Public Space | IDEAS

Houston, “The Bayou City,” has had a tense relationship with its bayous and their floodplains. As with any city with much of its development in the floodplain, flooding is always a very real risk — and it isn’t just an infrastructure problem. It is a PR problem. [This post originally appeared on the American Planning Association’s Kid’s… Read more »

[This post originally appeared on the American Planning Association’s Kid’s Planning Toolbox blog]

For starters, the term “one-hundred-year flood” is misleading. It implies that there will be 100 years between events, and to many people this doesn’t sound so risky. Secondly, FIRM maps that show the line are not easy for the average citizen to comprehend — and they aren’t readily available.

To most people the flood line is invisible — and out of sight, out of mind.

Water levels, however, can be seen even after the flood. As waters recede, the floating fragments and trash are deposited in a single line at the elevation of the flood: the debris line. This line gave me an idea.

We could make a debris line that show the 100-year flood line and open Houstonians’ eyes to the very real danger of living in the flood plain. So over the course of the next year, I’m organizing two events, “Trashed” and “Flash Flood” that do just this.

The “Trashed” event, which will take place in spring 2013, is a month-long art installation that will illuminate a stretch of the 100-year flood line running through bayou-adjacent parks and an urban neighborhood.

Where possible we’ll indicate the line itself. But where the line wanders onto private property, we’ll use tree flags on trees, signs and light posts on near-by public property to show the water level of a 100-year flood, indicating just how far underwater these businesses, homes and public spaces will be.

The centerpiece of this installation uses garbage collected from the bayou itself to create a man-made debris line. We’ll pin approximately one mile of this trash directly on the 100-year flood line through the parks and open spaces of the site.

The “Flash Flood” event, which will be held in the fall of 2012, intends to remind people of the unexpected nature and severity of a 100-year flood. This event is aimed at the next generation, because we think young people can be very effective at spreading information. Once kids understand a concept, they take it home and teach it to their families.

Flash Flood goes deeper than just showing the line. We’ll start by making presentations about bayous and floodplains to 7 public K-12 schools in Houston’s White Oak Bayou area. In addition to explaining how bayous and floodplains perform as the region’s natural infrastructure, we’ll also show them how they can affect the way stormwater is managed and reduce flood risks by making changes at home — like adding rain barrels, swales, permeable surfaces and other soft features that can hold the water back from the congested waterways.

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Posted by MattBaumgarten
in Bayou By Us
on 1 June, 2012

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In the decade since Salt Lake City hosted the Olympic Games, the City has continued its transformation into a very urban place. The strict grid of numbered streets that radiate from Temple Square has been an effective framework for the layers of sophisticated urban design and infrastructure investments. Thanks to one of the most comprehensive transit systems in the country and broad sidewalks that provide real estate for the City’s expanding urban forest, residents and visitors alike have embraced the walkable downtown.

I was in Salt Lake City last week for the grand opening event for our project at City Creek Center, which was a huge hit. 700 new housing units, 1 million square feet of revamped downtown office space, iconic shops and the novel stream that trickles through the new outdoor shopping street have been graciously lauded for the project’s success.

This project juxtaposes the seemingly natural and the very contrived. When we first met with our clients Taubman Centers and City Creek Reserve they talked about resurrecting the original City Creek which once flowed through the site, but has been buried underground since the development of the downtown area. At first we struggled to get beyond the semantics – you can’t restore the creek if there is an underground parking structure in its path – but we understood that they wanted to recreate the experience of the original pristine waterway. We wanted the creek to live up to the idea of a natural creek, but that it be rooted in a contemporary setting –requiring attention to the detailing and emphasis on the urban context.

As it turns out, the man-made City Creek is now the largest flowing watercourse built on structure in the U.S., and it is also one of the most technical designs that SWA has undertaken in its 50-year history. We used local trade professionals and sources whenever possible including rock work by Outside the Lines and Kepco+, raw material from Utah’s Brown’s Canyon near Park City, and quarried by Delta Stone Co. Some 600 boulders were used for the creek, promenade seating areas and other aspects including the 17-foot cascade that takes the creek down from the upper level to the street level.

