The Paradox of Public Space: Chapter 91 and Clean Water Act 303(d)

An increasing challenge for the design of public space is the expanding awareness of the many dimensions and networks throughwhichthepublicdomainisfullyglobalandunbounded while built architectural projects remain inherently discrete and locally bounded – a paradox of public space- for designers. For example- how we are increasingly aware that any local and privatized practice (like farming along the Amazon River) has both significant direct and indirect impacts on shared global resources (like Canadian fisheries) the world over.

Oyster Hack

There is a state of emergency in the USA- catastrophic coastal erosion, rising sea levels at the rate of one-eighth of an inch per year and poor water quality. Oysters can help. Oysters filter the water, removing toxins. Oyster reefs are living infra-structures that protect coastlines from storms and tidal surges. But…many of the world’s existing oyster reefs are functionally impaired. The Chesapeake Bay is dying. Untreated chemical run-off and human waste is creating ‘Dead Zones’ where there is no oxygen to support marine life. Much of Hurricane Sandy’s damage to New York City could have been prevented. In the early 1800’s the Harbor was lined with living oyster reefs. Now, these are dead or dying, fragile and vulnerable. Miami is flooded on a regular basis reports Miami Herald. Our oyster reefs must be revived or rebuilt- they will help. Walls are not the answer. 14% of US coastal cities have massive sea-walls already. National Geographic reports that by 2100 one-third of our coastal cities will be protected by walls, that cost billions of dollars and will not provide protection from the most severe storms. I believe in the power of the oyster. The oyster is an engineer- its reefs and shells work together as a “system of systems” to protect our waters and coastlines. Without them we are sunk, literally, no matter how many engineered systems we humans try to substitute and pay billions of dollars to implement.

In Vitro City: A Laboratory without Experiments

The paper states the relationships between the instrumentality of building systems, the aesthetics and politics of software and the digital technologies impact on the built environment. It explores the space between the architect’s intentionality and the changing modes in architectural production. The text proposes a critical awareness of the epistemological and technical dimension of the digital instruments as a way for architects to better appropriate the expanding array of digital tools in an ever-increasing urban complexity.

Disrupting the Digital: An Architecture of Parts

The paper ascribes to a belief that architecture should be wholly digital – from the scale of the micron and particle to the brick, beam and building, from design to fabrication or construction. This embodies a fundamental and disruptive shift in architecture and design thinking that is unique to the project images included, enabling design to become more inclusive, participatory and open-source. Architecture that is wholly digital requires a radical rethinking of existing design and building practices. Thes projects described in this paper each develops a set of parts in relationship to a specific digital fabrication technology. These parts are defined as open-ended, universal and versatile building blocks, with a digital logic of connectivity. Each physical part has a malefemale connection which is the equivalent of the 0 and 1 in digital data. The design possibilities – or the way that parts can combine and aggregate – can be defined by the geometry and therefore, design agency, of the piece itself. This discrete method advances a theoretical argument about the nature of digital design as needing to be fundamentally discrete, and at the same time responding to ideas coming from open-source, distributed modes methods of production. Furthermore it responds to today’s housing crisis, providing for a more democratic and equitable framework for the production of housing. To think of architecture as wholly digital is to substantially disrupt the way that we think about design, authorship, ownership and process, as well as the building technologies and practices we use in contemporary architectural production.

Design Strategies for Safer and More Inclusive Public Spaces

Public space in the city is being continuously contested. The most compelling of these challenges comes from the recent terrorist attacks on cities across the world. While the awareness of the need to ‘design against terrorism’ and a demand for greater safety in public spaces has entered into citizen’s consciousness -given the perception of fear due to recent attacks- drastic security and surveillance measures usually go against a more open and inclusive public realm.

