screenshot from The City Dark

DARKER CITIES, BRIGHTER STARS
The drive to limit light pollution has taken on increased prominence lately, with specialists across fields stressing its importance. The Atlantic Cities’ Nate Berg last week highlighted this growing movement and how one small town, Homer Glenn, barely 30 miles outside of Chicago, through a simple initiative has become a poster-child for the ease with which the problem can be addressed. The simple use of lower-watt light bulbs with light shields directing the light downward instead of upward can significantly make it easier to observe night skies in an urban setting. Light pollution prevents astronomers from doing their work, disrupts animal migratory patterns and simply disconnects us from our night skies. For more on the effects of light pollution on our environment, society, bodies and psyches, look back at our interview with filmmaker Ian Cheney about his documentary The City Dark.

New REI store in SOHO | via businessinsider.com

REI’S ADAPTIVE REUSE
What happens when you mix green architecture with historic preservation to house a outdoorsy retail chain that just happens to be the nation’s largest consumer cooperative? GreenBuildingsNYC took a tour of REI’s new store in Soho and describes in detail the ways the popular outfitter adaptively reused original features of the historic Puck Building, including the steam-engine flywheels that once powered the printing presses of Puck Magazine, the country’s first successful humor magazine (in publication from 1871 – 1918) and the original tenant of the iconic address at Lafayette between Houston and Mulberry Streets.

TURNING CITIES INTO LIVING ORGANISMS
A while back we looked at the DEP’s comprehensive effort to mitigate the damaging effects of stormwater run-off in Staten Island by adapting the area’s natural wetlands. This week, Fast Company profiles new approaches to stormwater control that combine the kind of low-tech, high-impact methods of the Staten Island Bluebelt with the lastest technological solutions made possible by cloud computing and the “Internet of Things” to create “high performance” infrastructure that can anticipate demand and prepare accordingly — infrastructure that can respond to its surroundings like a living thing.

Architects’ sketch of the Donnell Library | The Library of Congress

DONNELL DEMOLISHED
The Donnell Library has been demolished. It happened with little public fanfare, similarly understated to the building itself. Designed by Edgar I. Williams and Aymar Embury II (the architect of last week’s featured Orchard Beach Pavilion), the Modernist, cusping-on-Brutalist building had lived across the street from MoMA since 1955, overshadowed by its neighbors. The closing of the library space, famous for housing the original Winnie the Pooh dolls, has infuriated neighborhood residents for years, a sentiment that the new plan for the site — a 46-story hotel and condominium building — is unlikely to assuage. Read more about the demolition at Docomomo and find more information about the history of the Donnell Library in this 2009 piece from The New York Times‘ City Room.

2012 TED PRIZE WINNER: THE CITY 2.0
Since its founding in 2005, the TED Prize has traditionally gone to a visionary individual who is granted “one wish to change the world.” This year, the prize is going to an idea: The City 2.0. The $100,000 cash prize will go towards one wish, collaboratively identified by the “many individuals, organizations and companies doing spectacular work” around advocacy for a smarter, fairer, more sustainable city. It’s a decision that some find puzzling, and potentially counterproductive. On Co.Exist, Greg Lindsay points to “a murderer’s row of qualified” individuals who could have received the prize, but, putting that aside, considers some possible directions the collectively-crafted wish could take. Though this reminds us a bit of the year TIME magazine’s person of the year was “you,” we’ll have to wait until February 29, 2012, when the wish is unveiled at the TED Conference, to see the results of this experiment. For now, those who wish to contribute their ideas on behalf of The City 2.0 can write to tedprize@ted.com.

Drawing Hands, 1948 | MC Escher | via arch.columbia.edu

EVENTS and TO DOs

AN EVENING OF PSYCHOMETRIC DRAWING EXPERIMENTS, ARCHITECTURAL NON SEQUITURS, AND FREE ASSOCIATION: Studio-X NYC’s Night School series continues this weekend with a free drawing workshop with Sam Jacob of FAT (Fashion Architecture Taste) and Strange Harvest. An Evening of Psychometric Drawing Experiments, Architectural Non Sequiturs, and Free Association “will explore the potential of drawing to generate and represent the spatially impossible, using techniques derived from police artists, psychiatrists, and parlor games.” Bring your own drawing utensils and sketchbooks, and don’t be shy about your drawing skills, none are required. Saturday, December 10, 6:30-8:30pm at Studio-X NYC, 180 Varick Street, Ste. 1610. RSVP on the Studio-X Facebook page. For more info, visit BLDGBLOG.

THE UNFINISHED GRID: Reminder: Tomorrow, Saturday, December 10th, at 4pm at the Museum of the City of New York, Architectural League Special Projects Director and curator of the current exhibition The Unfinished Grid: Design Speculations for Manhattan Gregory Wessner will be moderating a panel discussion about the themes and ideas that emerged from the Call for Ideas that led up to the show. Joining Wessner on the panel will be Amale Andraos, Mark Robbins and Ken Smith. More info here.

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Graphic charting the amplitude of the tsunami in Japan | via NOAA

EARTHQUAKE AND TSUNAMI RAVAGE JAPAN, DESIGN STANDARDS MAY REDUCE EXTENT OF DAMAGE
The calamitous combination of an 8.9 magnitude earthquake and the subsequent tsunami that hit Japan earlier today has flooded cities, crumbled buildings and left a still-unknown number dead, injured and stranded. Updates and reports are still coming in, but, as expounded on in this Times article, Japan’s stringent building codes and a comprehensive system of seawalls helped to stave off what could have been even more extensive damage and higher death tolls. Preparedness and construction safety standards may have prevented the disaster from claiming the number of lives and destroying property to the degree of last year’s earthquake in Haiti or the 2004 tsunami in Southeast Asia. To stay informed and assist in response efforts, you can check updates on Google’s crisis response page, follow constantly-updated news reports, and see graphics explaining the impact of the tsunami and its movements across the Pacific on the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) website, including a fascinating (and terrifying) propagation animation. Meanwhile, GOOD has assembled, and is continuing to update, this list of ways that citizens can offer help from afar.
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New York City Prettymap by Stamen Design | via prettymaps.stamen.com

FAST COMPANY’S 50 MOST INNOVATIVE COMPANIES
Fast Company has released their selections for the 50 Most Innovative Companies in the world, as well as a series of top ten lists for “6 key industries” — Advertising, Biotech, Fashion, Mobile, Music and Design. Ranking first and second on the design list are Omnibus favorites Stamen Design (who made #48 on the overall top 50) and Local Projects (see Give a Minute). (Curiously, architecture firm Snøhetta makes the top 50 at #35, but is absent from the Design top ten.) Fast Company highlights an interdisciplinary mix within the design field — firms that design with information and technology (Stamen), create conversational experiences (Local Projects) and make awesome typefaces (Hoefler & Frere-Jones) all are at the top of the list. The list itself underscores the importance of design innovation in the global business landscape and reaffirms FastCo’s role as a tastemaker in future-facing thinking about the evolution of design professions.
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The Panorama of the City of New York | via the Queens Museum

THINGS TO DO
Fancy yourself a master of New York geography trivia? Tonight you have the chance to prove yourself at the Queens Museum’s 4th Annual Panorama Challenge! Commissioned by Robert Moses for the 1964 World’s Fair, the Panorama is the world’s largest scale architectural model (would we expect any other scale from Moses?), and will provide a visual aid to contestants answering questions about the city’s landmarks, bridges and neighborhoods. The games begin at 7pm, and beer and snacks will provided.

