Harvard GSD Planning Portfolio 2016-2018

Donald Taylor-Patterson

Harvard Graduate School of Design Portfolio (2016 -2018)

Table of Contents Affordable Housing in Dover, NH: Cedar Court

04

Transit Oriented Development in Tallinn, Estonia: Rescaling

10

Resilient Infrastructure in East Boston, MA: A Resilient Greenway

16

Urban Design in Allston, MA: Neighborhood Campus

22

02

03

Cedar Court: Connection / Health & Wellness / Opportunity

Harvard University | HUD Innovation in Affordable Housing Competition | Dover, New Hampshire | Winter 2017 Overview

Key Design Innovations:

Financing:

The HUD competition prompt asked us to relocate two public housing developments for older and disabled adults in Dover, New Hampshire. Our proposal includes five apartment buildings with a total of 156 1-BR apartments and 16 2br apartments. All of the units are reserved for households earning 40-50% of AMI. The design also emphasizes a dynamic “Village Center” community hub, which consist of a multi-functional outdoor plaza, community center, health clinic, convenience store, daycare, and art center.

Passive House construction techniques: buildings and windows are oriented to maximize natural light. The development uses efficient wall and roof assemblies to create super insulated and well-ventilated structures, diminishing the amount of additional energy required to heat and cool.

Our innovative financing plan includes $16M in taxexempt bond financing and $8.9M in 4% LIHTC equity.

Bond proceeds are reimbursed from a FHA 221 (d)(4) taxable permanent loan to take advantage of lower taxable securities rates. Financing also includes $12.4M in proceeds from the sale of two former public housing sites. The project involves Solar Investment Tax Credits, the Federal Home Loan Bank of Boston’s Housing Program, the New Hampshire Community Development Finance Authority’s tax credit initiative, CDBG funds, and RAD Project-Based Voucher contracts.

Goals and Programing: Health & Wellness: Promote residents’ well-being though spaces and programs that enhance physical health and combat isolation.

Connection: Support interaction among residents and with neighboring communities.

Green roof: A nearly 9,000 sf green roof is located on the Village Center building, contributing to stormwater management, helping cool the building in the summer and reduce heat island effect.

Terraced Landscape: The landscape leading from the courtyard buildings down to Cricket Brook Creek funnels storm water into an underground gray-water storage tank.

This prevents excessive or contaminated storm water from reaching the creek, mitigating pollution and erosion. Graywater collected in the storage tank can be recycled for watering in summer.

Opportunity: Create an environment for residents to invest in themselves and their community.

04

Contributors: Donald Taylor-Patterson, Alex Rawding, Alice Hintermann, Anna Ponting, Yang Huang

05

Sustainability at Cedar Court

Terraced Landscaping & Storm Water Cistern Geothermal Energy Permeable Pavement

Native Plantings & Pollinators

Solar-Thermal & PV Panels Green Roof

RENEWABLE ENERGY SYSTEMS SAVE 1.1K METRIC TONS OF CO2 EMISSIONS ANNUALLY, EQUIVALENT TO CO2 SEQUESTERED BY 30,000 TREES. 06 0 20 50

100

200

300FT

Residential Floor Plan Super Insulated Structures

STOR. MEC / H

TYPICAL 2-BED

COMMUNAL SPACE

W D

TYPICAL 1-BED

LOUN LAUN GE/ DRY

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A Day at Cedar Court 5:30pm: See a flier in the lobby for a knit-a-thon next week to benefit a local homeless shelter.

You sign up.

8am: Wake up in your sunny apartment. Window orientation provides ample natural light.

10am: Meet friends for seated yoga class in the Village Center 9:30am: Rain or shine, glass walkways allow safe movement between buildings.

11:15am: Stop by the WentworthDouglass Clinic to make an appointment for next week to discuss shoulder pain you’ve been experiencing.

4pm: In the Learning Lounge, Dover High students help you order Amazon Fresh.

You trade stories about high school then and now.

