Reconquering the public space
What kind of cities are we building? Vehicles riding on ever wider streets adding pollutants to our everyday environment making neighborhoods unsafe and turning across-the-street neighbors into strangers… Facilities that used to be provided only in the public realm but now are routinely afforded privately… Every place is the center of its own universe, with no shared focus. Independent from the world around us and disassociation from community offers us short-term freedoms, but adverse long-term consequences –not just for human beings but also for cities… Alex Laburn
new dialog
What do our cities lack today? What kind of human interaction do we experience each day? What kind of dialog do we have with each other; with our built environment? Can we manipulate the infrastructure of our cities in order to create a new dialog between ourselves and our built environment in order to improve our quality of life?
Emily Axtman
Mobile Architecture
The project is about mobile architecture that creates mobile communities. The architecture interacts with our forbidden highways by using the highways to travel from one location to another. Our society is mobile, so why shouldn’t we have architecture that responds to our conditions. People change jobs finding themselves commuting up to two hours or having an employer relocate the to a new location. The concept of mobile architecture would allow us to move our residence close to our work locations or create mobile work locations altogether. Locations would be set up providing services to allow these mobile units to come together to form communities. The mobile units are designed to collapse to a size that can travel on our highways and provide better aerodynamics. When the unit is at a fixed location, it expands into a more dynamic and formal space. The mobile units can be configured as single or multiple units that come together to form a single form. The mobile units are equipped with an array of solar panels providing energy for the unit and charging the electric vehicles which would be more feasible with the shorter commutes. The electric vehicles themselves are a smaller piece of mobile architecture that plugs into a work place and provides office space.
The Organism
This project is an intense intervention into the boundaries that the
freeway has traditionally created and how the freeway of the future can
overcome this boundary condition through the use of new Materials and the
Spatial Patterns that these materials make possible. Through the use of a
new form of living material that can be programmed to replicate and
perform to the architect’s desire, we can see an integration of
architecture, biology, and the higher agricultural sciences within the
realm of the freeway. The role of the architect can morph into a hybrid
of architectural design, biologist, horticulturalist, and collaborator
with many other scientific communities. In this future, architecture and
agriculture will collide to form an:
Agri-tectural Archi-culture
freeway has traditionally created and how the freeway of the future can
overcome this boundary condition through the use of new Materials and the
Spatial Patterns that these materials make possible. Through the use of a
new form of living material that can be programmed to replicate and
perform to the architect’s desire, we can see an integration of
architecture, biology, and the higher agricultural sciences within the
realm of the freeway. The role of the architect can morph into a hybrid
of architectural design, biologist, horticulturalist, and collaborator
with many other scientific communities. In this future, architecture and
agriculture will collide to form an:
Agri-tectural Archi-culture
Jason Dail
Time Shared Freeway
Maria Hill
What if we could take the freeway and make it a destination instead of a passage? The area that a highway takes up is massive and has enormous impacts on the surrounding community; it acts as a divider between neighbors, communities and cultural groups. But what if it could be a shared space instead? The freeway becomes a park, a playground, a concert venue at different times of day, depending on the needs of the community and the space is shared between all demographics. A sense of ownership is created. The freeway becomes something specific and familiar - a truly beautiful environment.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9KT5jtw6NBk
between the highway
The highway as we know it today is a large area of unusable land that
while connecting areas on a large scale, it actually acts as a barrier on
a more local scale. This current setup not only wastes valuable land,
but also divides communities and creates a dependence on vehicles,
lessening the role of the pedestrian. Using this information and looking
at current trends in community planning, where the size of the house is
approaching the size of the lot in which it is placed, I have created a
system that works with this trend, while solving some of the problems
posed by our current highway system. Through taking variables and
creating rules for how they interact, I have devised as system that
encourages interaction between the highway, the pedestrian, and the
architecture itself. By introducing a ribbon-like green space that
weaves in and out of the highway and using the topography of the site,
the grid of the area surrounding city is formed. This grid becomes
disrupted by the green space that acts as a pedestrian highway that
allows the pedestrain to connect to different to various public spaces.
On the other hand, the highway not longer divides anything. The grid of
the city is allowed to overtake the highway, allowing access across it,
and also providing space for architecture to interact with it. Rob Franklin
while connecting areas on a large scale, it actually acts as a barrier on
a more local scale. This current setup not only wastes valuable land,
but also divides communities and creates a dependence on vehicles,
lessening the role of the pedestrian. Using this information and looking
at current trends in community planning, where the size of the house is
approaching the size of the lot in which it is placed, I have created a
system that works with this trend, while solving some of the problems
posed by our current highway system. Through taking variables and
creating rules for how they interact, I have devised as system that
encourages interaction between the highway, the pedestrian, and the
architecture itself. By introducing a ribbon-like green space that
weaves in and out of the highway and using the topography of the site,
the grid of the area surrounding city is formed. This grid becomes
disrupted by the green space that acts as a pedestrian highway that
allows the pedestrain to connect to different to various public spaces.
On the other hand, the highway not longer divides anything. The grid of
the city is allowed to overtake the highway, allowing access across it,
and also providing space for architecture to interact with it. Rob Franklin
city within
The concept for this project is to contain all the movement and functions of an entire city within one vertical form and to integrate the freeway into the architecture. I am creating this new urban environment where the volumes are made of different materials that create a collaged texture for the city. Instead of hallways and corridors connecting these volumes, there will be streets, parks and plazas, for vehicular and pedestrian movement throughout the city. As the population and need grows, the city can be built up in sections. The building will be at the intersection of I-540 and US-1. Here the freeways and railroad will be able to service the http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K8Kj6XN78fQ
