Chris Kline Thesis Research Portfolio

RECLAIM THE IN-BETWEEN CHRIS KLINE

Reclaim the In-Between Chris Kline Advisor B.D. Wortham-Galvin Committee Members L. Rudolf Barton

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Table of Contents

9 Question + Abstract

11 Overview + Project Goals

16 Case Studies

44 Strategy of Creative Practice

46 Timeline

48 Literature Review 5

RECLAIM • To rescue from an undesirable state; also : to restore to a previous natural state.

• To make available for human use by changing natural conditions.

• To obtain from a waste product or by-product : recover.

• To demand or obtain the return of.

• To regain possession of.1

IN-BETWEEN “In” provides the idea of interstitial space, physical or abstract’; the interface. “Between” shows the presence of different outside conditions; the environment. Lastly, the hyphen conveys the link between these two conditions, the relation. The relationship between the three can exist as non-hierarchical. The in-between has vast capacity for integration, it offers opportunities for intervention, and everything has yet to be done, knowing that the primary triggering of change is already there. There is a state of imprecision, indeterminacy and disorganization, and uncharted territories allow for an expanding set of interventions. The in-between exists by states of frictions, complex and in tension from the existence of heterogeneous elements.2

1. “Reclaim.” Merriam-Webster.com. Merriam-Webster, 2011.

Web. 20 November 2013.

2. Perrault, Dominique, Bernard Tschumi, Michel Desvigne, and Nasrine Seraji-Bozorgzad.

E2: exploring the urban condition. [Paris?]:Groupe E2, 2003.

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Question

Abstract

What new forms of urban public experience can emerge from the creative activation of seemingly under-utilized, vacant and residual urban space?

How can the existing in-between condition created by highway infrastructure on Portland’s Eastbank be reactivated for public engagement?

This project aims to investigate how architecture can help reclaim and reactivate the underutilized and vacant spaces created by transit infrastructure along Portland’s Eastbank. With the Eastbank located adjacent to the Willamette River and across from Portland’s downtown core, transit infrastructure creates a margin between the natural ecology of the river and the small industrial, yet emerging, Central Eastside. Underutilized sites beneath elevated roadways currently consist of ad-hoc parking lots and city storage, with pedestrian and bicycle access being difficult or non-existent.

These spaces exist in a state of stagnation. Participatory processes and community engagement are the activities which will support the overall design proposal, aiding in both the reactivation of these underutilized spaces and the means by which the public can be included in designing public space.

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Overview

Reclaiming the In-Between Opportunity exists in the landscape we have cultivated for our cities. The common result of modern urbanization and complex interaction of social, technological and economic processes have overlapped in the development of contemporary urban growth. Within the past century, a time of unprecedented growth and technological progress, effective spatial utilization, that values each parcel of land, has been forgotten. Policies and a value system that have encouraged low-intensity land-use and urban sprawl have led to a growth that has left behind margins and folds of vacant spaces. As cities fluctuate and density increases, people shift in and out of the urban core, the conditions of vacancies remain.

The idealized modern city is orderly: activities are categorized and assigned to particular zones intentionally designed to house them. Commerce takes place in shops, stores, malls and markets. Recreational activities take place in parks, gyms and sports fields. The routes between – streets, sidewalks and public transit – are intended for efficient vehicular and pedestrian traffic. This ideal guides architecture, urban design, zoning and other land use policies, with the goal of achieving a clean, safe, efficient and eminently predictable city.

Where we stand now, resources are becoming more scarce, population pressures continue to expand and demands rise to create a better quality living environments. A re-evaluation has started to take place, changing the values of the recent past. We are moving beyond the simplistic birds-eye view of urban design, beyond the common master planning approach toward urbanism that has dominated for the past century. Spaces are starting to be evaluated from new perspectives and new points of view. Understanding the complex systems that exist which govern how we use space, the traditional top down regulations start to dissolve and open up, allowing a more inclusive and democratic planning processes. In this new planning process, the public is called upon to take part in shaping the landscape in which they live.

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We must evaluate the detachment that has occurred between how people interact with the everyday built environment and the planning processes guiding the designs. Understanding potential and limitations is imperative to developing meaningful spaces, where we currently find stagnation.

Shifting toward reclaiming the land as a valuable asset as it was historically viewed, leads to more intense and creative development in the urban core.

Forgotten spaces are foregrounded through the movements of tactical urbanism, insurgent actions or guerrilla methods of reclaiming city space. City dwellers have begun to act, displaying the desire to utilize what is leftover, making something from nothing and creatively using the canvas of the cities spatial conditions. Residual spaces exist in the forms of the cities underused parking lots, obsolete industrial wastelands, derelict urban sites and the vast systems of overlapping infrastructure.

Urban transit infrastructure, highways, freeways and the interstate, once the backbone of prominent growth of our cities, currently have left us with dividing lines embedded deep into city development. Once a solution for accessing the city, these structures have cut off the city from the inside, removing vast quantities of land to make way for the automobile. Where is the opportunity?

With networks of highway systems becoming so ingrained into our cities’ fabric, being integral to the cities operation, is there opportunity to reclaim the highway as an asset in urban development? Examining the spatial conditions of the highway, we can find the vacancies, margins and in-betweens. Sites of vast potential, currently existing in states of ad-hoc under development, parking lots and city storage facilities, these spaces are too valuable to remain as leftover programs.

Looking at the condition existing on Portland’s East Side, a margin of highways overlap one another to creating a divide between the valuable resources of the river and the industrial landscape. A complex arrangement of elevated transit infrastructure creates difficult access to the river along with potent spaces

filled with underutilized parking and storage. With vacancies adjacent to one of the most active pedestrian and cycle lines, the Eastbank Esplanade, the in-between of the elevated freeways have become transitional zones, moving people through them as quickly as possible. To reside in this space currently seems dangerous and unsafe. Issues of scale, safety and the high number of transient dwellers, create an unwelcoming and inhospitable space. The unexploited potential of this site is frustrating yet moreover, exciting.

Exploring the factors that define the current conditions, from zoning, planning policies and the right to the space, this area of in-between will shed light on what to do with the margins created by the installation of the highway in Portland’s urban core. Through means of interventions and outreach, creating public engagement, the participatory process is paramount in aiding in the unrealized potential of these spaces. A negotiation between top-down planning policies with bottom-up emergence will help foster a proposal that moves beyond the traditional green public space. This proposal asks what new forms of urban public experience can emerge from the creative activation of these seemingly under-utilized, vacant and residual urban spaces.

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Project Goals

Serve as a catalyst project to counterbalance the implementation of the highways, redefining areas for more meaningful public use.

Engage the community in the design of public space.

More adaptable, non traditional public space.

Create more pedestrian access to the river.

Embrace the highway as the context, but mitigate for human use.

Improve safety in these areas.

Create a Portland specific space, but applicable and adaptable to similar conditions in other places.

Mitigate the Highway: Issues of noise and scale

Recast current views of mass transit infrastructure, to focus on opportunity rather than hindrance.

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CASE STUDIES

Buffalo Bayou Promenade SWA Group Houston, Texas

The BeltLine Ryan Gravel & Perkins + Will Atlanta, Georgia

Paris Viaducts + Promenade Plantee Patrick Berger Paris, France

Open Air Library KARO Architecten Magedeburg, Germany Folly for a Flyover Assemble London, England Make This Better Broken City Lab Windsor, Canda 596 Acres Various Brooklyn, New York

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Buffalo Bayou Promenade

Buffalo Bayou Promenade SWA Group Houston, Texas Meeting The Goals Examining the goals I am applying for my thesis and how this case study meets them.

Goal: Engage the community in the design of public space Goal: Create more pedestrian access to the river Goal: Mitigate for human use Goal: Improve Safety in these areas Goal:Recast views of mass transit infrastructure

Project Overview The Buffalo Bayou Promenade is the 1.2 mile critical link, tying the pastoral Buffalo Bayou Park to the West, with the Theater District and Houston’s downtown to the East. The prior site of the promenade had become a trash-soaked eye-sore, with towering freeway structures crossing overhead and flooding the area with runoff during rainstorms. Previously, the water running through the bayou was filled with debris and trash as it is located at a major flood point for downtown Houston.

Pedestrians in the area would drop 30’ below grade of surrounding streets, making it dangerous as visual connections were lost.

The Buffalo Bayou Partnership, a non-profit organization, aimed at revitalizing the Buffalo Bayou, commissioned landscape architecture firm SWA to provide early conceptual master plans transitioning the existing site into a more pastoral and pedestrian based one. Major regarding took place to both help in reconnecting sightlines, and reduces the impact of erosion and flooding issues. Creating access points and incorporating lighting along with public art installations provide beneficial elements to regaining pedestrian access.

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Buffalo Bayou Promenade

New lighting creates safer pedestrian conditions.

Design Features Pedestrian bridges improve site mobility.

Implementation of new paths foster multi-modal transit.

Open spaces allow for a diversity of programs to take place.

Using materials that contained qualities of durability, cost effectiveness and displayed contextual relevance, SWA was intricate in the details of the project. Recycled concrete swales were placed atop new berms, absorbing the runoff from the highways up above and helping reduce further flooding in the Bayou below. Mixing a variety of new plants replaced old monocultures, that were riparian and flood-resistant helped improve wildlife habitat, and soften the harsh urban infrastructure and mitigate the scale of the freeways.

Gabion edge treatments were placed along the edges, allowing for filtering of drainage from downtown Houston, along with creating safer and visually clear elements as one steps down towards the water. Place specific lighting was installed that had the ability to be submersed and stand up to potential vandalism.

There is also lighting redundancy, to make sure that the park was consistently illuminated, especially in the dark corners and under the freeway passes, which is a paramount element in creating a feeling of safety on the promenade. A specific set of lights, designed by consultants, carefully locates floodlights under major bridge structures; change from blue to white to blue in accordance with the lunar cycle radiating from Allen’s Landing, the birthplace of Houston.

The overall plan shows Buffalo Bayous reinvigorated green corridor.

