PARTICIPATORY
ENGAGEMENT DESIGN Alan Waxman
Alan Waxman MLA GSD Harvard BA Whitman Anthropology + Japanese
HANGZHOU SINKING GARDENS BUILT 2012
The Sinking Gardens - a collaborative landscape intervention by Alan Waxman and Nikola Bojic - was built in Hangzhou’s XiXi National Wetland Park. The park is the latest green driver of massive urban development, displacing thousands for scenery and luxury apartments, gentrification on a grand scale. The intervention weaves together narratives of community solidarity with the aims of the China Academy of Art, providing a new social ground for displaced families as named participants. Boats emerge from topographies loaded with erased family memories, carrying earth and grass to form new land to be walked and explored. Each boat honors one family that lived for generations in XiXi. At right, family fathers Hong, Jiang, and Shen dedicate the gardens.
XiXi National Wetland Park Families in 1917 Wang Shen Zhang Yu Hong Jiang Shan Zhou Families after 1917 Bau Lian Hu Tang Fan Tang Long Yang
Mapping research reveals erased histories, loading the boats.
Section Persp
ective
Remains Found on Site During earthworks, several fragments of everyday objects were found. In 2000 there were four houses with gardens on site. In 2005, with highway construction, houses and fields began to fall into decay. In 2009, the site was naturalized as part of XiXi National Wetland Park and designated to become the site of sculptural interrvention.
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PROJECT LINK HARVARD HIGH SCHOOL DESIGN STUDIO ADDRESSES NEIGHBORHOOD ISSUES 2012, 2013, 2014 The program focuses on design as a method of cross-neighborhood understanding and catalyst for change. In the summer, students from around the Boston area come together at the GSD to learn the basics of drawing through object exploration and trust building exercises. This is expanded into neighborhood analysis and a series of time, space, and agency zoning diagrams unique to the particular site location. Characteristics such as wild urban plants, pedestrians, and lighting become indices of safety and potential keys to intervention. A landscape and architectural intervention is put forward. In the following fall, these ideas become part of a collaborative intervention involving diverse neighborhood groups.
landscape architecture autocad drafting software rhino 3d modelling software
PROJECT LINK YEAR-ROUND CURRICULUM Project Link is a full year program that connnects the Harvard Graduate School of Design with neighborhoods in the Boston Area. Students from the core, 4 week summer program become community leaders and design advocates in their high schools and communities.
DRAWING The “[Object]ive” exercise is drawing and drafting household and urban objects understanding how parts come together and use becomes a part of form
RECRUITMENT AND APPLICATIONS “Somebody Else’s Shoes” exercise in schools outreach to students applications distributed and application follow up visiting sessions.
COLLECTIVE CELEBRATION
MAY
event: sharing food and voice, diaogue, poetry demonstration performance assess value of p. link in community and advance outreach for summer
trust building exercise with drawing and collage as reflection translation of experience into the “Enclosed Path” environmental design project adobe photoshop adobe illustrator photography adobe indesign
JUN
APR
MAPPING AND SITE ANALYSIS
JUL
mapping/ Site Studies zoning time zoning safety mapping safety planning reflection
MAR LINK & TRANSFORMATION FROM WITHIN
FEB
RESOURCING assess results of year’s program neighborhood change: 1. environmental change 2. participation rate 3. participant satisfaction 4. observation 5. behavior change 6. health risk appraisals 7. biometric measures through clinic collaboration 8. gsd applications compile data and write grants for next years program hire the two-year lead instructor
JAN DEC
COLLECTIVE ACTION
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STUDIO CRITIQUE
AUG
presentation of collective projects with critique: presentation of architectural models landscape models digital renderings sharing with family
SEP OCT
PLANNING
motivated by group’s best qualities: building construction large model fabrication clothing fabrication community garden food preparation performance, improvisation walks work-outs meals/ events farmer’s market
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community organizing event organizing stakeholder discussion essays presentations specific feasible timelines for achievable projects essay writing microsoft word microsoft excel microsoft powerpoint
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SEEING AND HEARING
JUL AUG SEP OCT NOV
DEC JAN
FEB MAR 2015
APR
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JUL AUG SEP OCT NOV
DEC JAN FEB MAR 2016
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DORCHESTER AND FRANKLIN PARK, BOSTON
6am
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NEIGHBORHOOD HEALTH DESIGN THROUGH COMMUNITY PROCESS Community based interventions can become low-cost evidencebased treatment for patients on an urban scale. The largest industry in the USA is healthcare. 2/3 of those costs are due to chronic disease. The hardest hit areas are those of deep socio-economic in-equities. Here, unemployed and chronically sick patients become economic cash-cows, but their local neighborhoods rarely see any of this money. Through real-time tracking of health data, neighborhood projects like inter-generational faith groups and community gardens, can become assessed scientifically to become the treatment of the future.
