Sustainable Portfolio

Portfolio Michael Tweed , RA, LEED AP

Green Streets: Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Dickinson Street Proposed Green Street

Philadelphia, as with many other cities across the country, combines stormwater run-off into the sanitary sewer system.

As a result, pollution is being dumped into the city’s rivers during heavy rain events.

Working closely with the Philadelphia Water Department, this project designed interventions along the public streets to collect, clean and distribute stormwater run-off through the use of plants, trees and other sustainable methods. These techniques, known as”green streets”, slow the movement of water into the sewer system, drastically reducing the need for expensive infrastructure to reduce the overflow events that pollute the rivers. I helped generate prototype streetscapes to accomplish these goals and illustrated the street interventions used to communicate the purpose of these “green streets” to the community so that the water department gained citizen support. The success of this project is illustrated by the inclusion of these techniques in other projects throughout this portfolio.

Dickinson Street Existing Conditions

Sustainability Consulting

Snyder Avenue Sequence of Development

Snyder Avenue Green Street Construction Sequence

A Civic Vision for the Central Delaware: Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Aerial Rendering of South Philadelphia

This plan created a new vision for a seven-mile stretch of the Delaware River in Philadelphia. Currently cut off from the city by the intrusion of I-95, this riverfront is comprised of underutilized post-industrial land and big-box development, and is subject to unregulated residential speculation. The plan emphasized the ecological and economic value of the waterfront and established a framework that the city follow to generate new, cohesive, and sustainable development. This new growth would be organized around parks and open space, provide access to the river and implement a new movement system, including decking over I-95 and a grand civic boulevard complete with public transit. I took part in the design charrette, which allowed for public involvement, and I was then responsible for many of the diagrams and illustrators which conveyed the new vision. This vision has won several awards including: -American Society of Landscape Architects Honor Award, 2009 -The Waterfront Center Honor Award, 2008 -AIA Philadelphia Design Excellence Award, 2008 -APA Pennsylvania Planning Excellence Award Best Practice, 2008 -Congress for the New Urbanism Charter Award, 2008 -AIA Philadelphia Urban Design Committee Excellence Award, 2007 Aerial Rendering of Center City Philadelphia

Master Planning

River Front Park Network Signature Parks Neighborhood Parks Parks Under I-95 Riverfront Trail Green Streets

Parks & Open Spaces

Viaduct Park & Pier Development

Paoli TOD: Paoli, Pennsylvania

Aerial Rendering

This site, a former Amtrak rail yard, is developed on a brownfield super fund site. This project leverages the principles of transit oriented development by developing a new mixed use community around the new train station built across the rail tracks from this project site. The project includes a mix of office space, retail, rental and ownership residential and a senior living facility. The new development is build around the framework of a linear road connecting ample public space. The project also seeks to be LEED Neighborhood Development Certified.

For this project I was responsible for all aspects of design. I initially started with an extensive code review, which was only complicated by the fact that the project spans two townships.

I then worked with the client to formulate a design program and framework plan, which I then developed into the finished plan and renderings illustrated here.

West Entrance Perspective

East Entrance Perspective

Transit Oriented Development

Illustrative Plan

Land Use Plan

Trenton Downtown Waterfront: Trenton, New Jersey

Perspective of Neighborhood

A previous master plan for Trenton, New Jersey, suggested the removal of the existing route 29 limited access highway that runs through the center of the city, and replacing it with a boulevard complete with public transportation running down the center planting strip. This project was an economic feasibility and market plan for a small portion of this highway reconstruction project. Most of the study site was surface parking for the state office buildings. The master plan transformed the surface parking into gridded city blocks with dense development, placing the existing parking in garages throughout the project site. Anchoring the new development was a new campus for the community college and a new hospital. Other uses throughout the site included ground level retail, residential towers, a museum and convention center and office development. Public open space and parks were also important to the plan. Along with a new waterfront park, which connected the study area to the park space around the capital complex to the north, other neighborhood parks dot the plan. For this project, I drew the blocks of new development, formulated detailed calculations on land use that were used by the economic consultants, and created the illustrative drawings used to market the plan.

Land Use Plan

Neighborhood Planning

Illustrative Plan

Great Public Space: Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Map of Projects

Focusing on improving public spaces, this report was written for the William Penn Foundation as a means to help guide their multi-million dollar funding commitments for a period of ten years. The project had several goals; create a new vision of public spaces for Philadelphia, research known public space projects, rank these projects using a scoring system, and determine when each project would need to be funded and how much it would cost. Presented here are the seventeen projects that were in the final report. However, what is not shown is that every major project had several sub-projects each evaluated for cost and readiness. In total there were sixty-two projects studied in a data driven model used to determine the best projects to fund and when to fund them. I was integral to the team in developing this report. I was responsible for everything including; initial project research, mapping the projects, writing the text for the report and creating the sophisticated ranking model. While this project succeeded in developing a rational approach for the William Penn Foundation to determine its funding cycles, it has a great potential to become a model for planners and philanthropists throughout the country. In today’s current political environment where there are many grass roots originations pushing their own causes yet little money to fund a wide array of projects, this process uses a fair and logical means to create a vision and strategy for implementation. As such this project represents a tool that could have wide applicability to any city or organization involved with planning or policy making.