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Buffalo Bayou Promenade

Relevancies Buffalo Bayou Promenade is a valuable case study as its offers valuable insight into designing public space on a site that was once considered undesirable. Prior existing site conditions were similar to site conditions and issues I currently face on potential sites I am evaluating for further thesis study. The elevated highway condition at Buffalo Bayou created undesirable space by means of visual access, noise and water runoff, however the design tactics taken by SWA to remediate those issues offer insightful strategies into how to approach these types of site complexities.

The conscious choice of materials along with systems that protected the ecology of the river are subtle yet celebrated features in the design. Issues of safety and vandalism are dealt with in the same manner, with specific lighting choices and materials chosen for durability, allow the space to continue to function and avoid degradation. The large scale of the project offers insight into how to create specificity and detail in a project that is somewhat of a master planning project.

The implementation of open space and small but effective program allows the space to operate as a public asset yet it offers more reason for people to travel to the site. Understanding the balance of programming public space is a difficult and complex task, as in designing a public space you want it to create equitable ground, yet you want to create a reason for people to want to reside in this space. This issue is potent in the Pioneer Courthouse Square, where as it offers open space to occupy, it also has numerous programs throughout the year to maximize the utility of the grounds and its function.

References •Hung, Ying-Yu. Landscape Infrastructure: Case Studies by SWA. Basel: Birkhäuser, 2011.

•Mammoth/ building nothing out of something.” mammoth // building nothing out of something. Accessed November 1, 2013. http://m.ammoth.us/ blog/2009/07/its-prettiness-and-romance-will-then-be-gone/.

•Sipes, James L., and Matthew K. Zeve. The Bayous of Houston. 2012.

•SWA Group. “Various Images.” Buffalo Bayou Promenade. Accessed November 1, 2013. http://http://www.swagroup.com/.

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Buffalo Bayou Promenade

Atlanta BeltLine Ryan Gravel & Perkins + Will Atlanta, Georgia Meeting The Goals Examining the goals I am applying for my thesis and how this case study meets them.

Goal: Serve as a catlyst project to counterbalance transit infrastructure Goal: Engage the community in the design of public space Goal: Create more pedestrian access Goal:Recast views of mass transit infrastructure Project Overview The Atlanta BeltLine, a 22 mile loop reclaiming old infrastructure with new transit, tied into 33 miles of pedestrian trails and connection to 45 neighborhoods, started as a Georgia Tech Thesis project by Ryan Gravel. Proposing the reclamation of a mostly abandoned and underused rail corridor and transforming it into a new public transit system combining connective strategies of economic development and ties to natural ecology, the project found rooting in Atlanta’s Development Commission.

Atlanta currently faces challenges of uneven and low-density growth, along with a separation of land uses, there has grown an increasing dependence on the automobile to accomplish even the simplest of daily tasks as the sprawl of the city has reached limits leading to some of the worst commute times in the nation. This ultimately leading to any sort of sustainable growth becoming a real problem as the city keeps expanding its borders, and constantly developing low density sites. With several transit networks and rail lines fragmenting the city, large tracts of underutilized land have emerged further disconnecting neighborhoods and disrupting any sort of urban street network.

The railroad line has also dividing many neighborhoods, both in terms of its physical development and also in terms of social or economic status, segregating neighborhoods creating a city that lacks any sort of comprehensive social feeling. Seeing some of these issues, Ryan Gravel, along with his coworkers at the time, took his thesis (a few years after) along with packages and letters from local residents about the current conditions and sent them to the regions elected officials and transportation offices.

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Atlanta BeltLine

Volunteering and community engagement are key to the projects success.

Sections exploring new pedetrian and bicycle spaces.

New transit lines overlaid on greenways.

Sections showing the regeneration of greenspace with proposed transit.

Part of the overall plan showing design strategies

Design Features Cathy Woolard, City Council President and Chair of the Transportation Committee, received Gravel’s thesis and saw the potential the project held.

Meeting with Gravel, they organized a series of neighborhood groups, and begin gathering the public support for the proposed BeltLine. Seeing the opportunity for new public transit connectivity, green amenities and new jobs, neighborhoods saw the need for the project to get of the ground. The grassroots approach, lead to the project gathering numerous partners such as The Trust for Public Land and the PATH Foundation, who previously saw potential in the abandoned trail. Upon further partnerships the Trust for Public Land commissioned Alexander Garvin, an urban designer to study the concept.

Garvin proposed introducing parks into the concept, which lead to greater support for the project.

Currently the project has more than 50 new developments completed, creating more than 700,000 square feet of new commercial space and more than 9,000 new residential units. The current master plan calls for more compact and dense urban development which promote pedestrian and cycling activity, and a framework for urban growth that is more sustainable for the city and the region.

Atlanta BeltLine Facts and Figures * 1,300 acres (527 hectares) of new green space and parks * 33 miles (53 kilometers) of shared-use paths * $20 billion of new economic development * 30,000 new permanent jobs from new businesses in retail, entertainment, education, health care, professional services, hospitality, light industry, and the arts * 5,600 new workforce housing units * 50,000 new housing units anticipated along the corridor * 45 neighborhoods gain new and greater connectivity * 8 percent of the city’s land mass covered in the planning area and 25 percent of Atlanta’s residential population

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Atlanta BeltLine

Relevancies This project contains valuable insight into how a student’s idea can evolve into a movement that changes the way a city develops. Evaluating how a simple yet articulate thesis, looking at similar aspects of reclaiming and reutilization of redundant and underutilized transit infrastructure can reconnect neighborhoods, provide new jobs, boost economic production and initiate sustainable growth is inspirational to say the least.

Looking at how the project gained momentum from partnering with local agencies to its base of a grassroots support system, helps to locate where I want my current thesis development. Engagement of the public and create easy and simplified means in which they can become part of the process allows them to connect to the policy makers and designers, which can often become disconnected to the people they are proposing projects for.

The base of advocates and volunteers that embraced the BeltLine almost guaranteed that the project moved forward, creating a demand for the everyday problems facing the people of Atlanta. Along with the movement, looking at the features of the design from implementing public transit overlaid onto green corridors creates a spine for adjacencies of new housing and business operations.

This all creates improved economic conditions on top of something that was in a state of stagnation, using up resources with no valuable output.

Creating the social sustainability of reconnecting neighborhoods and developing smarter land use policies enforcing more dense development leads Atlanta out of the current sprawl condition that has created these problems and into a more sustainable, productive and viable city.

References •Davidson, Ethan. “The Atlanta BeltLine: a green future: a grassroots solution to transportation challenges, this pedestrian-bicycle-transit loop will encircle Georgia’s largest city. Could this be a model for other communities too?” Public RoadsSept.-Oct. 2011: 20+. Academic OneFile. Web. 14 Nov. 2013.

•Kobza, Kim P. “The Atlanta BeltLine and neighborhood America: transportation planners found a comprehensive, cost-effective way to capture the diverse views of residents and report the complex needs of each region.” The Public ManagerWinter 2006: 47+. Academic OneFile. Web. 14 Nov. 2013.

•Ideas + buildings that honor the broader goals of society | Perkins+Will. “Atlanta BeltLine | Perkins+Will.” Accessed November 19, 2013. http://www.perkinswill.com/ work/atlanta-beltline.html.

•Fernández Per, Aurora, and Javier Mozas. Reclaim: remediate, reuse, recycle. Vitoria-Gasteiz: a+t ediciones, 2012.

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Viaduc des Arts + Promenade Plantee

Viaduc des Arts + Promenade Plantee Patrick Berger Paris, France

Meeting The Goals Examining the goals I am applying for my thesis and how this case study meets them.

Goal: Serve as a catlyst project to counterbalance transit infrastructure Goal: Create more pedestrian access Goal: More adaptable non-traditional public space

Project Overview The Viaduc des Arts or Paris Viaducts reclaims an abandoned and derelict rail line no longer in use by the city and reactivate them by way interventions of local businesses and pedestrian based activities. The historic urban railway, was conceived in 1858 as part of Napoleon III and Baron Haussman’s plans for Paris improvements. The rail line, or Bastille line, ran off of the Petite Cienture, a line circling much of central Paris, running from the Bastille terminus to the Bois de Vincennes of the Eastern side of the city.

In 1969 the Bastille terminus was closed, but the rail line continued to be used until the mid 1980’s due to its access to the access of a prominent storage yard. Upon its full closure, the city of Paris’s planning department sought to re-develop the rail line that existed within the city limits, but with other public works projects moving to the fore front, the project constantly became sidelined and postponed any real development to the area.

With a revision of the cities redevelopment policy and the creation of Atelier Parisian d’Urbanism (APUR) – Paris’s urban design agency- the underutilized rail line underwent a greater analysis which allowed the development of a more sensitive approach to the ailing and vacant rail line. In 1981, the newly elected socialists government proposed new plans to rationalize and simplify the rail network running through Paris, thus leading to the sale of the Bastille line to the city. With the sale to the city and grand projects being proposed by President Mitterrand, a new Opera was to be built on the existing site of the Bastille terminus, the idea of turning the Bastille line into an urban asset started to come into play.

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Viaduc des Arts + Promenade Plantee

Promenade Plantee offers a green walk above the streets of Paris.

Design Features

New implementation of craft shops and stores.

With APURs desire to green the city, and the new Opera being constructed at the Bastille terminus, the old Bastille line held enormous potential, being that the retained viaduct arches could provide spaces for small business, and the viaduct itself was elevated above the streets, which could be converted for reactivation by landscape and pedestrian movement. With the sale of the land to the city being final, a few more small adjacent sites adjoining the viaduct were also acquired, allowing for access points to be developed. Upon this APUR had started work on its master plan for the old viaduct.

The Promenade Plantee elevated above the street

Patrick Berger, a French architect and planner, worked with APURs master plan, and saw the potential in the existing forms of the vaulted aqueducts.

The original structure was to be respected and restrained from as much change as possible. Using the large vaults as a base for development, each was developed into spaces for small business and local shops, catering to the market that existed with the Bastille Opera nearby.

