I’ve been test driving Architizer for a couple of months now, and I’m coming to the conclusion that I like it.  With everyone on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn (among others) these days, I think the question in every reader’s mind will be, “How many of these social media profiles do I really need?”  I initially felt the same way.  I have a Facebook account that I check about once every six weeks, and a Twitter account that I tweet to about once every two weeks.  However, I have found Architizer to be a rewarding experience in that they’ve already weeded out the white noise of subject matter and people that have no real bearing on my individual life.  As the name suggests, it’s social media for the architecture industry, which makes it more relevant to my daily existence than any other social media interface out there.

I’m not wasting time on Architizer looking at who from sixth grade had a baby or what distant acquaintance is attending World Cup games in South Africa, because everything on this site is design-oriented.  Architizer has everything separated out into categories such as Projects, People, Firms, Schools, Jobs, Competitions, Blog - and it’s ALL about architecture.  You can also sign up for a newsletter to be sent to you via email.  The site is a great source of inspiration for design.

My one complaint so far is that the Google map on the homepage takes forever to load, and quite honestly, it takes so long to load that I’ve never actually seen what happens when it’s done.  My hunch is that the result is not worth the wait.  Hopefully, Architizer will improve this feature before too long.

On a more positive note: Establishing a profile was fairly simple, and the interface is attractive and very easy to navigate.  Adding a project (a competition entry which I posted on this blog last year) took a little more time, but was an intuitive process as well.  In just a few minutes’ time, I was able to find a couple of people I knew from school, work, or through friends.  There aren’t millions of people on Architizer (just under 12,000 at the time of this post), which hasn’t truly ”gone viral” yet, but I appreciate the level of connectivity that it affords to the architecture profession, and I look forward to Architizer’s future.

Here is an aerial photo of the Bonton neighborhood: 

At the top of the photo, and at the bottom left, are the public housing properties.  This photo is a little out of date, because those properties have since been demolished.  The gray area toward the center of the photo are municipal properties, and to the north of this area, is Rochester Park.  The street headingnorth and south on the left side of this photo, dead ending in a cul-de-sac at the southern end of the photo, to the north of the forest, is Bexar Street. 

Here are some images which illustrate the existing condition of the neighborhood: 

The Bonton neighborhood is located very near to the Trinity River Forest, which is the largest urban bottomland forest in the world.  There used to be two public housing facilities (“projects”) in the neighborhood, but they have been demolished within the last few years.  The neighborhood used to flood whenever the Trinity River would flood, but since the building of the levee, the neighborhood no longer floods.  As a result of its location, though, the land is fertile, and everything is very green.  There are a lot of vacant lots throughout the neighborhood – about 45% of all of the residential lots are vacant. 

People in the neighborhood were very friendly, greeting us, but they were also very suspicious as to why we were there.  Several people exited their homes as we walked by, pleasantly asking us what we were doing there.  One man offered to share a cigarette with anyone in our group who smokes, which is no one.  A sedan sat on Bexar Street with several people gathered around it, listening to jazz music at high volume. 

Back at the office, we started to develop a master plan for the Bonton neighborhood, beginning with a quick review of a Bonton master plan developed by another firm a few years ago.  We followed that with a discussion of what we perceived to be the strengths and weaknesses of the Bonton neighborhood, while  writing our ideas on poster-sized paper. 

At times, we broke into smaller groups to develop various parts of the overall master plan in more detail: a written narrative of the neighborhood and of our ideas; usage ideas for smaller lots throughout the neighborhood; an investigation of the existing conditions of the residential portion of the neighborhood; re-establishment of the residential fabric of the neighborhood through the area that used to be the Turner Courts public housing facility; and land usage ideas for the public and commercial portion of the neighborhood, primarily along Bexar Street. 