rent study are discussed. Community-based trials are warranted to further test these findings.� - A Difference in Differences Analysis of Health, Safety, and Greening Vacant Urban Space. Branas et al. 2011
WANAPUM CULTURAL CENTER GRANT COUNTY HEALTH DISTRICT
Mareas Slome at Celilo
Mareas Slome at Celilo
WANAPUM CULTURAL CENTER The policies and projects of the Confederated Umatilla Indian Reservation (CTUIR) use the medium of landscape as a social and political field for sustenance of its citizenry. The health GRANT COUNTY HEALTH DISTRICT and wellness of the citizens of the CTUIR cannot be conceptualized as separate from the health of the ecosystem itself, which is protected by treaty with the US Federal government. The CTUIR demonstrates how the management of the landscape and its associated ecology is a political, social, and humanist practice. Paper Mill at Wallula
Paper Mill at Wallula
contemporary dam management with stakeholders Cycle of yearly projects for landscape and health
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HEALTH ECOLOGY MAINTENANCE ECOLOGY OF HEALTH
ACCOUNTABLE CARE ORGANIZATION: HIPAA protected space. Data rich, protected by the state, private. combined hospital and insurance group aiming to provide low cost high quality care.
DESIGN TRUST: Nestled within HIPAA protected space, merges environmental and social data streams. Empowerment here is based on legal silences and the power of designers to layer datas to effect.
ASSESSMENT AND FUNDING
ASSESSMENT AND FUNDING
HOSPITAL/ACO HEALTH DATA SCHOOL PROGRAM HEALTH DATA
HEALTH DATA ENVIRONMENTAL DATA HEALTH DATA
ANALYTICS ENGINE
ENVIRONMENTAL DATATRAILS AND PARKS HEALTH HEALTH HEALTH DATA DATA DATA HEALTH DATA CIVIC DATA HEALTH DATA
HEALTH DATA
HEALTH DATA
HEALTH DATA
NEIGHBORHOOD DATA
HEALTH DATA HEALTH DATA
HEALTH DATA
COMMUNITY GARDEN FAITH GROUP HEALTH DATA
EMPOWERMENT DATA
HEALTH DATA
HEALTH DATA
HEALTH DATA
NEIGHBORHOOD PERIMETER CHANGES BASED ON HEALTH DATA SET
CULTURAL DATA
LA VILLETTE STUDIO GSD
A new park aims to stitch together Paris’ long time no-man’s land behind the 19th arrondissement. The arrangmenet of highway edge conditions, marsh drainage, canal promenandes and civic plazas makes a mixture of social and private spaces allowing for continued refuge for edge denizens and new immigrants while simultaneously offering thoroughfares for students, tourists, and residents of the sparkling new Grand Paris.
ECOLOGIES OF SCALE STUDIO GSD
Ecological management on Cape Cod’s Mass Military Reservation is a seasonal network of national, state, local agencies, and biophysical infrastructures. Burning, coppicing, bog bio-degradation of poisonous RDX, and beach restoration become cycles sustaining human engagement in complex ecological implementations.
permeation in January permeation in October
permeation in August
permeation in May
sphagnum layer
repurposed monitoring well
repurposed monitoring well
RDX plume
ECOLOGY ACROSS SCALES
SALT MARSH URBANISM STUDIO GSD
Tidal flows and their resident salt hays are knit into a slow, postextractive urbanism of salt hay industry. Salt hay harvest becomes salt hay cement making, which becomes raised communal structures of housing and commerce with ground level industrial storage. This salt marsh urban system necessitates and facilitates the growth of the biologically rich salt marsh ecosystem anthropocene symbiosis.
