Rick Lowe = demi god + Loeb Fellow

And, in case, just like I did, you’ve relegated Rick to the “social- activist- artist- in- residence- experimental- housing- neighborhood- activist- of- socialness” category . . . I just found this from the Heinz Awards website:

This year he is a Loeb Fellow at the Harvard University School of Design, and he is currently working as the chief arts planner with Rem Koolhaas.

Koolhaas?! as in ‘Junkspace’ and ‘F–k the context’ koolhaas?? Whoa! I’m not quite sure what a ‘chief arts planner’ actually does or is responsible for design-wise, but I’d be willing to take it on for a day. Fun stuff!

 

Rick Lowe = demi god

As part of the “re/constructingatlanta: a contemporary continuum” intervention, Lowe was a highlighted speaker. His lecture was titled “Sculpting the Built Environment”.

His work was initially influenced by John Biggers, an artist who studied the social impacts fo the shot gun house. Lowe’s social variation on this, he calls Project Row House, was built in one of the most dangerous neighborhoods in Houston, TX in the early 90s. Scheduled for tear-down, agencies cited the homes as too close in density with dangerous narrow passageways between units that could easily be used by criminals to hide and partake in illegal activities. However, these are the very things that previously provided a high quality of life for the area. Wide front porches, neighbors within shouting distance, and a common ’square’ on which children could play all helped bind this historically, socially-animated neighborhood. Lowe recognized this, and with his four ‘necessary neighborhood components’, turned the community around.

1. Relevant architecture (I love how he puts this one first)
2. Sense of creativity and culture
3. A handing down of wisdom from generations
4. A social safety net

In all, his initial building project, sponsored with a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, encompassed twenty two homes over the first few years. Ten housing arts programs, five with educational programming, and seven for single mothers getting back on their feet. All of the houses are for rent, none for sale. Lowe and his team believed that market-rate, for sale housing would eventually come to the area, but renters stood a higher chance of being gentrified out. The project is still growing, in the next year 56 homes will be built by what is now called the Project Row House Community Development Corporation, creating pockets of close-knit neighborhoods with traditional front porches.

An unfortunately fuzzy photo, this is gallery director Cathy Byrd, Rick Lowe, and I at the exhibit after the lecture. We chatted for a bit, mostly about NPU-V, and its possibilities. The next week’s lecture was about the long term disinvestment, speculative development and displacement experienced by residents of neighborhood planning unit V, the Summerhill/Mechanicsville stadium-area neighborhoods. Some residents of the area joined in our conversation as well. And I’d have to say, Rick knows his stuff.

 

10 Urbanisms

Also in the GSD Winter 07 magazine, is a short article – list really – of an ongoing research project conducted by Joan Busquets. The research attempts to classify the various types of urban and architectural interventions that are taking place in our cities today. This is, when I signed up for history of urban form, modern american public policy, introduction to urban design, history of city planning, introduction to the fields of city planning and the like, what I thought I would be getting. A direct comparison of the various ways and scales with which to integrate the social, policital, economical, and environmental aspects of city design, regeneration, and planning. But, like many introductory survey courses are, they only skimmed at the surface of some of the more experimental and innovative methods of urban transformation.

‘The work in the forthcoming catalog to “Cities – 10 Lines” does not argue that all urbanism fits within the proposed categories, but it does propose that each line of work is endowed with a precise set of methods and instruments that can foster change in city-building.”

	Synthetic Gestures – work relying on high profile, clearly delimited, yet spectacular design projects that use their impact to trigger broader urban revitalization. Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao. Ghery.
	Multiplied Grounds – This uses converted infrastructures and/or high density reuse. The new conditions establish a restructuring of the surrounding fabric. Lille Intermodal Station, France. Koolhaas.
	Tactical Maneuvers – The project involves reducing the intervention to the least possible dimension, wherein its strength and success lie. Malagueria Housing Project, Siza.
	Reconfigured Surfaces – The restructuring of fine-grain, open space. Urbanity achieved by providing a new lease on life without the cost attached lo larger restructuring operations. Schouwburgplein, Rotterdam, West 8.
	Piecemeal Aggregations – An intermediate scale intervention of approximately eighteen to twenty five city blocks. This type realizes it can use an urban fragment as a starting point to address general city issues. Battery Park City, SOM.
	Traditional Views – This model assumes the lasting apeal of the late 19th and early 20th centrury residential city. Seaside, FL, DPZ.
	Recycled Territories – This results in the restructuring of large tracts of land in which human settlement becomes a single element that participates ina broader ecological system. Emscher Park, Germany.
	Core Retrofitting – The updating of historic cores without altering the city’s most delicate tissues, providing access to the center as well as new uses of old facilities. Master Plan Toledo, Spain. Busquets.
	Analog Compositions – Rethinks the scale of the master plan to take advantage of urbanistic projects at small and intermediate scales. Towards an Urban Renaissance: London’s Urban Task Force. Richard Rogers.
	Speculative Procedures -Experimental investigations in urbanism adapted from theories in philosophy, hydraulics, thermodynamics, the computer, etc. Provides a way for formulating new planning principles. Blur Building. Diller + Scofidio.

 

ciudades del futuro

“Cities of the Future” was sponsored by the History Channel, here in Atlanta this year. Washington DC and San Francisco were also featured. The competition encourages architect’s utopian visions of how our cities may be formed in the next hundred years.

Many, many of my past/present/and future studio professors were involved. Some through the official Georgia Tech team and others through their own firms. The point was to visually describe a futuristic scenario for Atlanta’s growth exactly one hundred years from today, hopefully while creating a building typology to rival that of the ancients (hence, the competition being sponsored by the History channel). A lot of students participated too, several friends of mine, mostly second year grads. During this same time frame however, I was working on the Urban Land Institute’s graduate level urban design competition. So I took merely an hour to sneak away from that prep to take some photos of my current studio professor’s entry. They named it “UberAtlanta” haha. Gotta love the Dutch.

Here’s the slightly more mainstream entry from what turned out to be Atlanta’s winners. They will go on to compete against the winners from DC and Sanny Franny.

More pictures on Flickr.