Crown, King of the Streets

A comment from Desmond to the post on SEA streets led me to a great 'country lane' prototype in Vancouver, BC - located on Crown Street.


:: image via City of Vancouver

From the site: "This stormwater management and traffic calming project was completed in February 2006. Instead of the standard curb and gutter, this residential street was constructed with natural drainage courses that allow stormwater to infiltrate rather than be carried away in the sewer system. The ecological benefits include stabilizing the base flows in nearby creeks, filtering of pollutants from stormwater and placing less demand on the stormwater system. The roadway was constructed as a meandering, narrow street to slow and calm traffic, and is bordered by structural grass and planted swales."

A few more pics from the site - which also links to some additional info:




:: images via City of Vancouver

A little digging found some additional info from Waterbucket, a site focused on sustainable water management - and some additional pics and info from the project, including some context: "“This section of Crown Street is located in an eco-sensitive and historically important setting, containing a wetland and two of the few remaining salmon spawning streams in the City of Vancouver,” said Mayor Campbell. “This project meets the City of Vancouver’s objective of incorporating enhanced sustainability into city operations by providing an innovative model of best practices for street design. It also gives us an opportunity to greatly improve salmon habitat in Cutthroat and Musqueam Creeks.”




:: images via Waterbucket

SEAing Green Streets

Probably a case of green streets on the brain - but a current pro-bono project has inspired me do some looking back at a range of innovative stormwater projects using the street rights-of-way. One of the best is Seattle's SEA Street project. SEA stands for 'Street Edge Alternatives' and is part of the Natural Drainage Systems program - synonymous to green streets but regionally specific to the Seattle area. The interesting part of the project is the integrated nature of the streetscape, stormwater infrastructure, and residential character.

Check out some slides from a 'virtual tour' of the project for some info and visuals of this simple yet effective solution...


:: image via Seattle Public Utilities

From the tour text: "The drainage goals for this project include conveyance, flood control, and minimizing the flow of stormwater off-site. The project team sculpted the project area to move water away from the roadway and homes and into planted swales along both sides of the road."

:: image via Seattle Public Utilities

A series of additional images and text includes some details, including the residential landscape character, pollution reduction items, plantings, and maintenance. A big issue is the transportation aspects - which are definitely a challenge to engineering status quo... narrow, multi-modal, slow, and non-linear. The fact that the combination of factors for the this project was built, and is successful, is testament to the potential transferability to other locales.

:: images via Seattle Public Utilities

And interesting to see if there have been other versions of this approach, particularly retrofit versions in a residential context. A final image shows the before and after shots...

:: image via Seattle Public Utilities

Stay tuned for another precedent study, the award-winning Pringle Creek Community in Salem, Oregon that uses curbless 'gravel verges' along the roadway to allow for soft, pervious edges - inspired by the work of Patrick Condon at UBC. Any other ideas of curbless, gravel verge streets incorporating stormwater and natural drainage that others know of, let me know.

From the Archives: Urban Habitat

One of the more interesting urban legends (which happens to be true) is the story of the coyote that decided to hitch a ride on Portland's MAX light rail - recently reemerged on the Seattle Transit Blog.


:: image via Seattle Transit Blog

Some more info via the strange Dogs In the News - from February, 2002 : "Authorities reported on Wednesday that a wild coyote was chased off the tarmac at Portland International Airport. The traveling prairie pooch, realizing that it wasn't welcome to fly the friendly skies, proceeded to the Tri-Met Airport Terminal Station where it boarded the light-rail train bound for downtown. ... Closely related to the domestic pooch (Canis familiaris), the coyote (Canis latrans) shares many of a dog's behavioral traits, such as a remarkable intelligence and capacity to learn. However, coyotes generally fear people and will avoid human contact. The "Commuter Coyote" described in this article (Canis latransit) is currently being researched by Scoop biologists. Stay tuned for further scientific developments."

The most interesting byproduct of this encounter, the human/wildlife interaction aside, was one of my favorite songs, "Light Rail Coyote," by the now retired Sleater-Kinney. From the Portland Mercury: "The song is a wonderful portrait of Portland as both an urban and rural landscape that houses punks, strippers, bookstores, and even the occasional public transport riding coyote.

