Crisman, P. (2005). "Over the Mass Pike: private life + public space," The Art of Architecture / The Science of Architecture. R. Hejduk and H. van Oudenallen, eds. Washington, DC: ACSA Press. Pp. 435-447. (original) (raw)
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Inhabiting the In-between: architecture and infrastructure intertwined
people.virginia.edu
A site out of mind is familiar territory to many city residents, but unseen and uninhabited in significant ways. These edges and leftover spaces, where urban and architectural scales and uses collide or social and economic divisions are manifest, are rarely considered worthy of design attention. Ugly, ordinary and out of the way, they present difficult existing conditions and unglamorous realities. Of the many types of sites out of mind, perhaps most challenging are the linear cuts incised through the morphological continuity of the city by railway and highway construction. Produced by changes in the technologies and cultures of mobility, this condition is found within dense North American cities largely developed before extensive 1950's highway construction. The resulting interstice, "a space that intervenes between one thing and another," 1 often generates seemingly uninhabitable zones and problematic discontinuities in the physical and social fabric. Yet these sites may also be understood as fortuitous seams that offer "found" land in apparently built-out urban areas, thereby reducing rural development pressures and increasing public engagement through greater physical density and design. Reconceptualization and inhabitation of these "compromised" sites with dense and sustainable urban infill is a potent alternative to greenfield development and sprawl. The air rights above and the leftover spaces beneath and along elevated highways, rail lines and other immense infrastructural elements are particularly compelling conditions through which to question contemporary conceptions of the public realm. How can publicness be constructed on a site that has yet to exist or exists in a marginalized space, literally in the margins, of high-speed movement? Highway air rights discussions often search for all-purpose "solutions" to the difficulties and opportunities of inhabiting these locations, but there is nothing generic about such conditions. Each (non)site has a history and specific characteristics that must be examined and understood during the design process. There are general principles, but these should be carefully articulated in flexible ways. EXPAND FURTHER?
Urban Highway Rights-of-Way as Sites of Intervention
2014
This paper examines US urban interstate rights-of-way and proposes that they be repurposed for a variety of uses. It situates the issue with a brief overview of the diffi cul es posed by urban interstates and some key milestones in the history of their development. In considering the poten al scope of such interven ons, the paper classifi es all of the discrete mid-sized American ci es through a typological study of how they interface with the interstate system. The paper considers the shared characteris cs of urban interstate rights-of-way that make them promising for repurposing. Finally, through four thought experiments, it proposes poten al new uses for the reclaimed spaces and considers how these new uses might impact the city around them both spa ally and func onally. INTRODUCTION With increasing concern over the environmental and economic impacts associated with the sprawl that has characterized US urban development for over half a century, ci es are searching for ways to red...
Reclaiming no-man's land : a case study in the utilization of expressway land-scraps
1984
The motive behind this thesis is to attempt a solution to a particular, seemingly intractable urban architectural problem, and in the process generate technical innovations, architectural forms and methodological approaches which potentially can have more general application. The chosen site is a tangled intersection of expressways in the center of Boston. A plan is developed for the construction of a complex of new social spaces literally enveloping the expressway, incorporating the spaces above and below ramps and highway spans. There are two particular insights which infuse this project as a whole: The first is an understanding that the numerous negative characteristics imparted by urban traffic to their surroundings highways can be overcome through innovation. The second is that such spaces also have quite positive and unique properties which can be culled out and enhanced. Within the thesis, specific proposals are advanced for the mitigation of problems such as fumes, noise and...
Urban Interstate Rights-of-Way as Sites of Intervention
102nd ACSA Annual Meeting Proceedings, Globalizing Architecture/ Flows and Disruptions
This paper examines US urban interstate rights-of-way and proposes that they be repurposed for a variety of uses. It situates the issue with a brief overview of the difficulties posed by urban interstates and some key milestones in the history of their development. In considering the potential scope of such interventions, the paper classifies all the discrete mid-sized American cities through a typological study of how they interface with the interstate system. The paper considers the shared characteristics of urban interstate rights-of-way that make them promising for the repurposing. Finally, through four though experiments, it proposes potential new uses for the reclaimed spaces and considers how these new uses might impact the city around them both spatially and functionally.
22nd ISUF Conference: City as organism. New visions for urban life , 2015
In small settlements such as hamlets, streets and public space are often undistinguish-able. Many French villages have started with no clear boundary between public open spaces and streets. While the evolution of planned French cities has been discussed (Lavedan 1952), this paper focuses on open space that has evolved into streets de ned with clear vertical boundaries (Anderson 1986) and is later enhanced by distinctive horizontal boundaries. Based on both Napoleonian and current cadasters, the evolution of the street morphology is analyzed to address the different types of boundaries that drive the street experience. The publically accessible open space of 17 small towns and 18 villages or small French settlements is analyzed as a system of open spaces (Hilllier & Hanson 1984, Batty 2001) and as a street network (Peponis, Bafna & al 2008). The analysis highlights a rst set of transformations that emulates Haussmanns transformations of Paris by rede ning the vertical street boundary (alignment and widening) and by adding new ones. These transformations impact the syntactic structure of the settlement, usually bringing higher integration, visibility and a shift of the core. The second set of transformation that leads to the 21st century street results from a series of changes on the horizontal plane (sidewalk, crosswalk, paving, etc.). These change in materiality are not just subtle design changes, they play a deterministic role on the accessibility of the public space. It leads to question certain modes of representations of the streets such as axial map, iso-vist, property boundaries, and street centerline, which embed only some aspects of the boundaries that privileges either the pedestrian experience or the movement of the car.
