Minding the City

Contents Acknowledgments

i 1

1

Introduction

2

Hidden in the Discourse

11

3

Insights from Neuroscience

31

4

Case Studies

49

55 71 87 99 119 135 149 159

5

Environmental Performance of the Public Realm

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01 - Biennale Sculpture Courtyard 02 - La Strada Café 03 - Paley Park 04 - Maison Carrée and Carré d’Art 05 - Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts 06 - San Antoni Joan Oliver Library 07 - Passeig des Born 08 - Bo01

The Urban Section Sensory and Aesthetic Potentials

Enhancing Meaning with Sustainable Systems

Sketch Studies Theses

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175 176 178

201 202 214

Beginnings

223

Postscript

229

Appendix 1 - the SUDes Curriculum

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Acknowledgments This book has been made possible by the extraordinary financial support given by the Ax:son Johnson Foundation to create and sustain the Master of Sustainable Urban Design (SUDes) program at Lund University over the past 13 years. Peter Elmlund, the Director of UCR, Urban City Research, a program within the foundation, recognized the need to educate a new generation of urban designers to have the knowledge, imagination and integrative design skills to create more sustainable cities.

It is out of this exciting and demanding search, its intellectual framework that the ideas for this book have emerged.

The intellectual framework has been built, piece-by-piece, by an exceptional group of individuals, working in a collaborative spirit. Ellen Dunham Jones was recruited in the first two years to help formulate together with Catharina Sternudd the beginning curriculum and pedagogy, its subjects, educational objectives, structure, course content, and studio sequence, all in close consultation with founding Director and team leader, Peter Siöström and core faculty, Andreas Olsson, Louise Lövenstierne, Per Björkeroth and Henrik Johannesson. The commitment to excellent teaching, careful management and a culture of student exploration and learning has been fostered and developed into a specific SUDes culture based on shared values in the making of more sustainable and humane cities.

Figure A.1. Sketching the initial storyboard.

Seeking additional outside expertise, Donlyn Lyndon was invited to join the program’s development. He helped frame the intellectual agenda, participated in studio and thesis reviews and summarized the key precepts and questions from the program’s yearly international conferences. The poetics of his writings and presentations have been an enduring inspiration.

As additional outside expertise, Harrison Fraker was invited to join the team bringing his knowledge of sustainable integrated whole systems thinking related to the “Eco Block” concept as well as his 40 years of experience as a design studio critic. He served the SUDes program as guest Professor for 10 years working with thesis students in developing the “what, why, where and how” of their master’s thesis.

Figure A.2. Notes and diagrams of a case study.

i

The program has relied strategically on the participation of outside professionals, visiting faculty and critics to provide added perspective and expertise to thesis committees, studio and thesis reviews, too many to list; but the following stand out for the quality of their regular and sustained contributions: Jenny B. Osuldsen (Snøhetta), Björn Ekelund (Warm in the Winter), Par Gustafsson, Camilla Hedegaard-Møller, Linus Zhang, Martin Arfalk (Mandaworks) and many more. Of course the program could not have thrived in the School of Architecture without the attention and support of the School’s Directors, including: Kerstin Barup, Lars-Henrik Stahl and Catharina Sternudd.

Specific Contributions

Figure A.3. Three authors: Siöström, Foteva, and Fraker, from left to right.

The three co-authors, Harrison Fraker, Peter Siöström and Atanaska Foteva together are responsible for the idea of the book, its contents, organization, structure and graphic design, its ”look and feel”. Because English is not Peter Siöström’s nor Atanaska Foteva’s first language, Harrison Fraker has been the primary author for all the text. However, Peter Siöström and Atanaska Foteva have provided constant feedback, input and critical suggestions as the text has evolved. Fraker has also developed sketches, drawings, diagrams and provided photographs in support of the book’s themes.

