End Game

I'll be wrapping up my project research into shared open space over the next month and a half. Also, presenting a paper about new directions in Danish urban design practice this week. And entering a design competition for an industrial site just outside of Boston, MA. So, this website will probably be a bit neglected until the Fulbright officially wraps up on June 1. At that point, look for the content of this site to be reorganized into a new website that will contain my design work, research and writing. Possibly with a new domain name. I'll post a link here when that gets off the ground sometime this summer. Thanks for visiting over the past 7 months and for the emails and comments!

Design Explorations

I've spent the last couple of weeks exploring how the shared outdoor space and living/woonerf street concepts could be used in the North American context. This first exploration looked at a Chicago neighborhood with an enormous number of abandoned, city-owned lots. I'll post more details under the "design" section of this website later in the week.

Shared Space is the new Woonerf

Not a single woonerf street has been built in Holland over the past 20 years.

Enter Shared Spaced—a new concept for the design of streets that proposes re-designing traffic environments so that they become spaces used by cars, pedestrians and cyclists for both functional and social purposes. Dutch traffic engineer Hans Monderman began exploring these ideas twenty years ago (and has since been joined by Ben Hamilton-Baillie as the two leaders of the movement). Hans lectured at the Center last night and the two of us spent Friday driving around Copenhagen and looking at streets and projects.

Monderman's chief tactic for transforming streets is to remove most traffic signs and lights—Shared Space projects illustrate that this act encourages social intereaction among auto drivers which actually creates safer traffic environments. He also encourages the use of materials and details that indicate the street's character to its users. His studies show that if a street is "perceived" as a small town main street, automobiles will slow down—and that this is a more effective strategy than posting speed limit signs. To learn more details, visit this site: Shared Space

Currently, there are seven pilot projects underway in Germany, Denmark, Holland, Belgium and the UK.

I find this concept really exciting. Many urban designers are of course interested in re-establishing streets as social places to be shared by both automobiles and pedestrians. But few, I think, would actually consider removing street signs as a strategy for increasing safety and social behavior.

What is Research?

This is a question that I have been reflecting on quite a bit lately as I draw closer to the midpoint of my project. Of course, you could probably spend a lifetime defining the word "research" beginning with its use in other fields and its linguistic origins among other things... but for now I'd rather just think about it.

Architecture exists between the scientific fields and the humanities and because of this it can be pretty tricky to define terms like "research" and "thesis". In the field of architecture, "research" has been used to describe everything from the formal analysis of Roman architecture undertaken by the Prix de Rome winners to the statistic-oriented books created by Koolhaas and his students which focus on "shopping", "globalization" and other themes. Unlike other fields, architecture does not seem to have an established set of research tools or methodologies. Which kind of makes sense. Research standards might interfere with the artistic and creative possibilities inherent in the investigations.

So, I suppose that one thing I am exploring this year is a research methodology of my own. How should I approach subject matter than I find interesting? What tools will enable me to gain a better understanding of this subject matter?

At this stage, my inclination is to organize my research process into three categories: write, gather, and invent (or create). I've learned that writing can be a powerful tool for framing an investigation and placing it within a context of other ideas and projects. The second stage, gather, involves searching for first-hand knowledge about the subject matter. While the writing stage could be primarily completed in the library or the studio, the gather stage requires the researcher to explore the subject matter through visits, drawings, photographs, interviews, films, recordings, etc. I guess these specific techniques would vary quite a bit based on the topic of study.... Finally, I think that as designers, it is critical to integrate the act of creation/invention into the research process. Much of the work I have discovered this past semester that focuses on contemporary architectural and urban phenomenon has disappointed me because of its lack of vision. It is enormously difficult to make the leap from analysis to design, but I think it is of critical importance if our research is to be of any value.

What do you think?

Architects and GIS

This week, I arranged for the GIS (Geographic Information Systems) expert at the school to give an introductory workshop to the Center for Public Space Research. GIS is a powerful and complicated tool that enables you to visually display incredible amounts of data as maps and diagrams. For example, a spreadsheet describing crime from the local police department (including crime type, location and date) could be opened and displayed on a map of the city using GIS. Then, one could add data about residents' income and tell the program to display crimes geographically based on average incomes of neighborhood residents. In other words, different types of information can be added together and sorted or arranged in a variety of ways.

