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?

Abstract IV

Kyle McMindes

More and more commonly  dwellers take less pride in, know less about, and interact less meaningfully with their homes. This expanding detachment between Dwelling and Dweller is generative of issues regarding one’s personal identity and growth, as well as their understanding of and caretaking for our physical environment.

The aim of this study is to explore the subtle yet ever present relationship between Dwelling and Dweller, so as to magnify this condition and procure a more acute sense of how are physical surroundings impact our individual identity and daily rituals. The work will utilize myself as both the investigator and the investigated, with my current residence (59 Englewood Ave.) acting as the site and instigator of the research. Broader subjects expected to be confronted through this experiment will be topics such as Routines/Habits, Familiarity/Nostalgia, Self-Reflection, Comfort, and Utility/Functionality. Investigations into this relationship will be conducted via extensive reading, writing, documentation, and many forms of making.

The media produced and discussed will piece together the fragments of everyday life and their physical relation to home, so as to generate responses/events that engage these newly realized threads. As of now the proposed product of the research is a series of imagined interventions within the home itself that will engage both Dwelling and Dweller in curiously fantastic and pattern altering ways. It should be made clear that the proposals are not intended to enhance the quality of life for the resident or improve the buildings performance in any particular way. The purpose of the interventions are to manipulate habits, instill fascination, and generate self-awareness relative to the home.

The implications of this work should be  a more experiential and holistic understanding of our homes and the endless everyday relations that occur within them. How they shelter, provide, engage, respond, and in trance us; and how we maintain, interact, furbish, and sustain them.

Q1: Can a dwelling go beyond the orchestration of routine and act as a genuine catalyst for habit making?

Q2: Can the interactions between dwelling and dweller  promote critical self awareness that fosters a genuine change or self realization within the user?
Q3: How can the study of existing events within the home inform interventions to it?

“Shifts in Perception through Tactile Sensations” 

The bias that vision holds over the profession of architecture suppresses all of the other senses. In Greece, optical refinements were implemented to create the illusion that a structure was visually “perfect”. The hegemonic eye, with its ability to absorb information faster than any other sense, has allowed designers to create buildings that “look” good, but might not necessarily “feel” good. Pallasmaa once stated that “touch is a parent of our eyes, ears, nose and mouth.” Tactile sensations can affect a person’s social behavior, self-perception, enjoyment and comfort within a building. Three dimensional space can be deceiving through our lens of vision. However, the tactile and haptic sensations that we experience do not misguide us. Tactility does not only mean ones sense of touch through material contact, but also touch through atmospheric conditions. It is important to explore how tactility can be leveraged to enhance our perception of space, while diminishing the ocular-centric bias that we hold today.

Providing a context is important when determining how tactility plays an integral role to a user’s experience within a space. A thermae bath or natatorium leverages materiality to alter atmospheric and tactile conditions as a means of affecting one’s comfort. This provokes us to ask questions such as; “how does the foot interact with the ground?” and “how does the body react to changes in temperature?” Can edge and surface conditions become altered at multiple scales to potentially change ones perception of space? There are many directions one could move towards when thinking about these questions.

One approach might be to implement materials at different scales to suggest different programmatic functions. Could a material at one scale suggest a boundary condition around the edge of the bath, while a different but similarly scaled material invite one to sit upon it? Could a material at a certain scale provide stability for the foot when walking on a slippery surface, whereas at a different scale that material might serve as a warm entity for one to lay upon, assisting in drying off? The extrapolation of this idea demands that studies be done both at the material and programmatic level. The exploration of a material through different shifts in scale would allow one to experiment and allocate a certain programmatic function to each object being scaled.

The goal/result of this research is to ultimately create a space that does not rely on ones sense of sight as a major sensory component. The thermal bath is a program of pure function. It is focused on touch and one’s skin coming into direct contact with very warm or very cold elements. By transmuting materials and their scale, I hope to learn how one’s perception of space could become enhanced, or even completely changed purely through tactile sensations.