Here are some of our preliminary sketches: 

We established a node on Bexar Street that includes a grocery store, a farmers market, and a library.  We also scattered “pocket parks” throughout the neighborhood.  Eventually, the goal would be to fill in the vacant residential lots with housing.  However, we predict that would take probably 15 to 20 years, and definitely no less than 10 years.  In the meantime, rather than having vacant lots, we proposed inexpensive, very public solutions for vacant lots, such as: 

• community gardens
• basketball courts
• dog parks
• public art
• sculpture gardens
• playgrounds
• bike trails
• water park

We proposed that each function would be designed to fit on one 50′ x 120′ lot, but there could be multiple variations of the same function scattered throughout the neighborhood.  We even developed a signage concept for these pocket parks: 

Here is the master plan we created as a group: 

We carried the existing residential fabric of the neighborhood north through the neighborhood, extending through the site of one of the previous public housing properties.  We left the municipal buildings where they were located, but we pulled them eastward away from Bexar Street, and replaced that portion with more public functions, like restaurants and shops. 

The brown rectangular building with a central courtyard towards the northern end of the site is an existing elementary school.  We added a much needed grocery store and library to the Bonton neighborhood, both along Bexar Street.  We also added a triangular plaza, where the residents of the neighborhood can gather.  This plaza includes a water park, providing a free activity for children when it’s hot during the summer.  Across Bexar Street from the grocery store, we planned a farmers market.  Our intention was that foods grown throughout the neighborhood in pocket park community gardens could be sold at the farmers market, in order to raise money for the neighborhood. 

We replaced the cul-de-sac at the end of Bexar Street with a parking lot located just off Bexar Street.  This will give hikers and bikers a place to park, if they are coming to visit the trail.  In place of the old cul-de-sac, we put a trail entrance to cross over the river, a trail to guide people from their cars and the neighborhood to the Buckeye Trail.  We flanked the trail entrance with an amphitheater and a learning center, where visitors and neighborhood residents may learn about the local flora and fauna of the neighborhood and Great Trinity Forest. 

This sketch highlights the vacant residential properties throughout the neighborhood.  Each green rectangle represents a vacant residential lot.  Most of these lots measure somewhere in the range of approximately 40′ x 100′ to 50′ x 120′.  The blocks at the northern end of the neighborhood, where the public housing property was, are vacant as well.  When I said 45% of the residential lots are vacant, that number only includes residential lots that were not public housing. 

We proposed that these vacant lots would be converted into public functions until a time when they would be rebuilt with infill housing.  As vacant lots suitable for housing would begin to be occupied, the pocket parks would slowly be repurposed for housing.  Ideally, a handful of pocket parks per block would remain, helping to preserve the sense of community in the neighborhood, and would maintain a sense of living history in the neighborhood. 

In this image, we incorporated the signage concept to show how as people walk through the neighborhood, they would see pocket parks reserved for various activities.  The artist’s palette denotes a pocket park where public art would be displayed.  This could be like the Nasher Sculpture Center’s garden (on a much smaller scale), or it could be as simple as a long cinder block wall that the neighborhood’s elementary school children could together paint with a mural. 

The carrot denotes a community garden.  The residents of the neighborhood could grow their own produce, and children in the neighborhood can learn about gardening and nutrition.  We believe children better enjoy healthier foods, like vegetables, when they understand how they grow, and especially when they have had a hand in growing those vegetables.  The community garden would be similar in theory to gardens that so,e elementary schools around the country have incorporated into their schoolyards. 

The water droplet denotes a water park for the residents to use to cool off in the summer.  Children can run through fountains or jets of water.  We also proposed a pool toward the northern end of the site, which would give local older students jobs as lifeguards in the summertime, and would give local younger children an opportunity to take swimming lessons, and potentially a chance to be part of a swim team. 

The chess board denotes a pocket park reserved for games – giant chess boards, as seen in parks around the world, like in Geneva.  Other games could be washers, ladder golf, corn hole, tic tac toe, Toss Across, and hopscotch, among others.  It is possible that one of the Games pocket parks could include a pavilion filled with tables and chairs or benches.  The pavilion could include a closet, inside which are stored all sorts of board games and decks of cards for the residents to play with. 

The bicycle tire denotes a pocket park that is part of a network of pocket parks which, combined with the streets of the neighborhood, link together to create a bike trail, where people can ride through the neighborhood, without having to be on the street the whole time.  These pocket parks could include urban furniture such as benches, water fountains, and air pumps.  This same idea could be repeated for walking trails traversing the neighborhood. 