Atop the vaulted viaduct, the leftover rail line was turned into a linear park, Promenade Plantee, removing pedestrians from the traffic noise and exhaust of the street and providing unexpected views into the city. The Promenade Plantee, created in 1988 by Philippe Mathieux, and Jacques Vegely, and architect and landscaper, mixed areas of vegetation and landscaping paralleled pedestrian paths was inaugurated in 1993, making it the only existing elevated park until the arrival of the High Line Park in 2010.

Stores and workshops create a reinvigorated streetscape.

Plan and elevation of the Viaduc des Artes and Promenade Plantee

The route of the Promenade, passes between modern buildings along with open sections which offer excellent views of the city runs for about 3 miles, connecting the Bois de Vincennes on one end to the Place de la Bastille on the other, opening to the Bastille Opera. One mile of the Promenade is elevated above the Viaduct des Arts, with the majority of the line running at various elevations from 30 feet to ground level, offering pedestrians and cyclists a green linear path through Paris’s 12th arrondissement.

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Viaduc des Arts + Promenade Plantee

Relevancies This project is relevant to its reuse of vacant space in terms of transit infrastructure. The conversion of old, derelict transit structure into spaces for local business and the addition of a elevated linear park, while maintaining the historical context in which it is built offers valuable insight into how to design for sites with such complexities. Looking at what these sites offer in terms of opportunity instead of just focusing on what the current issues and problems are, allow the design to thrive and embrace the existing infrastructure as a means for both social and economic sustainability.

With the addition of the Bastille Opera, the linkage became an important to how people would get to the it, this offered a reason for developing the viaduct as it would capture the existing movement passing through the site.

This is something that exists in a sense in the current site of my thesis, with the Eastbank Esplanade circulating around the river, already having a high pedestrian and cyclist activity. However the challenge lies in the general speed and activity already taking place, people heading to the opera or going to the building as possible tourists travel at slower paces, often wandering and in a state of exploration. Whereas at the current site of East Portland under the I-5 Freeway, the pace is much faster, people are running and cycling and sometimes walking, they are operating in a state of fitness, so creating program that operates to current adjacent activity could be a more plausible proposal. However, creating new program could bring in new types of pedestrians, leading to a greater reactivation of space.

References •Meade, Martin. “Parisian promenade.” The Architectural Review Sept. 1996: 52+. Academic OneFile. Web. 14 Nov. 2013.

•Urban Gardens. “The High Line’s French Ancestor: La Promenade Plantée.” Accessed November 2, 2013. http://www.urbangardensweb.com/2011/09/23/thehigh-lines-french-ancestor-la-promenade-plantee/.

•Viaduc des Arts - Site officiel. Accessed November 4, 2013. http://www.leviaducdesarts.com/.

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Open Air Library

Open Air Library KARO ARCHITECTEN Magedeburg, Germany Project Overview Established in 2005 in an abandoned district center in East Germany, The Open Air Library has reclaimed once unused land into a space for community function and gathering. This micro library, a by-the-public-for-the-public initiative under the management of KARO Architects, was constructed using discarded beer crates and volunteer labor. The project emerged and evolved as a desirable public space, with residents donating personal books for public consumption. The library began to take on other roles instead of just book sharing and became a place for performance, poetry readings, dancing and community gathering.

There are an estimated 30,000 books in the library, which is impressive for its informality. However, the growth and scale of the library is a testament to the dedication, effort and sense of community pride felt by the residents themselves. The shelves are always opened and anyone can come and go as they please, taking and placing whatever books they desire.

The re-occupying of the small vacant land between streets fits well for a program that was based on communal integration. The convergence of the streets to create the open triangle became the perfect place for citizens to get together and construct something that they desire: public space. In this sense, public space means more than open space, but is a place where the public freely and informally gathers together and engages in community events.

Relevancies This project is relevant to current thesis studies as it highlights the often forgotten public’s desire for public space and what that space means to them. We frequently see public space designed fully under the hand of a well-intentioned designer that fails to really achieve what the public wants. This project shows how the designers, KARO Architects, used their training and abilities in design to foster community and engage public space through the means of volunteerism and the act of donation. This is something that has started to dissolve in the current typical architectural practice, but we must constantly remind ourselves that we have the abilities and skills to design these spaces. Furthermore, we must always consider who they are for and the best way to design for the actual users References •ArchDaily. “Open Air Library / KARO Architekten.” Accessed November 8, 2013. http://www.archdaily.com/39417/open-air-library-karo-architekten/ •Architizer. “Open-Air-Library Magdeburg.” Accessed November 8, 2013. http://architizer.com/projects/open-air-library-magdeburg/.

•Carrera, Judit, Magda Anglès, and Rosa Puig Torres. In Favour of Public Space: Ten Years of the European Prize for Urban Public Space. Barcelona: CCCB, 2010 •Public space: European Prize for Urban Public Space. “public space: Open-Air-Library: Magdeburg (Germany), 2009.” Accessed November 8, 2013. http://www. publicspace.org/en/works/f084-open-air-library.

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Folly for a Flyover

Folly for a Flyover Assemble London, England Project Overview Folly for a Flyover is a pop up architect project created by Assemble CIC, a collective of architects, designers, and artists. The project, a pop-up building for cinema and performance workshops, was constructed under a concrete flyover in east London. The ambitious construction site, located under a flyover between the east and westbound lanes of the Lee Navigation canal, created a challenge and an opportunity for the design team. The group constructed a pointed brick rook, which pokes up between the two lanes of the highway. The building itself hosts movies, workshops, art events and performances. Visitors can also rent rowboats and explore the canal.

Assemble, a non-profit funded through grants and award winnings, has two notable community based, reuse projects so far. Folly for a Flyover was built from reclaimed timber, hand-cut bricks and donated material. They employed volunteer labor to construct the building.

Relevancies This project is relevant in that it is pop-up architecture, created to fill an otherwise vacant, unused space. Assemble creatively designed a structure to fill the space and work within the current environment. The project also employed volunteer labor, building a sense of community accountability and ownership of the project.

Furthermore, the group is a non-profit and do not have to adhere to the desires of investors and can create architecture for the community, with community involvement.

References •ASSEMBLE | Assemble. “Folly for a Flyover | ASSEMBLE.” Accessed November 16, 2013. http://assemblestudio.co.uk/?page_id=5.

•Dezeen. “Folly for a Flyover by Assemble.” Accessed November 16, 2013. http://www.dezeen.com/2011/07/05/folly-for-a-flyover-by-assemble/.

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Make This Better

Make This Better Campaign Broken City Lab Windsor, Canda Project Overview Located in Windsor, Ontario, Broken City Lab is a creative research group with a focus on creating community engagement with a city that has fallen into a state of stagnation. Windsor, Canada located across the water from Detroit, has a large population of its residents work in the automotive industry, which was hit hard by the 2008 recession. With high numbers of the population leaving the city, much like the case in Detroit, much of the cities spaces have degraded into wastelands and vacant plats.

Working through the means of art to tactically engage communities helping to re-imagine potential for action in a collapsing post-industrial city, Broken City Lab has embarked on numerous campaigns throughout the area. Some examples are seed bombing, community gardens, text-in-transit panels and public light installations called Cross-Border Communication, which projects a message across the water to Detroit in a means to communicate the similar circumstances the adjacent city is in.

Using methods of not only art, but social media the group has grown from a small core of four to a wide mix of volunteers and activists of all sorts that support the cause. Finding creative and positive ways of interacting with the derelict landscapes, Broken City Lab uses graphic designers, communication experts and media liaisons to keep a comprehensive blog and social outreach to keep community updated on current projects. This system in turn has also helped Broken City Lab bring in feedback about projects and create a vast data base of information on the city. Using texts, tweets and emails to get city input on ideas helped generate content for their “100 Ways to Save a City” campaign, in which messages and ideas were projected throughout the city.

The latest project is Sites of Apology / Site of Hope; a social mapping project using citizens input to locate forgotten areas throughout the city, then mapping the data will bring attention and focus to the vacant and forgotten spaces with the goal of preservation and healing of sites through further community input.

Relevancies The work of Broken City Lab is relevant to current the current thesis as it looks at ways on how vacant sites and underutilized land can be brought to the attention of the community. It also highlights to tools of art, graphic design, projection and social media as influential and purposeful methods to engage input from the public about what is happening to the cities landscape.

References •Fernández Per, Aurora, and Javier Mozas. Reclaim: remediate, reuse, recycle. Vitoria-Gasteiz: a+t ediciones, 2012.

•Broken City Lab. “Broken City Lab Projects : Broken City Lab.” Accessed November 17, 2013. http://www.brokencitylab.org/projects/.

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596 Acres

596 Acres

Various Brooklyn, New York Project Overview 596 Acres is a public education project with the goal of helping citizens of New York City locate and access to underutilized or vacant land. The project originally focused on creating community gardens and grow your own food programs, but has moved into various types of programs from gardens to general meeting space.

596 acres comes from the actual amount of vacant public land existing in Brooklyn alone in April 2010. Most of the land is city owned and siting in a state of stagnation with no future plans for development. 596 Acres has created a network of current vacant spaces through online mapping and social media, allowing the public to be informed of what spaces around them are open for potential use. The tools listed below created by 596 Acres show the how people can access these vacant sites.

(1) making municipal information available online and on the ground (e.g. by placing signs on vacant public land that explain a lot’s status and steps that the community can take to be able to use this land); (2) providing education about city government and ways to participate in decisions that shape neighborhoods; (3) assisting communities with legal support and campaign-development on land use issues; (4) maintaining networks that allow communities to share knowledge and relationships with decision-makers; (5) working with groups after they get access to land to build sustainable community governance as they become stewards of a public and inclusive resource; and (6) advocating for municipal agencies to increase participatory decision-making surrounding public resources.

Relevancies 596 Acres is a useful case study as it highlights how a group has networked the city in terms of vacant sites and created an index of usable land. Mapping out spaces and giving the community easy access to locate and colonize on these site shows how cities as dense as New York can utilized all of its land to the fullest potential. This is similar to some of the goals for this thesis as I look to highlight how transportation infrastructure has created a vast amount of vacant and underutilized spaces within the city core.