Peter Siöström has been a driving force behind the book. He has focused on how the key themes of the book are conveyed, how the ideas in the text, the subject and content of the images and diagrams and the graphic layout work together to reinforce key messages. He has developed diagrams and contributed many photographs from his extensive personal photo library.

Atanaska Foteva has been a “Jane-of-all-trades”. She helped in developing the “storyboards” for the book at the very beginning, has prepared many of the drawings and diagrams and contributed extensively to its graphic composition and page layouts. As an architect and a former SUDes graduate and teaching assistant, she has been an invaluable part of the core trio, bringing in the sensibility of the next generation.

Figure A.4. Sketching field notes.

Benjamin Dohrmann, a graduate of SUDes and current teaching assistant, was added to the project to help with the InDesign production of the book, including page layouts, graphic design, cover design and most ii

importantly in preparing the figures and images to meet quality standards and gaining approval for use of non-author images.

James Varas, a graduate student in the Master of Urban Design program at UC Berkeley, was engaged to help develop the Sketch Studies.

He has contributed his design skills in preparing sketches, plans, sections, computer models and perspectives to capture the sensorial design potentials of the Sketch Studies.

The final acknowledgment goes to the students of the program over the last 13 years. Their diversity of worldviews, creativity, continuous spirit of learning and the extraordinary content of their thesis work, all have made important contributions to the intellectual framework that has inspired the book. Some of the students have been retained over the years to help in studios and the preparation of the international conferences and deserve special recognition: Delia Moldavenau, Constantine Milea, Edda Ivarsdottir, Katerina Vondrova, Cyril Pavlu, Atanaska Foteva and Benjamin Dohrmann have all made invaluable contributions to the ongoing development of the SUDes program.

Figure A.5. Siรถstrรถm, Dohrmann, Foteva, and Fraker, from left to right.

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Chapter 1

Introduction

W

ith the escalating frequency and severity of climate disasters and the unprecedented transformations across all sectors of the economy required to combat the existential threat of climate change, why write a book about mind and meaning in sustainable urban design? Its importance may seem trivial. Yet, new discoveries in how we construct or find meaning in our everyday lives may transform, enrich, and motivate how we strive to create a more sustainable future.

Cities will have to play a critical role in both mitigation and adaption. They account for 75% of energy demand and around 80% of greenhouse-gas emissions.1 The public space of cities provides all the important infrastructure systems involved - transportation, energy, water, waste, food, communication, and social opportunity - that are necessary to accomplish an integrated, whole-systems and equitable transformation to a low-carbon, sustainable future. Integrated political, social, economic, and technical design strategies exist that are proven and cost effective. Paul Hawken in Drawdown and Doug Kelbaugh in The Urban Fix explore the strategies in great detail: their development, promise and complexities of implementation.

Figure 1.1. Figure-ground plan of Vienna comparing public space to private space.

(Source: Allan Jacobs, Great Streets, 1996)

Figure 1.2. Opposite: Reflective canopy in Marseille Vieux Port by Foster + Partners.

(Photograph by Nigel Young, Foster + Partners)

1

Unfortunately their current rate of deployment is too slow to match the urgency of the climate crisis. Beyond overcoming the institutional inertia, legal constraints, and cost incentives in existing city building practices that limit rapid deployment, are there changes needed in the approach of design professionals or other opportunities, latent potentials that could encourage, drive and accelerate the design transformation?

Figure 1.3. Figure-ground plan of Wiesbaden.

(Source: Rowe & Koeter, Collage City 1978)

As urgent and important as the policy and technical solutions are, the sustainable transformation of infrastructure and public space must be more than a technological fix. The changes and fixes must be desired, funded, and supported by the cities’ many constituents. In the end, their success will depend not only on their integrated technical performance, but also on the extent to which they are perceived and valued as positive and meaningful improvements in the experience of the city. After all, as Dan Solomon once commented, “sustainability alone is not sustainable.�2 This book is about how to make sustainability more than just about sustainability.

