Written Statements 01

We do not have a new reading for this week. Instead, we should be developing our written statements through the ideas expressed in the readings over the course of the semester.
Please provide short (1-3 sentences) responses to each of the following questions:
What is/are the processes at work within your park?

How do this/these process(es) contribute to the organization of your park?

Which elements of your park are open?

Which are closed?

How is your park legible? Give a specific example.

How is your park resilient? Give a specific example.

If you do not understand these questions, it means you need to review the readings from the past few weeks.

What is/are the processes at work within your park? The major process at work in my park design is that of puncturing the man-made and allowing the natural processes to take hold and eventually take over in these designed areas. The puncture speeds up the natural processes already in the works on this site, while seizing the opportunity to strategically site spaces for human use.


How do this/these process(es) contribute to the organization of your
park? These processes are based on a grid that works from the bottom left of the site in a gradient both horizontally and vertically. This organization takes advantage of the natural area to the left of the site, in hopes that the combination of favorable conditions and natural succession being sped up by the design would culminate into a new and unique park, while retaining the sites historical significance.


Which elements of your park are open? The punctures are an example of an open part of my system as they depend on succession as they age and the concrete gives way to plants. Some puncture are flexible, so they allow for a range of activities as well as the opportunity for natural succession to take place and give the park a range of flexibility into the future.


Which are closed? Some of the sports field areas are closed in my system as they are predetermined for a specific activity or range of activity while some other punctures are left flexible to allow for active or passive recreation.


How is your park legible? Give a specific example. The park not very legible for its greenness now is designed in a way that after the design is finished the natural process continues as the plant material with the favorable conditions supported by the design will continue to fill the punctures and afford plants the opportunity to spread to areas that were well out of reach before this design.


How is your park resilient? Give a specific example. This park is resilient in a way that I have designed disturbance, in the form of the puncture and set in motion a process which will eventually reverse the amount of paved surface into vegetated surfaces, not quite the land that existed before it was filled in but never the less a usable space for the surrounding residents and visitors that can transform as the need for changing or evolving programs arises.

Reading #8

The reading for this week is:

Julia Czerniak, "Legibility and Resilience", in Large Parks (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2007) pp. 214-251.

Reading #7

We will return to our readings this week with:

Anita Berrizbeitia, “Re‐Placing Process”, in Large Parks (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2007), pp. 174‐197.

and

“210‐15, 320‐13, 320‐15, 320‐16, 320‐17, 320‐18, 520‐3, 520‐4, 520‐5, 520‐7, 520‐8, 520‐11, 520‐12, 520‐14, 520‐15, 520‐16, 520‐19, 520‐20” , in Time‐Saver Standards for Landscape
Architecture: Design and Construction Data. (New York: McGraw Hill Publishing Company, 1998).

Principles of Landscape Ecology

As we move forward, it is important that we begin to understand the readings as they relate to our own individual projects. In this way we should use the readings to help us to develop our ideas. Use your comments for this week's blog entry to relate the reading directly to your project.

The reading identifies 4 principles; PATCHES, EDGES AND BOUNDARIES, CORRIDORS AND CONNECTIVITY, and MOSAICS.

1. Discuss how each of these 4 principles might relate to your project.

2. Describe how your project provides for human use by responding to a system already at work on the site.

Sixth Reading

Wenche E. Dramstad, James D. Olson, and Richard T.T. Foreman, "Foundation", in Landscape Ecology Principles in Landscape Architecture and Land-use Planning (Washington D.C.: Island Press, 1996) 9-18.

and

Wenche E. Dramstad, James D. Olson, and Richard T.T. Foreman, "Part 1: Principles", in Landscape Ecology Principles in Landscape Architecture and Land-use Planning (Washington D.C.: Island Press, 1996) 19-46.

Fifth Reading

This week we are reading from New Geographies issue #2: Landscapes of Energy. See below for the post about the publication's release last week. These readings look at specific projects and will hopefully be inspiring at the current stage of our work. Please post your comments here. There are more pictures than words here so I expect some thoughtful conversation.

See you Friday.

Mapping Data

The mapping data is on its way...

Please also take a look at the following 3 additional sources for data:

Bytes of the big apple. Great source for planning GIS data.
http://www.nyc.gov/html/dcp/html/bytes/applbyte.shtml

The second is the NY State GIS clearing House.  Great source for data, but
you will need to sign up.
http://www.nysgis.state.ny.us/gisdata/index.cfm

Finally, http://www.nyc.gov/html/doitt/html/eservices/eservices_gis_downloads.shtml

All three links have been added to the links widget to the right. 

New Geographies 02: Landscapes of Energy

A book launch will be held for the second volume in the New Geographies series tonight at the Storefront for Art and Architecture. The event will include a panel discussion between Rania Ghosn, Hashim Sarkis, and Charles Waldheim, whom we read a few weeks back. 

