CarParkFarmFlats:
Sucker, Graft and Epiphyte
201 Comprehensive studio, Spring 2006
mark anderson,
sucker \Suck"er\ (s[u^]k"[~e]r), n.1. a person who is gullible and easy to take advantage of [syn: chump, fish, fool, gull, mark, patsy, fall guy, schlemiel, soft touch, mug]2. One who, or that which, sucks; esp., one of the organs by which certain animals, as the octopus and remora, adhere to other bodies. 6. (Botany) A shoot from the roots or lower part of the stem of a plant; -- so called, perhaps, from diverting nourishment from the body of the plant. 8. A parasite; a sponger. See def. 6, above. 11. A nickname applied to a native of Illinois.
epiphyte \Ep"i*phyte\, n. [Gr. 'epi` upon + fyto`n plant, ? to grow:] 1. (Botany) any plant that does not normally root in the soil but grows upon another living plant while remaining independent of it except for support (thus differing from a parasite). An epiphyte manufactures its own food (see photosynthesis) in the same way that other green plants do, but obtains its moisture from the air or from moisture-laden pockets of the host plant, rather than from the soil. Of the flowering plants, the best-known epiphytes are orchids and bromeliads, such as Spanish moss. Epiphytes may grow upon the trunk, branches, or leaves of the host plant, sometimes so thickly as to damage the original plant by crowding out its leaves. They are most abundant in the moist tropics.
parasite \Par"a*site\, n. [F., fr. L. parasitus, Gr. ?, lit., eating beside, or at the table of another.] 1. One who frequents the tables of the rich, or who lives at another's expense, and earns his welcome by flattery; a hanger-on; a toady; a sycophant. 2. (Botany) (a) A plant obtaining nourishment immediately from other plants to which it attaches itself, and whose juices it absorbs; -- sometimes, but erroneously, called epiphyte. (b) A plant living on or within an animal, and supported at its expense.
graft \Graft\, n. [Prob. orig. so called because illegitimate or improper profit was looked upon as a graft, or sort of excrescence, on a legitimate business undertaking, in distinction from its natural proper development.] 1. Acquisition of money, position, etc., by dishonest or unjust means, as by actual theft or by taking advantage of a public office or any position of trust or employment to obtain fees, perquisites, profits 2. To insert (a graft) in a branch or stem of another tree; to propagate by insertion in another stock; also, to insert a graft upon. 3. (Surgical) To implant a portion of living flesh or skin in a lesion so as to form an organic union 4. To join (one thing) to another as if by grafting, so as to bring about a close union.
Project
We will design a new urban land use integrating financially viable farming with public space and parking. Design emphasis will focus on the mechanical systems, structural systems and environmental enclosure elements necessary to produce effective growing environments for specific crops and to facilitate simple program requirements. Design criteria will include: thoughtful integration of these program uses into the existing and proposed urban ecology; program functionality; and mechanical and budgetary realism of the proposed design.
Concept
Many cities, especially in the United States, have more land invested in parking and highway infrastructure than is necessary or desirable as the economic and environmental costs of private automobiles and automobile infrastructure becomes more evident. Significant alteration of current automobile-based land planning and the increased viability of public transit systems will increasingly create opportunities for auto-specific landscapes to become integrated with other land uses. The sloping landscapes and odd configurations of parking and highway structures make them awkward for conversion to many typical building uses. At the same time, these structures and landscapes offer unique potential for reapplication for multi-purpose landscapes that integrate with and make use of the unique characteristics of highway infrastructure and parking areas.
For many of the same reasons that highway and parking functions will become increasingly integrated into more complex urban land uses, urban farming will also become more attractive. If more farming is sited within the city, cost and environmental impact of transport from farm to consumer will be reduced. Concern for quality of life that is returning many people from suburb to city includes an interest in fresher food, and in the creation of more diverse job opportunities within the city. The environmental costs of farming on raw land with unfiltered run-off into natural land and water has also become more evident, and a great deal of research and progress has occurred in soil dynamics and agricultural mechanization that suggests benefits from some farming in structured soil isolated from negative interaction with natural systems, and closer to the end consumer. New environmental control systems and mechanized irrigation and farming techniques make urban farming increasingly cost-effective and non-polluting. The value of plant-based photosynthesis in filtering the air and converting carbon-dioxide from ozone-depleting urban pollution back into the earth through carbon fixing is increasingly recognized as a reason for increasing plant growth in cities and developing scientifically constructed soil systems and crop rotations that maximize this environmental benefit. All of this suggests that turning existing parking garages into vertical farming flats is an eminently sensible urban idea.
Approach
This studio will attempt to fulfill the objectives of a comprehensive design studio. As envisioned by architects concerned with the idea of a competency-based architectural education, a comprehensive studio is one that includes significant integration of both the conceptual logic of architecture as well as its practical realization in building form. This is typically understood to mean, by architectural accreditation boards for example, that every student receiving a professional degree in architecture should complete at least one studio course in which a building design project is developed comprehensively from programmatic design through a full set of design documents, clearly integrating structural, life safety, mechanical and enclosure systems into an overall design logic. This is of course a difficult objective to achieve, and comprehensive studios are often regarded as a frustrating and sometimes mundane chore. None of us will be willing to spend our valuable creative time on a mundane and uninteresting chore, and yet we certainly want to learn as much as possible about how to work comprehensively and responsibly in any building project. As architects, we want to achieve high levels of construction quality, fiscal and social responsibility while nevertheless maintaining simultaneously high standards for creativity and architectural depth. This is an immense and daily challenge for architects, in professional practice and in school—an exciting challenge, at the core of our highest ambitions for architecture. In this studio we will take the challenge on with great excitement and productive intensity. We will design spatially, experientially, programmatically rich urban proposals, as well as responsibly researched, practically developed, well-integrated, beautifully drawn and detailed buildings.
