Midtown Mews

A Garden of Eden Grows in Manhattan

From the blog No Land Grab, via Curbed NY... of all the April Fools ephemera - this one made me laugh the most. Enjoy!


:: image via No Land Grab

Some highlights from the project, which offers:
...22 Acres of underutilized land, transformed into a vibrant*, gated enclave. (*or, vast parking lots... it depends)"

:: World-worthy architecture
:: Won't block views of itself
:: Will include some units affordable to some people if developer obtains tax-free bonds


:: image via No Land Grab

Plus added features to make you swoon...
:: 7 Acres of Green Colored Space
:: Removal of space wasted on sidewalks and streets

And my favorite from the Plan drawings:
:: Publicly Accessible Private Open Space

I love the little broccoli-like vegetated 'hats' as well. Mmmm. I guess if it weren't so plausible, it wouldn't be as funny. Happy April, fools...

Integrating Habitats Competition: Urban Ecotones

Well it's finally official - the announcement of winners and the like for the Integrating Habitats Competition. The celebration was held about a month ago now (Feb 26) and we've all been basking in the warm glow of adoration since then... The team and our entry got lot's of photo ops at the celebration (that's some of us there below).




:: images via Uncage the Soul Productions

A follow-up for Metro is the voting for People's Choice Awards and their blog to keep people updated on next steps. Also a big step is the production of the competition publication, which can be had upon completion by emailing Metro. And the jury, well it was pretty awesome, including:

:: Stefan Behnisch, principal, Behnisch Architects-Stuttgart, Germany and Venice, Calif.
:: Joan Nassauer, professor of landscape architecture, University of Michigan-Ann Arbor, Mich.
:: Tom Schueler, founder, Center for Watershed Protection-Ellicott City, Md.
:: Susan Szenasy, editor in chief, Metropolis Magazine-New York, NY
:: Jim Winkler, president, Winkler Development Corporation-Portland, Ore.
:: David Yocca, director, Conservation Design Forum-Elmhurst, Ill.

The competition was interesting as it addressed a local issue with some global implications. From Metro: "Integrating Habitats sought multi-disciplinary, collaborative designs of the future that integrate built and natural environments. Winning designs selected by this world-renowned jury redefine the current language and standards of environmental sustainability by fostering balance between conservation and development, maximizing biodiversity and safeguarding water quality for this generation and those to come."



Our teams submittal, and the winner of Category 2, involved a commercial development with a lowland hardwood forest habitat interface, including big-box green home center, a lot of parking, and remnant wetlands. Here is some more detail about our submittal and how we solved this tough problem.

Urban Ecotones:
Transitional Spaces for Commerce and Culture
Project Team:

:: GreenWorks PC: Jason King + Brett Milligan
:: Bruce Rodgers Design Illustration: Bruce Rodgers
:: Ankrom Moisan Associated Architects: Scott E. Thayer, Michael S. Great, Justin C. Hunt
:: ESA Adolphson: John Gordon
:: SWCA Environmental Consultants: Christie Galen, Coral Mirth Walker, Kim Gould

Project Statement:
This design intervention provides a vision for how innovative home building centers can thrive economically, adapt to anticipated future city conditions, and provide a model for regenerating critical habitat corridors at a city-wide scale. We assert that the major challenge to current and future big box developments will be their reliance on fossil fuels, and generic, non-site specific land development.




Two Portland planning documents advised our design: Metro’s 2040 Growth Concept and Portland’s Peak Oil Task Force 2007 Report (Descending the Oil Peak: Navigating the Transition from oil and Natural Gas). Both documents critically examine transportation infrastructure and propose actions Portland should take to prepare for the future. Portland’s Peak Oil Task Force predicts that there will be a dramatic change in transportation and lifestyles due to fossil fuel shortages within the next 30 years. This fact has led our team to critically assess the prescribed parking requirement and its utility in the future. Our design proposal meets the current parking requirement and offers a regenerative economic replacement strategy should large parking areas become obsolete.



Our design strategy is guided by time based, economic and ecological systems to provide an adaptive development model for the shift from fossil fuel dependency to a more localized economy. For example, unwanted yard and food wastes are brought on site and transformed into compost to assist with the regeneration of low HCA areas and to generate economic capital. Stormwater management strategies utilize existing topography and hydrological patterns to collect and cleanse water with technologies that replicate wetland processes and habitats.



Particular attention has been given to thresholds at which commercial development meets natural systems. Rather than seeing these interactions as points of confrontation, they are approached as environments of unique richness—a synergy of both habitats akin to an ecotone: the transitional area between two ecosystems containing more diversity and biotic activity than singular habitats. Rather than impinging upon natural systems on site, habitat buffers are increased to provide a shared zone of mutually-beneficial interaction.





Economically, our development model taps into Portland’s leading market for sustainable building practices and lifestyles, and fosters community by creating service- oriented building centers near regional and town centers to meet the challenges of post peak-oil conditions.


Through day-lighting, façade articulation and site responsive features, the architecture provides a contrasting experience that will attract nearby shoppers from adjacent big box developments for the engaging experience the site will offer them.




Additional Project Elements:


:: Enlarged View of Big-Box Green Home Center + Parking


:: Enlarged View of Community Agriculture Center and Composting Facilities


:: Site flows of people, fauna, flora, and water were balanced throughout


:: Parking (re)volution involved a unit with multiple possible iterations


:: Technical Detail of Parking Lot Removal and Replacement

Concept sketches:


:: Stormwater Ponds, Regional Trail + Transitional Parking Edge


:: Trail through HCA and entry to Home Center with Habitat Rooftop


:: HCA to Community Agriculture Transition Zone

Anyone looking for more information or higher resolution images, please feel free to drop a comment. We're planning on getting the word out and excited about the competition and it's potential to reshape the built environment and truly integrate habitat with development.