Planners have been quick to adopt GIS, perhaps because they are—traditionally—more concerned about demographics and policy than architects. But, it seems to me that architects and urban designers could use GIS in order to identify sites for new proposals or interventions. One example of this approach is illustrated by Dr. Anne Vernez Moudon from the University of Washington. Her team established a complex series of criteria for describing walkable neighborhoods in Seattle and then queried the GIS system for sites in Seattle's suburbs that also matched the same criteria. After site visits revealed significant barriers to walking and cycling in these environments, Vernez Moudon could potentially recommend design proposals or recommendations for these environments.

Here at the Center, GIS offers a fantastic strategy for organizing the people-centered data collected in Copenhagen and other cities. Entering this data into the GIS system would provide very efficient methods for displaying, archiving and interpreting this data.

So, at this point I am searching for a way to test out some of these ideas by integrating this tool into my own research.

Suburban Form

Suburban Form: An International Perspective is a recent collection of essays edited by Kiril Stanilov and Brenda Case Scheer. This is a great book that presents case studies of various suburban environments in Asia, North America and Europe. It argues, convincingly, that suburban form is NOT the same everywhere. Since the 1950's, architects, planners and scholars have described the suburbs as physically monotonous and socially homogeneous environments. Suburban Form is one of several recent books to challenge this assumption.

One of my favorite essays, by Brenda Case Scheer, compares several different segments of a commercial highway strip outside of Cincinnati, Ohio. The formal and historical documentation of the four segments reveals that there is an underlying order and logic to these environments despite their chaotic appearance. The study also demonstrates that although the segments have much in common with each other, there are significant differences in scale, subtle variations in form and unique processes of lot acquisition and consolidation.

I found it interesting that many of the authors utilized GIS technologies to quickly map demographic and formal changes. Layering this information can create diagrams that describe social and morphological processes. GIS is a fantastic tool that more architects ought to be using. I am coordinating a workshop in late November to introduce basic concepts of the technology at the Center. Hopefully, I will find interesting ways to integrate it into my project.

Places 17.2 Retrofitting Suburbia

Over the past couple of weeks, I have been eagerly awaiting the arrival of the latest issue of Places journal at the architecture library. The issue is titled Retrofitting Suburbia and is edited by Ellen Dunham-Jones. I've been spending a lot of time researching strategies for suburban retrofits over the past few weeks in the library—so I was understandably excited to hear that the last issue of Places would be devoted to the topic.

It finally arrived yesterday.

I read the journal cover-to-cover in record time and waited for it to sink in over the course of the day. And what did I come away with? Disappointment.

The essays and projects included are very successful in that they cover a wide range of issues related to the topic from a variety of perspectives—finance, real estate, policy, architecture, etc. But I can't help but feel disappointed that the overall tone of the issue was, well, a bit depressing, really! And quite boring too!

Christopher B. Leinberger's essay, entitled "Creating Alternatives to the Standard Real Estate Types" spent more time explaining how entrenched the market is in existing real estate typologies than he did describing possible additions of new types. Renee Chow's "Ossified Dwelling: Or Why Contemporary Suburban Housing Can’t Change" beautifully diagrams and describes wonderful adaptations to homes in Levittown. But, only to conclude that today's sub-divisions contain houses that are too large and lots that are too small to support this type of retrofit today. Paul Hess' "Rediscovering the Logic of Garden Apartments" clearly describes the history of and fundamental problems with the garden apartment. Together, these essays describe how incredibly difficult it is to physically retrofit suburban conditions, particularly in residential areas.

"Superneighborhood 27: A Brief History of Change" by Susan Rogers is a fascinating essay that describes the incredible demographic and social change that has taken place in a inner Houston suburb over the last 20 years as a growing population of families from Central America has replaced middle class singles. This essay convincingly shows that unplanned demographic change is perhaps a more likely "retrofit" than physical change.

Lots of descriptions. Lots of analysis. But what was missing were ideas, interventions, dreams -and dare I say- retrofits!

My favorite piece was provided by Roger Sherman, who describes a backyard wiffle ball baseball field that was constructed in two backyards of cul-de-sac residences in southern California. Complete with bleachers, a scoreboard and even a concession stand, this project is one of the few illustrations of an actual retrofit.

Of course, Places is a serious and scholarly journal. This collection of essays clearly illustrates that there are numerous policies, cultural attitudes and financial markets that present an incredible challenge to those who would like to transform the middle landscape.

Maybe the notion of "fun" is not in keeping with the scholarly sensibilities of the magazine—or—with the dire state of the suburban landscape. But, I can't help but wish J.B. Jackson was with us to remind us that these landscapes are beautiful and interesting places too. We ought to find a way to have some fun when we think, write and dream about them.