Immaterial Spaces

I came across an interesting experiment by Timo Arnall and Einar Sneve Martinussen from AHO and Jack Schulze from BERG, in which they mapped the space created by waves emitted from RFID chips. By creating a rig that would trigger an LED each time it entered the RFID field, and capturing these moments on time-lapse photographs, the team was able to create 2-D images of the field. Then, by sequencing the 2-D images in a series of slice, created a 3-dimensional representation of the field. Video here.

 The fields being given off by many different technologies, from microwave ovens to CTA cards, to Wi-Fi hubs and radio stations, can each be spatially mapped to understand their limitations. Mapping an "immaterial space" can have enormous potential for all types of industries. Radio and telecom industries could have accurate maps displaying service areas and signal strength. Verizon could finally get rid of their one-man signal verifier in favor of a legion of receptors atop their vehicles.

Perhaps more intriguing is its application to the built environment. Libraries, cafes, and homes are formed to the boundaries of a Wi-Fi hub. Walls are built to move in sync with signal fluctuations. Groundbreaking ceremonies now include the first powering-on of the hubs. Technology has officially replaced masonry as the new cornerstones of our buildings, its signal our scaffolding. Transcribe the technology to map audible environments and you can determine the volume of space in which the sustained decibel level is above 65. This would be of great interest to residential developers, hospitals and schools, or anyone else that doesn't want to live behind a concrete barrier near a highway or airport.

The technology will have officially permeated our market when it becomes an iPhone app. People hold out their phones like divining rods in search of strong signals. Hi-tech games of hide-and-go-seek with your friends running about the city. A second wave of geocachers search for small beacons hidden in mundane locations. Indeed these experiments have opened up more possibilities than just a graphic for the technology.

What if the technology is attached to brain wave sensors, sold in handy packages over the counter. Instantly your emotions are given a definition and a space; people can measure how sad you are in cubic feet, or literally step inside your "happy place", or know just how far away to stand when you're angry. If an architecture can be made to respond to these readings (possibly with inflatable materials), we could create rooms that are always just the right size-always intimate without being confining. Or in prisons, where the devices are programmed inversely, so the angrier and more dangerous you are, the smaller your cell.

Guadalajara Post-Mordem.

Across a litany of issues that I have recorded as being my personal criticisms of the Guadalajara project, including many issues that I wish to research deeper, there was one that sort of stuck out most. During the design phase of the competition I was well aware that my project was more "real" than what the competition was looking for. More specifically, they were looking for ideas on what a city in this location could be whereas I was really setting out a new system for ordering urban conditions - many of the ideas I had been developing for several years, and here was a chance to apply them all in a real-world location, with a geography I could actually use to form these lucid ideas.

So when the winning entry is announced, I notice two things about it: a) it is similar to mine, but taken further, and b) I need to take my projects further.

Again, I'm trapped in this cycle of thinking that my project was too "real" and didn't push the boundaries enough, then reminding myself that these were ideas I wanted to explore. Perhaps now that I've put them down on paper I can begin to explore them further. So here's an abbreviated analysis of the two projects.

Both projects are exploring a linear mobility structure, accentuated with openings and enlargements at key intervals. Whereas my project explored this idea in plan and ultimately placed these linear routes onto the landscape, the winning design explores the idea sectionally and subtractively by carving them from stone. I've always felt that these are two of the weaker points of studying at UWM, that I have been trained to well in designing in plan and not well enough designing subtractively. Perhaps this is one of the lessons I will take away from this project. The two schemes are designed at completely different densities and populations, and having my target population in mind would muddy the other concept.

What gives me hope is that I am on the correct path; that this idea of a linear system punctuated by public space is a valid strategy. I think that burying it in the face of the mountain is a beautiful move, and its excitement, if not feasible or practical, is stunning (but there's those words again!). I'd like to say that had I not been transcribing previous ideas I would have had a similar response but I don't think I would have. A catalogue of my work shows a consistent failure to push design far enough to leave the realm of pragmatism and enter pure architectural speculation.

My final project at UVA was a similar venture, laden with good intentions but stifled by pragmatism. During my final review I was told that my project would be really great if I had had another 2 weeks to work on it but I've never been sure about that. Once I gave that same criticism to a student a few weeks ago and I realized what it meant: it's not that the project wasn't refined, it's that it was too refined. Boxed in by my own perception of what a final product should be, I resort to details when I have yet to capture the potential spirit of the concept. I can only hope that I will be able to take that away from this competition; that I should continue to explore and model, think in all planes before committing. Yes I had only a week. Yes I was recording my ideas into one project. But that should not keep me from taking it further.