“Single Room Occupancy: New Typologies,” an exhibition by Jonathan Kirschenfeld Architects (formerly featured on the Omnibus for the Floating Pool project) opens tomorrow evening following a presentation of the firm’s recent projects tonight at 6pm at the Pratt Manhattan Campus, entitled “Typologies of Social Engagement.” The exhibition will display four projects that address housing in New York City neighborhoods, and, in conjunction with the lecture, investigates the future of sustainable living and housing prototypes for underserved communities. The lecture is tonight, March 11, at 6pm at 144 West 14th street, and the exhibition will be on view through April 10 at 0.00156 acres Gallery on 114 Smith Street in Brooklyn.
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OLD BROOKLYN CHURCH MAKES A HOME FOR NEW ARTS COMMUNITY
In Greenpoint, an Irish Catholic church makes unexpected bedfellows with local artists. The Times reports on the collaboration between filmmakers, musicians, visual artists and Reverend James Krische to keep St. Cecilia’s church a vital hub of activity. Declining enrollment and lack of funding forced St. Cecilia’s schools to close its doors in 2008, but rather than let the building fall into disuse, as has happened with so many Brooklyn churches, the Reverend reached out to the local arts community — in part because St. Cecilia is the patron saint of music. The popularity of the classroom-turned-studio spaces spread through word of mouth, and St. Cecilia’s is now a location for film and TV shoots, band practices and gallery shows. Most importantly, it is an example of how to bridge the divide between older populations and incoming demographics in changing Brooklyn communities, and of how to keep historic structures relevant through re-evaluating their program.
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Domus architecture guide app | via Apple

DOMUS iGUIDE
Domus launches a new app to ease the life of the archi-traveler. Architecture guides to Berlin, Shanghai, Milan and New York are now available for the iPhone in English and Italian. Replete with maps, directions, images and facts, the guides create itineraries for tourists, and even curious locals, to investigate the built environment with the expert aid of “the most authoritative international magazine of contemporary architecture, art and design.” New York’s edition features 80 buildings, 100 architects and four itineraries: Downtown Architecture, Art and Design Walk; The Center: Midtown Drift; Unorthodox Modern; and Contemporary Curtain Walls. Domus plans to release more versions, creating cell phone accessible tour guides to the worlds great cities. Though an exciting platform to start exploring to be sure, the guides do make you wonder if, as the New York Guide says, “the best architectural moments often happen by way of surprise, through direct and accidental encounters.”
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CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS
Gowanus by Design is asking for speculative ideas on the future urban development of the Gowanus Canal community. Called “Connections: the Gowanus Lowline,” the competition invites participants to imagine potentials to reengage postindustrial lands, and create dynamic, pedestrian-oriented architecture that either passively or actively engages with the canal and the surrounding watershed. Submissions are due April 17th, and the winner will receive a $1,000 cash prize, along with the satisfaction of participating in generative urban discourse, of course.

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Culver Viaduct | Photo by John McGill

Infrastructure as Urban Opportunity
As infrastructure in our cities reaches and exceeds the end of designed life spans, the necessary upgrades, repair, and replacements to these aging systems require significant public investment. According to the American Society of Civil Engineers, some $2.2 trillion of investment will be needed to address US infrastructure needs in the next five years alone. At the same time, urban park development increasingly involves cooperation with, and concessions to, the private sector to offset the need for public investment. Vacant land suitable and available for new public space and other essential local amenities is, for obvious reasons, hard to come by. It is therefore no surprise that last summer’s opening of the High Line’s first segment was so highly anticipated and widely discussed: infrastructure is increasingly seen as a locus of opportunity.

The seemingly inaccessible and useless spaces of urban infrastructure have a value beyond their (often awkward) adjacency to newly viable real estate: they are already inscribed with highly specific relationships to surrounding urban fabric, and as intervention sites can therefore mediate between radically different scales, speeds, and programs.

Underneath the Culver Viaduct | Photo by John McGill

Activating Urban Void Spaces
Large pieces of transportation infrastructure have traditionally been built to address a singular, performance-driven use, and those conceived and built at a particular moment in history were often over-engineered to accommodate (or privilege) other layers above, below and adjacent. Precisely because of these attributes, they serve as translators between adjacent systems, producing as byproduct large volumes of space with odd relationships to surrounding buildings, streets, and their respective orientations. These transportation systems offer a scaffold that is scaled to the city, relevant to its history, and generally oversized but underused – structures that have the latent potential to organize public space more actively and to support a vibrant mixture of urban programs based on immediate local needs and conditions.

As these systems age and must be upgraded or replaced they provide a unique opportunity for us to expand the meaning and scope of “adaptive reuse” in the urban context. The ubiquity of such decaying structures in our cities, and their resulting firm – but conceptually uncertain – presence in the public conscience, suggests an inherent economy by which space can be found for activities that are unlikely to be adequately addressed by conventional development scenarios.

Layers of space formerly ignored or associated with the banality of a particular engineering problem must now be reconsidered and addressed in this moment of heightened interest and investment in infrastructural upgrades and repair. By actively engaging them, such spaces can be folded into the public realm, making them at once more legible and less obtrusive to contemporary patterns of land use, transportation and culture. This strategy instrumentalizes infrastructure for public use and local benefit, not as an afterthought to private development but as an existing and potent prefigurative device for urban change.

The Culver Viaduct
In the Gowanus, what appears to many an abandoned and contaminated area standing as an impediment to economic development is in fact already teeming with activity, albeit behind closed doors and at a relatively small scale compared to the area’s more intensive industrial past. What is lacking is a coherent and legible public arena in which interaction among the diverse group of current users can occur. Indeed, while public access to the canal is no longer blocked by active industry, it will remain mostly sealed off as the estimated 12-year Superfund cleanup process begins.

The Culver Viaduct, which carries Brooklyn’s F and G subway lines over the Gowanus Canal, offers a prime opportunity to implement precisely this strategy. Given its legitimate place in local history and the public imagination, the viaduct offers an ideal armature within which to stage a new set of conditions for the broader Gowanus site, without touching the most ecologically damaged areas at all. And it happens to be currently undergoing a $300 million replacement of its concrete structural deck. What follows is Underline, my design proposal for the Culver Viaduct — an opportunistic repurposing of existing, functioning infrastructure to address the need for a vibrant and coherent public realm. Unlike the High Line and many other recent adaptive reuse projects that employ linear infrastructure as an armature, this strategy is not dependent upon the termination of active rail (or other) service in order to produce viable sites for intervention.

Site History
When completed in 1938, the Culver Viaduct was the only elevated portion of the original Independent Subway system, and reached a height of 90 feet above grade in order to accommodate tall ships on the Gowanus Canal while also supporting two above ground stations. With the canal and its banks recently designated a Federal Superfund site (in March, 2010) and now mostly unused for shipping of any kind, the extreme vertical separation of these layers can be reconsidered: the concrete structure both offers large volumes of valuable “free” space and is the threshold to contaminated ground.