Out at the edge of town
Where airfield runs water down
Coyote crosses old tracks
And hops on the Light-Rail Max"

Check out the link for some more info and listen to the tune. While it is perhaps a stretch to connect the demise of one of the grrrl punk superstars with declining habitat values - it is telling that a band of intelligent women - took note of a very urban issue, and a very Portland one at that, to make some art. Their last album, 'The Woods' came out in 2006. Much like the coyote, we will never see them again.


:: image via MySpace - Sleater-Kinney

DailyLand: Green Island

Somewhat of a visionary departure for the DailyLand feature, these visions of 'green' urbanism in the literal Green Island proposals of a vegetated Tokyo are both confrontational and thought provoking. It makes me think directly of the previous post wishing for green transit, and taking it a whole city further. Specifically I ask... would cities swathed in green grass be more sustainable that the alternative, or is this just switching a specifically grey and unsustainable infrastructure for a green one? A question to consider in our time of the new 'New Deal'...








:: images via Green Island

DailyLand: Parc Nus de la Trinitat

Parc Nus de la Trinitat, Barcelona, 1993 by Joan Roig & Enric Batlle found via VULGARE. "...is in north east Barcelona, inside a circular motorway junction. The scale of the six hectare park is definad by a framework of trees forming a spactially effective filter between the motorways and the park. A circular gallery divides the park into an inner and an outer area."




:: images via VULGARE

The park's location is definitely difficult, with multiple lanes of converging traffic. The use of buffering bands of vegetation, water, and berming creates separation from the immediate context, to the point where you can't see any of the trafficways from the park interior (or maybe some fine compositional cropping from the photographers)...






:: images via VULGARE

Obviously connectivity is the key to making this a successful space... as well as the size, to allow for spaces to be separated from the traffic lanes to a degree where they can stand on their own, with adjacent buffering. See the map view of the project below - via the original case study from the University of Virginia School of Architecture, which shows the open space in context with the rest of the urban form.


:: map image via Urban Arch Virginia

Oh Joyless Utopia

This quick one found via Modern Mechanix features a 'City within a City', featuring New York's Interstate Commerce Center, envisioned in 1946 as a dreary, hypermobilized utopian hub.

"This unique “in-building highway,” 32 feet wide and three-quarters of a mile long, and rising at a grade of only 6%, will be one of the outstanding features of the proposed Interstate Commerce Center building to be constructed by the Tishman Realty and Construction Company of New York. Thirteen stories high and covering an area of four square blocks strategically located on the threshold of the world’s commercial marts and routes on lower Manhattan, the new building will be a revolutionary step in architectural design aimed at helping industry meet the inevitable changes and expansions of the postwar industrial era."


:: images via Modern Mechanix

Transportation Dump

I've been doing a ton of research lately on green streets, so that's cause some focus beyond the general bigger picture of transportation. And with all of the upcoming spending on infrastructure through stimulation - it will be interesting to see how much of this will be green, how much will be grey, or at the very least how much will be innovative of some sort. Some interesting visuals and commentary in the realm of transportation, from new robotic bridges, to bike sharing, to new literally green parking.

:: Tiny roadside garden in Tawaramachi, Tokyo - image via Vulgare

This first image cracked me up, as I have a virtually identical sketch in one of my notebooks from our Integrating Habitats study of alternative parking lots configurations. In this case, reducing the paved surface towards the toe of the space, reducing imperviousness by 25 percent but still allowing wheels and people to get in and out... nice to see somebody implemented this idea.

:: Point Frasier Development - Australia - image via Land Relief

I just had to include this image from Karrie Jacob's article in Metropolis about Rethinking the Interstate - the article of which should be read by anyone with a say in infrastructure spending...

:: image via Metropolis

And a well thought out article by Brand Avenue, which offers as well some great thoughts, as well as some images from the Pennsylvania Turnpike postcards... the splendor of our linear transportation system, at least as it was sold to people back in the day.