Site
We will design a complex urban site at an I-80/Bay Bridge interchange in San Francisco into a vertically stacked farming landscape that also incorporates parking, market stalls, public facilities and support spaces. The site is at the corner of Folsom Street and Essex Street near the west end of the Bay Bridge in the South of Market area of San Francisco. The reason for selecting this site and program is simple and practical—we want a program with large, open spaces heavily dependent on mechanical systems and environmental conditioning that is not incidental to the building purpose, but central to its purpose. This area of parking and highway infrastructure in a topographically interesting area of the city offers a unique challenge for proposing structural and programmatic change within an existing, systematic landscape. The proposal to place agriculture within this existing urban landscape will require precise study and understanding of environmental conditions—daylight, sun exposure, temperature, wind, humidity, seasonal cycles and soil structure. The farming process itself is relatively familiar and comprehensible in its practical functions and points of transport, exchange and environmental interaction with adjacent communities at several scales of analysis. This site and program choice requires the studio to move very quickly into significant depth of thinking about structure, program, mechanical systems and urban function as a conceptually integrated design problem inviting many avenues for creative research, design investigation, and detailing.
Teamwork
Studio participants may at their choice work individually or in small teams on the design project itself. Two-person design teams are strongly encouraged. Additionally, everyone will work together in small research teams developing shared information available to the group as a whole. These research responsibilities are a major component of the course, and the studio as a whole will rely on energetic, creative, and timely research by each team. Research responsibilities will be assigned by the group as a whole or volunteered as areas of research develop. Everyone may be simultaneously in several research groups, and the composition of these research groups is expected to change as ideas, information needs, and interests develop throughout the semester.
Research
To design this building will require substantial research into many construction concepts, systems and materials. These research areas will be developed by the studio group as the project ideas come into focus, but will certainly include solar analysis and day lighting study; concrete and steel structural systems; urban farming; local climate and weather conditions; viable crops for each available or designed environmental condition; construction costs; soil dynamics; local traffic and urban conditions; farming methods and machinery; agricultural robotics, photovoltaic power, solar hydronic heating, plumbing, filtration and irrigation systems, active and passive environmental control and conditioning systems, environmentally activated control systems, environmental and structural analytical software…
Documents
Research will be documented by each group within the same construction document system developed for the design work, essentially in the format of system specifications and detail drawings. This process of documenting the research work will establish a base system and understanding of a construction document structure for final design proposals. There will not be one set of documents that miraculously appears at the end of the semester. Instead, the entire work of the semester will take place in the format of the final document set. As each document page begins early in the semester, this will be the same page that continues to develop throughout the semester, becoming the final document set. We will not be terrified, chaotic, last minute presentation makers at the end of the semester. Everyone will have their final presentation well under way near the beginning of the semester, carefully and continually revise the drawings throughout the semester, and calmly walk into the final review with a thick, remarkably complete and detailed set of drawings. In fact, I think we will go out for a noisy, happy party the evening before the review, and then go home and get a good night’s sleep.
To minimize extraneous decisions that take away from the primary design project, we will all share one document format. The group as a whole will decide upon format at the beginning of the semester. There will be all standard construction document pages, compiled as a set in 24”x36” horizontal landscape format. This size will be used for all reviews. Daily studio discussions can usually use 12x18 or 11x17 half sheets. A full list of essential drawing pages will be developed at the beginning of the semester in group discussion. We will look at various professional drawing sets to establish the standard. We won’t be reinventing wheels on the drawing format; creativity will be primarily reserved for the building design itself. Drawings will be in any cad software, although AutoCAD will be preferred in order to help share base documents, research details and specifications. It is expected that all document sets will employ both 2-d and 3-d drawing, as well as annotated photographs of site, components, models, mock-ups and experimental work.
Research Consultant Teams (everybody will be on one of these teams)
· Urban agriculture, plants, irrigation, soils, drainage, recycling
· Concrete construction systems and details
· Steel construction systems and details
· Glass enclosure systems and details
· Circulation, egress, elevators, accessibility, fire code, delivery/removal, parking
· Mechanical systems, plumbing, energy, daylighting
Production Consultant Teams (everybody will be on one of these teams)
· Document templates and management, CAD systems, Index and scheduling
· Digital model
· Physical model
· Site documentation, topography, site sections, zoning analysis
· Solar analysis, day lighting, energy analysis software
· Structural analysis software and building code review
For Monday presentation:
· Digital model
· Physical model
· Document templates
· Present production team preliminary documents and reports
· Present research team preliminary documents and reports
· Make first visit to site and present initial design sketch analysis (nice sketches-- digital or photo montage or physical object sketches are encouraged)
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