The basketball net denotes a pocket park that really is nothing more than a public basketball court to be used by residents and visitors to the neighborhood.  Other pocket parks could be reserved for other sports as well. 

The swing set denotes a pocket park playground.  The playground could include things like sandboxes, jungle gyms, hopscotch, merry-go-rounds, rock climbing walls, and swings. 

We also came up with other ideas for pocket parks, which aren’t represented here, such as dog parks and parks reserved for outdoor dining and grilling.

We review the work of our peers and competitors with a critical eye, pointing out all that went wrong in the execution of their design.  Our criticism is based on what we know, and on what is familiar to us.  We point out why something would never work “in the real world.”  However, the “real world” surrounds us with a constant state of flux.  Just because something wouldn’t work today does not mean that it won’t work tomorrow.  We stifle our own innovation and creativity by failing to ask, “why not?”

When looking at the designs below, I remember that without challenging ourselves to step out of reality, our creativity dies, and we produce what we “know,” rather than what makes us “think.”  If someone hadn’t asked “What if…?” and “Why not?” these designs wouldn’t be possible.

What if we assume one or more of the features in these designs to be realities, and provide a critique from there?  What if we assume the future condition of our environment to be drastically different, and we had to accommodate that world in our designs?  Some people might say, “but that’s not what the world is going to be like in ten or thirty years.”  However, now, more than any time in the history of the earth, we have the manpower, the ability, and the technology to change our environment tremendously, in a very short period of time, given a collective determination.  We have the power to shape the world we live in.  Why not?

LilyPad, “a floating offshore ecopolis for climate refugees,” as described by the designers Vincent Callebaut Architectures.  Each LilyPad is a self-sustaining, off-grid mini-city, powered by solar, wind, and hydropower.  Image taken from http://vincent.callebaut.org/.

RiverGym, a human-powered mode of transportation, designed by Mitchell Joachim and Douglas Joachim.  Image taken fromhttp://www.terreform.org/projects_mobility_rivergym.html.

This concept car was designed for BMW by students Jai Ho Yoo and Lukas Vanek from the Instituo Europeo di Design, in response to the question of what cars will look like in 2015.  Image taken from http://gadgets.boingboing.net/2008/08/14/bmw-zx6-concept-by-j.html.

This solar-powered plane mimics a bird by flapping its wings.  It was designed by NASA and the Ohio Aeorspace Institute.  Image taken fromhttp://hubpages.com/hub/Flapping_Solar_Aircraft_The_Bird_Plane.

Manned Cloud: an airship hotel designed by French designer Jean-Marie Massaud, in collaboration with Office National d’Etudes et de Recherche Aérospatiale (ONERA).  The Manned Cloud carries 40 passengers and 15 crew members.  It comprises 520,000 cubic meters, and includes a restaurant, lounge, library, fitness center, spa, bar, terraces, and 20 guest cabins.  http://www.massaud.com/site/en/#/works/espace/6050-manned-cloud.

A seed archive designed by Brittany Bell, a student at Victoria University School of Design in Wellington, New Zealand.  The architecture of the seed archive mimics the architecture of a plant, resembling the cytoskeleton of a plant.  This design will help the architecture to adapt to its changing environment.  Image taken fromhttp://www.dezeen.com/2008/12/10/seed-archive-by-brittany-bell/.

Here are some sketches that I drew for the initial concept:

This is a plan for the site, which is over 700 meters long, from left to right.  My scheme is basically a series of pathways snaking through the site, passing between and around the larger site features.  These undulating paths are at different elevations from one another, and the width of each path varies as it traverses the site.  The paths are made of different materials, such as sand, gravel, and crushed granite – all pervious materials to help with site drainage and stormwater runoff.

Inside the circle at the top of this drawing is the main performance hall, which would be designed to hold up to 6,000 people.  Other than identifying where it would be sited in this scheme, I did not develop the main hall further.

This portion of the site is separated from the linear portion of the site (to the south) by a fairly large street.  I envisioned this part of the site as a linear park, with a lake in the center and an outdoor amphitheater at each end.  There is an additional outdoor amphitheater just east of the lake, which isn’t marked in this drawing.  I also planned four large gathering areas to give buskers and street performers a place to entertain people in the park.