References •596 Acres: Home. Accessed November 13, 2013. http://596acres.org/.

•The New York Times. “A Plan to Turn Brooklyn’s Unused Acres Green - NYTimes.com.” The New York Times - Breaking News, World News & Multimedia.

Accessed November 14, 2013. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/29/nyregion/a-plan-to-turn-brooklyns-unused-acres-green.html?_r=0.

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Strategy of Creative Practice

Various Explorations

Criteria

Criteria

Successful study in this realm will offer greater understanding of the issues and territory I am working within.

Engaging case studies, literature and interview will offer new points of view for me to use as I move forward in this process.

Building and implementation or tactical actions will help me understand and legitimize the conditions I am looking to improve as well as offering valuable feedback from the public about what the need/want is.

Interventions

OUTPUTS

OUTPUTS

Interviews

‘Chair-bombing’ or Similar

Conducting interviews with contacts ranging from civil engineers to urban planners, along with current users of the space will provide valuable insight into guiding the thesis direction.

This method of tactical inventions looks to create physical artifacts aimed at engaging current users of the site. Using furniture, signage and other methods of public involvement the strategy is to gather valuable data of what users want from this space.

Case Studies

Digital Connection or QR Coding

Continued research on precedents and case studies provide alternative responses to a similar condition.

Examining works of professional firms along with tactical urbanism actions will continue to inform the proposals relevancy and direction.

Small scale digital interventions will help reach a larger field of affected users. Creating simple means of data gathering through social media, web based survey and blog interaction will provide simplified interaction for data collection.

Literary Reviews

Adjacency Interviews

Continued study into the literary realm will offer new views and ideas, along with potent topics in the current realm of exploration. Evaluating readings will offer continual insight and deepen any investigations currently taking place.

Working within the site, a series of interviews will offer valuable input and engagement from users closest to and most effected by changes in the sites current conditions.

Criteria

Criteria

Communication of ideas, thoughts and ultimately a final proposal is incorporated through graphics.

Conveying a varying set of graphic types will be critical to communicating the overall intent of this thesis.

As critical as graphics, modeling will offer valued insight into spatial conditions, materiality and other conflicts that may arise.

Various types of modeling from final to abstract will aid in deeper explorations of spatial use..

Graphic Explorations

Mapping offers an overall view of site conditions. Investigating systems of density, zoning, use, adjacencies, natural conditions and transit networks to name a few, offer comparative and analytic substance to build future proposals on.

Section and Perspective Working in a drawing that offers the greatest realization of a space ‘in-between’ will allow the most direct method of communication of current thought processes and design ideas.

Abstract Images Images that provoke emotion or conversation, that are often more conceptual will offer the tone in which the project advances.

Plans Lastly, plans offer a simple locational drawing to any design proposals or existing conflicts. Being that it is not the most representational of an elevated highway condition, it will be used for more specific purposes when needed.

OUTPUTS

OUTPUTS

Mapping

Physical Modeling

Programmatic More complete and final quality models offer a three dimensional representation of proposals and spatial conditions. A series of highway models with proposed programs is desirable as a final product.

Conceptual and Diagrammatic Working models, some what quick and direct offer insight into spatial and program studies, along with materiality and interaction with site conditions.

Artifacts Continued exploration on models or artifacts that convey the idea help provoke conversations and deeper understanding of the issues and current challenges of the project.

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Timeline

Fall

Winter

Spring

Advisor or Committee Member Meeting Literary Research Artifact Creation Case Studies Process Interviews Site Analysis Production of Data Gathering Interventions Social Media Links QR Coding ‘Chair Bombing ‘or Similar Site Campaign Inhabitant Interviews Local Business Data Logging

Data Review Revisit Site Investigations Initial Proposal Idea Iteration Process Iteration Process Programming Material Investigation Design Studies Final Book Production Conclusive Proposal Graphic Production Map Making Model Building

Final Presentation

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Literature Review

The Impossible Project of Public Space Manual de Sola Morales Cities Within a City Kurt Iveson The In-Between Dominique Perrault Urbanism After Form Charles Waldheim Terrain Vague Ignasi de Sola Morales Rubio Highway as Cultural Landscape Raymond Gastil Slow Infrastructure Mario Gandolsonas The Character of Third Places Ray Oldenburg Atlanta BeltLine and Neighborhood America Kim P. Kobza Recycling Sites Undergoing Urban Transformation Michael Ziehl Modulating Infrastructural Flows to Create Open Space Alexander Robinson Highway...ing SMAQ

The Image of the City Kevin Lynch Claiming Residual Spaces Erick Villagomez Urban Diaries Walter Hood Opportunistic Urbanism Diego Ramirez Lovering On Making Immodest Proposals David Goodman Foregrounding Julia Czerniak Sprawl vs. Community Douglas Morris Drosscape John A. Jakle Addressing the In Between Karen A Frank Systems of Contingency Ying-Yu Hung Highways: An Architectural Approach Lester Abbey Lloyd Corp. V . Tanner Supreme Court Document Life Between Buildings Jan Gehl

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The Image of The City Kevin Lynch

In The Image of the City, Lynch observes how people in the urban real orient themselves by the use of the mental perception of the city. A mental map created in users of the urban environment helps denote how a legible or imageable the city is. “The process of way finding, the strategic link is the environmental image, the generalized mental picture of the exterior physical world that is held by an individual. This image is the product both of immediate sensation and of the memory of past experience, and it is used to guide action.” Lynch notes that the urban environment consist of paths, edges, districts, nodes and landmarks, each defining and each playing specific role and make up the city dwellers mental map.

The elements of the city overlap and interrelate regularly, noting “the image of a given physical reality may occasionally shift its type with different circumstances of viewing. Thus an expressway may be a path for the driver and an edge for the pedestrian. Or a central area may be a district when a city is organized on a medium scale and a node when the entire metropolitan area is considered.”

Lynch continues his observations noting the city is a complex network, an “environmental image” made up of identity, structure and meaning. Identity – the recognition of urban elements as separate entities.

Structure 0 the relation of urban elements to other objects and to the observer, and meaning – its practical and emotional value to the observer.

Lynch points out how people inhabit and form their movements around the urban realm aided by their mental maps and how over time people learn to navigate through training and then are able to act upon their environment.

Lynch’s analogy of the jungle exemplifies the concept of training and acting upon an environment, “We stare into the jungle and see only the sunlight on the green leaves, but a warning noise tells us that an animal is hidden there. The observer then learns to interpret the scene by singling out ‘give-away’ clues and by reweighting previous signal. The camouflaged animal may now be picked up by the reflection of its eyes. Finally by repeated experience the entire pattern of perception is changed, and the

observer need no longer search for give-aways, or add new data to an old framework. He has achieved an image which will operate successfully in the new situation, seeming natural and right. Quite suddenly the hidden animal appears among the leaves “as plain as day.”

This writing pertains to the concept of underutilized space as it helps formulate an understanding of the hidden or invisible “image” of the urban environment. Moving past the real and physical structures that make up the existing realm of the city, an overlaid network of personal perception and mental maps overlay the city in a complex network. Using Lynch’s categorizations of paths, edges, districts, nodes and landmarks, deeper investigation can be made in terms of what pertains to an underutilized site and what constitutes opportunity among a network of mental maps?

Reference Lynch, Kevin. The Image of the City. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 1960.

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The Impossible Project of Public Space Manual de SolaMorales

Morales writes in his essay “ the impossible project of public space” the challenges that come with designing for the public realm. Questioning what is actually public, what is private and where public space actually falls in between. The concept of public space becomes a gray area and is not black and white of public and private, as other factors control what happens in public spaces. The idea of regulation pushes back on what is considered a public or free space, however certain regulations make the space a desirable place for the majority. Morales asks “if all urban space is more or less public (and all public space is more or less of or for private interests), What would be the specificity of what we conventionally call “public spaces?”

Morales also begins to question what constitutes public spaces as a real experience, is it above sociological, political and functional factors? Or is it a simple element of material and design choices that create the desire to reside within their borders. However, for a public space to be successful or well designed it has to remain open for interpretation and an intersection of interests. Public space should be a connective surface representing mobility, coexistence and conflict rather than stylized, neatly resolved landscapes.

Morales categorizes public spaces into four typologies; tidying up projects that expand the previous sphere of public space, projects that collectivize and projects that invent.

This reading will be helpful for future research on the concept of what constitutes public space and private space. Defining it as a gray area rather that a hard line between public and private brings attention to factors that fall out of the typical design realm, such as regulations and controlling public space so it becomes somewhere people want to reside yet not feel controlled. This becomes important when looking at vacant or underutilized spaces which currently fall into a category of no programming or ad-hoc, potentially illicit or undesired program.

Reference Carrera, Judit, Magda Anglès, and Rosa Puig Torres. In Favour of Public Space: Ten Years of the European Prize for Urban Public Space. Barcelona: CCCB, 2010 53

Claiming Residual Spaces in the Heterogeneous City Erick Villagomez

Asking how we are to approach the design of existing North American cities amidst factors of increasing population pressures, complexity and diversity of people and uses and dwindling resources, Erick Villagomez seeks to point out that opportunity exists in the very landscape we have cultivated for our cities. Residual spaces exists in the urban landscape, underused parking, obsolete industrial wastelands and derelict urban sites are a relatively recent urban phenomenon. The natural result of modern urbanization and complex interaction of social, technological and economic process have overlapped in the development of contemporary urban growth.

Within the past century, a time of unprecedented material wealth and technological progress, spatial utilization has been forgotten. Policy and a value system that encourages low-intensity land use has lead to a growth in underutilized and residual space, however making a shift to reclaim the land as a valuable asset as it was once historically viewed, leads to intense and creative development in the urban core.

With the changing times and as resources become more scares, as population pressures and demands rise to create a better quality living environment, a re-evaluation must take place, changing the values or the recent past, moving beyond the simplistic birds-eye view and master planning approach to the urbanism that has dominated for the past century and what is common in most North American cities.

