHARLES WALDHEIM is the John E. Irving Professor at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design. Waldheim coined the term “landscape urbanism”to describe emergent practices at the intersection of contemporary urbanism and landscape. He is a recipient of a Rome Prize fellowship from the American Academy in Rome and has served as the Cullinan Chair at Rice University, a Sanders Fellow at the University of Michigan, and a visiting scholar at the Canadian Centre for Architecture. Discourses on Urbanism: Formerly Urban
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LANDSCAPES M.O.
Julia Czerniak “How does landscape appear and perform when constrained by maintenance and management – muscled instead by ecological, socioeconomic, and political forces?” –page 151
Themes include: Urbanization patterns Metropolis to the megalopolis Working with the “machine age” infrastructures Creating urbanity in “weak market” cities What does shrinking cities mean for architectural pedagogy?
Image source: beltmag.com
Rust Belt territory map
route traveled and cities visited
Rust Belt territory mapImage ll source: Formerly Urban E-138
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YOUNGSTOWN, OHIO One of the ten best towns to start a business Intriguing utilization of an event space Efforts to make it happen are what activates the space “Designers are masters at programming space ……..imagining program is not enough. Designers must think beyond the rather simple question of what to do toward the more complex one of how to get things done through non profits, the development community, the public sector, finance, real estate development to help facilitate it” – 154
CLEVELAND, OHIO Designed bus lanes and other features to make the system legible Interesting moment in which LEED ND is leveraged (ex. Upper Chester and St. Luke’s Hospital wanting to achieve it)
Image source: Formerly Urban
Cleveland Initiatives Discourses on Urbanism: Formerly Urban
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DETROIT, MICHIGAN Poster-child for the formerly urban Fascinating landscape succession within the residential vacancy The Urban Homestead Sectors (CDAD)
Comes with an energy component and tax abatements The idea of the naturescape which would require low maintenance yards, boosts air quality, and wildlife habitats
Opportunities to live in parts of Detroit that are heavily vacant and formed by a successional landscape
Detroit Zones Image source: Formerly Urban
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Dutch Elm Disease (1920s - 1990s)
1971
American Elm Ulmus americana Detroit lost half a million trees from 1950-1980 due to disease and attrition Czerniak brings up the idea of street names being erased over time but the ability of trees to be able to continue to define those lines, especially during the fall
1984
Detroit street with Elm Disease
Image source: Formerly Urban
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DETROIT DISABITATO Charles Waldheim
“For the architectural profession, the city of Detroit in the ‘90s entered a condition of meaninglessness precisely because it no longer required the techniques of growth and development that had become the modus operandi of the discipline” –Page 170
In ‘Detroit Disabitato’, Waldheim argues that architectural discourse has been bound up in an ideology dependent on growth, and it is time for the discipline to address the challenge of the shrinking city, and the type of urbanism it creates.
abandoned condition of Rome
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Detroit is the exemplar for urban decay. In 1990 the city attempted to concentrate and decommission the most blighted sectors in the city. It was never executed due to major push back from residents. In 1990 Detroit lost 1 % of its housing stock to arson, the same year the city funded the largest demolition program ever in American urbanism. “Reconsidering the formerly urban as a unique framework for thoughts suggests the need to develop new models, cases, theories, and practices for these sites and subjects.”
Waldheim calls for us to take a close reading of the past in order to imagine new landscapes of cultural form. Origins in the west have a lot of relation to Detroit’s contemporary condition.