Because the curving train line is not constrained to the urban grid, the structural piers transpose the geometry of the rail bed to the streets below, with columns landing on sidewalks but not the streets themselves. The result is an array of unique spatial conditions, each with a slightly different disposition relative to surrounding streets and buildings.

The structure’s dimensions, despite being highly irregular and specific to local structural demands and adjacent site constraints, are ideal for inhabitation – increments are generally between 15 and 20 feet in each axis, providing spaces of a useful scale.

Underline Section | Rendering by John McGill

The Scheme
Four types of “preservation” emerged as essential to the architectural strategy: preservation of sunlight, of structural stability, of limited footprint at ground level, and of existing (historic) character. Informed by these criteria, Underline offers four potential modes of intervention: the creation of flexible space for public assembly; precast concrete decking hung from above on steel rods as a public landscape “ribbon;” pure infill at ground level; and adaptive reuse of, or interface with, existing adjacent structures.

Sunlight animates the existing structure and is essential to the unique experience found on the sidewalks around Smith and 9th Streets. Aggressive infill of the viaduct’s undercarriage – a strategy often employed in Europe – would compromise this special quality and risk casting a shadow over any future street life. A 3D analysis of solar exposure within the space of the viaduct throughout the year revealed that despite its inherent drama at sunset, it remains dark throughout most of the day, year round.

Underline Solar Exposure Analysis | John McGill

The solar analysis led to a strategy of puncturing the deck of the viaduct strategically, cutting openings within the supporting piers and inserting steel lattice “skylights” to carry the rails overhead. Enclosed volumes of multipurpose classroom space could then be clustered below the openings, within the existing structural frames. Each volume is shaped by the angles at which the sun tends to reach the street below, so that the persistence of large areas of shadow is minimized. By night the relationship reverses: prismatic volumes glow with artificial light, projecting it into the darkness of the canal.

In order to preserve the integrity of the existing structure, asymmetrical loads would have to be avoided. We can’t assume that the existing reinforced concrete truss members are capable of carrying additional load. This means that the route of the pedestrian ribbon is largely dictated by the clearances found within and between the trusses at various heights above the street, and the places where it can be fastened to the re-engineered deck above for support. In areas where existing (but unused) playgrounds and vacant land exist beneath or adjacent to the viaduct, the landscape ribbon is free to move outboard to form the roof for new enclosed spaces below, and offers views and pedestrian access into each space. The ribbon tapers and swells as it moves through the structure, seeking light and connecting opportunistically between discreet elements of the program.

Underline Pedestrian Walkway | Rendering by John McGill

The fourth mode of intervention, adaptive reuse, occurs primarily at the concrete plant at Smith and 9th Streets, which is the only active business immediately adjacent to both the viaduct and the canal itself. Once decommissioned, the structure could be reinvented as a climbing wall – an injection of new activity to animate and preserve an evocative and representative historic structure.

Preserving this set of desirable existing conditions results in a series of distributed spaces connected by a linear public park. This establishes a sequence of unique visual experiences as one moves along, offering glimpses of unexpected adjacent activities, the regular appearance of moving trains overhead, and the rhythmic discharge and departure of passengers to and from the stations at either end of the project site — not to mention views of the city currently reserved for F and G subway riders.

Despite being distributed, however, the program is arranged in discernible clusters so that points of access to each component of the project are clearly legible from the street. Starting from the south, the first of these might contain an EPA monitoring station and public exhibition space, a café, public outdoor amphitheater, rock-climbing wall, and classrooms. The next section consists of covered outdoor basketball courts and a small public fitness center and lap pool, and in the final group retail and production spaces. Because each element is knit into the whole by the landscape ribbon, a loose affiliation emerges between both related and unrelated events in time and space.

Underline Public Amphitheater | Rendering by John McGill

The project also includes a provision for storm water collection on the surface of the rail deck, with drains feeding hanging gardens of deciduous vines suspended on wire mesh from the rods supporting the landscape ribbon, as well as the plantings along the ribbon itself. Such plants would perform in two ways – filtering and retaining storm water before it reaches the street or the canal as runoff, and filtering light during the summer to shield passersby. As a repetitive element related to the structural cadence of the existing viaduct, the hanging vines would further reinforce existing tensions between the geometry of the viaduct and the city around it.

Initially an elevated platform for public observation of a compromised landscape, this thin viaduct could eventually shed its image of forbidding overpass, under which people move by default, confined by fences and traffic, and emerge as a vital, engaging public passageway and gateway – a shift from mere edge to public threshold.

Underneath the Culver Viaduct | Photo by John McGill

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John McGill is a designer at WRNS Studio in San Francisco and a recent graduate of the masters program in Architecture at UC Berkeley, where he occasionally teaches as a lecturer in architecture. He grew up in Carroll Gardens riding the F train and now lives in Berkeley.

The views expressed here are those of the author only and do not reflect the position of Urban Omnibus editorial staff or the Architectural League of New York.

Starting from scratch is not the only way. Given the urgency of the massive changes to our way of life that must take place over the next seven to ten years, I believe that strategies which involve a retrofit or a clip-on to our existing structures and infrastructures deserve a serious look.

Retrofitting our urban building stock to address climate change need not be limited exclusively to increasing their energy efficiency. If “one of the primary causes of global environmental change is tropical deforestation” (Geist & Lambin, 143), then we should approach the adaptation of our buildings as an exercise in reforestation. Deforestation is too often divorced from urban discourse around climate change. In an attempt to redress that, my investigation into sustainable retrofits has included research into some causes of and solutions to deforestation, including a list of interventions already being implemented in the developing world (click here to read more). We must learn from both the causes of climate change and attempts to combat it as we attempt to reforest the city.

It is estimated that the Amazon rainforest absorbs approximately 28% (7.34 billion metric tons) of carbon emissions from the burning of fossil fuels every year. Tropical rainforests are the planet's defense against global warming. Deforestation is one of the greatest sources of carbon dioxide which is the principal cause of global warming. "If converted to cattle operations, rainforest land yields about $60 per acre. If timber is harvested, the land is worth around $400 per acre. But if its renewable and sustainable resources are harvested, the land could yield an average of $2,400 per acre. "Each acre of rainforest prevents 75,000 to 100,000 pounds of carbon dioxide from being released." (Source: http://www.ecoclicknetwork.com/devEvo/MoreEcoFacts.cfm)

The City as Usable Surface Area
A densely populated city replicates its ground surface area many times over in the surfaces of the buildings that populate it. New York City, for example, covers some 309 square miles (801 sq km) of land area, much of which is built up. As of the 2000 census, there were 7,679,307 housing units in the five boroughs. A recent New York Times article quantifies the amount of available roofspace in the city alone as 944 million square feet, 11.5% of the total building area the city holds. Given that the population on the planet is rapidly increasing and due to double over the next 100 years, we may soon need all the available arable land for growing crops, with marginal lands where food crops provide inadequate yields relegated to biofuel crops (Killeen, 39). As the available space for the necessary green technologies is limited, it makes sense, therefore, to consider the city as the surface for our intervention.