Understanding the complex systems that take place and govern how we uses space, the traditional top down process can start to be dissolved and open itself up to more inclusive and democratic planning process in which the public is called upon to take part in shaping the landscape they live in. We must evaluate the detachment that has occurred from how people interact with the everyday built environment and the planning processes guiding the designs. Understanding potential and limitations are key to developing potent spaces that are currently in a state of stagnation.

Spaces below – existing from a direct relation to large infrastructural elements, these spaces are often neglected and paved with parking lots.

Transforming these vacancies into something meaningful and useful can lead to a diversity of uses, all beneficial to spaces that have been taken out of the city in the development of highway infrastructure of the 1950’s and 60’s.

This reading is important because it starts to highlight all of the factors that come into play regarding on how cities have created many types of residual or left-over spaces. From economic to social to environmental, it points out how the complexities and a possible lack of integration have led to piece-mail development creating voids in the urban core. Finding and evaluating these spaces and applying the re-evaluation of the traditional master planning approach, can lead to a diversity of possibilities in these spaces.

Reference Hou, Jeffrey. Insurgent Public Space: Guerrilla Urbanism and the Remaking of Contemporary Cities. New York: Routledge, 2010.

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Cities Within the City: Do-It -Yourself Urbanism and the Right to the City Kurt Iveson

Kurt Iveson talks about the current growth and interest of microspatial urban practices that are reshaping the urban landscape, such as guerrilla urbanism, do-it-yourself or insurgent movements to reengage with the current state of the cities unused or dilapidated spaces. Asking the question of how do we measure the impacts of ambiguously defined and informal activities? Also looking at the bigger picture and the extent of which these DIY or guerrilla tactics are taking place. All in all, looking for a network or threading between these actions and examining this as a formal movement towards the reclamation of space and the attitudes of city dwellers unhappy with current conditions and the need to take matters into their own hands.

This article examines the right to the city and who it is for, asking: is there or can there be, a shared politics of the city that connects these types of practices? The DIY movement, or insurgent architecture is not guaranteed to generate a new kind of city, but the movement must be explored and examined being that there is a movement, enough for citizens to act out on their own and create what is missing, making themselves part of the discussion between practitioners who design “public spaces”.

Iveson argues that enacting the ‘right to the city’ is a matter of building ‘cities within the city’, by both declaring new forms of authority based on presupposition of the equality of urban inhabitants and finding ways to stage a disagreement between these competing forms of authority.

Reshaping urban space is a product of complex power-geometries, as different people and practitioners seek to determine who and what the city is for. Challenges of property rights, planning codes, spatial design, law and various policy come into play when changing a single parcel of public land.

Iveson cites Crawford in her work of developing typologies which capture the shared dynamics of the DIY practices.

• De-familiarization (in the sense of identifying new possibilities in taken-forgranted spaces of the city);

• Re-familiarization (in the sense of re-occupation of alienated spaces in the city); • Decommodification (the assertion of use values over exchange values in urban space); • Alternative economies (such as recycling and gifting economies); • Collaboration across difference (in the sense that involve emergent rather than pre-constituted subjects)

In total, DIY or insurgent or whatever name we claim for this tactical push of reclaiming lost urban ground, there is a common belief among the movement that at the heart a change is possible despite economic or political obstacles or disciplinary or institutional inertia. The actions that are emerging in the cracks of formal urbanism have a common desire to propose alternative lifestyles, reinvent our daily lives and reoccupy the urban spaces with new uses.

Reference Hauck, Thomas J. Infrastructural Urbanism: Addressing the in-Between. Berlin: DOM publishers, 2011.

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Urban Diaries Walter Hood

Hood writes about the concept of ‘everyday urbanism’. He notes on the concept of improvisational design, being a “spontaneous change and rhythmic transposition of nonobjective compositions and traditional design elements within a spatial field created by a distinct framework. Elements of individual expression working with social, environmental and traditional design strategies create change of the everyday objects and practices.

Improvisation generates new goals as it departs from traditional design practices”. Improvisation generates spontaneous change as a cultural norm, a constant flux exists, and places are adaptable. There is expression of self, there is not regulation or status of who ‘designs’. The image of the community is reinforced.

Lastly the tradition of environmental design is built upon and expanded demanding individual responses. Hood references the uncovering the familiar, which recognizes that space is egocentric, varying from person to person. Hood uses improvisation as a research tool to evaluate and respond to the multi layered phenomena that define communities.

The process of improvisation allows for post-occupancy evaluations, demographic analysis, patterns of use and interviews among the few to be driving factors in design.

The examination of the mini-park looks at how a small parcel of land, usually within the borders of low income neighborhoods, have become some of the most valued places in the communities that they reside in.

Once they were thought of as inexpensive and irregular today the simple aspects of the mini-park allow for a structured environment if specifically programmed in which specific groups use the space. This creates segments in society, lacking a sense of the right to use the space. This raises the issues of programmed and un-programmed, has designers looking at how public spaces can most effectively serve its community. Hood suggests that throwing away irrelevant notions, moral stances and reformist approaches are essential to design space that truly serves its community. Moving beyond typical historical research and observing the everyday life is “the

single best technique for discovering what people do and how people interact with other people in neighborhood space� according to landscape architect Randy Hester.

Hood’s writing is influential in how he approaches design, by observing the everyday actions of people operating within a space, designers are more capable of designing spaces that are more inclusive.

Using the simple techniques of evaluation and observation, designers can get more of an understanding of a site, beyond the normative historical research. This technique will be valuable for my current thesis proposal, as I focus in on sites that are currently underutilized and vacant. Observing how, if any, people use the site in its current state, also observing adjacent sites for the everyday activity. Using methods of interviews and community engagement, suggested in Walter Hood’s Urban Diaries, I will be able to gain a more in depth analysis of what people want out of a public space, guiding future proposals to become a more effective approach than current design practices.

Reference Hood, Walter, and Leah Levy. Urban Diaries. Washington, D.C.: Spacemaker Press, 1997.

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The ‘In-Between’ Dominique Perrault

The essay written for the E-2 Competition, titled “Exploring the Urban Condition”, deconstructs the concept and meaning of the term “inbetween.” The phrase itself consists of two parts: the word “in” and the word “between”. When these two parts are examined independently and combined, the relationship, significance and opportunities for intervention in these spaces become clear. If we first examine the word “in”, we can get at the physical and abstract nature of the space. The word “between”, conversely, shows the existence of an outside condition, or the environment.

The words are connected by a hyphen, which shows the link between the two; the link between the physical space and the environment. Showing that spaces, especially the underutilized spaces, do not exist in a vacuum, they exist as a condition of themselves and the environment. Therefore, when designing for these spaces, we must consider both factors.

The concept of “the in-between” offers a unique opportunity to architects. These spaces, while imprecise and existing at tension with surrounding, developed areas, are undetermined and can be integrated into existing programming. In-between spaces are in a constant tension and result can result in confrontation and friction for designers, developers, and users. The essay describes this friction, particularly in the context of transportation infrastructure:

“Transportation infrastructures are a most telling example. Be they railroads, highways or waterways, they have a logic of their own; efficient straight line, gyration radiuses, pent inclination…These objects are found to be thoroughly isolated from the context through which they pass. Their effective impact greatly surpasses their formal boundaries…. The struggle that arises from this confrontation between the city and an element of territorial scale always ends with the city forfeiting to the infrastructural constraints, never the opposite.”

The undetermined nature of the in-betweens fuel creativity and imagination and create opportunities for improvement. However, it is important to consider the social, economic and other conditions when

creating programming for these spaces.

This reading offers value in its examination of the in-between, from a break down of its etymology to what it means in actual space, created between conflicts of heterogeneous elements, and helps to start to define terminology used for future writings and proposals. The language used in this article is on point to current thoughts on thesis issues, as it hones in on what has created these spaces and the factors driving that creation.

Reference Perrault, Dominique, Bernard Tschumi, Michel Desvigne, and Nasrine SerajiBozorgzad. E2: exploring the urban condition. [Paris?]: Groupe E2, 2003.

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Opportunistic Urbanism Diego Ramirez-Lovering

This book focuses on contemporary cities in developing nations and the role of informal economies as an increasingly dominant option for vastly growing populations, particularly in Guadalajara, Mexico. In developing economies, housing and commercial development have become ad hoc and informal, rather than planned and structured because of the lack of economic stability. In Guadalajara, the exponential population growth and culture of opportunity have created an informal system urban expansion and development.

There are an estimated 2.65 million micro businesses in this city of 4 million. A recession in the 1980’s and 1990’s caused residents to seek alternatives methods for earning and income and housing. Due the recent population growth, the city struggles to find productive employment opportunities for the eligible workers.

To fill this slack, an informal economy has developed that occupies holes in the urban landscape in the form of vibrant and often temporary micro-businesses. While this informal economy was initially viewed as a threat, it is now seen as a means for shaping the future development and urban landscape. Public housing facilities and street vendors are now fixtures in the city.

Reference Ramirez-Lovering, Diego. Opportunistic Urbanism. Melbourne, Vic: RMIT Publishing, 2008.

Urbanism After Form Charles Waldheim

Urban infrastructure is commonly thought of by architects as a means for social and environmental progress. This thinking has elevated the regard of infrastructure as the “way forward�. However, this has led to an elitist attitude toward infrastructure that does not consider engagement with social and environmental factors. A new school of thought suggests that by focusing on the performance and operational goals of infrastructure, we can achieve balance with the urban environment.

Infrastructure has a different meaning to urban planners, designers and landscape architects. It is viewed as a method for great return of effort, a way to understand the landscape and ecology, and the be-all-end-all of design.

All these views of infrastructure fail to consider the user and the community in which it operates. There are significant cultural, social and architectural factors at play that determine the usage and value of infrastructure.

Reference Bhatia, Neeraj. Coupling: Strategies for Infrastructural Opportunism. New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2011.