“Landscape might be usefully re-situated as medium and method through which the formerly urban might aspire to the social environmental, and cultural conditions of the urban, absent of its traditional architectonic forms” – Page 180
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Meaning of Landscape Landscapes first began to be critically thought about during the Italian Renaissance when the elaborate depiction of “backgrounds” were depicted. Origins of landscapes have been informed historically by depopulation, abandonment, and decay of urbanized territories. Etymology of landscape: “the world itself ” –J.B. Jackson “The landscape is a portion of land which the eye can comprehend at a glance” Landscape as a way of seeing, or mode of subjectivity
Image source: 7 themes.com
searching for the meaning of landscape
Transformation of Landscape 1600s – English landscape established as genre of painting imported 1700s – Migrated from genre painting into a way of seeing the world or mode of subjectivity 1800s – In English, it referred to the land, if looked at in this way 1900s –Used to describe the activity of refashioning the land as if it were in a painting Image source: pinterest.com
romanticizing Rome’s abandonedness
Claude’s Landscapes Claude Lorrain – 1600s French painter living between the Renaissance and Baroque Eras Visual representation of classical Rome’s succession and abandonment
Liber Veritatis – “Book of Truth” compilation of Claude’s paintings He painted daily throughout the disabitato for the majority of his life.
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drawing of Rome’s abandonedness
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Disabitato – Uninhabited (Specifically referring to inside the Aurelian Wall in 16th-century Rome) A comparison to Rome’s forgotten landscape: Rome and Detroit both lost 1 million residents - Detroit lost 50% of its population over half a century - Rome lost 95% of its population over a millennium Rome devolved into a lawless wilderness of landscape succession; wolves roamed the streets at night, the Roman Forum was a place for livestock, infrastructure fragments were interspersed throughout the landscape. Vineyards, orchards, vegetable gardens, nurseries, occupied the disabitato; a juxtaposition between landscape cultivation and succession. Around the Coliseum, 420 plant species were documented, similar to the ghost gardens found today in residential parts of Detroit. Discourses on Urbanism: Formerly Urban
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CONVERSATIONS
MASTER OF NONE McLain Clutter is an architect, author and Associate Professor at the University of Michigan Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning. Clutter’s design and scholarship focuses on the role of architecture within the multidisciplinary milieu of contemporary urbanism.
Image source: mclainclutter.com
Incentive Network channels private investment to sites that are critical in providing public access across the wide bands of infrastructure severing downtown Dallas from the waterfront. The scheme identifies areas where the divisive highways and railways rest on the ground, comprising the best opportunities to bridge across the infrastructure. In exchange for the opportunity to build at these increased FAR’s, developers must provide public access and amenities at the elevated bridge level.
Radical Railbanking is a project that hijacks, and radicalizes the tactics of railbanking by manipulating geodemography through the productive misuse of conventional GIS software. In doing so, the project attempts to locate a constructive position, relative to the hegemony of market segmentation geodemography from which the architect can operate. Radical Railbanking uses GIS to analyze and recombine development potentials that are latent in the spatial and statistical relationships between the land parcels along Detroit’s rails. E-146
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CITY FORM DETROIT Virginia Stanard is an Assistant Professor of Architecture, and Director of the Master of Community Development at the University of Detroit Mercy. Her practice and teaching advocates community development through the collaborative design process.
Image source: cityformdetroit.com
One of the most admirable aspects of her work is it level of engagement and granularity spent with specific neighborhoods within the city. Most of the situations her projects engage are low-income settings that are catalysts for the neighborhood, by providing communities with basic urban amenities and interventions that amplify the neighborhood experience. Discourses on Urbanism: Local Practices
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AKOAKI
Image source: modelmedia.com
Image source: modelmedia.com
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Anya Sirota is an Assistant Professor at the University of Michigan Taubman College of Architecture + Urban Planning. Her interdisciplinary research broadly focuses on contemporary cultural production and its relationship to architecture. With emphasis on experimental interventions, cultural infrastructures, and design in the public realm, her work critically re-evaluates ways that architecture can sustain heritage and participate in public discourse.
Sirota’s architectural practice, Akoaki, has created a unique niche in Detroit for its ability to straddle academic or idealized ambitions with smart, organized strategies of realization. Her work focuses on emboldening the social and cultural productions that are already active on site, creating spaces that are simultaneously “cultural” and “productive”, without toil. Sirota’s sensitivity to the socioeconomic dynamics of the city renders her work extremely relevant to a fast-changing Detroit.
Her project O.N.E. Mile, in Detroit’s North End is centered around a renovated garage turned arts hub and events space. Through the thoughtful curation of image and programming, the project has taken on a life and narrative of its own.