Theory and Practice: Guadalajara - Part II

Many of the ideas for the ArpaFIL competition are several years old. If I were to explain their origins as a narrative, I would probably tell a story about how I was driving through West Virginia on a trip home to Chicago. West Virginia is one of the best drives I've taken; the constant undulations of the road along the X, Y, and Z axes makes for an engaging trip, all the while a panoramic of tree-covered mountains inhabits the background. During a particularly long ascent I began to think about how I was in hour 2 of a 14 hour drive, and that I would much prefer taking a train (as origin stories go, this one goes even further back, to a midnight train ride through the Swiss Alps which I found particularly fascinating). I began designing in my mind a method of creating a high-speed rail line that would occupy the grassy median of the highway. Of course it would have to be elevated, so a sleepy driver would not plow his car or truck into an oncoming train. And the space below could be used to carry cable, fiber optics, power, etc. If given a bit more room, this space could carry slower-moving freight trains. Or regional trains. It was the genesis of the circulation spine.

The spine itself was one concept. It provided a solution to the issue of mobility infrastructure that could be applied to other ideas about land usage which I had studied in Christopher Alexander's A Pattern Language. 
A Pattern addressing towns (#3, City Country Fingers) allows for a region of high density to be placed in close proximity to natural and agricultural, zero-density regions. Flying in the face of modern American suburbanization, this system creates a greater area of intact ecology and exposes the greatest number of citizens to its benefits, without putting either ecology at risk. Alexander's book has had a greater effect on my thinking than I realized; While pattern 3 was my primary tool for organizing large tracts of land in the New Guadalajara, I had inadvertently also applied #2 (The Distribution of towns) to my mobility infrastructure network, and #'s 4 and 6 to the lower-density regions. Going back through A Pattern Language, I see that still many more patterns exist in part or in whole, throughout my design.

What has driven the circulation spine as an organizing element has been a desire to reduce the dependency on motorized traffic. Having lived in towns from 30,000 to 3,000,000, I have really always been able to minimize the amount of driving that was necessary. While I have driven a car since I was 16, in High School I was able to ride my bike to school. In Milwaukee and Charlottesville I could easily walk to classes. In Milwaukee and Chicago I have been able to take public transportation to most of my destinations. In fact, many of the businesses I choose to frequent are chosen in no small part because of their proximity to an El stop or a bus. This is crucial in my observations of the urban landscape; Having fewer cars on the roads means less parking, which means more pedestrians, which means more intimate shops with windows, which makes the streets safer, which means more pedestrians, which brings in more business, which makes the neighborhood thrive, which reduces crime, which brings more pedestrians and more income, which improves the quality of life and air and sound and all the things that make cities wonderful. On the other hand, more cars means more parking, means greater distances between stores, means inward-focused stores, means fewer eyes on the street, means greater crime, means fewer pedestrians, means more cars. Both are self-fulfilling prophecies. America is currently caught in a downward vehicular spiral. My interest is in seeing what it would be to have an upward, pedestrian cycle.
By combining a pedestrian-focused urban landscape with an organizational circulation spine, the city begins to take shape. Pedestrian streets run perpendicular to local rail stops at 400 foot intervals, equivalent to half of every El stop. Pedestrian streets run about 1500 feet at their longest, which allows even the farthest buildings to be walkable to a train. By staying within this 3000-foot corridor, there is not a single inhabitant of the city that cannot reach a train with a 10 minutes' walk.
Corresponding to this layout, a pattern of density emerges which is highest at a point where pedestrian routes meet the circulation spine. Akin to a major intersection in a city, these points receive high traffic counts in relation to the far ends of a street. The natural response to to place a greater number of people and businesses near these intersections. Fully 50% of the citizens of the New Guadalajara will live or work within 500 feet of a train station.