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Project and Action: On Making Immodest Proposals David Goodman

David Goodman points out that we are currently confronted with something that has long existed in some form or another, but has only recently begun to congeal into what might be considered a movement.

Small scale and process driven , happenings, actions and interventions seize moments of disorder and opportunity to propose and execute micro-acts of architecture and urbanism.

Terms like ‘tactical urbanism’ or ‘guerrilla architecture’ begin to describe the stealthy and tactical nature of this work, and highlight its engagement with everyday spaces and every day affairs, with or without official sanction. This work is more commonly becoming the case of being an action carried out by concerned or interested cities and not architects or professional designers. This ad-hoc action has lead architects to re-evaluate the typical methods of practice; it can serve as a training ground, leading architects to have to become earnestly and meaningfully engaged in the problems of the day and the conditions of what and who and where we design.

The tactical urbanists help point out what is missing, what is desired and how simplicity can improve the everyday condition and learning from this, Architects and the profession of architecture can evolve into something that parallels the current circumstances. Architects can shift to become producers of sites and opportunity and no longer wait for the big competitions and commissions to return. They can create meaningful work, expanding architectures realm and importance in profession. The architect has strength in their ability to propose concrete things, and that is where they can find place in the current condition of urban tactical action.

Goodman asks the question; can the architect keep alive the possibility of big plans, of big ideas, or propositions, day dreams and preposterous schemes, even when the immediate situation requires something at once more humble, more immediate and, in the moment, more effective and relevant to the challenges around us?

David Goodman emphasizes the current movement of ‘tactical urbanism’ and how architects can use this movement as a chance to re-calibrate and adjust the profession to learn from it. Examining how architects can become further embedded and involved in the current circumstances of urban existence and the call for improvement, and their trained ability to realized and create concrete things, can lead to the architect becoming s more well-verse and essential commodity. Looking not only at the projects and actions that take place, but how the movement has affected the traditional profession of architecture offers a unique lens in how to view the movement at hand.

Reference FernaĚ ndez Per, Aurora, and Javier Mozas. Reclaim: remediate, reuse, recycle.

Vitoria-Gasteiz: a+t ediciones, 2012.

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Terrain Vague Ignasi de Sola Morales Rubio

In Terrain Vague by Ignasi de Sola Morales Rubio, the act of photography initiates the conversation of how architecture and a city is perceive. Morales points out that the objects captured by the camera through specific framing, composition and detail have decisively influenced our perception of the works of architecture photographed. The same examination exists for our perception of the city through photographs, as we gain a visual experience of the city; however it lacks the true direct relation to the true experience of the city. Continuing on to explain the empty and abandoned spaces which are occurring in the cities, terrain vague has headed the category, with terrain connotations a more urban quality, or an extensions of the precisely limited ground fit for construction, for the city and vague having Latin and Germanic origins, alluding to movement, fluctuation or instability. Vague descending from vacuus, or ‘vacant’ and ‘vacuum’, leading to ‘empty or unoccupied’, yet also ‘free and unengaged’.

The relationship between the absence of use of activity and the sense of freedom is fundamental to understanding the potential of these types of spaces in the city.

In these spaces, memory and history survive yet they are forgotten, on few residual values survive, despite its lack of connection with the city. These sites are foreign to the urban system, mentally exterior in the physical interior of the city, its negative image.

Morales asks what is to be done with these enormous voids, with their imprecise limits and vague definitions? There is enthusiasm for these spaces, as they are imprecise and fluctuating and they are prone to discovery by the urban citizen. Morales points out a problematic situation for the architect, “Architecture’s destiny has always been colonization, the imposing of limits, order, and form, the introduction into strange space of the elements of identity necessary to make it recognizable, identical, universal. In essence, architecture acts as an instrument of organization, of rationalization, and of productive efficiency capable of transforming the uncivilized into the

cultivated, the fallow into the productive, the void into the built�. There is a current violent relationship of urban designers and architects to the terrain vague, vastly transforming the landscape and striving to dissolve the uncontaminated magic of the void into something efficient.

Reference Davidson, Cynthia C. “Terrain Vague.� In Anyplace, 118-123. New York, N.Y.: Anyone Corp, 1995.

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Foregrounding Julia Czerniak

Julia Czerniak explores what it means when the word landscape is placed in front of other disciplines, such as landscape urbanism, landscape architecture and so forth, arguing that it simultaneous strengthens the discipline of landscape design and expands its range of operations.

Landscape infrastructure tries to align social and ecological concerns and overlay them with the logistical systems of infrastructural planning.

Infrastructure comes before cities, enabling growth, but is existent after decline, even when the systems that helped produce growth are no longer needed.

Czerniak questions the ability to foreground infrastructure as a method for exposing its opportunistic potential. Foreground suggests a prominent or important position, it is the scene nearest to the viewer in perspectival images, in literary reference, it is the practice of emphasizing certain words or images over others that surround them. Looking at how we can give equal status to infrastructure, something that needs to happen for cities to exist as a system, and combine that with the aspect of design, creating improvements on both civic and social fronts.

Examining methods from ground level water control strategies combined with public amenities of seating creates a combination of systems that are sustainable to both the environmental and civil practices of the city while being sustainable in the social asset created in new public space.

Practices like this create incremental and modest propels that foreground infrastructure as landscape, creating more city and urbanity with less actual building.

Reference Hung, Ying-Yu. Landscape Infrastructure: Case Studies by SWA. Basel: BirkhaĚˆuser, 2011.

Highway as Cultural Landscape Raymond Gastil

“Too much control obviously diminishes the public real, but a certain amount of control is necessary. It’s a classic liberal democratic argument.

You need a certain amount of control and support to establish the terms of civic discourse.”

Stan Allen

Until recently in highway design, the dominating factor by highway engineers was moving vehicles as fast, efficiently and safely as possible.

Only recently has highway design be more focused on the impact of the road on the landscapes through with it passes. The experience of the driver and passengers of the landscape they move through, and the road landscape as a public landscape and as a functioning ecological system. The design of road landscapes rarely responds fully to the potential of scale, speed and movement.

Reference Gastil, Raymond, and Zoë Ryan. Open: New Designs for Public Space. New York: Van Alen Institute, 2004.

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Sprawl vs.

Community Douglas Morris

This reading explores the government involvement in the revitalization or destruction of blighted urban areas. The reading contents that rather than preserves and cultivating these areas, the government began initiatives to wipe out historic urban areas, buildings, and vibrant neighborhoods.

Campaigns of this type eliminated vibrant neighborhoods and communities and replaced them with sprawl.

The primary characteristics of sprawl include: low density design, lack of multi-use development patterns, automobile dependence, gridlock and inadequate public transit. Life in suburbia is the antithesis of community.

There is a loss of pedestrians, and thus, the social glue that holds communities and society together. Main streets are replaced by strip malls and vast barren plains of asphalt.

This causes a loss of community because people must gather in formalized meetings like book clubs, sports leagues and other deliberate events. This began after WWII, when the landscape started to be formed by business interests and the government, promoting a way of life designed around the automobile.

Communities are formed through spontaneous human interaction, which happens when people shop, dine out and go to parks in their neighborhoods. Offices, schools and public buildings also facilitate this kind of interaction. Relationships are built through face-to-face meetings and gatherings, which is inhibited when the community is distributed and dependent upon cars.

Reference Morris, Douglas. It’s a Sprawl World After All: [the Human Cost of Unplanned Growth-- and Visions of a Better Future]. Gabriola, BC: New Society Publishers, 2005.

Slow Infrastructure Mario Gandelsonas

The infrastructure built in the first half of the twentieth century is crumbling, we are at a point where the problems caused by deferred maintenance have produce major disasters. However the problem goes beyond maintenance. The role of this urban infrastructure has always been to allow for the movement of people and goods. Modern urbanists fantasized about replacing the old city streets with a new city that would welcome the new technology of the automobile.

Creating a fluidity of movement for the car, the old cities streets of pedestrian activity became divided and segmented for the path of the automobile. The highways system, mainly the U.S. freeway system, one of the most important infrastructural works of the twentieth century constitutes the best example of change in urban form as a result of changes in infrastructure. The American highway system is still today completely embedded in our urban life and the consciousness as the infrastructural backbone of mid-century suburbanization. However new “soft” technologies – electronic information and media communication systems – generate new possibilities of interaction and multi modal connectivity, allowing a resurgence of pedestrian based urban planning.

This reading looks at how architecture can move beyond traditional practices, currently leading up to a static state. Moving towards a more dynamic model, and allowing ourselves to become more mobile in the way we engage our built environment, allows us to create more effective urban conditions. From improving our network of road systems to be more adaptable to the fluctuations of the city to our reliance on the automobile, we can embrace new technologies as opportunity for new growth.

Reference Cuff, Dana, and Roger Sherman. Fast-Forward Urbanism: Rethinking Architecture’s Engagement with the City. New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2011.

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Drosscape John A Jakle & David Wilson

The term “drosscape� derives its meaning from the idea that dross, or waste, can be resurfaced, reprogrammed and reused. This concept is essential for the future of urban planning and growth. Future urban growth will require that the in-between landscapes are salvaged, reused, and repurposed.

The idea of using waste for urban infill is fitting in America because wastefulness is commonplace in urban areas. Wastefulness is so embedded into our culture that American urban development has altered to reflect this attitude. This brings up the concept of environmental ethics and cultural preferences when designing for an American city because designers must take into account the placement of waste in the lives of people.

Public funding can be used to fund many urban projects, like stadiums, libraries and schools. However, the public often rejects spending government tax dollars on public works projects. There are far more willingness in the private sector to spend money on public improvements.

This could be because the private sector sees the return on investment faster than the government.

These two concepts weave together when we consider urban landscape waste. As housing grows quickly, more waste is produced.

Development energy moves from one project to another, forgetting about spaces within the city. The processes that cause housing and urban development to thrive can ignore and waste space. Infrastructure is an integral part of the urban landscape, and accounts for much of the wasted space.

This calls into question the social and cultural attitude that create wasted space. It seems that the only way to truly address the issue of wasted space within the urban landscape is through community involvement and shifting public works.