A hypothetical six story apartment building has a footprint of approximately 2,100 square feet. The vertical surface area available on the facade for the deployment of green technologies using wind and solar power, or green screens for vertical gardening, or water walls for cooling, is approximately 12,000 sf if the building is freestanding, and around 3,600 sf if it is in an infill condition. Add on the roof area, much of which remains unused, and you get 14,100 sf for the freestanding and 5,700 sf for the infill building. Multiply that by the sheer number of buildings occupying any densely populated urban condition and the number becomes more significant still. (Buildings are only one field of action among many: New York State also has 113,000 miles of highway, another overlooked infrastructure to which clip-ons may be added.)

Sustainable Solutions
Even something as simple as painting roofs white, instead of black, has been shown to provide a significant savings in terms of the amount of energy expended to cool buildings, as well as reflecting heat away from the city rather than absorbing it. Read more about other sustainable solutions currently being implemented in the developing world here.

Greening our cities: Exterior Applications

	WHITE ROOF: “Hashem Akbari, a physicist at the Lawrence Berkeley lab, just released a study showing that the average American 1,000-square-foot white roof could offset 10 metric tons of carbon dioxide. According to his data, roofs constitute 20 to 25 percent of urban surfaces, while pavement is about 40 percent. Therefore, if all of those surfaces were switched to a reflective material (or color) in the 100 largest urban areas in America, his calculations show, this would offset 44 metric gigatons of carbon dioxide. That’s more than all countries emit in a single year. Further, that’s worth about $1.1 trillion at current carbon trading rates.” – from “Paint your roof white, save the planet”
	GREENSCREEN: By integrating more trees and photosynthesizing plants within the fabric of our existing cities, we harness the power of plants to absorb carbon from the atmosphere. The surface area of buildings multiplies the ground footprint of the city many times over, making vertical gardening and the integration of growing walls into our buildings an interesting practical solution. The roofscape of most cities is an area that is often forgotten but that could easily be used for the application of green technologies beneficial to all. Greenscreen is a type of metal structure that can be attached to existing walls or used to create freestanding growing walls.
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	WINDBELTS AND GREEN ROOF: Wind belts are a recent technology which harness the power of the wind to generate electricity. They are relatively inexpensive and suitable for both developed and developing countries and are the first wind technology not to employ turbines: according to Matt Vella, “About the size of a cell phone, the final Windbelt prototype employs a taut membrane that, when air passes over it, vibrates between metal coils to generate electricity.”  Windbelts could be used on the facades and roofs of existing buildings as a sculptural element, taking advantage of the building envelope as an available surface upon which to attach. Trees may be planted on the roof by using either planters or by using a new Japanese soil substitute, Pafcal, which is much lighter than earth.
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	WINDBELTS AND GREEN ROOF: Windbelts can also be attached to functional structures such as canopies which are normally used to protect the building entry from rain.

	ROOF POND:Roof ponds can be used for cooling in areas that are warm and not very humid. This technology has a lot of potential, but has been underused to date because of a fear of leakage on the part of architects and clients, however, if properly detailed it is a promising strategy and can help to reduce the heat island effect in cities. Water is placed between two layers of insulating material. The area covered with water should be 85% to 100% of floor area in places with winter temperatures between 25 and 35 degrees Fahrenheit (-4 to +2 Celsius) and 60% to 90% of floor area in places with winter temperatures between 35 and 45 degrees Fahrenheit ( +2 to +7 degrees Celsius). Average pond depth is between 3 and 6 inches (Stein & Reynolds, 2004.Insulating panels cover the roof and are opened during the day in the winter to absorb the heat of the sun, and at night, the panels are closed, allowing heat to radiate to the building’s interior. In the summer, the process is reversed.
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	ROOF SPRAY: This is another method for cooling which could be employed in a retrofit of existing buildings. It can be used in combination with the roof pond, or independently with the water being stored in a tank. Here water is cooled by spray at night, via evaporation and night sky radiation, and then stored for use during the day in the building’s cooling system (Stein & Reynolds, 379-80).
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	WATER WALL, WATER COLLECTION AND SOLAR PIPE: It is well known that electricity can be generated from fast moving water. Here, we propose that a water wall be added to a blank facade on an existing building as a means of generating electricity. Water can be collected via a system of gutters on the building, and then can be piped and recycled to generate the necessary flow. This water can also be used to flush toilets and for other non-potable applications. In addition, the water provides cooling to the building’s inhabitants.The roof in this scheme is envisioned as a space in which the entire surface area is covered by solar coils. This is a recent development: “Solyndra’s panels employ cylindrical modules which capture sunlight across a 360-degree photovoltaic surface capable of converting direct, diffuse and reflected sunlight into electricity. This self-tracking design allows Solyndra’s PV systems to capture significantly more sunlight than traditional flat-surfaced solar panels…”

Implementation Strategies
How might all this begin to be implemented? Below you see a piece of New York City to which we have applied some of the technologies discussed above. Large scale urban farming which takes place indoors and on large expanses of roof, greenscreens to let plants to climb the vertical surfaces of the city, trees which are now able to grow on the city roofscape. Roof ponds and artificial waterfalls for cooling and electrical generation. Solar and wind devices which form sculptural elements in the city, performing a function as well as having an aesthetic. Ports for plug-in electric vehicles which gather energy from photovoltaics. Solar panels incorporated into street poles, and vertical wind turbines which form a rhythm in the streetscape. Bicycle lanes, room for walking and the incorporation of still more trees.

click on image to enlarge

The government of New York City might choose to provide tax breaks that would give economic incentives to building owners who implement the strategies we have illustrated. A demonstration project of a square city block could be facilitated in this way, perhaps involving the participation of large scale property owners or local community groups such as PACC, 5th Ave Committee, and HCCI, which are already spearheading initiatives aimed at reducing the city’s carbon footprint. Justin Garrett Moore, an Urban Designer at the Department of City Planning suggests targeting groups with large property holdings, such as the New York City Housing Authority or the Abyssinian Development Corporation.

A demonstration project may also fall under the aegis of HUD’s Choice Neighborhoods Initiative, which has as one of its goals the transformation and energy efficiency upgrade of housing in economically distressed communities. In addition to the tax break provided by the city, property owners involved in the demonstration project would see a significant reduction in their utility bills, and could potentially sell the energy they produce as excess capacity back to Con Edison. In the distant future, energy production may become a much more localized phenomenon, with the old, formerly centralized public utilities being rebranded into producers of alternative energy. Perhaps the current dilemma, rather than being seen as a death sentence or a depressing indictment of wasteful society, can provide an opportunity to rethink and retool our existing way of life. Our chance is now.

Research Team:  Fay Alkhalifa, Marcus Brooks, Graziela Gimenes, Akiko Hagiwara, Anna Obratzsova, Gabriela Rodriguez, Allison Schwartz.

This article is adapted from “Clip-on Architecture: Reforesting Cities and Potential Solutions to the Climate Crisis” by Vanessa Keith, a PDF of which can be downloaded here. Right-click here to download the bibliography (PDF).

All images courtesy of Vanessa Keith.

Vanessa Keith, AIA is a principal at StudioTEKA. She is a registered architect who received her Master of Architecture degree from the University of Pennsylvania and her Master of International Affairs from the School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University, graduating with a concentration in Economic and Political Development and a focus area in urban planning.