Where we had to supplement the locally cut stone, we relied completely on technology. Rock cut in Minnesota arrived and fit together perfectly with the rocks that were cut in China. I would argue that this landscape was just as technically precise as the architecture that surrounds it.

And the architecture is a fantastic complement. ZGF designed the residential towers. Local architecture firm, FFKR led the office design and Callison Architects in partnership with Hobbs + Black designed the retail center itself.
But, to me, the real story is on the street.

The context of the site goes beyond the immediate architecture. As a streetscape, the project heavily relies on its interaction with the city around it. The urban design challenge was in converting the supersize, vehicular Salt Lake City grid to a comfortable dimension for residents, office workers, shoppers and passersby. By giving boundaries to the city’s 22-foot-wide sidewalks and punctuating them with moments of garden nodes and places to sit, we were able to infill empty space with urban space. The new proportion not only has to relate to the surrounding architecture and infrastructure, but it is the cornerstone to creating an urban atmosphere that connects the meaning of the site and the project itself to the character of the city.

I like to think we were successful. Do you?

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Posted by ReneBihan
in Landscape is the Answer
on 17 April, 2012

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The Atlanta Connector will remain the City’s most significant and visible infrastructural corridor for the foreseeable future, so any transformation has to embrace the Connector as an integral part of the City of Atlanta. This project aims–not to make the Connector disappear–but to use the Connector as a transformative piece of the City’s open space… Read more »

This transformation strategy will use a melding of art, landscape, engineering and urban design to create layers of interest to the fabric of the Connector, affecting how the city is perceived and ultimately how it functions. Further, the transformation of the Atlanta Connector will recalibrate the national conversation on the role of infrastructure in our cities and towns, putting Atlanta on the forefront of urban design issues centered on redefining infrastructure as public space

Background

Over the last decade and a half Downtown and Midtown Atlanta have become models for urban redevelopment. Thousands of new housing units; millions of square feet in new office space; expansion of educational and cultural facilities; and over $50 million in transportation improvements, public safety initiatives, and environmental enhancements have reshaped Atlanta’s urban core into a vibrant, walkable, cosmopolitan center. The condition of the Connector stands in stark contrast to our improved urban centers. The project involved visioning for the 5-mile stretch of highway from the I-75/I-85 merge on the north end of Midtown Atlanta to the I-20 interchange near Turner Field south of Downtown Atlanta. This vast expanse of pavement carries 300,000 vehicles per day, and is marked by aging infrastructure, concrete retaining walls, and limited landscaping and maintenance.

The Problem

In its current state, the Connector creates a decidedly negative environment for the City of Atlanta, damaging both the visitor’s opinion of the City and its urban fabric. This in turn affects connectivity, transit ridership, tourism, and ultimately tax revenues and jobs in the urban core. As the Connector was built and rebuilt over the last 60 years it has slowly taken on a character that is divorced from the aspirations of the City of Atlanta. The well tended streetscapes, parks, and urban fabric of Downtown and Midtown Atlanta is absent from the visual fabric of the Connector. The academic institutions that line the Connector (Georgia Tech, Georgia State, Emory, and SCAD) have turned their backs on what could be Atlanta’s front door. A “DMZ” like zone of parking garages, vacant lands, and service drives has sprung up between the Connector and the City that it was intended to service.

The Strategy

The Vision

The vision advocated in this document is that of freeway moving through a green and lush landscape punctuated by art and urban incursions into the fabric of the freeway corridor. The Connector is embraced and cared for as an integral part of Atlanta’s open space system and people move freely along and across it. Dramatic gateways crafted from the landscape announce arrival into the City and serve as a marker of a special place along a travelers journey. Lighting is used to extend the effects of the transformation creating a shift in attitude from day to night. The complete composition becomes a stately museum space full of wonder and opportunity, serving as a showcase of Atlanta’s unique place in the world.

Design Elements

The core strategies that will be employed along the length of the Connector involve greening, light, art, and ultimately, urban design interventions across and along the Connector. These strategies are used to modulate and recalibrate the existing infrastructural surfaces of the freeway in a manner that adds depth and meaning to Connector experience, and by default, the visual (and ultimately physical) experience of the City.