The shape of the city has changed. From the centralized shape of a traditional Roman town or Medieval castle town, or the center-less sprawl of an American frontier town, the city has taken on a linear shape, with bulges occurring at cities along the serpentine spine. The shape is without precedent, but the precedents required for city-building have changed. Cities no longer require an elevated position for defensive purposes. Access to a river is no longer needed for water, which is pumped from aquifers; or shipping, as shipments are now made by rail, truck, or plane. The only regulating factor in developing the New Guadalajara was the preservation of natural features. The spine runs along the bases of mountains. Agricultural land is pushed out of the way of forests and riparian corridors. Even the city yields to the right-of-way of streams and natural foothills. The city is subservient to nature, and will adjust itself to suit the landscape. A very un-American concept.

From the omnipresent regulation of the circulation spine comes a new interpretation of wayfinding hierarchy. Whereas the modern highway system organizes itself as a datum, off of which one can find rest stops, towns, or other concrete ribbons, the circulation spine of the New Guadalajara is imagined as an enfilade of public spaces, set in an hierarchical organization. Arriving to the region from a distant location (to Guadalajara from, say, Los Angeles) one would have to transfer from this fastest mode of transportation to a regional train to the city of your destination. From that regional train another transfer to a local train, which makes stops at each perpendicular pedestrian street along the way. Each of these transfer points becomes a hub of public activity, and varies in its size and density from top to bottom.
Even on the street, one must pass through an enfilade of plazas, starting with a central plaza (the largest would be below the regional rail hub) and moving outward, getting progressively smaller, until the outermost plaza may be a small, intimate garden. Moving from one to another  acts as a wayfinding device, while also bringing life and activity to the surrounding buildings.
Once at your destination building, one must again traverse the enfilade of public spaces embedded within the building. Somewhat akin to a sky lobby, this may be a small outdoor garden, it may be an enclosed foyer, or it may be a large plaza set within the building. A traveler will make their way up to the appropriate lobby, and will then move on a set of local stairs or elevator to to appropriate floor. The sky gardens provide a sense of community and security in a building of enormous scale and density.

A few simple concepts combine to create a complex urban landscape of density and hierarchy. The concepts themselves allow for a large city which reduces vehicular traffic and pollution, provides renewable energy to its citizens, allows for a quality of life and community rarely seen today, and can even be self-sustaining, given the amount of quality agricultural land available to feed its citizenry. The New Guadalajara has been a significant exercise in creating a city of considerable size and density while maintaining an environmental and social quality of life.

 

 

My greatest criticism of my own project may be its lack of understanding of Guadalajaran culture, or Mexico's urban process. Many of the elements and proposals I utilize stem from a criticism of American urbanism and some problems may be confined to America. On the surface I understand that this project may not reflect the social, cultural, and urban needs of Guadalajara, but at the same time I never expected them to be. This project always was supposed to be a vehicle for the ideas and concepts I had already created but never applied in any disciplined manner. Even if the project was not meant to tackle Mexican urabnism, I would have appreciated a greater understanding and application. That may be my main criticism, and I'll spend more time on that criticism next time. This competition was a first step of many in understanding a relationship that could exist between architecture and urbanism. It deserves my honest assessments.

Built in a Week: Guadalajara - Part I

After realizing the competition entry date was earlier than expected, compounded with the knowledge that the 4' long board has to be completed, printed, and in Guadalajara in 10 days, I've been a little busy cranking on images. So I'll post some here, with an update to follow once all is sent out.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Invisible City

What happens when a city returns to nature? Where do the people go? What if the 1.5 million inhabitants of Guadalajara decided today that they wanted to go elsewhere? Maybe they go home, pack up their books, wrap their glassware in newspaper, place everything in boxes and ship it all off to some other place. Then, they begin unscrewing lightbulbs, taking doors off their hinges, removing windows from their sashes. They tear down the brick walls and stack the materials in crates. Then they pull up their driveways, waiting momentarily while a truck rolls  the street up like a giant rug. Someone plucks the streetlights from their bases, and another collects manholes (and not just the covers). Entire buildings are dismantled, parking lots removed, soil replaced, and all signs of civilization are secreted away. Maybe overnight.

And then the sun rises and nature has made her comeback. The grasses spring up for the first time in decades underneath a foundation that no longer exists. Rabbits make homes in abandoned storm sewers. The people, meanwhile, have all gone to holiday in Puerto Vallarta, bringing their lamps and their grocery stores and gas stations with them. They bring the office, because we may be here a while.