Motivation In this context the motivation for the book comes from many sources and perceived opportunities. It is inspired by the growing evidence and insights from biological researchers and neuroscience for the bodily basis of mind and meaning. The corresponding rise of embodiment theory has refocused on the emergent, the affective, the sensual, the gestural, and the kinesthetic factors in understanding our place in the world. It demands a reformulation of urban design theory that in the recent past has focused on the primacy of the visual, the linguistic, the abstract, the remote data, and the analytic. It does not negate these approaches to urbanism, it repositions them.

In part it is also in response to what has largely been hidden in the discourse on sustainable urban design, both the limited discussion about its aesthetic potential,3 its poetics, as well as its potential role in enriching the sensory experience4 of the city, beyond the visual. It is a hypothesis of the authors that sustainable systems have the capacity to, not only, adapt to and mitigate the impacts of climate change, but also

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greatly enhance a more multi sensory and aesthetic experience of urban spaces - think sustainable delight.

Furthermore, the public space of cities, the streets, parks and plazas, which constitute approximately 40-50% of the land area,5 present a latent opportunity. While they have traditionally provided the spatial framework for all transportation, infrastructure, commerce, and social interaction, their environmental performance is underdeveloped. They are immediately available to the city to be rethought and redesigned, using sustainable systems not only to improve their environmental performance in the face of severe climate events, but also to contribute to a more meaningful, aesthetic experience of the city.

The authors believe that the path to a sustainable future must recognize and seize this opportunity. It is an opportunity to have public space play a significant role in remaking the city to be more sustainable, humane, and beautiful. Recently Lance Hosey has asserted, “Aesthetic attraction is not a superficial concern - it is an environmental imperative. Beauty could save the planet.”6 And as Louis Kahn reminds us, “the measurable is only the servant of the un-measurable and ideally the two should be developed together.”7 These circumstances have inspired the authors to reexamine career-long efforts with their students and colleagues to understand the specific qualities of urban spaces that make them meaningful, that make them register in our imaginations and become memorable, that foster greater attention, care, and sustain a form of poetic experience over time. It is an effort and a call for urban designers to return to the visceral, tangible, and physical qualities of the city as design inspiration, not just its abstract representation. It has further inspired a search for how to represent and make these latent qualities more vivid, visceral and generative in the urban design process; thus fostering a rereading of both well-known and common urban places, paying greater attention to and thus minding them for a new set of emerging design opportunities and potentials. Most importantly it is intended as an open invitation for others to join in this search.

Figure 1.4. Reflections of water ringlets in Biennale courtyard by Carlo Scarpa.

(Photograph by Peter Siöström)

Figure 1.5. Battery Park, NYC. (Photograph by Peter Siöström)

Chapter 1 - Introduction |

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CASE STUDY 2

La Strada Café Berkeley, USA Adaptive reuse

A COFFEE CORNER ON THE EDGE OF CAMPUS

Figure 4.2.1. Sketch: campus, bay and hills

Figure 4.2.2. Context plan birge path

LA STRADA CAFÉ

bancroft way

college ave

Situated on a corner that overlooks a main entrance to the Berkeley campus and on a street with views of the Bay, La Strada has become one of the most popular cafés in the city. Its special qualities are partly related to its unique location, but are also a result of physical qualities that have not been designed, but have emerged spontaneously from the functional and essential needs of adapting an old gas station into a unique espresso café. Its outside terrace provides a level platform for seating on the corner of two sloping streets, and affords a corner prospect, overlooking the space of the campus entrance as well as views up the hill to the green front yards of stately buildings. While separated from the sidewalk by planters, the terrace touches the daily flow of pedestrian traffic and is shaded by a canopy of flowering trees.