The views expressed here are those of the author only and do not reflect the position of Urban Omnibus editorial staff or the Architectural League of New York.

Deforestation “is not a recent phenomenon; it is as old as the human occupation of the earth, and one of the key processes in the history of our transformation of its surface.” (Williams, xxi) The desire to expand ever outward, the thirst for the frontier, the unconquered lands, the uncharted waters, thus seems to be a fundamental part of being human. What follows summarizes research into tropical deforestation and some sustainable solutions being applied in the developing world. But first, read about some ways we can combat the effects of tropical deforestation in New York here.

Altering the Landscape
“Every newly planted tree seedling in the tropics removes an average of 50 kilograms of CO2 from the atmosphere each year during its growth period of 20-50 years, compared with 13 kilograms of CO2 per year for a tree in the temperate regions” (Brown, 167).

“Market regulations take many forms, but the most effective are those based on financial incentives that motivate individuals to choose voluntarily what is in their short-term economic interest” (Killeen, 74).

Even in its earliest days, it appears that human alteration of the landscape was a bottom-up event, rather than something centralized and disseminated from the top down. Is there some fundamental pattern at work, somehow hardwired into our systems as human beings that makes us repeat the same tragic steps over and over?

Whatever the local cause, it appears that many of the cause of climate change – such as deforestation – finds its larger origins in the tragedy of the commons (Diamond, 428). Underlying the tragedy of the commons is the premise that individuals benefit in the short term from the overharvesting of commonly harvested resources, but suffer collectively in the long term when they are depleted (Diamond, 428). As deforestation and environmental degradation are strongly linked to patterns of individual short term self interest, the question becomes how we can work with rather than against these interests in order to promote a different outcome?

Wouldn’t it be great if we could just turn on a carbon vacuum cleaner and clean up the whole mess?One solution is for those who share the resource to recognize their common interests and collectively agree to police themselves. This tends to work best in smaller and more isolated homogeneous communities where there is some stake in a common future and the boundaries of the resource and those who exploit it are well known (Diamond, 429). The government can also enforce quotas, though this may be impractical as the cost of policing the resource may be high. A third solution is to privatize resources, making individuals custodians of them; this practice can be something that emerges from the top down as a governmental initiative. It can also be bottom up as in the case of farmers in Niger who, in the 1980s, noticed that the soil was more fertile and there was reduced erosion when they planted acacia trees in their fields. This practice spread and now there are around 120 million trees on Nigerian agricultural land: “The key to this success story was the shift in tree ownership from the state to individual farmers, giving them the responsibility for protecting the trees” (Brown, 158).

The solution, then, would appear to have something to do with examining the factors at play which encourage environmentally destructive behaviors, and setting out to change them. While it is obvious that some top down decision making is involved in creating the conditions which have fostered the dire circumstances in which we now find ourselves, much of what happens afterwards would often appear to be the workings of many individual decision makers. Current economic models sadly do not take into account the services provided by forests. As in the case of the destructive flooding of the Yangtze River in 1998, which caused an astonishing $30 billion dollars worth of damage due to landslides, these services may be worth far more money than the lumber in the trees. After the destruction, the Chinese government paid loggers to replant the trees, noting that the flood control service of trees was worth three times the value of cut timber (Brown, 86, 166).

How Tropical Deforestation Affects the Rest of the World

	HADLEY CIRCULATION: The long-distance effects “of Amazonian deforestation are modulated by a phenomenon known as the Hadley circulation in which warm air rises at the equator, moves toward the poles, descends at higher latitudes, and returns toward the equator along the surface of the earth…” According to climatologists, as deforestation increases, precipitation will be reduced and temperatures will rise in the Amazon. As a result, these impacts will cause climate change in other parts of the world and global warming will continue at a faster rate (Killeen, 60).
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	IMPACT ZONE OF THE AMAZON RAINFOREST: Deforestation in the Amazon severely reduces rainfall from Mexico to Texas and into the Gulf of Mexico most notably in the spring and summer growing seasons when rainfall is essential for agriculture. Similarly, the deforestation of lands in Central Africa affects precipitation in the upper and lower U.S Midwest, while deforestation in Southeast Asia was found to alter rainfall in China and the Balkan Peninsula most strongly. It is important to note that such changes primarily occur in certain seasons and that the combination of deforestation in these areas often increases rain in one region while reducing it in another (NASA).
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An Urgent Deadline
“…we do have a short time left to cut back emissions in order to avoid a ‘dangerous’ level of warming and can still aim for a ‘safe landing’ within the one to two degree corridor. This window of opportunity is very nearly closed, however. … we have less than a decade remaining to peak and begin cutting global emissions. This is an urgent timetable, but not an impossible one” (Lynas, 270).

Though a few degrees Celsius of warming may not seem all that severe, here are some chilling examples as food for thought. The last Ice Age, which occurred some eighteen thousand years ago, saw average world temperatures about six degrees colder than those of today (Lynas, 17). A world six degrees warmer would be something akin to Dante’s Sixth Circle of Hell, a world subject to powerful storms far beyond what we are currently able to imagine, including hurricanes able to circumnavigate the globe, and methane explosions which “would dwarf even the most severe modern battlefield weapons” (Lynas, 257). How can we become more efficient and, moreover, how can all that excess carbon be absorbed? Wouldn’t it be great if we could just turn on a carbon vacuum cleaner and clean up the whole mess?

Tree as Carbon Vacuum Cleaner
Well, we already have carbon vacuum cleaners, of a sort. They’re called plants and trees, and they do the opposite of what we do when we breathe in oxygen and breathe out CO2, or when we take a trip by car to the supermarket. They also have the potential to absorb much of the CO2 we emit year after year, when combined with other sustainable strategies. Not every tree absorbs the same amount of carbon, and trees in the tropics absorb more CO2 than temperate trees. However, on average, a tree absorbs approximately 3 kilograms of carbon dioxide from the air per year. Scientists have pointed to the importance of forests in carbon capture:

“…a heavily forested region in northern Michigan could store more than 350,000 tons of carbon per year. With the area population emitting about 573,000 tons of carbon annually, the forests would sequester approximately 62 percent of the region’s human-caused carbon emissions – the equivalent of yearly emissions from about 225,000 cars” (Science Daily).

Many cities around the world are adopting environmental initiatives independently of their national governments and are participating in the Cities for Climate Protection campaign (Dow & Downing, 78). Certainly the idea of reforesting for the purpose of carbon sequestration is a worthy one. However, another untapped resource for the application of strategies of efficiency and carbon capture remains the structure and fabric of the city itself. Like the urban clip-ons described in the accompanying post, the schemes below envision retrofitting an existing infrastructure (in this case, highways through the tropical rainforest) to lessen the damage our built environment causes our climate.