Urban Corridor: accumulation and interaction as form-bearing processes
The installation Urban Corridor was presented from June to August, 2000, at the Colorado University Art Gallery within the context of the Electronic Easel exhibition. This installation consisted in a constructed space shaped as a corridor containing lights, motion sensors, two slide projectors, a video projector, and a multi-channel sound system. The whole setup was run from a Macintosh PPC computer equipped with two CD-ROMs and a x10 two-way interface. The Urban Corridor explores the relationship between the public, the visual and sonic material, and the space as a way to bring to life the clash produced by the urban landscape on our day-to-day interactions. We describe the conceptual grounding and the technical implementation of this installation by focusing two issues: (1) the interactions between musical processes, time and space, context and materials, and the role of the public in the piece, and (2) the accumulation of sonic elements.
Detroit's lines of desire: Footpaths and vacant land in the Motor City
Informal footpaths known as desire lines crisscross the city of Detroit and are visible from space. Despite their prevalence, especially in postindustrial cities, no comprehensive study of desire lines exists for any urban area. How extensive are these lines, how do people use them, and how are they changing over time? What is their potential to reinvigorate the fabric of neighborhoods and communities? We conducted a spatiotemporal analysis of desire lines in Detroit by combining remote sensing and spatial analysis with physical audits and interviews. Our results show that Detroit has more than 5680 of these footpaths, totaling more than 150 miles (> 240 km). Transportation planners may value desire lines for their efficiency, reducing travel time and distance. Urban theorists and community activists, however, view desire lines as a form of resistance and reclamation of space for a public poorly served by urban institutions. The results of our mixed-methods approach demonstrate how these two perspectives can co-exist. Desire lines are creative attempts to expand urban possibilities, enhance efficiency, and reaffirm agency in increasingly regulated cities. Desire lines in Detroit, however, are rapidly disappearing. From 2010 to 2016, the Lower Eastside region of the city witnessed a 70 percent reduction in the total length of these lines. Our analysis shows that this correlates with changes in land ownership, management practices, and population dynamics. The loss of desire lines exposes the limits of informal practices and indicates the need for connections to broader relationships of power and governance. Creative engagements with the state can formalize lines and help residents realize their rights to the city.
Brave New Neighborhoods: The Privatization of Public Space
Contemporary Sociology: A Journal of Reviews, 2006
A central difficulty faced by the contemporary urban designer is that of giving shape to the formlessness of urban sprawl, creating collective spaces when human interactions are increasingly dispersed across electronic and vehicular communications networks. But until relatively recently it was difficult for the practitioner and student to readily locate literature on the phenomenon untinted by polemic and partisanship. Urban Mutations combines two sorts of essay, one hailing from academic analysis, the other from the architectural studio, which combine to produce a generally calm and considered appraisal of the dilemma faced by cities and their designers. The book originates in a small international symposium organized by the Aarhus School of Architecture in September of 2002, and the Danish editing of the volume retains a northern European and Scandinavian flavor in both its topical approaches (for instance, Poul Baek Pedersen's history of the Danish welfare city) and its somewhat uneven Englishlanguage editing (though credit is owing to the editors for making the selection available to English-language readers). Readers will find in here some statements of belief but no overall clarion call. The volume accepts that the management, through design, of the contemporary urban landscape is a challenge of such magnitude that it is best approached with a cool head: before we do anything, the title of the book tells us, let's step back and plot the mutation of the urban. When did it begin? (The book's short answer: with the relaxation of European and Scandinavian welfare state principles, and the adoption of neoliberal maxims.) What is its scale? (It is regional, national, international-'XL', to borrow architect Rem Koolhaas's shorthand, as several contributors do-but it equally affects small spaces and everyday life, and the welfare state bears a responsibility for increasing the political and physical scale of the urban footprint in the first place.) What is its nature? (Mobility-physical, social, economic-which apparently threatens traditional, fixed, concentrated cities.) Essays by political sociologist Bob Jessop and urban geographer Stephen Graham are notably helpful in getting the lay reader up to speed on these problems. An urban specialist might read the above abstract and contend that these phenomena have been known for a fair time now. Nonetheless, the serious literature on the politics and economics of the city is ever-more vast and dispersed, and there are few formats in which it is concisely connected, as it is here, tentatively, to the problems faced in the studio. When contemporary urban theory and practice are bridged it is usually as a supermodern eruption, headlines converted through CAD into mega-projects. Urban Mutations has dalliances with such projects, though their authors (like Jan Willem van Kuilenburg) will likely be unfamiliar to readers from American conference and publishing circuit, and more importantly, some chapters, like Morten Daugaard's, provide a commendably systematic account of pressing spatial issues (like 'after-sprawl'). Urban Mutations is actually of immediate interest to an architectural historian like the present reviewer. How long, one wonders, will the legacies of three successor waves of avant-garde architects who tackled urban mutations-Team X in the 1950s, Archigram in the 1960s, Rem Koolhaas and the 'Superdutch' school since-provide Views expressed in this section are independent and do not represent the opinion of the editors .