INCREASINGLY LAYERED WITH TIME
FLUX CITY FLATBUSH ADJACENT
PLAN OF THE CIVIC COMMERCIAL CENTER NEIGHBORHOOD
B AT FL H US E AV E NU
CONSTRUCTED SALT HAY FIELDS, CONSTRUCTED, NOW USED ONLY FOR CIVIC ACTIVITIES AND AS STORM BARRIER
AT THE CENTER OF THE CIVIC - ISLAND - BLOCK IS THE SALT HAY FIELD, A COMMUNAL GATHERING AREA AND CEREMONIAL FESTIVAL GROUND TO CELEBRATE THE SALT MARSH SEASONS
THE BUILDINGS EMBRACE SURROUND AND ENVELOPE THE WATER HERE - WHERE PEOPLE CAN BOARD THE FERRIES, PLEASURE BOATS, AND RENT SMALL PERSONAL CRAFT
THE CIVIC BUILT COMMERCIAL AND RESIDENTIAL CENTER LIES AT THE INTERSECTION OF ALL THE MAJOR TRANSPORTATION ROUTES - WATERWAYS, FLATBUSH AVENUE, AND FOUR SMALL RAISED PEDESTRIAN ROUTES THAT FAN OUT ACCROSS THE BUILT ENVIRONMENT
ADJACENT TO BELT PARKWAY
ON ROCKAWAY INLET
MID DENSITY, RESIDENTIAL AND INDUSTRIAL AREA AT THE OUTSKIRTS
LOW DENSITY, BAYSIDE HOUSING/BOATHOUSE AND SALT HAY INDUSTRIAL AREA
THE PARKING FACILITY IS EASY TO REACH FROM FLATBUSH, BUT LIES DESCRETELY BELOW GRADE AND UNDER THE AT-GRADE PEDESTRIAN ROUTES
A FRESHWATER POND LIES BESIDE FLATBUSH FOR A DIVERSITY OF WATER BIRDS AND FRESH WATER SPECIES
AREA OF HIGH EFFLUENT DENSITY DETAIL OF HIGH EFFLUENT AREA AHECENT TO BELT PARKWAY
BELT PARKWAY
A SMALL RESIDENTIAL AND COMMERCIAL AREA GROWS FROM THE ATTACHMENT TO THE HIGHWAY AND BIKE PATH. AT THE LOWER LEVEL, ACCESS TO AQUATIC TRAFFIC MAINTAINED
FRANKLIN PARK STUDIO GSD
Redesign of Franklin Park is a topographic exploration: a new trolley through clustered trees and houses shows the way to a stone stair, gateway to a broad Playstead vista between grass, stone, and sky. From the Playestead, descent into the arena is dramatic entrance to the Zoo. In these theatrical spaces, the watched become watchers - reflexive liberation. Franklin Park, in Boston, is considered the finest sculptural work of Frederick Law Olmsted. Envisioned as a healing destination for urban factory workers to experience the sublime, intricate topographic re-working forwards this discourse of viewing and liberation, as relevant today as it was over 120 years ago.
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Enter at the STAIRS 1:40
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ARENA TO ZOO - watched to watcher 1:40
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CHARLES RIVER CONSERVANCY INTERNSHIP
The River Street Bridge across the Charles River bisects the greenway between the Charles River Esplanade and Harvard University. Cyclists and pedestrians dart between a constant flow of traffic. The nonprofit Charles River Conservancy commissioned visualizations of an underpass through the bridge that would extend from the shore. Over several months, drawings were done for advocacy support meetings and fundraising - to help visualize the intervention, and to win support for the intervention as a political reality.
IUnderpass as tunnel garden
SCIENCE CENTER PLAZA AND OVERPASS STUDIO GSD
Noise is a rich and varied resource at the Cambridge St. overpass. Drilling two translucent sound and light wells through the overpass reveals the unique nature and sound of the site. Careful study of all the sound creators on the site informs a dynamic grid in which numerous sonic programs play out over the course of the day. “Yellower” sound is created by volunteered use of staitonary spatial features: wind in trees, birdsong in sumac. “Redder” sound is created by programmable features: music, hawking, engine whirs. “Orange,” both voluntary and programmable, is the sounds of people: human voices and footsteps.
existing sound conditions existing sound conditions
proposed sound conditions
proposed sound conditions
OVERPASS WELLS: COLORS OF SOUND
Noise is a rich and varied resource at the Cambridge St. overpass. Drilling two translucent sound and light wells through the overpass reveals the unique nature and sound of the site.
Careful study of all the sound creators on the site informs a dynamic grid in which numerous sonic programs play out over the course of the day. "Yellower" sound is created by volunteered use of stationary spatial features: wind in trees, birdsong in sumac. "Redder" sound is created by programmable features: music, hawking, engine whirs. "Orange," both voluntary and programmable, is the sounds of people: human voices and footsteps.
The image on the front cover is a proposed sound and light well as viewed from the pedestrian zonethe world above.
KYOTO TEAHOUSE GARDEN BUILT 2010
Built for centuries old Kinse Ryokan Cafe-bar in Kyoto’s famous Shimabara arts and entertainment district, this small interior courtyard garden, or tsuboniwa took shape in Spring of 2010. Shimabara is the oldest arts district in Japan, home to the taiyu, elite geisha. Only a few women still practice as taiyu and serve tea in the Yabunouchi tradition. I lived in Shimabara for over a year, studying tea in Yabe-sensei’s exclusive Yabunouchi tea room.
TEA CEREMONY PRACTICED 2006-PRESENT
I studied Ikebena
IKEBANA PRACTICED 2009-PRESENT