	AMAZON BARRIER ROAD WITH CLIP-ON SOLAR PANELS: While it would be better not to construct roads through the rainforest at all, IIRSA is forging ahead. Here we envision a potential compromise solution to the roads proposed by the IIRSA project. If the problem is that roads increase access, it may be worthwhile considering the development of road systems which limit access or have access at specific entry points which are controlled. A barrier of the type shown here still provides a view of the surroundings, and also provides an infrastructure upon which can be mounted solar panels, wind belts, and other sustainable energy generating devices.
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	AMAZON ELEVATED ROAD: Elevating roads makes access by human beings to pristine forest areas more difficult, and yet still allows animals to migrate and move freely beneath the road surface. While not ideal from a conservation standpoint where leaving such areas entirely alone is best, this represents a compromise solution, given that road construction projects are already planned for the area. Animal overpasses and underpasses have been used very successfully in Canada: “… Parks Canada has upgraded portions of the highway. This includes dividing and twinning the lanes and installing fencing and wildlife overpasses and underpasses. These crossings allow animals to pass safely over or under the highway. The system has reduced collisions with wildlife by more than 80%. By monitoring the wildlife crossings, Parks Canada has learned that 10 species of large mammals have used them more than 60,000 times since 1996.”
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	AMAZON BARRIER ROAD WITH GREEN STRIP: The roads in the Amazon, or any other road for that matter, provide an opportunity for planting, thus giving back a bit of the surface area taken up by the road. Here a simple underground tunnel allows access by wildlife to the two sides of the road. A barrier which discourages human interventions in the forest also prevents animals from being killed on the road. Wind belts and other technologies can be incorporated into roads, which represent a vast amount of surface area which could be used to generate energy sustainably. It is our belief that we should view all surfaces, whether infrastructure or buildings, as potential sites for the deployment of green strategies. Electric cars at their current level of development can be used for day to day travel and commuting, thus reducing a huge source of greenhouse gas emissions.
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	ROAD WITH ANIMAL BRIDGE: Similar to the concept of the fish ladder, a device used to aid fish migrations over dams, the animal bridge provides a connective link between the otherwise isolated parts of the ecosystem on either side of the road. This diagram is envisioned as a limited access road with checkpoints, and so has a reduced need for side barriers preventing access to the forest.
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Sustainable Solutions
In addition to the ambitious retrofits proposed above, many low-tech options are currently being developed for and by developing countries. Notably, in many cases it takes a relatively small investment to make a huge difference. USAID is working in Kenya to distribute 780,000 solar cookstoves which, as they are more efficient, require less wood, relieving some of the pressure on local forests as a source of cooking fuel (Brown, 154). Non turbine windbelts are being developed for the market by a team from MIT which, in 2004, got the idea as they were working to solve the energy needs of the local Haitian population in Petite Anse. The belts function by converting the vibration caused by the wind passing over them into energy. Other pole-mounted wind turbines have also been developed at a scale that is more readily deployable within the confines of the city, and able to harness wind energy coming from all directions. Rooftop solar water heaters in China have made a big splash and, at $200 each, they are widely being used in villages which do not yet have electricity. There are around 40 million of these heaters being used in China today (Brown, 246).

Special gutters are now available for the collection of rainwater for passive heating and cooling, or for the generation of electricity via waterfalls. There is great interest in the potential of algae, which can be grown almost anywhere, and is faster growing even than bamboo. Certain types of algae may be as effective in capturing CO2 as trees, and algae is currently being used in a pilot project at MIT where it absorbs 40% of the CO2 emissions from a power plant and is then converted into biofuel. In-stream turbines for rivers allow for the generation of electricity without the expense and environmental damage that can be caused by large scale dams. The Spiteri Water Pump in Malta, a machine which generates electricity when immersed in a body of water by harnessing its latent electrostatic energy, does not need any fuel to operate. It has low operating costs and generates energy 24 hours a day. Geothermal energy is another, virtually limitless supply of power from the earth’s core that is presently used to heat over 90% of the houses in Iceland, and constitutes more than one third of the country’s energy usage. About half of the world’s geothermal capacity is concentrated in the United States and the Philippines, with other countries bordering the ring of fire in the Pacific not far behind (Brown, 253-54).

Lightweight soil substitutes such as Pafcal are being developed which will allow for roof planting without the heavy loads associated with soil. Greenscreens have been developed which can allow vertical gardens to grow up the facades of existing buildings. Urban farming, which could take place in buildings within the city limits, thus drastically reducing the travel distance for foodstuffs, is being explored. Indoor farming does not require fossil fuels for plowing fields and driving harvests to market, nor does it require fertilizer or pesticides, and plants can be grown 24 hours a day. Indeed, “a 30 story farm that covered a city block could feed 50,000 people year round” (Fischitti, 74). Solar modules are being designed that can be attached to light fixtures, or which come in rounded tubes and are able to collect more energy from the sun than traditional solar panels, converting direct, diffuse, and reflected sunlight into power. So it would appear that Socolow and Pacala are correct in their assumption that all or most of the technology needed to reduce carbon emissions to stabilized levels already exists. So the challenge is how to implement these strategies. Maybe a good first step is to try to clip-on some of these solutions to a city block in New York. Here’s how.

Research Team:  Fay Alkhalifa, Marcus Brooks, Graziela Gimenes, Akiko Hagiwara, Anna Obratzsova, Gabriela Rodriguez, Allison Schwartz.

This article is adapted from “Clip-on Architecture: Reforesting Cities and Potential Solutions to the Climate Crisis” by Vanessa Keith, a PDF of which can be downloaded here.  Right-click here to download the bibliography (PDF).

All images by Studioteka.

Vanessa Keith, AIA is a principal at Studioteka. She is a registered architect who received her Master of Architecture degree from the University of Pennsylvania and her Master of International Affairs from the School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University, graduating with a concentration in Economic and Political Development and a focus area in urban planning.

The views expressed here are those of the author only and do not reflect the position of Urban Omnibus editorial staff or the Architectural League of New York.

Happy Thanksgiving Eve everyone! Instead of our usual Wednesday feature, today we send you off into the holiday weekend with an early edition of the weekly Omnibus roundup. To get in the spirit for the parade to end all urban parades, check out Macy’s online timeline of the event, browse through some excellent vintage photos of past parades, and make sure to scout out a curb-side spot on the new route (the path has been changed due to parts of Broadway being closed to vehicular traffic).

A little off the parade route, but still noteworthy, Atlantic Yards is staying in the news: the State Court of Appeals approved the use of eminent domain in a 6-to-1 vote. Matt Chaban at the Architect’s Newspaper and Norman Oder at Atlantic Yards Report give us a rundown of what happened (with some FAQ about the issue to boot), and Oder reminds us that the project’s opponents aren’t done fighting.

If last weekend’s New York Times piece on sewer overflow makes you uneasy every time you see a forecast of rain, find a little hope in coverage on the Freshkills Park Blog of the EPA’s testing of porous paving materials, which could help combat storm water runoff from streets and parking lots. The EPA is testing different materials in New Jersey, but we’ve already seen that New York City is starting to show some stormwater management skills too.

Attention Bronx residents, the Mayor of Melrose wants your input. What do you think should happen to the old Bronx Courthouse? The owner of the building wants to know what the residents that the building might serve need and want in their neighborhood. Ideas so far include a kind of Chelsea Market for the Bronx, or a Barnes and Noble to fill a noticeable bookstore gap in the area. Chime in with your ideas on Welcome to the Village of Melrose. (via Curbed)

The Department of City Planning has announced a new proposal meant to encourage inviting, walkable sidewalks – a restriction on turning front yards into parking spots and a tightening of planting requirements on some residential properties. Next up, community board approval, then back to the City Planning Commission and the City Council. Stay tuned.