And for those of you in the Portland area - the winning entries for the competition will be on display, live and in living color, beginning April 1st in the Bureau of Development Services - 1900 Building lobby, located at 1900 S.W. Fourth Ave., in Portland. Check it out.

Veg.itecture: #19

aka. The Pooktre Vegitectural Prize Awarded

Well, all the lobbying for Jean Nouvel as one of the pre-emininent Veg.itects of our time has paid off with the recent announcement that he was recently awarded the Pritzker Architecture Prize for 2008. While not as prestigious as aforementioned PVP, congrats are in order all the same.


:: image via NY Times

A review and acknowledgement that there are is a long line of storied architects whom have claimed this prize. Vegetated Architecture is not on the list of requirements, but fit nicely into the overall theme: "The purpose of the Pritzker Architecture Prize is to honor annually a living architect whose built work demonstrates a combination of those qualities of talent, vision and commitment, which has produced consistent and significant contributions to humanity and the built environment through the art of architecture."

His most known work of Veg.itecture is the oft-viewed Musee du Quai Branly in Paris. From the NY Times overview of the Pritzker award: "The bulk of Mr. Nouvel’s commissions work has been in Europe however. Among the most prominent is his Quai Branly Museum in Paris (2006), an eccentric jumble of elements including a glass block atop two columns, some brightly colorful boxes, rust-colored louvers and a vertical carpet of plants. “Defiant, mysterious and wildly eccentric, it is not an easy building to love,” Mr. Ouroussoff wrote in The Times."

One building in the US I did get to see and like (but was frankly underwhelmed by the landscape architecture) was the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis, perched on the revitalized waterfront and making a bold statement for somewhat hum-drum prairie design. Not Veg.itecture, but a fine and tangible personal Nouvel project.


:: Guthrie Theater, Minneapolis, MN - image via NY Times

So as we celebrate Nouvel, we turn our attention to some of the recent Vegetated Architecture that is changing the face of the dual intertwined professions of landscape + architecture. Some notable additions to delicately place on foam, stick pins neatly skewering the corners, and a curt, hand-written label to the side.

So perhaps my heavy-handed allusion to specimen collecting was not lyrical enough to preface the announcment of 'The Worlds Biggest Butterfly House' happening in the UK, as reported on Treehugger. The project looks somewhat funky (perhaps just representational, as the buff colored materail reminds me of kitty litter) with it's geodesic dome and earth-sheltered pupae, nestled into the landscape of meadows and gardens. Probably something only a butterfly or Bucky Fuller could love.


:: image via Treehugger

The next project has a striking form, and has the press-cred to warrant lots of exposure... as well as some subtle integration of building and landscape in poetic and functional ways. Via Inhabitat, the design for Precinct 4, by Studio Nicoletti Associati and Malaysian architects Hijjas Kasturi Associates, "...is a refreshing and original with unique, marine-inspired structures - which also draw from traditional Islamic designs - arranged in a permeable, radiating block of bioclimatic architecture."




:: images via Inhabitat

The use of bioclimatic architecture makes us thing fondly for our other Veg.itecture pioneer, Ken Yeang, whose extensive use of vegetation as environmental strategy has defined the theory for architects such as these to follow. The use of indiginous forms and strategies derived from place and climate are vital to proper melding of these two concepts. Shifting to a neighboring region of Hong Kong, Dezain showcased a link to Hong Kong Jockey Club and their Central Police HQ by Herzog & de Meuron (Pritzker winners, as well). Not quite the same as the typical cop-shop in the US...




:: images via HKJC

A new building on World Architecture News in London by Renzo Piano (a Pritzker alum) knocked me over with a smashing green facade (until i realized it was merely a green wall of ceramic and glass, un-vegetated). Oh well, it's a nice thought. The project didn't disappoint, with a wonderfully rendered (if someone monocultural) rooftop terrace to more than make up for my disappointment.




:: images via WAN

While we're talking Starchitects and former Pritzker winners, a new one in LA by Frank Gehry has vegetation toppling down a cascade of building forms. Following our recent post on significant Los Angeles open spaces - this submittal include park connectivity as a major feature. From World Architecture News: "Also to be improved as part of the project is the existing County Mall, which will be transformed into a 16-acre park stretching from the Music Center at the top of Bunker Hill to City Hall at the bottom of the Hill. The park will become the new "Central Park" of Los Angeles and will be the scene of many citywide celebrations as well as daily events."


:: image via WAN

And to shift gears somewhat - and pick up a much earlier thread of growing your own Treehouse - growing your own park structure. Via Treehugger, a company named Plantware's approach: "...is known as tree shaping, arborsculpture, living art or pooktre."

Pooktre? I thought we were talking about Pritzker? Anyway, I gotta remember that one for Scrabble anyway. A notable quoate from Treehugger by Plantware CEO explains the inspiration: "A fantasy about building houses from living trees, inspired by the ficus tree, whose roots create amazing forms. We discovered a way to control the direction in which a tree grows, which can be used to grow structures that will be useful and environmentally-friendly." If you have the time, I'd definitely recommend it.


:: image via Treehugger

This is definitely not a new phenomenon, as Treehugger points out. On a related note - pooktre pioneer Axel Erlandson from California: "...started shaping trees in 1925, and by the late 1940's opened up "The Tree Circus," a tourist attraction which has now been transplanted to an amusement park in Gilroy, California."


:: image via Arborsmith Studios

Time to play, veg.itect style. I bet Nouvel would love these... and what's next, the Pooktre Vegitectural Prize? Why not?