This sketch shows a section through the plan above.  This section shows how the paths are at different elevations, and it is meant to be more diagrammatic than realistic.  Some of the elements in this sketch are in the background, such as two of the outdoor amphitheaters, while some of the elements have been cloven, such as the lake and the outdoor amphitheater just east of the lake.

These sketches are rather large, measuring about 12″ tall and 36″ long.  They were done very quickly, during my lunch break one day.  Therefore, they are rough, and I don’t have anything more polished to represent my ideas.  As a team, we chose not to pursue this scheme, so I did not investigate this concept further.

Here is a rendering of the A.R.M. The A.R.M. on the left has been transported by snowmobile. The other A.R.M. has been separated into its two components, with the frame being used as a greenhouse and to harness wind energy. The live-work module is in the foreground.

A.R.M. is a design solution to Arctic Perspective Initiative’s (API) recent design competition for a mobile media-centric habitation and work unit to be deployed throughout the circumpolar region.  I participated in the competition with three of my friends, and this is our submisison.

This is a diagram showing some of the key features of the A.R.M. From the top left bullet, traveling in a clockwise motion, these features are: a lightweight aluminum frame; the Arctic Relay Module (A.R.M.); a hinge where the frame flexes in response to the terrain; a removable sled attachment; wheel/tire storage that lends buoyancy to the A.R.M.; and adjustable hydraulic shocks.

We designed A.R.M. as two pieces – a module for living and working, and a frame for transporting the module and harvesting energy.  During transportation, the module fits snugly within the aluminum frame, runners attach to the frame, and the entire unit may be pulled by a snowmobile across the snow and ice.  While traveling on this type of terrain, six wheels are stowed in the bottom of the module, providing buoyancy in the event that A.R.M. would be required to float.  On dry land and/or roads, these wheels may attach to the frame in place of the runners, so that A.R.M. may be towed behind a truck.

This diagram shows how the A.R.M. and its frame are rotated into the vertical orientation, at which point the A.R.M. is removed from the frame. The frame then houses wind turbines to harness energy and a greenhouse.

Once it arrives at its destination, A.R.M. is separated into its two components.  The module has feet that descend, to raise the module above the ground, preventing snowdrift from blocking the entrance.  The frame is rotated into its vertical orientation, and wind turbines are put in place to harness wind energy.  Translucent plastic is inflated into the frame, turning the frame into a greenhouse.  A.R.M. is a self-contained, zero-impact unit, which may be used as a stand-alone unit, or may be combined with other A.R.M.’s to make a larger overall space.  The frame is used to generate 5kW power, and to support the telecommunications network that will provide a means of communication between other A.R.M.’s and with the larger world community.

This map of the Arctic show how the A.R.M.s could be deployed throughout the region, and how lines of communication could be established between them.

The live-work module is designed to accommodate technology equipment fitting within a standard 19-inch frame.  In this frame system, broken or outdated components may be easily removed and replaced.  Sensors integrated into A.R.M. collect data relating to, but not limited to: climate; microclimate; local soil, ocean, and ice characteristics; electromagnetic radiation; local flora and fauna.

These perspective section cuts show how the interior spaces of the A.R.M. could be arranged.

Bonsai

Bonsai is the art of the miniature landscape.  The cultivation of plants in containers dates back to ancient Egypt, around 4000 B.C., where pictorial records show plants being grown in containers cut into rock.  “Bonsai,” translated as “tray planting” in Japanese, is believed to have taken hold as an art form sometime between the 3^rd century B.C. and the 8^th century A.D in China, where it is known as “Penjing.”  Bonsai was introduced to Japan around the beginning of the 13^th century.  Using a wide variety of techniques, such as leaf trimming, pruning, grafting, and defoliation, the bonsai artist is able to create miniature landscapes in a myriad of traditional styles.

Example of multiple bonsai plants designed to resemble a forest. Image borrowed from www.shohin-europe.com.