Before we take off for turkey and pumpkin pie, congratulations are in order for Carmen and Jenny, aka fluxxlab, who are featured in GOOD’s new IBM-sponsored video series. Watch the video below and go back for a reread of their Omni-feature from this past April.

Have a great holiday weekend! We’ll be back on Monday.

The Roundup keeps you up to date with topics we’ve featured and other things we think are worth knowing about. Image: 1938 Macy’s Day Parade, Clown Float With 68′ Nose. Found on ziegfeldgirl via designrelated.com.

Here’s a look at some of the most inspiring parks the city has started building on some formerly industrial or otherwise unlikely sites.

Bushwick Inlet

“The only place left to build new parks is on the former industrial waterfront. Developers are benefiting from the upzoning to build parks as amenities, and the city is committing public money to develop 28 acres at Bushwick Inlet, with the brownfields included.” - Adrian Benepe

Ground was broken in early July for this 28-acre space on Greenpoint/Williamsburg’s waterfront. By winter of 2010, the athletic field, multi-use building, and playground should be completed. Wetlands will follow as part of the second phase of development for the northern portion of the park, expected to be completed by the summer of 2011.

View of East River from N. 9th St. and Kent Ave., Williamsburg. Photo courtesy of Will Fernia.

Facing north at river’s edge, East River State Park, Williamsburg. Photo courtesy of Will Fernia.

Calvert Vaux Park

“PlaNYC includes [long-mapped] parks that were never developed or semi-developed. We’ve done community visioning sessions and construction has started at Calvert Vaux Park, near the Coney Island inlet.” - Adrian Benepe

Calvert Vaux Park, originally named Dreier-Offerman Park after a home for unwed mothers that stood on the land, was rededicated in 1998 for the architect Calvert Vaux, whose body was mysteriously found in nearby Gravesend Bay. The 77.98-acre park is bounded by the bay on one side and Shore Parkway on the other, and stretches from Bay 44^th to Bay 49^th Streets.  Completion of phase one of project construction, which includes two synthetic turf soccer fields along with wetlands construction, an entrance garden, and additional trees, is estimated for January 2010. Further phases of construction will bring three baseball fields, six soccer fields, a recreation center, an amphitheater, and a playground along with picnic areas, nature trails, and a bike path.

facing northwest from western tip of Dreier Offerman park, photo courtesy of Timothy Vogel

facing southeast at the souther side of Calvert Vaux Park looking across Coney Island Creek towards the Coney Island parachute jump, photo courtesy of David Hogarty

Facing north from the southern corner of the soccer field at Bay 44th St. and Shore Parkway. Photo courtesy of Joe Brown.

Concrete Plant Park

Concrete Plant Park: “The Bronx River, when you get up north, gets quite bucolic. Our idea, with the Bronx River Alliance, is to have a continuous greenway. Concrete Plant Park incorporates old silos like architectural follies and around the bend in Hunts Point is a five-acre park on the lot of a former paint factory.” - Adrian Benepe

Recently opened, this former concrete batch mix plant has been re-established as a 2.7-acre park of salt marshes on the western shore of the Bronx River between Westchester and Bruckner Boulevards, along the Bronx River Greenway.  This new amenity for Crotona Park East retains some of the plant’s silos and mixing bins, integrating the industrial relics with new benches and green space facing the waterway.

Taken from the elevated 6 Whitlock Ave subway station, facing east. Photo courtesy of Maestro5ive

facing north from the north side of Bruckner Blvd between the railroad and the river, photo courtesy of Jacob Mason

Fresh Kills

Fresh Kills: “It will be open soon, certainly the southernmost section, where they’re building a series of athletic fields. This is a magical moment, the biggest expansion of parks in generations. It’s never a bad idea to acquire land for parkland- they’re not building any more of it.”

“Design ideals for the 19^th and 20^th Centuries, some are still valid, but people now want to do skate parks and mountain biking and surfing and kayaking…so we throw caution to the wind about lawsuits and put up signs that say ‘play at risk.’ We have an obligation to get kids more exercise, to build facilities for people in wheelchairs…the more we can do to engage kids in one sport or another, the happier they’ll be.” - Adrian Benepe

In an estimated 30 years time, Fresh Kills Park will cover a mammoth 2,200 acres, an area three times the size of Central Park and one big enough for the planned “fives parks in one.”  The Confluence will be the center of waterfront and cultural activities, with 20 acres of waterfront land at Creek Landing and 50 acres of athletic, event, social, and artistic program space at The Point. Natural wetlands, meadows, and creeks will cover much of the North, South, East, and West Parks, with additional recreation space, trails, and the natural wetlands and Plans for the North, South, East, and West Parks offer vast tracts of natural settings, with trails, scenic routes, and recreational space throughout.  The West Park will be finished last and will include a 9/11 memorial.

photo: Alex Maclean; courtesy of the City of New York

photo courtesy of Michael Falco

Highland Park/Ridgewood Reservoir

Highland Park/Ridgewood Reservoir: “We have outreach coordinators who do listening sessions and conduct opinion polls. People say: you didn’t listen. Well no, we did listen but we had to make a choice that we hope will satisfy 51% of the people. Everything we do is in the public realm, but you also try to go beyond to incorporate things that people want to do in the 21^st Century.” - Adrian Benepe

Situated high on a plateau between Brooklyn and Queens, Highland Park has afforded views of both boroughs and the ocean for over 100 years.  The Ridgewood Resevoir was drained a decade ago and a young forest has grown up in its place. Infrastructure for this 50 acre site is currently in the works, which will include perimeter lighting and path restoration. A master plan will follow.

facing a children’s farm operated from 1907 to the 1960′s by the Board of Education on what is now the site of the Highland Park Children’s Garden by Jamaica Ave and Warwick Street, photo courtesy of NYC Department of Parks and Recreation

facing the southwest edge of the central reservoir basin looking northeast, photo courtesy of Greg Bugel

“Unless you get beyond putting in a bench, parks won’t succeed. It’s an old saw that good uses drive out bad. There’s tremendous psychic reward in knowing that even our scut work goes to making people happy. There are very few public services that focus on happiness.” - Adrian Benepe

Alec Appelbaum writes about how cities can become greener and fairer for the New York Times, the Architect’s Newspaper and others. He lives on the Lower East Side.

Additional reporting and image research by Nick Buccelli and Rachel Aland.

The views expressed here are those of the author only and do not reflect the position of Urban Omnibus editorial staff or the Architectural League of New York.

Frank Duffy is a British architect, noted for his research and design work on the changing nature of the modern office. He is the author of Work and the City, one of five books in Black Dog’s Edge Futures series that explores the impact of global climate change on various aspects of social life, including education, transportation, community and Duffy’s own realm of expertise: the nature – and spaces – of work. Duffy’s command of this topic is rare, honed in the thirty-six years since he co-founded DEGW, an architectural firm whose emphasis on social-scientifically informed space-planning practices, organizational consultancy and post-occupancy evaluation makes it singular in the field.

In the book, Duffy argues against contemporary cities’ irrationally low use of their existing office space. In so doing, he echoes in unexpected ways Robin Chase’s call to maximize our use of excess capacity in transportation. And he foreshadows Laura Forlano’s future-facing analysis of new intentional communities springing up in self-organized work environments.