Reference Berger, Alan. Drosscape: Wasting Land in Urban America. New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2006.

The Character of Third Places Ray Oldenburg

In The Character of Third Places, Oldenburg identifies the nature of the Third Place, informal gathering places that are necessary to form any sense of collective community. These places operate after the first place of home, and second places of work. Oldenburg argues that third places are the heart of a community’s social vitality, the grassroots of democracy, but sadly, they constitute a diminishing aspect of American social landscape.

While observing the attributes of a third place as somewhere that operates on neutral ground, somewhere that is comfortable in between the realms of public and private spaces. Also noting, the third place is a leveler, it is somewhere that people from all backgrounds interact with one another.

The third place is categorized by its central act is a place for conversations, a space for the stories of the day and points of view to be shared. Oldenburg’s pointing out of the third place is compelling because designers often overlook the concept of the third place, thinking of their spaces as a destination instead of a place for conversation, interaction and interaction between people.

This work relates to the emerging idea of underutilized space and architectural opportunism. As site investigations may provide preferential physical attributes, Oldenburg’s Third Place helps provide some basis for possible programmatic intervention. This writing helps move any proposed design ideas past the physical characteristics and materiality into the realm of human interaction and how to create places that are the home away from home, or the third place.

Reference Oldenburg, Ray. The Great Good Place: Cafés, Coffee Shops, Community Centers, Beauty Parlors, General Stores, Bars, Hangouts, and How They Get You Through 73 the Day. New York: Paragon House, 1989.

Addressing the In-Between Occupying the Edge and the Underneath Karen A. Frank

The idealized modern city is orderly: activities are categorized and assigned to particular types of places intentionally designed to house them. Commerce is to take place in shops, stores, malls and markets, and recreational activities are to take place in parks, gyms and sports fields. The routes between; streets sidewalks, public transit are intended for efficient vehicular and pedestrian transit. This ideal guides architecture, urban design, zoning and other land use policies, with a goal of achieving a clean, safe efficient and eminently predictable city. However building with the intent to be efficient with clearly designated and segregated uses results in many leftover spaces without planned uses, these spaces possess a range of social and spatial characteristics that allow for possibility and diversity. Most are publicly owned, somewhat accessible yet remain un-programmed and unimagined.

Exploring concepts of commerce in these spaces through means of the temporal, such as Christmas tree sales, food vendors and markets provides a program that enhances the space and may be temporary but operates on a timetable of time of year, day or season, creating a level of consistency. These spaces can also be imagined as recreational spaces, for exercise, music, sport or play space. Covered and already noisy they create the perfect arena for sport, play and noise. These spaces can also become places of expression. Being that they are public and most have some sort of movement adjacency (pedestrian, vehicle) they provide canvas space for expression of art, joy or sites of mourning, becoming ad-hoc memorials and reminders of the importance of the place at a moment and time.

Prominently these spaces are used as places of dwelling, providing the adequate structure needed for cover, both from the elements and from the private/public realm, these spaces offer personal and communal space in the realm of housing. Tolerated as a space to “live� on the notion that these spaces don’t possess any other programmatic possibilities, left over, they become spaces for transient occupation.

These spaces have varying titles from insurgent space, vacant lots to everyday urban space and indeterminate spaces, while they may have different titles; they are one in the same, all holding immense value. They are spaces for imagination, mostly public and operating as a blank canvas in typically the heart of the urban landscape.

How does design play into these spaces? Currently design is used as a tool to limit or remove access to these spaces, fences, barriers and parking lots litter these spaces, trying to remove public access to public space. However there are two different approaches taken by professional designers on the use of vacant space; one of accommodative and encouraging, sometimes insurgent side.

This method encourages support from people by small scale, possibly temporary insertions, being able to operate in the nooks and crannies of the existing urban environment. Second, a more noticeable larger scale intervention, still retaining some informality, openness and possibility that existed in the once vacant space creates planned and programmatic responses but keeps from becoming privatized and cut-off to public interaction.

Reference Hauck, Thomas J, Infrastructural Urbanism: Addressing the in-Between. Berlin: DOM publishers, 2011.

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The Atlanta BeltLine and Neighborhood America Kim P. Kobza

Kim Kobza highlights the methods used for community engagement in the Atlanta BeltLine project, creating a combination of new technology data gather with traditional grassroots methods allow vast amount of citizens to become part of one of the largest public projects undertaken in Atlanta.

The current system lacks a community connection to any sort of new public infrastructure projects, and with an estimated 150,000 new people to move to Atlanta in the next twenty five years, the system needed a change to its traditional practices, one that has led Atlanta to sprawl out with vast low density development. With the exponential sprawl of Atlanta, the reliance on the automobile has only grown, with transit infrastructure cutting up the city and dividing neighborhoods, creating social divisions and leading to an unsustainable growth pattern for the city.

The BeltLine, a project that reclaims abandoned or underutilized infrastructure, creates a twenty-two mile loop encircling downtown and midtown, increasing green space, jobs, housing and reconnect neighborhoods that were once divided by the transit lines. The BeltLine would completely change the distribution of public space, land development and business activity. The project comes with a price tag of $2.8 billion, and being a project based on improving conditions for the public, the planning team needed to ensure that all those affected were heard.

Government funds would only be dispersed upon proof of equally accessible public involvement opportunities. The dilemma of little government funding and desired civic participation arose. Looking for a comprehensive and cost-effective way to capture the diversity of responses, a solution was proposed- an online conversation.

The design team was lead to IBM-Neighborhood Americas Public Comment (currently INgage Networks) software with capabilities of providing a central point of communication for project officials and stakeholders along with it being a tool for the free exchange of ideas using an organized and easily updatable platform.

“With Public Comment there was no need to manually open, track, and classify individual messages. Collected responses were stored in a specific area related to each topic, instantly available for review and reporting purposes,” explains BeltLine consultant, Stacey Abrams. “The software allowed us to reach a large audience and consider the responses of more than ten thousand residents, regardless of their socioeconomic status or preferred means of communication.”

This process was simple and structure and messages were able to be reciprocated back to residents to know that they were being listened to, also gave the design team the ability to provide the proof needed for government funding. Results lead to the design team receiving participation from more than 20 percent of the total population of each of the four main regions, providing support and recommendations, and created an equitable podium for the people of Atlanta.

The software allowed for the design team to map where the comments were coming from and what the important values and priorities of each region, leading to more specific design responses in certain areas.

This in term is leading to a change in how the City Council approaches new public projects and that new technology has created great methods of connection to the public for input and support.

This article is valuable as it demonstrates how one of the largest public projects in recent history, and currently being constructed was committed to keeping the public involved and the methods of how incorporating technology allowed for simple and vast numbers of input from the communities that would be affected by the project. Looking at how the software works, with analytics and mapping as well as providing a simple design interface and was something everyone could use demonstrates

Reference Kobza, Kim P. “The Atlanta BeltLine and neighborhood America: transportation planners found a comprehensive, cost-effective way to capture the diverse views of residents and report the complex 77 needs of each region.” The Public ManagerWinter 2006: 47+. Academic OneFile. Web. 14 Nov. 2013.

Systems of Contingency, Flexibility and Adapatability Ying-Yu Hung

Landscape architecture is a disciple of diverse interests, scales and territories, it is vague and requires clarification. Landscape architects and urbanists can help reverse the process, cognizant that even with our best intentions, the landscape we create may yield unpredictable results, and that the aspect of change is the underlying factor in all of the work. Systems can no longer be approached in isolation, even the smallest intervention affects the larger whole. “landscape has become a lens through which the contemporary city is represented and a medium through which it is constructed� Charles Waldheim on landscape urbanism.

Landscape infrastructure offers the next step for further inquiry as a city’s development and economic future is in direct proportion to its ability to collect, exchange, distribute goods and services , resources, knowledge and people across vast territories. Cities with well capitalized infrastructural systems provide an efficient, fluid operation hence maximizing its productive power and regional influence. The U.S. Highway system, developed for national defense purposes has developed for civilian use, carrying 40 percent of all highway traffic, 75 percent of heavy truck traffic and 90 percent of all tourist traffic, however due to lack of funding, the infrastructure is falling into disrepair.

Infrastructural issues arise such as the design was historically conceived in isolation, independent of the overall urban vision, leading to conflict and compromise measures such as mitigation, camouflage and sometimes deactivation of the system. Also the U.S. has placed a high value on mono-functional infrastructural systems, fulfilling a single purpose, designed for efficiency, but fail to provide a consistent level of efficiency throughout there lifespans. Clashing with the context of urban life, transit corridors are left idle between peak hours creating voids and barriers in the city.

Infrastructure can more meaningfully integrate territories, reduce marginalization and stimulate new forms of interaction. The traditional centralized single-purpose infrastructural system has to

become decentralized and multi-functional, becoming a catalyst for urban revitalization through open space augmentation, habitat creation, community revitalization and the transformation of urban blight into urban destination.

This reading highlights current issues of infrastructure and its roles in creating new territories rather than creating further divides. Examining how landscape can play a vital role in reconnecting the void and disconnect left by infrastructure can provide , allows a more efficient yet somewhat organic use of city spaces.

Reference Hung, Ying-Yu. Landscape Infrastructure: Case Studies by SWA. Basel: BirkhaĚˆuser, 2011.

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Recycling Sites Undergoing Urban Transformation Michael Ziehl

Second hand spaces draw on the atmosphere, the traces and the history of their previous uses. An individual aesthetic evolves out of these sites, each with an improvised quality and embedded history, which allows for unique opportunity and interactions to emerge. These second hand spaces allow for new uncharted plans of action to emerge, acting against traditional urban planning methods, and further embedding themselves into the context through the means of their creative reactivation.

Second hand usually a term deemed for clothing, brings out the notion of resourcefulness, the same can be applied for the second hand site of the city. The do-it-yourself attitude has created a new mentality of anyone being able to reclaim space and improve conditions. Allowing more people to try their hand at improving space and making place. However many people have not fully acclimated to the idea of second hand spaces as they fall out of the traditional categorization of normative city function.