It is also subdivided into many seating areas, affording a wide variety of seating configurations. In contrast to the natural canopy of the terrace, a pagoda-like roof, located in the place of former gas pumps, is both a solid shading device and protection from the rain. The space is buffered from the street by a dense hedge and together with the roof creates a forecourt to the enclosed café entrance. It is also subdivided into multiple seating areas. The hedge, the forecourt, the door to the café and the arrival at the coffee counter create a layered sequence where customers can line up and experience an efficient and socially congenial ritual of purchasing coffee; all the while bathed in the sound of the espresso machine, the aroma of coffee, and the fragrance of pastry.

In this multi-sensory environment customers know, as they observe the scene, they can usually find a place to accommodate their seating needs, whether alone or in groups. The multiple seating areas, with a choice of environmental conditions, creates an atmosphere that invites customers to enjoy their coffee break in a sensory rich, comfortable, and meaningful way, no matter the weather.

Figure 4.2.3. Opposite: view from campus to La Strada café corner

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A CORNER PROSPECT

Strada’s terrace occupies a special corner that affords a unique prospect overlooking a large entrance space to the Berkeley campus and a view at right angles, up the hill at the front yard setbacks of stately campus related buildings. This primal condition of prospect and refuge is immediately recognized from experience and through our mirror neurons, the shape of the corner is simulated in our bodies.

Figure 4.2.4. Diagram: ‘prospect/refuge’

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Figure 4.2.5. View to Berkeley Campus

Figure 4.2.6. View up the hill to front yards and tower

Figure 4.2.7. Plan of corner condition

Figure 4.2.8. View from campus to La Strada Cafe

Figure 4.2.9. Corner gesture

Figure 4.2.10. Hand gesture of corner condition

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A LEVEL PLATFORM ON A SLOPE

The most essential requirement for making a place on a sloped corner is to create a level platform. Our bodies immediately register and feel the balance and stability it affords.

Figure 4.2.12. Axonometric: level terrace on sloping corner

Figure 4.2.11. Figural balance

Figure 4.2.13. Section A-A: level platform on sloping corner

A

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A

EMBODIED PERCEPTIONS

Figure 4.5.11. Figure diagrams of embodied perceptions: a,b,c,d,e,f

Our mirror neurons sense the lowering of the podium to the street.

a.

Our mirror neurons simulate both the real and imagined climbing of the gentle entrance stairs. b.

Figure 4.5.10. Hand diagrams of embodied perceptions: c,d,e,f

Our bodies feel the tension of the canopies reaching out to the street. c.

c.

d.

d.

e.

e.

f.

f.

Our mirror neurons imagine the lifting of the podium to open the space below.

Our bodies feel the lifting of the double fold at its two corners and the balancing implied along the diagonal.

Our bodies feel the enclosing branches and shade of the Bosque.

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ENVIRONMENTAL PERFORMANCE, MORE THAN A GREEN CATHEDRAL Figure 4.7.14. Shade of the canopy (change photo to day)

The tree canopy – Beyond its enclosing form, the leaves provide shade in the summer, creating a cooler microclimate, a reduction in the feel of the sol-air temperature on our skin, in contrast to other parts of the city.

Figure 4.7.15. Diagram of shade

Figure 4.7.16. Inconspicuous hedges’ performance

The hedges – Not only create enclosure at the scale of a seated human, they also buffer the space from the movement and pollution of the traffic. Their evapotranspiration creates a cooling effect on the backs of seated urban participants.

Figure 4.7.17. Diagram of hedges’ performance

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AFFORDANCES AND TIME

The space affords and invites many forms of engagement: Just sitting and people watching, a weekly market, enjoying a coffee or meals served by nearby local restaurants or cafes, a concert in the evening, a night time stroll.

The space embodies the city’s continual evolution in time, in this case from street to multi-purpose room. It takes on many functions and meanings depending on the time of day and the seasons.