On a recent visit to New York, Duffy took Rosalie Genevro, executive director of the Architectural League, on a walk around Lower Manhattan, to reflect on our office stock and what it means in the context of our changing city.

Read an excerpt of their conversation below, followed by an audio-slideshow of their walk. -C.S.

Rosalie Genevro: Do you see any glimmer of hope in our recent and current financial meltdown?

Frank Duffy: I think the crisis might stimulate a beneficial thought process, in two principal ways. The first is related to the question of sustainability, which I think is going to work its way through the whole system. And the second of course is information technology, which is changing the nature of organizations. The building isn’t a useful unit of analysis anymore, because organizations are always bigger or smaller and constantly changing. At least half of them operate in a virtual world, in a placeless world. The crisis is going to demonstrate that there’s too much space. And a lot of people are going to be frightened by that. Hopefully that fright will lead to some beneficial realizations.

RG: It may be a very painful transition – it seems to me that we already have a lot of empty space that won’t be absorbed because it won’t be needed.

You also make the argument in Work and the City that even in terms of existing space that is occupied, we use it at an irrationally low level – it is just not inhabited much of the time.  Even for people whose interest is in making money from the built environment, that argument doesn’t seem to have penetrated.

Buildings aren’t made out of glass, concrete and stone: they’re made out of time, layers of time.FD: Actually, I think it will penetrate eventually.  I thought, twenty years ago when I spend a lot of time encouraging development, that facilities managers would bring some intelligence into the system; but instead of thinking about the supply chain, they were much more interested in their own deliverables rather than longer-term use value. The vertical silos that exist within these very large corporations pose another very important problem. We need to weave together, keeping the end-user’s point of view in mind, the organizational silos within which, say, human resources departments look after human resources departments and information technology staff interact only with information technology staff. In that context, it is very difficult to create organizations that are agile.

That being said, there are many things about the American office that are extremely intelligent that Europeans didn’t necessarily pick up on until much later. Americans were less interested in the idea of a Gesamtkunstwerk and supported the skills of people like interior designers, space planners, decorators and others whose scope – within the building – was to meet the short-term needs of five- or ten-year tenants. That system was invented here. It’s a wonderful system. And it’s a perfect example of not getting everything “right in a night” but leaving scope for change and adaptation. That’s the principle that I’m trying to articulate in this conversation. Not all design decisions have the same longevity. Buildings aren’t made out of glass and concrete and stone: they’re made out of time, layers of time.

One of the things I like about New York is the juxtaposition of the old and new in the way that the blocks have been developed. That is a component of the recipe for success of long-term urban fabric: it is capable of being modified internally and externally as social and technological change develops. Older stock has been moved out of exclusive office use into other purposes, older buildings turned into apartments for example.

RG: If we are to build fewer new buildings, how do we decide what’s worth building?

FD: Well, I think you can test that. You can think through the process of working on a floor plate or building section, thinking about what its use-potential is.  If I were a building owner these days, that’s something I’d be interested in: the future potential of existing structures, whether they’ll have to be extensively modified to cope with change or not.

I am very much involved with the Olympics at the moment in London.  The so-called “legacy” and “transitional” phases of the Olympic sites are very important.  We’re trying to do a think-over of a way of designing things that can mutate and develop into other things over time.  One of the curses of architecture is its instantaneity.  The definite statements of each individual building do not necessarily cumulatively add up to something that has got the idea of change built into it.  But urbanism should include that idea, and older cities have had that capacity to accommodate change. The mono-functionality that you see from here very clearly is vulnerable.

Another theme is that the design and use of interstitial spaces – made in the context of the knowledge economy – is becoming more important than the buildings themselves or what happens inside them. So, designing for the full spectrum of uses over a large area, having a mix of uses and then having the principle of change built into that so it can develop and mutate and move from one kind of use to another. These are the fundamental secrets of urbanism.

The building isn’t a useful unit of analysis anymore.RG: How can you design for that? That has always seemed to be the accreted nature of cities. The most interesting places tend not to be the work of one hand, of one designer.

FD: Or one financier. It’s always been difficult, but I think we’ve made it worse by the way in which buildings are financed, procured and developed. Cumulatively, over the course of the twentieth century, this has made each building more and more specific and separate in itself rather than something that adds to a more complex urban fabric.

Certainly, from an architectural and user point of view, I’d think about what different building forms can accommodate, and how ambiguity, choice and potential can be built into design over a long period. Thinking about the buildings themselves in a much more sophisticated way. But also thinking about the nature of the interstitial spaces – who owns them, who manages them, who loves them, who takes advantage of them. That’s something that we have not given enough thought to.

RG: Thinking about the interstitial spaces as providing for serendipity or accommodating the unexpected is very hard to do as a designer.

FD: Well I don’t see why it needs to be so. It’s all about scenarios, thinking through what could happen, and what is fixed.

RG: What’s the appropriate role of the public and public decision-making bodies in all of this?

FD: The city and citizens are two levels.  The city should always fight for the long-term.  The individuals always try to find ways of penetrating the system to make sure that it meets their changing needs.  There are feedback channels that should be built into much more of the urban fabric.

The fascinating paradox of the power of technology and its ability to allow people to choose when and where to work, is that it actually makes more poignant and more important the city-like things that are good at bringing people together. The more we disperse, the more we need to congregate. I think the true nature of a city is discourse, especially in a knowledge economy. It’s about places – serendipitous encounters. That’s another design principle to be brought into urbanism. Places that are valuable because they are unprogrammed and open-ended and allow accidents to happen.

For a long time there was a correlation between the patterns of work and the shape of the building. What’s happening now is that patterns of work are changing faster than the shape of the buildings. And we have models of buildings that are inherently vulnerable because they are not good at accommodating groups, they are not permeable, they make assumptions about levels of occupancy that are untenable and easily refuted. They can’t be changed into anything else.

They’re brittle – they snap, they can only do one trick.

I became aware of this in the 60s and 70s in the regeneration of the decayed industrial cities of the UK – Glasgow, Liverpool, Birmingham. In order to bring great stretches of the Liverpool docks back into beneficial use, we had to realize that the older buildings – because they were robust and adaptable – could be used for a wide range of purposes apart from what was originally designed. They could be used as art galleries, workshops or hotels, for example.

What’s the lesson there? The lesson is about making a building tough enough to accommodate change, to have enough volume, to have columns in the right places, attractive ceiling heights, a relationship to the sky and the outside that is tolerable. These were considered to be obsolete and useless, but they were brought back to life. So I think the difference is that these newer office buildings are so flimsy – so value-engineered – that they have only a very limited range of utility.

The reinvention of place, the pleasure of place, the use of place for talk, commerce, etc. That’s terrific. To be freed from the “8-hour day.”  These are, in human terms, recent inventions, no older than 200 years. People thought of and used time in a very different way before that.  And we’ll invent something new ourselves. This discussion about the nature of buildings is only a subset of a much broader discourse about the nature of life in what I hope will be a much better world. I don’t think the twentieth century’s my favorite century actually. I think there were one or two things wrong with it.

Click ‘Play’ button below to start slideshow

Interview conducted by Rosalie Genevro. Edited and condensed.
Photos by Cassim Shepard.