Storefront

Forth Reading

Our forth reading is James Corner, "Eidetic Operations and New Landscapes", in Recovering Landscape: Essays in Contemporary Landscape Architecture, ed. James Corner (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1999), pp. 152-169.

Mapping

Came across this map just thought I would share.

Third Reading

Our third reading is James Corner, "The Agency of Mapping: Speculation, Critique and Invention", in Mappings, ed. Denis Cosgrove(London: Reaktion Books, 1999), pp. 231-252.

Definition

Landscape -
the organization of space

Landscape is a medium

The landscape is a medium, a medium that adapts and a medium that is evolving. The concept of landscape, especially in its relationship to nature exists in a timeline that goes from religious reflection, to theories of beauty, to existing as a juxtaposition to city life (Central Park). These events tie into man’s growth, mentally and technologically. To today where a concept of landscape urbanism is introduced. This I understood to be the landscape’s continual transformation in a time where man has realized errors in planning, importance of nature, and acceptance of a new layer into the city. It is this integration of landscape to the city that develops the concept of landscape infrastructure. It becomes the landscape that provides the blank sheet to be designed for activity and programs. The same way the city relies on electrical grids or sewage systems it now needs a methodology to incorporate the landscape. But rather than including the landscape in last, it becomes the job of the architect to design a process and lay out a model for the new city. This threading of integral layers (historical, natural, man-made, scientific) involved in our way of life is landscape urbanism in the way I understood it.

Landscape
land-scape [lan(d)-skāp]
1a: a picture representing a view of natural inland scenery b: the art of depicting such scenery
2a: the landforms of a region in the aggregate b: a portion of territory that can be viewed at one time from one place c: a particular area of activity

"infrastructural urbanism"

Stan Allen begins this chapter with three images spanning six decades of the twentieth century. These images take us down a path of design frameworks that go from cultural/aesthetic to technological to economically productive. This developed into what he describes as "semiotic architecture" taking away from architectures versatility and "discursive system". This of course is not to be fully blamed on the architect, but on social, economic and political shifts of the time. The path reveals architecture's continuous metamorphosis in responding to the dynamic system around it. This first point is taken and noted and the author then heads down a line that defiantly states, "One affect of this shift toward images and signs is that architecture's disciplinary frame shifts. It finds itself in competition with other discursive media - painting, film, literature, the internet, performance art - a field in which architecture often seems to come up short. What these other media lack, of course, is architecture's powerful instrumentality - its capacity to not only critique, but also to actually transform reality." This statement is a bold definition for architecture, although I question its full validity. It is true the architecture becomes more than just an art, model, or concept, it becomes transformed into a space of social activity, program, and function, all regulated to a certain extent by the architecture itself. But this is only in the physical world, in the metaphysical world, it can become the painting, the novel, or the movie that influence and alter our realities. These other elements guide and express the human condition just as well as the building. I have to point of course my knowledge of specific examples of design and architecture of that time are limited and I'm unsure of specific examples Stan Allen may be citing too, so what I could be saying could not relate.
Anyway the chapter continues with the introduction of the term infrastructural urbanism which I decided to break down for understanding.

infrastructure
in-fra-struc-ture [in-fruh-struhk-cher]
- the basic, underlying framework or features of a system or organization
urbanism
ur-ban-ism [ur-buh-niz-uhm]
- the way of life of people who live in a large city.

A model in which architecture is understood as a material practice that "works in and among the world of things, not exclusively with meaning and image." This transforms the system to a level that is closer involved with the larger system around it. The world is an ecology of systems (ecosystem) parts and pieces that all fit together and work together. So is infrastructure then this basic framework connecting these systems? The message I understood through the text revealed the answer is yes and it becomes what I perceive as form and function working together, neither following the other. Infrastructure can then be thought of as a systematic configuration linking elements of a site, design, and context. How are the pieces working together and what are their relationships to the space become the questions to ask.
Understanding these conditions and considerations I fail to see these concepts applied in either the reconstruction of the Souks of Beruit or the Logistical Activities Zone in Barcelona. His idea of unity "achieved by the continuous rhythm of the roof structure" to me feels disconnected from the rest of the site. It begins to enclose an outside space and looses connection to tradition, especially in the Beruit example. I fail to see the need for a tangible structure when addressing infrastructure or infrastructural urbanism, not to say that it can't be. When I think of these connections especially when design is considering, space, program, and function there are more typologies that must be taken into consideration. These roof structures are missing something, especially since urbansim is the way of life of people in a city. Or perhaps it becomes an understanding that went way over my head.

First Reading

The reading for this week is Infrastructural Urbanism, Chapter 2 from Stan Allen's "Points + Lines: Diagrams and Projects for the City".