thesisproposal_2016-12-14

Methodology: pg. 9-14

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Liminal Urban Spaces:

Addressing the Temporality of Built Form Through the Lens of Building Mortality

Issue: The perception of permanence in architecture is a deep seated mentality.  In reality, architecture is temporal and what is here now will not always be here.  This can be a somewhat disturbing thought; especially when there are sentimental ties to the built structures that we inhabit.  A city can be thought of as a living entity made up of buildings, landscapes, and people that are in constant flux.  When a component or part of that system is not used, it goes dormant and falls into a liminal state until there is a socio-economic need for it again.  Buildings seem to experience mortality at different times for different reasons, however one could argue that a building’s death occurs well before it is demolished, renovated, or even vacated.  When buildings and landscapes progress to a point of mortality, what can we do to influence the future use of the space when it is eventually reassimilated into the urban fabric?  This thesis will look to explore the liminality between a building’s vacancy, demolition and reassimilation and what impacts building mortality has on our perception of landscape, waste,  and architecture.

*The goal of this thesis is not to eliminate liminal urban spaces or wasting, but to explore the possible influence of ephemeral interventions within them to nudge these spaces into a beneficial direction depending on community needs (social, ecological, economic,etc.) as well as alter the communal perception of these spaces from deficits to assets.  

Significance of Issue: The average vacancy rate among the 75 largest urban centers in the United States sits at 10.6% and has historically fluctuated between 12.5% and 15% in cities with populations above 250,000 (US Census 2012; Kremer, Hamstead 2015).  There are many factors that may influence when and why properties are vacated such as disinvestment, industrial decline, and contamination of the land to name a few (Kremer, Hamstead 2015).  Vacancy can have large social, ecological, and economic implications on an urban area including increased crime.   Visible environmental cues that indicate a lack of investment in an area can influence the social dynamic of the neighborhood, causing feelings of fear, abandonment, and vulnerability ultimately with the possibility of compounding vacancy issues (Garvin et. al. 2012).  Cities spend millions of dollar per year on demolishing derelict properties (HUD 2014).  However this process creates prolific amounts of waste each year.  The building sector created 530 million metric tons of construction and demolition waste in the United States in 2013, 90% of which was purely demolition related (EPA. Advancing Sustainable Materials Management. 2013).  For scale, the United States produced 254 million tons of municipal solid waste (MSW consists of residential and commercial garbage and recyclables) in 2013.  

Proposal of Method: When a building dies, it has many different possible fates.  It can be reconditioned up to modern habitability standards and then reoccupied, or, it can be taken down via either demolition or deconstruction to make way for new stock to name two possibilities.  This can be visualized as a decision tree containing the theoretical maximum number of possibilities for a particular site.  This thesis would work to identify key intervention points over time that provide the maximum influence over a vacant lot’s future.  How could focused ephemeral design interventions at specific stages pre and post mortality catalyze and influence the reassimilation process to achieve a particular result? How could this work to redefine the public perception of dead buildings and derelict landscapes? How could temporary urbanism in the form of low cost, low risk transient on site building utilizing recovered materials serve as a way to provoke urban reinvestment?

Liminal Urban Spaces:

Addressing the Temporality of  Built Form Through the Lens of Building Mortality

Issue:

The perception of permanence in architecture is a deep seated mentality.  In reality, architecture is temporary and what is here now will not always be here.  This can be a somewhat disturbing thought; especially when there are sentimental ties to the built structures that we inhabit.  A city can be thought of as a living entity made up of buildings, landscapes, and people that are in constant flux.  When a component or part of that system is not used, it dies and falls into a liminal state until there is a socio-economic need for it again.  Buildings seem to die at different times for different reasons, however one could argue that a building’s death occurs well before it is demolished, renovated, or even vacated.  When buildings and landscapes progress to a point of mortality, what can we do to influence the future use of the space when it is  eventually reassimilated into the urban fabric?  This thesis will look to explore the liminality between a building’s vacancy, demolition and reassimilation and what impacts building mortality has on our perception of landscape, waste,  and architecture.

Significance of Issue:

The average vacancy rate among the 75 largest urban centers in the United States sits at 10.6% and has historically fluctuated between 12.5% and 15% in cities with population above 250,000 (US Census 2012; Kremer, Hamstead 2015).  There are many factors that may influence when and why properties are vacated such as disinvestment, industrial decline, and contamination of the land to name a few (Kremer, Hamstead 2015).  Vacancy can have large social, ecological, and economic implication on an urban area including increased crime.   Visible environmental cues that indicate a lack of investment in an area can influence the social dynamic of the neighborhood, causing feelings of fear, abandonment, and vulnerability ultimately with the possibility of compounding vacancy issues (Garvin et. al. 2012).  Cities spend millions of dollar per year on demolishing derelict properties (HUD 2014).  However this process creates prolific amounts of waste each year. The building sector created 530 million metric tons of construction and demolition waste in the United States in 2013, 90% of which was purely demolition related (EPA. Advancing Sustainable Materials Management. 2013).  For scale, the United States produced 254 million tons of municipal solid waste (MSW consists of residential and commercial garbage and recyclables) in 2013.  