CREATING A CONNECTED SITE:

Connection through site Connection within site THROUGH WITHIN

08

Connection viaCONTEXT visual context VIA VISUAL

12pm: Take the long way back to your apartment, stopping to wave to the daycare

TOTAL DEVELOPMENT COST: $36.6M

4% LIHTC & Solar Credits

Wentworth-Douglass Hospital rents a Health Clinic at Cedar Court, providing cost-saving on-site care. $1.4M Income during Construction

$9.2M Tax Credits

$12.4M SOURCES: $36.6M

Proceeds from DHA Property Sale

Planned outings downtown for a pizza lunch or a stroll down main street keep residents connected to their former neighborhood.

$210K/UNIT $9.9M Mortgage (FHA loan replaces TE Bonds)

$2.7M Soft Debt & Grants (Including Daycare & Community Center) CEDAR COURT CAMPUS $1M City of Dover (Road) Dover Senior Center exercise classes expand to Cedar Court’s multi-purpose fitness space.

Cedar Court’s Village Center and daycare serve the community at large.

INVESTMENT IMPACT ACROSS SCALE: 174 QUALITY, AFFORDABLE HOMES 8+ COMMUNITY PARTNERSHIPS

DHA’s Union Court will go through RAD with the Cedar Court campus and share communal facilities.

4+ NEW COMMUNITY FACILITIES 0.5 ACRES OF PUBLIC PARK 1,191 METRIC TONS OF CARBON EMISSIONS SAVED

Dover High School students provide on-site tech support for Cedar Court residents.

University of New Hampshire hires residents to help medical and nursing students practice bedside manner.

09

Rescaling: Pedestrian Oriented Development for Lasnamäe Harvard University | Option Studio | The Unfinished City | Tallin, Estonia | Fall 2017 Overview

Key Issues:

Proposal

The 1973 Soviet Vision for Lasnamäe envisioned the neighborhood as a set of eleven standardized selfsustained micro-regions, each with its own rationally allocated commercial center, public amenities and services. Construction of the neighborhood started in the late 1970s and went through the 1980s. However, due to the gradual collapse of the Soviet Union, state funds from Moscow gradually diminished, until the union collapsed in 1991, leaving Lasnamäe unfinished. Estonia regained its independence and several parts of the original plan were left incomplete, including a light rail transit system, several micro-regions, and most social amenities.

Housing: Soviet housing was built quickly and inexpensively, making much of the existing housing close to being in need of replacement. Additionally, the transition to private homeownership made ownership of Lasnamäe’s residential buildings highly fragmented.

After observing the realities of present day Lasnamäe, we decided to revisit the Soviet plan and revise it to fit Lasnamäe’s contemporary context. By focusing on revising the original Soviet plan we can strengthen Lasnamäe’s existing condition and bring new opportunities that serve both Lasnamäe’s residents and Tallinn as a whole. We believe this can be done through a robust Transit Oriented Development plan centered around the re-introduction of the planned tram looping through the neighborhood along Laagna channel highway and the designated space planned for the unbuilt Rahu road highway. In order to achieve this vision, we’ve laid out a set of four subgoals for the project, each of which will both address an issue highlighted previously and support TOD.

Lasnamäe Today The transition from a communist to capitalist state left many aspects of Lasnamäe largely incompatible with the future development of the city. These issues manifest in four main categories:

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Commercial: The vast mono-functional residential land use in Lasnamäe and the incompleteness of the centers that were built left a major need for commercial space in the neighborhood.

Transportation: The neighborhood is becoming increasingly car dependent, making parking an issue. Public transit is served by buses only.

Open Space: Soviet planning included lots of open spaces, however many of them are unprogrammed and serve little use. The transition to a capitalist economy left land ownership fragmented. Thus, a lot of land around/ in-between buildings remains under the ownership of the city and is underutilized.

Goals: 1/ Introduce more low-rise high density buildings.

2/ Increase commercial uses.

3/ Provide new housing opportunities.

4/ Create a more community-centered public realm.