V3 Thesis Abstract

“Keep up with modern facilities if you want to remain in Buffalo”. – Roger Goodell NFL Commissioner. With the lease of the current Buffalo Bills stadium coming to an end after the 2023 season, there is little doubt that a new stadium is envisioned for the Bills in the near future. The current stadium, New Era Field, opened in 1972 and is one of the oldest stadiums in the NFL still in use. While only used 8 games a season, there is a large financial gain for the local business at each game. Outside of those 8 games, it is an empty structure. This stadium represents the history of the Bills and the NFL. There has been triumph and tragic loss experienced in those seats and there would be more than one Bills fan wanting to hold onto that history as this team means so much to the community and its identity especially if the stadium were to move downtown as many of the current concepts are leaning towards. There is a special bond that the fans of Buffalo have with their team and it would be a benefit to the community of Orchard Park to both maintain that history as well as expand on it.

With the future stadium of the Bills likely being moved from the current complex in Orchard Park, the town has a conundrum of what to do with the old stadium once the main tenant moves out. Do they knock it down or can it be repurposed? With so much history for the town and the city of Buffalo, it would be a great loss to the community to lose. My thesis aims to not only save this history of Orchard Park, but also serve as a “Blueprint” for other communities that have stadiums that are empty, or going to be, to have a guideline as to the steps and process at which to repurpose the structure for the benefit of the community.

A small portion of the old stadium in buffalo (the rockpile) was kept to hold on to the history of the early days of the Buffalo Bills.

“Even More Than Architecture”

Richard Coyne

1-Compare Las Vegas in the functionality of architecture and the term of past sells cities as well as the significant natural features of Grand Canyon, Niagara Falls  …, etc. How can architecture bring business in the two cases?

2-In Jacques Derrida investigation in the core of architecture by relying on the principles of modern architecture and the limitations of the four concepts of architecture, Is it explaining all the current architectural precedents?

3-Compare the process of publicity of architects and their work with the idea of flourish of the research to make it valuable?

The following example of a well-known architect Ammar Khammash. Is it research design or artistic product or both?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HtkBJLr_c_w&feature=share

An “Artificial Science” of Architecture

Philip Steadman

1-Is the technology or science is essential for architecture, for example, the golden ratio for Renaissance or it is an add to the architectural design to enhance the operational system of it and can be reached without it?

2-Compare research process of Hoods idea and the March and Martin as well as “Spacemate” refers to 3 categories of design research, into, through and for?

3-Is the March and Martin an urban design regulation can have a space for creativity?

Even More Than Architecture, Richard Coyne

1. Coyne writes, “Tschumi reports that on their meeting, Derrida inquired of Tschumi why architects should be interested in his work since ‘deconstruction is anti-form, anti-hierarchy, anti-structure – the opposite of all that architecture stands for,” (185). What does architecture stand for? How can architecture be anti-form, anti-hierarchy, anti-structure? Why would an architect aim to do so? How does Tschumi do this?
2. “Here reading converges with design […] reading becomes active, synthetic, shared, and creative,” (Coyne, 187). What are examples of reading converging with design? What would a design be without reading within it’s process?
3. “Ethnographic study also encouraged participation by the researcher, getting involved, seeing what life is like from the point of view of the subject, and accepting that the presence of the researcher has an effect on the material under study,” (Coyne, 195). When does the design process of architecture become the process of user experience or user-centered design? How do these two differ? Is it important for the two to become one?

An ‘Artificial Science’ of Architecture, Philip Steadman

1. To study the architecture of ancient civilizations, we can only look at what remains of their buildings. What are the implications of this? Do these implications apply to Steadman’s proposition that more can be learned from the architect’s process of design by studying the artifacts directly?
2. “But as Herbet Simon points out, the distinguishing feature of all useful artifacts is that, because they are produced for human purposes, they ‘can be characterized in terms of functions, goals, adaptation’,” (Steadman, 48). How does this relate to biology?
3. “Bon was interested in such effects as architectural cases of allometry, the biological phenomenon  whereby organisms change their shapes as they grow larger, in order to preserve certain ratios essential to their physiological functioning. The ratio of surface to volume is important for example in warm blooded animals, since it affects heat loss or gain through the skin,” (Steadman, 38). This study seems valuable if we are concerned only with architecture as an example as allometry. Which fields of architecture would be most interested in these findings? Is it possible for people to live as simply as animals? If not, what gets in the way of this? Do these reasons ultimately prevent any future of structures becoming as simple as those made by animals? What are the consequences of this?