Proposal of Method:

When a building dies, it has many different possible fates.  It can be reconditioned up to modern habitability standards and then reoccupied, or, it can be taken down via either demolition or deconstruction to make way for new stock to name two possibilities.  This can be visualized as a decision tree containing the theoretical maximum number of possibilities for a particular site.  This thesis would work to identify key intervention points over time that provide the maximum influence over a vacant lot’s future.  How could focused ephemeral design interventions at specific stages pre and post mortality catalyze and influence the reassimilation process to achieve a particular result? How could this work to redefine the public perception of dead buildings and derelict landscapes? How could temporary urbanism in the form of low cost, low risk transient on site building utilizing recovered materials serve as a way to provoke urban reinvestment?

Deconstructed Landscape:

Landscape, Architecture and Waste through the Lens of Building Mortality

Issue:

Building mortality, liminality, and reassimilation.

When a building dies, it has two different possible fates.  It is either eventually reconditioned up to modern habitability standards and then reoccupied, or, it is taken down via either demolition or deconstruction to make way for new stock.  Buildings die at different times for different reasons, however one could argue that a building’s death occurs well before it is demolished or renovated.  This thesis will explore the liminality between a building’s demolition and reassimilation and what impacts building mortality has on our perception of landscape, waste,  and architecture.  

Significance of Issue:

Construction and demolition, and by association architecture, create prolific amounts of waste each year. The building sector created 530 million metric tons of construction and demolition waste in the United States in 2013, 90% of which was purely demolition related (EPA. Advancing Sustainable Materials Management. 2013).  For scale, the United States produced 254 million tons of municipal solid waste (MSW consists of residential and commercial garbage and recyclables) in 2013.   Between 1996 and 2003 New York City saw a $400 million increase in its sanitation budget due to the closure of its last remaining landfill in Freshkills, Staten Island causing the city to start exporting its solid wastes to other states(NYC Sanitation 2004).  Connecticut is running out of landfill space rapidly, in particular for C+D wastes and Massachusetts is considering a ban on the disposal of C+D waste products entirely(NYC Sanitation 2004).

Proposal of Method:

Temporary rebuilding on site utilizing recovered materials could serve as a way to avoid having to transport a portion of the materials off site to recycling facilities or waste facilities by serving as a creative way to store construction materials on site for future projects. Through  this process, we can begin to take a landscape up approach to building that could provide ways to blur the boundaries between building waste, landscape, and architecture.  The installations would be both performative and informative and would integrate with the landscape to allow the former house site to become a positive environmental influence by augmenting any existing positive ecological functions and perhaps providing additional ecological functions such as water runoff control, filtration, and C02 sequestration.  The architecture of the constructs would address the importance of aesthetics in ecological design and the impact that it has on public perception of waste and “green” design. The economics of ecological design through the reuse of existing materials would also be furthered by showing what is possible with the introduction of closed-loop material practices. The site-holistic designs could open a new social dialogue, which would address the value and utility of reused materials and their potential for positive environmental impacts.

Steadman:

1. Leslie Martin and Lionel March’s approach to land use and built form studies is a rigid example of building analysis that is predisposed for a certain type of answer. If this type of strategy provides a way to a theoretically ‘perfect’ design, why have these perfect design strategies not become the profession of architecture?
2. We are a growing population in a finite expanse of space. How can tools like ‘Spacemate’ work to act as a type of defragmenter allowing us to use space in both a more efficient way as well as a more human way?
3. The term bio-mimicry has been growing in popularity in past years. Although there may be highly refined examples of the adaptation of form and function found in nature, what are the caveats of implementing these findings past a research level?

Coyne:

1. The amount of generated knowledge that we have is ever expanding. As Coyne states, there are digital tools such as the Internet and keyword searching that are meant to increase the pace at which we consume knowledge.  At what point do we hit the speed limit on learning and how will that change how we research?
2. “Design-led research seeks to understand the world through direct intervention by the researcher, rather than through detached observation.” Doesn’t design research do both of these to a certain extent?
3. The question of ‘Identification of need’ is used by Coyle to relate design research to systems theory which follows a more linear research trajectory from need to research to solution. Does this help to bridge the design and science disciplines?