Figure 4.7.18. Market by day

Figure 4.7.19. Promenade by night

Figure 4.7.20. Performance by night

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URBAN CANOPIES The space above the public space of the city, the urban canopy, is the most underdeveloped part of a city’s environmental performance. It remains open; and in most cases, receives little attention except during the holidays when lights are strung to light the early evenings and celebrate the festive season. But with its strategic location both in and over the volume of public space, it has a tremendous potential to shade the city on hot summer days and protect the public space from the impact of the urban heat island effect. The importance of shade cannot be overstated. It is described as “a civic resource, an index of inequality, and a requirement for public health” by Sam Bloch in a recent article published in Places Journal3. It can be seen as essential to renewing the experience of the public commons as a public good. Traditionally this function has been accomplished by urban shade trees. In those cities with mature trees (50-100 years old) shading streets or plazas, the experience of the cooler microclimate is palpable, almost like an oasis in the city; and of course the eco services and co benefits (see below) are extremely positive. The value of urban shade trees has been touted as one of the single most cost effective strategies for adapting to climate change; and thus many environmentalists have called for the massive construction of urban forests in cities and neighborhoods around the globe (a billion trees) as an immediate strategy against climate change.

The solution of planting trees is not the only strategy for shading the city, however, and comes with challenges. Trees need water; they require access to appropriate soil conditions; they require maintenance—trimming and leaf collection; they take time to grow into their mature shade cover; and they can restrict the flow of wind, which provides both a cooling effect and urban ventilation of heat build up and pollution. Fortunately, other strategies exist. Fabric canopies, green trellises and even trellises with solar collectors can not only accomplish the shading effect, but also provide other comfort and sustainability services. They also have the design flexibility of being able to be placed in the most effective location in the urban section, not necessarily tied to the ground; and they can be operated, open and closed as needed. Since their location can be high above the space, they can be easily combined with other sustainability strategies related to the urban walls or floor. The urban canopy remains one of the most effective opportunities for tempering the micro climate of cities while delivering other sustainability services

Figure 5.37. Holiday street lights.

(Photograph by Atanaska Foteva)

Figure 5.38. Sony Center Plaza, Berlin.

(Photograph by ralfskysegel, pixabay)

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and its design potential for creating rich, multi-sensory, memorable spaces is waiting to be explored and expanded.

Trees

Figure 5.39. Section: shade trees.

(Sketch by Harrison Fraker)

Eco Services: • Tempers microclimate, reducing UHI temperatures • Absorbs storm water • Absorbs carbon • Improves air quality • Creates habitat • Changes aroma seasonally Co Benefits: • Reduces energy consumption • Reduces AC costs • Creates biomas for energy and/or building materials • Creates carbon capture value • Improves health

Figure 5.40. Dappled light, Stockholm. (top) (Photograph by Harrison Fraker)

Figure 5.41. Path lined by cherry blossoms. (below) (Photograph by Bjonsson, pixabay.com)

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Sensory and Aesthetic Potentials Trees provide shade from the direct sun, removing the feel of the sol-air radiant temperature on your skin. It is a powerful sensory experience, augmented by the evapotranspiration of the leaves. Yet trees deliver so much more - dappled light filtering through the leaves, many different spatial forms to their canopies carrying memories of different soffits and vaults. They can be used to shape space. The seasonal changes of deciduous trees provide beautiful color in the fall, while the shedding of their leaves in the winter enables welcome solar heat gain. Flouring and/ or fruit trees produce an explosion of blossoms in the spring, not only creating a magical atmosphere of color (see Kyoto cherry blossoms),

but also giving an unforgettable aroma to the time and place each year.

These rich sensory qualities: the feel of shade, spatial form, smell, color, texture and seasonal change create an aesthetic atmosphere and human response that is part of the positive health impacts that trees have been shown to deliver. Trees have the potential to transform the experience of cities beyond their environmental performance. For these powerful embodied experiences to become alive, trees need to be thought of as more than just generic street trees. They need to be designed with these sensory and spatial intentions as inspiration.

Figure 5.42. Broad museum plaza at night.

(Photograph by Harrison Fraker)

Figure 5.43. Karlaplan, Stockholm in fall.

(Photograph by Peter Siรถstrรถm)

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