Park Here: Landscapes + Datascapes
We invented patterns that work in tandem with an idea for the reclamation of this 251-acre site as a new public park, and rethink the idea of “visitors center” relative to new technologies and social networks.
The challenge of this project will be to invent hybrid architectural landscape and urban patterns that work in tandem with an idea for the reclamation of this 251 acre site as a new public park, and to rethink the idea of “visitors center” relative to new technologies and social networks.
Use of the fabrication lab to experiment with topographic form, and the exploration of new data interfaces and new forms of information and data mapping will be encouraged relative to conceptual program for site-as-museum, landscape-as-exhibit. Technology how to place the visitor in and around nature, and to allow his to get a new understanding of his relationship to her surroundings and the physical and virtual visitor. Site as experimental ground
For many designers across a range of disciplines and scales, landscape has emerged as a model for thinking about contemporary urbanism. This studio aims to test new scenarios of imagining, building, and occupying urban landscape form and to engage a large piece of territory in the metropolitan region minutes from lower Manhattan. Strategies of dispersal, process, open-endedness, emergence, concentration, porosity, edges, programming, technology, and time will need to be considered alongside concrete design and programming interventions. We will devise framework strategies and stage interim occupations for a prolonged and opportunistic recovery of this place as a hybridized techno-landscape, a public brownfield, a place to visit, and as a public works project in process.
Students are expected to present their proposals through a range of drawings, photographic works, and models. Physical models will be emphasized Each designer will be asked to develop a unique approach to contextualizing the site and district within city and region, and to propose an innovative spatial strategy for transforming the 251 acre site. A series of exercises and explorations, including a landscape urbanism precedent study, a pattern study exercise, and a programming exercise, will guide the design process through to final review. Students will be expected either singly or in small groups devise an overall site approach and to design in greater architectural detail one piece or layer relative to that approach. It is assumed that projects will engage an ecological process and address strategies and scenarios for social occupations, remediation, energy, waste, growth, recreation, and change.
Issues to research and explore:
- What is a park
- What are the rules and codes that govern relationships and operations over time ?
- How do we learn
- What is a “visitors center”
- What shapes contemporary urban landscape form
- How to center / mark / make a place
- How to create new ecologies of use and disuse
- How to start / plant a seed
- How to sequence programming, culture, infrastructure, landscape,
- What are the methods for constructing a new urban landscape system? what are the various timeframes associated with the settlement of the site relative to infrastructure, landscape, built pattern ?
- How can dwelling form contribute to the future of cities and create a sustainable land-use pattern ?
- What are the physical parameters of the elements? size? scale?
- How is the new urban landscape powered ? where does it get its energy from ? does it generate energy ?
- How does the place evolve through time ? what can be controlled ? what is indeterminate ?