KNÜVENER ARCHITEKTURLANDSCHAFT Thomas Knüvener is an architect, landscape architect, and Adjunct Professor at Texas A&M University. His work engages the reformulation of infrastructural and institutional landscapes for public appropriation, highlighting issues of identity and perception.
Image source: architekturlandschaft.de
The :metabolon memorandum outlines a global perspective in the proposal for a combined architectural and landscape architectural solution to create a new image for a landfill during the Regionale 2010. Landfills are often “non-places” that exist in conflict with their context. The memorandum followed a strategy of openness on several levels, including community participation. A circular route was developed with many viewing stations inwardand outward-looking - the idea being to better understand place.
Image source: architekturlandschaft.de
Image source: architekturlandschaft.de
The extension of South Campus Hochschule Niederrhein in Krefeld is accomplished with a new building for the Institute of Energy Efficiency and the Department of Industrial Engineering. The size of the area, which holds space for further institutional building, provides the opportunity to organize future urban planning and landscape architecture. The Central Valley acts as a rainwater retention area, where rainwater from the atrium and roof seeps, a sustainable operation of the new building.
Image source: architekturlandschaft.de
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AUTHORS Manasvi Bachhav holds a Bachelor of Architecture Degree from Sir J.J. College of ArchitectureUniversity of Mumbai, India. She is interested in exploring the potentials of Architecture within the temporality of the urban context through multiscalar interventions.
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Travis Crabtree holds a degree in Landscape Architecture from Mississippi State University. His research focuses on productive landscapes as a formative element within distressed urban conditions.
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Jonathan Hanna is a graduate of the University of Michigan Bachelor’s of Science in Architecture program. Born and raised in Detroit, he participates in the rich tradition of making in the region, and plans on working and living in the city after graduation.
Mengyu Jiang holds a degree in Architecture from South China University of Technology. She is interested in the design of inclusive communities, and the possibilities around new forms of urban governance.
Shao-Chen Lu holds a Bachelor of Architecture degree from Taiwan. His research focuses on the relationship between architecture and urban space. Post-graduation, he plans to keep working on projects that interrogate the role of architecture in the reconfiguration of urban settings.
Nishant Mittal holds a degree in Architecture from the Maharaja Sayajirao University Baroda in India. Interested in the agency of institutions and new forms of governance in the transformation of the distressed central city, he plans to stay in Detroit after graduation to practice as an urban designer.
Luneoufall Vital Gallego holds a degree in Architecture from Texas Tech University and is also pursuing a Master of Architecture from the University of Michigan, starting in Fall 2016. Her interest explores the limits between interpretation and design as agents for speculative futures.
Melia West holds a Bachelor of Architecture from the University of Notre Dame, with a concentration in Historic Preservation. With experience in corridor design plans, and walkable neighborhoods, she is committed to fostering a sense of place by building on existing assets and community initiatives.
Authors' Biographies
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Zhe Zhang holds a Bachelor of Architecture degree from Suzhou University of Science and Technology. Interested in Asian cities with high density, he is returning to China to practice as urban designer and architect, also doing research on the relationship between urban culture and urban form in Jiangnan cities.
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Volume III: DEVISE
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS To faculty and practitioners, for teaching us to look and see the many presents and futures that Detroit can sponsor. McClain Clutter Associate Professor of Architecture University of Michigan Principal, Master of None Margaret Dewar Professor, Urban and Regional Planning Director of the Real Estate Development Certificate University of Michigan Larissa Larsen Associate Professor, Urban and Regional Planning and Natural Resources University of Michigan Claire Leavengood-Boxer Master of Architecture Graduate, 2016 University of Michigan Anya Sirota Assistant Professor of Architecture University of Michigan Partner, Akoaki Virginia Stanard Assistant Professor of Architecture & Director, Master of Community Development Program University of Detroit Mercy Partner, City Form Detroit Acknowledgements
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TAUBMAN COLLEGE architecture + urban planning
University of Michigan Master of Urban Design
2015-2016