Category: infrastructure
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New Light on No Man’s Land
Joyce van den Berg, a Dutch landscape architect, has some interesting plans to memorialize the thin strip of land that divided East and West Germany. From Spiegel Online: “The “death strip” or No Man’s Land was the ground between the two Germanys. In the inner city the border consisted of an actual concrete wall, the…
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Do You Rule the Sewer?
I’ve been remiss in posting about the interesting WPA 2.0 competition and it’s alluring tagline: “whoever rules the sewers rules the city” as I was debating about entering because it is just amazingly compelling in idea. So alas, due to summer and time constraints (I know, lame, but I’ll explain later) I’m passing on the…
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Interim Vacancy – Pt 2
A followup to the idea of interim use of vacant lands, the SF Chronicle surprised with expanded coverage of some ideas for these sites… and they are all pretty fun. King continues: “…a quartet of local designers see something else: a site that could become a sculpted realm of green folds spiked by artistic birdhouses…
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Seeing Daylight
The idea of daylighting streams is compelling as an urban intervention – unearthing the natural drainage from the buried pipes and. A new project from Seattle offers a unique vision of the potential in action. Some background: “A large, paved lot once devoted to overflow mall traffic and RV parking has been replaced with a…
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Urban Typologies – Freeway Field Guide
This was one of those posts you immediately fall in love with as someone with a penchant for infrastructure and urbanism. We love naming typologies and objets d’urbanity, so when poignantly topical blog The Infrastructurist offered this two-part series on ‘A Field Guide to Freeway Interchanges’ I decided to devour it, then share some of…
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Clean Water Services – Field Operations Center
A recent trip out to a meeting at the Clean Water Services Field Operations Center yielded some interesting images of some of the innovative stormwater ideas that were implemented into this project, which opened in 2003. The design was completed by Pivot Architecture from Eugene, along with Murase Associates from Portland as landscape architect. ::…
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Wilderness, Continued…
Book Review continued from Part I: Reading List: Wilderness and the American MindAldo Leopold’s ideas of a ‘land ethic’ and ‘ecological conscience’ offered a touchstone for a new movement – giving birth to the idea of instilling Americans with a love and respect for their land. While mostly known for the amazing work ‘A Sand…
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Speaking Dequindre
Detroit is still on my mind often as I see the duality of ongoing issues and inspirational stories of rebirth. It was great to see news of the recent opening of the Dequindre Cut, a section of abandoned rail line connecting the waterfront to areas of the Central City. I remember the Dequindre fondly, as…
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London Bridge, Updated
The idea of habitable or living bridges keeps popping up in proposals, and the idea has a lot of merit in our desire to provide density, connectivity and ultimately, increased livability of urban areas. Another recent proposal uses the old/new idea in London to build a bridge including retail and residential uses and is being…
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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…