Then, while they are gone, what once was Guadalajara begins to be remade. Smaller, fresher, more compact. Instead of sprawling suburbs, mid-rise buildings sprawl to the heavens. Tall towers mark the locations of highly dense neighborhoods and business districts. Everything seems to cling fast to a serpentine pathway- a spline of cars, trains, and pedestrians. The inhabitants of New Puerto Vallarta begin the exodus back to their ancestral homes, only now the scene is much different; the city is very narrow, and everything is walkable from one of these new transit hubs. Buildings are organized much the same way, as elevators and escalators and stairs take people first to sky gardens, then to their destination. Over time the new city of Guadalajara will fill in with all its previous inhabitants, and will add another 300,000 in babies and curious onlookers. But the city they return to now offers stunning views of natural forests and riparian streams infilled with serene agriculture (enough to feed the entire city).

Possible Cities

ArpaFIL is hosting a design competition to re-imagine the city in a more harmonius balance with the environment and with its inhabitants. The competition essentially wipes the city of Guadalajara, Mexico off the face of the earth and the challenge is to create a city from scratch given only the natural topography of the land. The competition is quite daunting, if not for its size alone. But it also serves as the perfect venue for exploring many of the concepts and theories about urban development, architecture, infrastructure, and the spaces between that I have been developing for years. The project is becoming a proving ground for a new type of urbanism. I hope that the competition will also serve as the centerpiece of a few blog entries.

In essence, the project can be seen as a study of hierarchy in scale; The project is organized around a central transit spine which includes international high-speed rail, regional rail, and local train service, highways and local lanes, even pedestrian routes. Development forms along the spine, increasing in size and density as transit nodes grow nearer. Layered upon this built form is one controlled by the natural topography: Low/zero density forests and wildlife refuges, interconnected riparian zones along streams and lakes, and low mountains framing and containing the natural limits of the city. In the geographic center of the city, where most cities are at their densest, agrarian farmland and Solar Stirling power generation.

The most unfortunate aspect of the competition is that all information must be submitted on one 30" x 40" presentation board. With a few years of concepts finally being overlayed and analyzed, there's sure to be more information than can be submitted. Rejoice, for that is what will be covered here!

The Edifice Complex

Much of my research has focused on the threshold between the individual building and its larger built environment. When I was studying in Paris, I spent a lot of time studying contemporary architecture in a city which gets most of its character from ideas and standards that were implemented 130 years ago. I would study buildings by Christian de Portzamparc, or Massimiliano Fuksas, or Jean Nouvel. My bias in interpreting the works was that everything was in some way responding to its context, either by holding the street edge, or following window lines or cornice heights. Everything was, in my mind, sort of shoe-horned into place in the city. I'm beginning to wonder now if that is necessarily true, or if it was by own desire to see that happening. My senses tell me that some are responding more than others. A fair assessment.

Lucia Phinney told me that what I was really studying in Paris were "screens", these veiled elements that were really about separating disparate conditions, be they public versus private, or deeper; in my assessment of the city itself, there was a dichotomy between the public and more touristy areas which were rather pristine, and working-class neighborhoods in the 9th and 10th arrondissements that epitomized the real Paris: a large city with its problems of homelessness, crime, vandalism, etc. According to Phinney, much of my research was an attempt to identify that threshold. Now that I'm back in the States, back in Chicago, I am again finding myself interested in identifying these screens and thresholds.

When it comes to defining thresholds, I have a better idea of what they are not than what they are. I know that I am not just interested in the facades of buildings. The facade is an important aspect of defining the threshold in that it informs and is informed by its context and regulates the privacy gradient. But I have found that by exploring the alleys one can find a truer assessment of what is happening in a building. It's as if the experiential limits of the building are held tight against the facade of the building, but in an alley the limits are extended, perhaps halfway down the block. When you get tot the scale of the city, tings begin to change. Up close is when you feel the weight of the city bearing down on you. Cognitive maps provide barriers with small openings instead of fluid space. However one can be 20 miles out of town and still feel they are connected- this weekend I was traveling through Indiana and could still see the skyline in the distance.

Thresholds are very nebulous. Depending on the scale of the artifact and the level of engagement it can hold tight against a building or be miles away. A screen can be paper-thin or a thick space of transition, and can change with the changing elements of a building, even changing with the diurnal and seasonal periods. I hope I can continue to explore these phenomena in the streets and neighborhoods of Chicago.