wind
Figure 16
Figure 17
Synthetic Ecologies
Figure 16: aspen leaves “quaking” in the wind
Figure 17: depiction of the porosity of the aspen canopy, where the leaves, due to their structural make-up, flutter and bend, allowing an abundance of light and wind through the canopy
Phoenix, Arizona is the fifth most populated city in the United States with the twelfth largest metropolitan area. It is the hottest city in the U.S. according to the greatest annual mean temperature of 122 degrees. The city is set up on a large grid where each massive block is about ¼ of a mile by ¼ of a mile and each is broken down into smaller sectors depending on the zoning of the space. Within the city, Grand Avenue, a long boulevard that runs at a 45 degree angle, is a major break in the monotonous grid. At the corner of 43rd and Camelback, there is an abundance of abandoned lots and parks that could provide a great public surface within the city as one travels between the residential, commercial, and industrial spaces around the area. The Phoenix site is a very flat area with have of the buildings being residen-
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tial; the tallest buildings in the immediate area are the industrial buildings that are a maximum of five stories tall (see Figure 18). As such, the relative height of the canopy is in the same region as these buildings, but towers over most of the surrounding residential and commercial buildings. Most of the trees on the sire are also rather short, only reaching about the top of the average aspen canopy. The installation of such a system on this site would drastically change the sense of the ground in the area, creating a new overhead condition and thicken the edge of the ground. The synthesis2 of the aspen system and the Phoenix site would create a sheltered condition, expanding upon the notion of the flat ground and the hot sun found on the site. An underground system of connectivity would act as a way of travelling from place to place without having to enter the Phoenix heat. On the ground level,