Greening strategies form the foundation of the transformation. The permeable spaces along the Connector’s margins and within its immense interchanges will hold a vibrant, robust and legible urban forest canopy. Urban forests will be crafted to create gateways at the north and south entries into Atlanta’s urban core. These forests will follow threads of unused open space into the heart of the City, enhancing views, hiding vacant properties, and forming a medium through which the City is viewed. Where space or safety considerations limit the inclusion of forests, vertical greening strategies will be employed to continue the thematic greening of the Connector and the City. While these greening strategies will have nascent effect on regional sustainability and clean air initiatives, they are not seen as offsetting the intensely negative effects of the 300,000 vehicles per day that use the Connector. At best they will be a window into the regional appreciation of sustainable design practices and a point of departure for reducing and discussing the effect of heat island, storm water, and air quality on the City.

Inserted into the verdant green fabric of the Connector are art and light elements purposely crafted to interact with, and activate the surfaces of the Connector. The art of the Connector will transcend traditional labels with all elements, greening, lighting and art, working together to create the Museum of Freeway Art (MOFA) – a first-order art tourism destination whose mission is to transform the Atlanta Connector, and the national appreciation of art and freeway. The museum is created by co-opting the complex spatial character of the Connector as a museum space crafted with both the high-speed traveler and the neighborhood viewer in mind. Retaining walls, bridges, tunnels, and the furnishings of the Connector becomes a framework of museum walls and spaces. Super graphic murals, lighting effects, slow motion video, and sculpture will be used to highlight the natural and cultural history of Atlanta. Like its sister museums and cultural foundations in Atlanta, MOFA will have a permanent collection, rotating collections, membership, a board of directors, a national level curator, and a museum shop. By refocusing the conversation about the Connector from that of freeway to a museum space, a much richer, intensive and transformative design solution can be achieved.

Over time, new urban spaces will be created above and along the Connector that seek to take advantage of the Connector. Urban parks, promenades, trails, pedestrian bridges, and development projects are envisioned as a series of urban insertions that ripple through the City fabric as new connections are made and old ones are reinvigorated.

The Result

As the Connector is transformed from negative to positive, the public realm, private properties, and institutions along its margins will realize the positive attributes of the new culture growing within this new found public space. The end result of the transformed Connector will be an Atlanta that is outwardly welcoming to freeway users; the City will see increased walk-ability, access to transit, and stronger neighborhoods; visitors will learn something new about the City, its aspirations, and its place in the world. The economic incentives behind the project include increased tax base as properties along the Connector are repurposed or developed as vibrant mixed use districts, which in turn promotes urban living and an influx of creative class residents from around the greater Atlanta region.

Process

During a six-month period between May and October 2011, Midtown Alliance and CAP/ADID oversaw a planning process utilizing local planning professionals and a nationally renowned landscape architecture and urban design firm. The planning process benefitted from valuable monthly input from two advisory groups and from a series of public involvement events and opportunities. A Leadership Team of high-level decision makers worked in tandem with a Creative Team of local design professionals to provide strategic advice on design and implementation. Additionally, outreach efforts included numerous interviews with key stakeholders, a public workshop, social media outreach, and an online survey. The consultant’s scope of work involved attending monthly meetings with the leadership team, creative team, stakeholders, and the general public. Ideas and design concepts were generated and vetted with these groups over the 6 month design process. Consensus building among the myriad stakeholders was at the heart of the project so that the goal of an implementable series of projects could be documented.

The final document produced for this project included detailed inventory and analysis of the Connector, and adjacent properties. The design work and recommendations were built upon this data and informed by the public and stakeholder involvement process. In addition to the grand vision outlined in the plan, the consultant also created detailed design guidelines and cost estimates aimed at early win projects that could be quickly funded and implemented. Early implementation is underway with local philanthropic organizations joining forces to fund projects.

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Posts Tagged: Public Space

The 100-Year Flood and the Next Generation

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Future Infrastructures: Atlanta Connector

The Result

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What is a Park?: The Kindergarten Project

Planting Seeds

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