Category: urbanism
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Walhattan
An amazing if somewhat shocking graphic spotted on A Daily Dose of Architecture, “The above is from Jesse LeCavalier’s essay “All Those Numbers” at Places: Design Observer. In it, the architect investigates “the design possibilities latent not only in Walmart’s building types but also in the organizational practices — especially its unparalleled expertise in logistics.”…
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Ecological Urbanism: Introduction Part 2
Continuing the investigations of the introduction to the book ‘Ecological Urbanism‘ (read Part 1 here) – we pick up on the concepts of ecological urbanism in the explosion of interest in urban and local food production. Near and dear to my interests, the ability to transform such shrinking cities like Detroit, emulating the lessons and…
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Ecological Urbanism – Introduction Part 1
‘Ecological Urbanism‘ (640 pages, Lars Müller Publishers; 1 edition (May 1, 2010) edited by Mohsen Mostafavi with Gareth Doherty) literally arrived with a thud last week, the 650 page brick like tome touching down on the front step of the house with much anticipation. Tempted as I was, a number of deadlines made me hold…
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Vertical Agriculture (Modest Proposals)
While the flights of fancy that drive many of the concepts of vertical farming are quite breathtaking, there’s a subset of these projects that, while not quite ready for the pages of design magazines, have much more applicability for building-integrated agriculture in new construction and retrofits. A simple and much discussed example that has been…
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Vertical Agriculture + Solar Access
It’s been a bit since I’ve posted on Vertical Agriculture – but an architecture studio I’m helping with at Portland State has a number of students pursuing food production as part of their buildings relating to urban ecology – and has me again thinking of the practicality of these building-based growth modules. While intrigued by…
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Sunday Parkways
I thought it apt to post something about Portland’s Sunday Parkways, as today the route leads right in front of our house in Northeast. This concept, inspired by the Bogota, Colombia concept of Ciclovía – which is the temporary event or permanent closure of a street to automobile traffic. This is the third year that…
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Ephemeral Road Paint
Ubiquitous markings in our roadways are a fact of life. From road striping, lane delineation, and construction utility locates – the street is often a rainbow of color and line. Ways of expanding this notion in interesting ways to take-back some of this area of cities and make us aware of the patterns underlying or…
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you hold the gun!
A call from submissions for a student-run architecture journal KTISMA from the University of Oregon,with a focus on the temporal, changing, and dynamic nature of architecture, landscape and urbanism. ktismaκτίσμαktis’-mah: thing founded; thing created a publication edited by graduate students at the university of oregon’s department of architecture. a focused forum of discussion about environments;…
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Clinton Condominiums
Not specifically ‘landscape’ focused, but a wonderful juxtaposition of materials is found on the Clinton Condominiums at SE by Holst Architecture. I think it’s a great example of mid-density infill within the context of a commercial street corridor. All photos (c) copyright Jason King, 2010 This is one of my favorite buildings in Portland, with…
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The Park: Dallas
Following up on the post about freeway capping, a reader alerted me to The Park, a Dallas, Texas based project aimed at reclaiming spaces atop the existing freeway corridor: “Five acres of shared, public green space will deck over the existing Woodall Rodgers Freeway, bringing new traditions, shared experiences and FUN to the center of…