Much like the fashion industry, design can move through phases of trend, fashion, and obsolescence, this can happen in architecture as well, the reasons may be different but a state of obsolescence can emerge. A process of recycling can prevent the site from falling into decay; it is economically sustainable and sensible.

The economic feasibility of recycling allows for users to pursue successive courses of action, in turn leading to more creative explorations and experimentation. The result is projects that allow for long term investment and growth with low risk.

Second hand spaces that are opened up for public consumption provide traditional urban planning with a set of suitable solutions and responses that are low cost and low risk while maximizing usability and effectiveness in it inclusiveness.

This article is helpful in looking at how vacant sites and underutilized city spaces can be considered second hand, however in the sense of the embedded history and resourcefulness that vacant sites can offer.

Regarding these spaces as opportunities for resourceful reutilization through programs of public engagement programs can help foster city growth that is still contains the regiment of typical systems, yet allow for more bottom up organic growth.

Reference Ziehl, Michael, Sarah Osswald, Oliver Hasemann, and Daniel Schnier. Second Hand Spaces. Berlin: Jovis, 2012.

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Highways: An Architectural Approach Lester Abbey Lester Abby writes about the role of architecture in highway design, which attempts to exist between the humanistic component rather than just a strictly engineering point of view. He notes that the goal of the highway is to become an integral part of its setting, and yet the design and implementation process is still fragmented and compartmentalized. The work of planners is separate from that of engineers, which in turn is separate from the work of designers and disconnected from the actual contractors of the highway themselves, lacking a continuity from planning to operation.

Abbey lists a hierarchy in transportation planning: Policy, Systems and then Project. The project component s recommended to be evaluated through various range of scales from short to long range, examining the full effect of design implementation.

The question is raised about the need for more highways, as the single occupant transit systems continue to clog and jam up with more and more users, leading to more time lost sitting in the automobile going to and from.

However the going to and from, the home to work, as Abbey brings up, is somewhat unknown, we are unsure of what future work schedules will be, whether there will be a shift from working in the dense urban cores or whether we will continue to work at home, and this unknown, he argues is the one things proponents of more highways have going for them.

Another issue brought up in this reading is the notion of community infrastructure. As the highway has become a communal piece, used by all, it falls under heavy criticism when something goes wrong or there is a malfunction in the system. The current viewpoint for roadway infrastructure has become the “if it aint broke, don’t fix it� mentality. This mentality has led to simple repairs being deferred and leading to larger problems, ultimately creating massive costs for the overall system. This has led to the system being viewed more often in a negative light as it seems it has become a continual dump of taxpayer money and the benefits do not outweigh the cost.

Reference Abbey, Lester. Highways: an Architectural Approach. New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1992.

Modulating Infrastructural Flows to Create Open Space Alexander Robinson Alexander Robinson mentions that measuring public open spaces by its proximity to the maximum number of people, size and lack of permanent occupation, then by that definition the circulatory infrastructures: the streets, freeways, railways, urban rivers and power corridors are our greatest space opportunities. The current condition of these systems in most North American cities is that they operate at high capacities, are unable to expand and are perceived as urban stressors.

However current projects have shown enthusiasm for re-utilization of these spaces, but yet that brings along issues of unthinkable cost, along with most of these systems being essential to city function, no matter their lack of desirability.

Robinson asks “How much performance (how much public utility) can we effectively place within these spaces? Specifically, can public open space become an additional performance parameter within these specialized and fixed territories? Can the host of strategies being developed to improve infrastructural performance in-situ be adapted to the creation of open space?�

Robinson goes on to note how modulating flows can start to solve some of the issues. Strategies of access modification, time restrictions, and metering offer dynamic modulations to in the current flows of the city, altering them and allowing for temporary creation of open spaces.

Considering this framework, a set of strategies can be proposed or allow for further design innovation and progress in capturing more urban open space.

Using these modulators, the potential of shifting flows to create temporary open space becomes viable, a system which can further be expanded upon and examined as the role of city infrastructure evolves.

Reference Hung, Ying-Yu. Landscape Infrastructure: Case Studies by SWA. Basel: BirkhaĚˆuser, 2011.

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Lloyd Corp v.

Tanner Supreme Court

The definition of what is public and what is private continually falls into an expanding grey area; the debate constantly becomes an issue of specificity.

The issue of physical location or place becomes the larger context of the issues, with smaller conflicts of activity and time adding further confusion to the definition of what constitutes “public.” The Supreme Court decision of Lloyd Center, LTD v Tanner et. al discusses the issues with shopping malls being deemed as public spaces, however privatized and constituting the activities that take place within these establishments.

To summarize the article, the argument highlights citizens distributing handbills or pamphlets regarding meeting to protest the draft and the Vietnam War. Operating under the belief that the Lloyd Center mall was a public space, it was a prime location for this sort of activity. Lloyd Center was a main destination for any Portlander’s wants and was/is a dense area of public activity. The Lloyd Center security, who, at the time looked like and had nearly all the authority of the Portland police, including the ability to carry a weapon, asked that the group move off the premises or they would be arrested. Believing that they would be arrested if they did not leave, they departed and the lawsuit was filed. This issue highlights the question where the incidents of petitioners private ownership of the mall has the power to exclude certain forms of speech from its property or the Supreme Court “must decide whether ownership of the center gives petitioner unfettered discretion to determine whether or not it will be used as a public forum”

The Lloyd Center, a mall in Portland’s urban center, and at the time removed public streets for its development location, was once the largest in the nation. Operating over about 50 acres, bounded by public streets, with six other public streets running partly into or around it, the mall was/ is an economic hub, arguably replacing the typical street condition of local businesses: “When construction of the Banfield Freeway through Sullivan’s Gulch was assured, the Lloyd family’s focus turned to a retail facility. Throughout the 1950s, master planning progressed for the Lloyd Center and its

surrounding area. At that time, the Lloyd District was similar to many urban Portland neighborhoods – middle-class, single- and multi-family homes with a big Sears store, grocery stores, a few restaurants, dry cleaners, churches, etc. serving the residents. In August 1960, Lloyd Center, the thenlargest shopping center in the country, opened its doors. As an open-air development, it featured extensive award-winning landscaping and became immediately popular with residents from all over Portland”

The issue that is highlighted here other than the activity of peaceful protest taking place within the public-private hybrid of Lloyd Center, was of a centralized privatized entity becoming the new economic hub. In the case, the center for commercial activity became a packages destination through the removal of public streets containing local shops and restaurants line the streets and the public wanders in and out and transverses. The design of the mall created a simulated public, outdoor space that felt much like commercial streets. The mall is described in the case as an “enclosed mall compressed and intensified space. Glass-enclosed elevators and zigzagging escalators added dynamic vertical and diagonal movement to the basic horizontal plan of the mall. Architects manipulated space and light to achieve the density and bustle of a city downtown- to create essentially a fantasy urbanism devoid of the city’s negative aspects: weather, traffic and poor people.”

In conclusion, this case highlights the broader area of what is deemed public and what is private. In terms of privatizing an urban center that acts as a traditional town center, it falls upon one owner (or group) to have a clearly stated set of regulations and what they deem public actions, a list that would be long and almost impossible to create. In my view, if something is peaceful and acts in a way that does not physically harm other patrons, and in a place that is calling itself public, it should be permitted. This, of course, is open to discretion of what is being protested, but I back it up with the notion that we abide by the first amendment whether we like what is being said or not.

Reference Supreme Court of United States. Lloyd Corp v. Tanner 407 US 551. Washington D.C.: Supreme Court of the United States, 1972.

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Highway...ing SMAQ The traditional trend in architecture is to reinforce the purely disciplinary statues of the architectural expertise, only focusing on the methodologies of material, tectonic and performative constraints. High speed transit systems, such as freeways create conflicts like noise pollution and an incompatibility of speeds from pedestrian to highway speed vehicles. These issues have created a dramatic disconnect in a situation where there is a tectonic overlap.

Highway‌ing looks to embrace this segregation, aiming at the invention of a new typology integrating road and living infrastructure, looking at an overall systemic integration rather than two separate parts. Incorporating elastic design processes into a current system of static form and geometry, the oppositions of different speeds, diameters and scales, become intertwined thus achieveing a greater programmatic and sensual density.

Highway‌ing reprograms the road with sports facilities, housing and pedestrian access, the spaces that the highway uses to accelerate and decelerate allow for these facilities to exist. Pedestrian crossings stitch the once dividing line as housing is now incorporated into the highway system itself.

This reading offers insight into the potential of the highway as a system; currently it acts as a spine for access to cities, but creates numerous problems, from noise to traffic and cutting off parts in between. However evaluating the highway as a system to build onto rather than around, fills the void and allows for reclamation of space for human use.

Reference Hauck, Thomas J, Infrastructural Urbanism: Addressing the in-Between. Berlin: DOM publishers, 2011.

Life Between Buildings Jan Gehl Examining the relationship between space use patterns and the spatial properties of the physical environment, Gehl looks at analyzing the factors which influence the use of urban spaces. Using qualifiers of human use from flows, levels and activity from human contact to social interaction, Gehl offers insight into the performance of various types of public spaces.

Gehl talks about how functionalism has led to a lack in the vitality of street life and how we have compartmentalized the systems of the city with little room for overlap or spontaneous activity. Raising the issues of a sense of place and the dimensions of public space, reveals the design approach required for activated and successful public spaces. Examining what factors led to people assembling and dispersing within a public space from building heights, orientation and density offer contextual factors that play a vital role in the success of a public space.

Continuing to examine the combination of both moving and stationary activities, the examination of how static activities allow people to stop an reside within the space, creating an experience much different than just transitioning through. The details and the smallest components are some of the biggest factors that contribute to people residing within the space and make the largest difference in its success. Having a specific level of pedestrian movement along with areas for static occupancy can be complimentary to one another, allowing for factors of safety, enjoyment and successfulness in the public space.

Reference Gehl, Jan. Life between Buildings: Using Public Space. New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1987.

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