Economic Impact Generated by the Public Open Space: Case Study of Klyde Warren Park

Klyde Warren Park is Dallas’s new town plaza which has literally and figuratively bridged the city’s downtown cultural district with the burgeoning mixed-use neighborhoods to the north, reshaping the city and catalyzing economic development. The park brings Dallas-sites together in new ways, with dozens of free activities and amenities to offer every week, from concerts and lectures to games and fitness/ yoga classes, all within a beautiful five-acre urban oasis. The park decks over the sunken Woodall Rodgers Freeway, which had been an imposing barrier between downtown and the densely populated Uptown neighborhood. Spurred by a study in 2002 that confirmed the feasibility of a “deck park” over the freeway, leaders of the Dallas business community formed the non-profit Woodall Rodgers Park Foundation, which was responsible for the operations and maintenance of the new park with its operating hours from 6am to 11pm. After ten years of planning, design, fundraising, and construction, Klyde Warren Park opened in the fall of 2012 and was immediately embraced by the community, cementing its place as a world-class urban park.

Copacabana Non-Public: Toward a New Public Attitude

More than a physicality, public space is a condition beyond an urban fragment or locality. Before it becomes a place, public space exists as a shared value. The devastation of the Amazon forest by multinational meat producers, the launch into space of a Tesla Roadster by Elon Musk, shootings in public schools, and the development of a new Trump tower in a big city somewhere in the world are just some examples of spaces being taken over by the relentless neoliberal advances into places that were once shared or not claimed at all, or simply considered “public.” This process of takeover happens persistently in our cities, through ever-subtle or overstated methods by corporations and governments, by disfranchised groups, empowered tribes, or simply disguised by over-regulation. Starting from the premise that, in fact, “public space” as we know does not exist, this paper explores the notion of “non-public” as a critical foundation for a new reclamation of our cities. The paper plays the devil’s advocate to counterpoint the frequent academic discourse that references public space as a normalized urban entity. Taking on a shifted direction Copacabana Non-public challenges the notion of what constitutes “public space” to change so many fixed assumptions. Instead of dancing around the subject, it exercises the consideration of the conditions that make public space in reality non-public—its constituencies and jurisdictions, its stakeholders and claimants, its crisis and promises. Taking Copacabana beach as a study case, Copacabana Non-public seeks to map out the real actors of public space to locate new strategies of engagement to transform its pseudo-public character, to identify policy and design strategies that reclaim urban spaces for more democratic citizenries.

Identity Crisis: The Agency of Instagram in Schools of Architecture

The focus of this paper addresses themes of neoliberalism, university commercialization and marketing, architecture school identity formation as a representational practice through social media, and the role of image curation and its production in contemporary architecture. This paper emerged after hearing the phrase ‘buyer’s motive,’ which explained what schools needed to consider for attracting students to their programs at a conference by Ruffalo Noel Levtiz on recruitment, marketing, and retention in higher education in the United States. The use of the word, ‘buyer’, instead of ‘student’, or ‘prospective student’, or ‘learner’ seemingly transformed the production of engaged education to its passive consumption.

Spatial Writing: A New Mode of Architectural Heritage Representation

Modeling, as an instrument of architectural design, delineates boundaries for new ideas and establishes a framework for approaching the unknown. Those boundaries, however, often leave out elements of the design process and the larger context of the project. This is a particularly critical issue when dealing with architectural heritage sites with complex histories and multiple identities. As part of a larger research project dealing with the representation of cultural heritage, in this paper I pose the question: How can digital modeling embody the intangible dimensions of architectural production?

DAM[N]ED: Mechanizing a Sacred River Landscape Redrawing Territorial Systems in the Narmada River Valley

This essay traces the story of the Narmada River and its transformation from a sacred landscape to one of the largest mechanized territorial systems in the world. The Narmadatravelssome 1,300 kilometers from Amarkantaktothe Arabian Sea; enabling the livelihood of millions, shaping distinct regional identities and embodying a rich cultural imaginary for those worshiping her holy waters. The infrastructural potential of the river was first formulated as a megaregional project in the 1940s to modernize and bring prosperity to the watershed. Under implementation since the 1980s, the “Narmada Valley Development Project” is incrementally transforming the river into an interstate infrastructural network of water conveyance and energy generation. Through a cartographic and photographic inventory, the project traces the transformation of the natural and cultural systems associated with the Narmada River over time. Pausing at Omkareshwar, a major pilgrimage destination, the essay unfolds the current state of uncertainty and civic unrest that the massive infrastructural works are placing in the fragile lives of the valley dwellers.