Emeryville | Boom Town
Architecure & Urban Design Studio | Professor Darrell Fields -Final Project
The studio proposes new, contemporary housing for Emeryville, CA - complementing similar scales and densities of housing to the north of the city. Emeryville is a small city located between Berkeley and Oakland. Incorporated in 1896, the city represents an excellent case study in urban transformation. Its lineage as a city includes remnants of post-industrialization and, within the last decade, an emerging hub of shopping, entertainment, modern housing developments, and hi-tech companies. The “housing project” is conceived as semester-long research emphasizing the self-conscious relationship between analysis and design. The studio posits housing as a fundamental catalyst for urban innovation. Given the intricacies of formal logics and typological determinants, housing represents an excellent opportunity for research and design within the complexities of contemporary living conditions. Emeryville’s version of public space is deeply conflicted and adaptive, shot-through with opportunism, entrepreneurship, frivolity, and entertainment. This north/south Amtrak corridor provides regional and national transportation amenities. Unfortunately, the railway corridor “splits” Emeryville in to east/west halves. The result is vibrant shopping and entertainment centers (west side) are disconnected from the bulk of new housing complexes (east side).
*Final Site Model - acrylic, cork, museum board, and wood.