Reading 1 : Steadman

Q1_ The idea of Spacemate seems interesting, but is something like this actually used in practice?

Q2_ Why did Jones and Alexander distance themselves from their original research?  Did they eventually come to a conclusion that their ideas were not as useful as proposed?

Q3_ In the reading it was talked about how early CAD was supposed to be a generator of design then switched to a representational tool for design.  What has caused us to revisit that idea now?

Reading 2 : Coyne

Q1_ “Architectural research has a relatively small audience, producing modest metrics.  In so far as numbers have any kind of influence, then architectural researchers may start to skew their outputs to appeal to an even wider audience.”  I think this is a very dangerous issue.  We have seen what relying on these metrics has done to journalism, where small newspapers have shut down and can no longer report on local politics and have been replaced with clickbait pseudo news outlets such as buzzfeed, slate, etc.  Here depth and analysis have been replaced with breadth and emotionally charged words used simply to rattle the cages of readers rather than offer any legitimate insite.  Furthermore, these outlets hardly ever produce their own content and instead summarize summaries from other sources.  Is this the direction we want architectural research to head in?

Q2_ Should the benefit of research even be measured in typical media metrics?  The general public sometimes does not make the connection of the benefits of research and thus a valuable research topic could be shut down by simply not producing enough twitter followers.

Q3_ The idea that much research needs to be funded makes plenty of sense, but it is not important to understand who is funding research?  There can always be ulterior motives that can possibly skew research results.

Number of city-dwellers will be doubled by 2050. Rise of different technologies is rapidly changing the way in which cities are managed. City mayors around the world compete to achieve a smart city. While there are many indeterminacies about appropriateness of digital infrastructures, they are now the inseparable part of the city. Use of smart phones let citizens to participate in shaping their cities more than before. Transportation mobile apps, civic data gathering approaches along with playful urban apps are changing the behavior of citizen.

Centralized top down implementation of smart governance systems are popular to predict the possible problems and support better decision making based on citizen engagement. But are these decisions offering a solution to our existing big problems or they will bring more problems with themselves? There are growing concerns about ownership of data gathered about citizens, as well as what really information technologies are changing. The excitement of automation might conceal the true potential of this new technologies.

What future cities offer in terms of livability and joy? What are the potentials of future cities and information technologies embedded in them for improvement of equity, life of poor and middle-class? What is measurable in a city and what is not measurable? These are crucial questions of this research. The emphasis and promises of tech companies on better life condition, rarely addresses the situation of marginalized and how new information technologies can support them. This investigation is looking for possibilities of better measurement and engagement.

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.

Philip Steadman, “An ‘Artificial Science’ of Architecture”

1. The work regarding the floor space index is stimulating. However, it seems like it could only be used in projects where the boundaries are linear, perpendicular to each other. Could this method be used for more “curvilinear” projects?
2. Are “spacemate” diagrams still being used today? If so, how are they calculated? With today’s technology being more advanced than when it was developed, it is curious to wonder.
3. “Bon was interested in such effects as architectural cases of allometry, the biological phenomenon whereby organisms change their shapes as they grow larger, in order to preserve certain ratios essential to their physiological functioning.” Were any social sciences involved with this project, seeing as a part does interact with people directly?