Topiary

Topiary is the art of sculpture, using living plant material – trees and shrubs, mostly – as the medium.  Ancient writings show that the art of topiary has been practiced for over 2,000 years and dates to the Romans.  The best plants for topiary are evergreen, with small, dense leaves, such as box, myrtle, or yew.

Traditional topiaries have foliage trimmed into geometric shapes such as spheres, cubes, cones, pyramids, and obelisks.  There was a decline in the popularity of the art throughout the 18^th century, and when the topiary as an art form was revived in the 19^th century, more sculptural forms appeared.

Espalier

Espalier is a horticultural technique of pruning and grafting used together to train trees to create two-dimensional forms with the branches.  This technique was originally developed during the Middle Ages as a way to grow fruit trees within castle walls, without taking up space needed for other activities, and to add decoration to the walls.

Because these trees absorb as much sunlight as untrained trees, espaliers are ideal where there are issues of limited space.  Espaliers are able to grow well in cooler climates which would otherwise prevent the same species from growing successfully in a non-espaliered form.  Olives, figs, apples, and pears take particularly well to an espaliered form.  There are many different traditional shapes for an espalier, such as horizontal, palmettes (also called fans), cordons, and Belgian fences, among others.

Here are some sketches of traditional espalier patterns (images borrowed from www.southernaccents.com):

Horizontal Cordon

Fan

Triple-U

Belgian Fence

Candelabra

Pleaching

Pleaching is the art of training trees into a raised hedge, often in a two-dimensional, flat plane representation.  This technique involves the weaving together of branches, in which the branches are wounded and bound together at the site of the join.

Eventually, the trees will grow together through inosculation, a naturally occurring phenomenon similar to grafting.  From the late medieval times through the early 18^th century, pleached allées of trees were very popular in European gardens.  Trees with smooth bark, such as linden or sycamore trees were most commonly chosen for pleaching.

Grafting

Grafting is a horticultural technique of asexual propagation, in which the tissues of one plant are fused with those of another plant.  The technique dates back 4,000 years to ancient China and Mesopotamia.  Grafting is used on all different types of plants, with a variety of intentions – repair of damaged plants, hybridization, perpetuating clones, and optimizing pollination and cross-pollination, among others.  There are many different approaches to grafting a plant, such as inlay grafting, budding, and stub grafting.

Axel Erlandson was an American farmer, who utilized the technique of grafting to shape trees.  He opened his Tree Circus in California in the spring of1947.  Here are some of his creations:

Using Tree Shaping Techniques to Grow a Building

Ferdinand Ludwig, Oliver Storz, and Hannes Schwertfeger  – three young German architects at the University of Stuttgart’s Institute of Basics in Modern Architectural Design – have been experimenting with the concept of growing a building from willow trees, a process they call “building botany.”  They have experimented with building smaller structures built from trees, and they have investigated the elasticity of these trees and how well they grow around steel pipe.

The architects start by building a conventional support structure out of steel, resembling a scaffold.  Young willow trees, which are thin and are still flexible at a year old, are woven throughout the scaffolding.  The minimum height for these trees at the beginning of the project is ten meters, or thirty-three feet.  The trees are bent into the desired shape around the steel structure and are fastened into place.  As the trees grow and become stronger, they will assume the load-bearing function of the scaffolding, and the steel frame members will be removed, upon inspection by a structural engineer.  They expect the desired strength to be achieved over a few years’ time.

Because the growth of the trees is restricted, the roots of the willow trees grow sideways into containers of soil.  As the willows mature to a certain point, their roots are cut off, which will encourage the trees to grow into a single organism.

The structure of this living organism presents a different set of challenges.  Metal fasteners used to secure the trees to the steel frame can obstruct the flow of sap.  If this obstruction were allowed to persist, the trees would be strangled.  Ludwig, Storz, and Schwertfeger have devised a system of “sap bypasses” of branches, in order to keep the botanical structure alive.  They also must prune and otherwise maintain the structure in order to keep it from growing into unruly shrubbery.

The end goal of this endeavor is that when the willow trees achieve their full strength, the structure will be able to support an eight-meter, or twenty-six-foot, tall tower in South Germany.  Once the living organism is able to assume the load-bearing function of the tower, floors and roofs may be added.