:: images via Brand Avenue

And it looks as if Jan Gehl's influence on NYC transportation is residual, as new of a Danish bikesharing program kicks of for reals (via Treehugger): "For the last two summers there have been week-long bike sharing trials in lower Manhattan, and NYU now has a new bike share program with 120 riders. The Department of Transportation in New York has put out a request for proposals from companies showing how prospective bike share program would overcome some of the city's idiosyncrasies. One company that will be showing NY Parks and Rec how it would set up bike sharing in the Big Apple is Goodmorning Technology from Copenhagen."

:: images via Treehugger

Another from Treehugger - the ubiquitous argument that drives traffic planners on both sides nuts - on whether the Big Dig was successful in reducing traffic overall: "According to the Boston Globe, while the Big Dig succeeded in increasing "overall mobility by allowing more people to travel at peak times. . .most travelers who use the tunnels are still spending time in traffic jams - just not in the heart of the city, where bumper-to-bumper was a way of life on the old elevated artery." In other words, whereas traffic jams were primarily a downtown phenomenon, "the bottlenecks [have been] pushed outward, as more drivers jockey for the limited space on the major commuting routes."

Actually I don't care - I'll take the latter for urban livability anyday...

:: image via Treehugger

Perhaps we just need to change the nature of what type of traffic is included - such as this link from the Where, featuring: "...a collaboration between the American Association of State Highway & Transportation Officials and the Adventure Cycling Association, who have created a transcontinental network of interstate bike routes out of more than 50,000 miles of existing trails."

:: image via the Where

And finally, maybe a little over-the-top, but this robotic bridge lift has style... via the Atelier A+D for a bridge in Leeuwarden, Netherlands:

:: images via Atelier A+D

Veg.itecture: VIVA la Revolution

As promised, the counterpoint to the recent posts related to Veg.itecture in Action (VIA) are the more conceptual illustrative examples in the Veg.itecture in Visual Assessment (VIVA) posts - which offer a more sparsely informative overview of the visions of vegetated architecture and the many graphic forms that it takes. The dichotomy between vision and action will provide some interesting fodder for discussion - giving a more well-rounded overview of the phenomenon.

A project that has made all the rounds of the architecture blogs is the photoshop-genic projects that gets people talking - this project from Kjellgren Kaminsky for a large apartment project in New Heden. The projects iconic flowing hills are "...Envisioned as a “green lung” for Gothenburg, Sweden, the development will introduce a beautiful expanse of fresh green space to an area currently consumed by parking lots and football fields."






:: images via Inhabitat

Just as dynamic (or at least derived from dynamic processed), the envisioned Volcano Stadium in Guadalajara, Mexico by Jean-Marie Massaud seems to rise from the earth. Superbowl anyone?


:: image via SpaceInvading

A sinuous green parking lot, via Urban Greenery, of the such as the Green Corridor Indian Road Green Space in Windsor, Canada.


:: image via Urban Greenery

And the Community Enhancements and Green Facades... making roads and parking just a bit more pleasurable.


:: image via Urban Greenery

Staying on the topic of roadways for a bit - this intriguing project from Israel called Highway Habitat - which features multi-layered habitat for people and perhaps other things...?






:: images via World Architecture Community

A bit smaller scale, one of the Ordos 100 houses by RSVP has sinuous forms that wrap from ground to rooftop... as well as pockets of interior vegetation.






:: images via WAN

Another by SPRB arquitectos for the Bicentennial of the Independence Plaza, Mexico City, Mexico - comes via WAN. The inclusion of a rectangular green wall that will surround the and create: "...a great ritual space around the Concepción Chapel, symbolically dedicated to the Mexican Independence and Revolution, rectangular and long, isolated from the chaotic movement of the city by a “green wall”.






:: images via WAN

And finally, the silliness, via Jetson Green for an innovative new house that reminds me somewhat of a coconut with a parasol: "This conceptual proposal for a residence with combination solar panel and wind turbine offers the best of both worlds, with a dose of stage-like performance. Shaped to look like a rock, the dwelling stores water in its outer shell as an insulator to conserve energy. Furthermore, the transforming device embodies a playful spirit with its daisy-like shape that seems more like a toy rather than a high tech piece of equipment." Renderings and such from: Andreas Angelidakis.






:: images via Jetson Green