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                 

Rank and Score of Projects

                 

Strategic Planning

Example Project Map & Phased Sub-Projects

Field Observations of Existing Conditions

A Sustainable Framework For Priet: Nataional Standards

Retail Environmental Issues

Upon request from a client, this project illustrated the definition of “sustainability”, how this client’s projects impact the planet, and what steps could be taken to reduce this impact. The result was a series of presentations that explained everything from the simple science of climate change to how the client’s corporate infrastructure could become more sustainable.

My responsibilities included creating the presentation that was focused on the sustainability of site planning and architecture. This presentation focused on “low hanging fruit” which are interventions that can be easily implemented into most projects developed by this client.

However, the presentation also suggested more advanced concepts of sustainability in the built form that could be implemented when the client makes substantial renovations to existing properties or builds new development.

Areas of Study

Examples of Low Hanging Fruit

Sustainability Consulting

Examples of Environmental Improvement Suggestions

Energy Analysis

Single Family Detached Housing

Density Rating:

Single Family Semi-Detached Housing

Density Rating:

Single Family Attached Housing

Density Rating:

Multiple Family Housing

Density Rating:

Ideal solar orientation is often heralded as a great example for sustainable development, and there is no doubt that the orientation of a building does have an impact on the energy used by that building. Within a rural or suburban setting, designing the ideal orientation of a building is easy to achieve.

However, in urban conditions where development wraps around four sides of a block, achieving ideal orientation is difficult.

This line of research was intended to determine what social inequities there might be when urban orientation is accounted for. To study this, this experiment looked at the energy saved by various building orientations in a variety of development densities.

The conclusion of this experiment is that the energy saved by dense development far surpasses that of ideal orientation. The efficiency gained from building more densely removed any concern for buildings that did not have ideal orientation, meaning there is very little to no social justice issues when accounting for urban orientation. But more importantly, this research shows that if site orientation is considered an important sustainable solution, then so must urban density.

This experiment is only the beginning of how a study can relate density to energy efficiency. While it shows that urban density should fully be investigated, the models presented here were only sketches of real buildings. There are many other building types, locations, technologies and details that can be investigated. Also, this model did not take into account energy saved by the reduced need for infrastructure and transportation that follows dense urban development. It is my hope that in the future I can continue this research and use it to help influence the debate on climate change solutions.

Density 100.00% 80.00% 60.00% 40.00% 20.00% 0.00% 1

2

3

4

3

4

Energy Savings

Oreinta�on 100.00% 80.00% 60.00% 40.00% 20.00% 0.00% 1

2 Energy Savings

Sustainability Consulting

Density Vs. Orientation Energy Analysis

Energy Used Long face of Cooling Total building facing Heating N/S 6298188 1378626 7676814 E/W 6190506 1439344 7629850 45 degrees 6221541 1415437 7636978

Density

2%

11%

Energy Used Heating Cooling Total 4814580 1142353 5956933 4827140 1193908 6021048 4957791 1165803 6123594

2%

23%

Energy Used Heating Cooling Total 48700600 14227792 62928392 48639228 14604137 63243365 49351112 14485220 63836332

Density

Energy Savings Orientation

Multi-Faimly Housing

Density

Energy Savings Orientation

Attached Housing

Long face of building facing N/S E/W 45 degrees

0%

Energy Savings

Energy Used Long face of Cooling Total building facing Heating N/S 5626002 1236282 6862284 E/W 5506134 1283254 6789388 45 degrees 5551202 1262667 6813869

front to back orientation N/S E/W 45 degrees

2%

Orientation

Semi-Detached Housing

Density

Energy Savings Orientation

Detached Housing

2%

42%

The Urban Kidney: Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Aerial Perspective

This project was a submission to an international design competition “Building a Sustainable World�, sponsored by the California chapter of the Royal British Institute of Architects.

The major goal of the competition was to build a community with a minimum of 1,000 residences that could exist off the grid. This submission earned second runner up for the completeness of the design. The design for this neighborhood did not just generate its own energy and water, but it also went far beyond by remediating brownfields, cleaning a polluted river, and revitalizing a blighted neighborhood. This project restored the urban fabric with a sustainable and progressive design that could be exported beyond this site to any post-industrial city. As a member of this team, I was integral in developing the design concept, energy modeling, strategic phasing and finial design documentation. This project was further honored by being chosen by the Community Design Collaborative for their Industrial Renaissance exhibit, which highlights project that transform industrial sites back to productive use.

Location Map

Urban Design Competition

Infill Housing Concept