Richard Coyne, “Even more than Architecture”

1. Coyne criticizes of what happens when web search is used in regarding to research. It is true that a good amount that pops up isn’t useful, but it still helps a lot more than before the internet was used. Isn’t it worth it to find articles and readings online that one would never find within a library even if it takes a little more effort and time?
2. “These media channels and content types do not of course have comparable intellectual impact and influence.” The media is one of the most powerful industries out there no matter what they put out. Ergo, doesn’t that mean that it in fact does have a big impact and influence on the population?
3. Coyne brings up the concept of “otherness” within the article, bringing different disciplines together. While this is a motivating idea in theory, how would this be done in reality? People usually go to school for only one discipline, so their knowledge of various subjects would be limited.

John Mellas

Week 4 Questions

Coyne

1:  While the internet has innumerous resources for architects and students alike, “some critics think that we have entered an era of shallow, superficial browsing and reading.” Being able to “search” within a pdf document helps in the short term but is it harmful in the long term? Has the advent of online resources impacted students to research less? Or, rather, absorb less. Has the online resource pool made us complacent in our research and reading?

2:  With physical books, from cover to cover, it gives you a focus on its written content. There are no external links to follow to lead us off topic. With both book and online taken into consideration, Is the internet of resources overwhelming us with information?

3: Unlike the original Enac and first iteration computers, our phones can fit in our pocket. Why do we need to study the “social and cultural impacts of computer networks on cities” when the networks and computers don’t interact with the architecture?  Should our phones interact with buildings?

Steadman

1:  “Leslie Martin and Lionel March distinguished three simple types of form: ‘pavilions’, ‘streets’, and ‘courts’.” The program that would occupy these spaces can vary, how can limiting to these three help inform “artificial science” and design?

2:  Meta Berghauser Pont and Per Haupt’s developed what was called an “ingenious and useful graphical tool called ‘Spacemate’”. In what way can students use these types of graphical tools? Are these tools developed more for the larger firms and corporations or are methods like the “Spacemate” a useful tool for the average student?

3:  Because of “spacemate’s” integration with other fields within the artificial sciences, can this method of diagram be applicable to those other fields and vice versa? If so, how can students use this information in their work?

One of the major concerns of the architectural design is what features make a place meaningful. My question is what features can transform space to place, to make it meaningful in terms of encouraging social interaction among strangers. Tehran as capital city of Iran, despite of having so many parks, restaurants, coffee houses and shopping mall centers, it still misses something; Real social interaction and passion.

Unfortunately, with passage of time, the passion of people to go to the parks decreased because of safety issues and therefore enjoyability has decreased. Parks became places for homeless and addicted people. On the other hand, restaurants and coffee houses in Tehran are typically designed in a way that they do not engage people in social interactions. This can be due to different design characteristics; for example, furnitures are arranged in a way that does not easily provide an opportunity for individuals to have informal dialogues with one another. In addition, furniture arrangement is mostly focused on separation of spaces, meaning that they provide a private space for groups of people and do not take into account the individuals.

Also, in these kind of places there are no special events to provide a foundation for connecting people with different backgrounds, cultures and thoughts. So, you can usually see individuals enjoy their privacy for relaxing by having a snack or a meal or groups of people who usually have history in between them from before. Therefore, it is unlikely to see sparks among strangers.

The focus of this study is to explore new methods and information about features that will support social interaction in public spaces in one of the significant historical streets in Tehran. Valiasr street is a tree-lined street which divides this city into eastern and western parts, which makes it one of the major paths for both pedestrians and motorists. Even though it is one of the major attractions of Tehran, lack of a decent public space is sensed. Although it has a lots of common public spaces such as parks, restaurants and cafés, as a developing country there is a lot of room for improvement.

To achieve this goal, multiple methods of gathering data such as archival information, observation and surveys will be used. A part of this study relies on social science to find trends and patterns in people’s behavior. Also historical research has to be used to study the past and present state of the area to develop a design for the future.

There are some questions that author is trying to find answers for them such as:

1. What features can transform space to place, to make it meaningful in terms of encouraging social interaction among strangers in public urban spaces
2. What factors of place can transform passive users to active users?
3. What features of a public space can make passion for people who go there and spend their time?
4. How is it possible to spark something among strangers who have no previous history from each other?