Contributors: Donald Taylor-Patterson, Armando Sullivan

Lasnamäe

Tallinn

Existing Tram Network Proposed Extension

[

0

.5

1

2

3

Kilometers 4

11

Pedestrian Footfall Analysis !

! ! !

! !

!

!

!

! !

!

station density high density medium density low density

12

[

0

.125

.25

.5

.75

Kilometers 1

Development Framework

High Density

Medium Density

Low Density

station density high density medium density low density

open space adjacent to linear parks temporal programming

commercial use permanent and temporary private open space

residential and commercial shared privateuses open space

residential use private open space

resid

Building Use

Form + Open Space

Station Density

to linear parks commercial use ng private openpermanent space and temporary

residential and commercial shared private openuses space

residential use private open space

residential use

13

0 5 10

14

25

50

100

Meters

15

A Resilient Greenway for East Boston

Harvard University | Core Planning Studio | Adapt East Boston | Boston, Massachusetts | Spring 2017 Overview

High Level Recommendation

The East Boston neighborhood is home to over 40,000 residents. While historically Italian, the neighborhood has seen a large influx of Hispanic/Latino immigrants in recent decades. Recently it has become increasingly desirable for new development, especially along its waterfront, which boasts unparalleled views of downtown Boston. The neighborhood also boasts great transit access with the MBTA Blue Line putting a majority of the neighborhood within a 10 minute walk of rapid transit. Due to this high quality transit access, over 50% of neighborhood workers commute via the Blue Line. However, East Boston faces significant threat as climate change becomes an ever pressing reality. 100 and 1,000 year storm models show vast portions of the neighborhood face significant flood risk as storms worsen and become more frequent.

Furthermore, the Blue Line, a critical resource for the neighborhood and the city faces significant threat of salt water inundation, which could corrode equipment and knock out the system for extended periods of time. This project takes this reality and proposes and urban design and planning intervention that builds upon and strengthens the neighborhood’s transit infrastructure.

An earlier stage of this project developed a high level resilient transit plan aimed at both creating redundant transit infrastructure in the neighborhood as response the increasing chances of Blue Line shutdowns and strengthening evacuation routes and plans should other infrastructure (namely the neighborhoods two tunnels) fail. Part of this plan involved introducing a more robust bicycle and pedestrian infrastructure, creating a new ferry infrastructure, and creating a comprehensive evacuation plan.

High Level Recommendation This stage of the project looks specifically at the redundant infrastructure created by rethinking the design of the East Boston Greenway, an existing bicyle and walking path running the length of the neighborhood, largely parallel to the Blue Line. It imagines the Greenway as not only an alternative means of travel in the neighborhood, but also as flood protection infrastructure in certain areas aimed at protecting both portions of the neighborhood and the Blue Line. It assumes significant investment by stakeholders

like the MBTA, Massport, and the city of Boston and builds on the city and Massport’s existing plans to protect certain portions of the neighborhood.

Precedents The project draws from precedents for multi-functional resilience infrastructure like the Big U project in New York. Based on a sectional study of the different neighborhood conditions along the Greenway, different types of interventions are proposed. In some areas the Greenway is elevated to allow water to run underneath in the event of a flood, keeping the path usable. In other areas it functions as a berm, providing protection to the neighborhood and Blue Line, while creating space for new recreational areas and new development.

Contributors: Donald Taylor-Patterson* 16

*Contributions from earlier project noted where applicable

*Contributors: Justin Rose, Donald Taylor-Patterson Beachmont

Reslient Transit Plan Rive r

CHELSEA

Che lsea

Suffolk Downs

Orient Heights

8

Mystic River

MERIDIAN STREET

TRE

TT S SCO

PRE

BROOKS STREET

Constitution Beach

ET

1

4 3

Wood Island

Wood Island Marsh

Airport

Evacuation Center Existing Ferry Route

2

Proposed Ferry Route 6 Maverick

Downtown

MA VER

5

ICK

STR

EET

Logan Airport

[

7

Near Term

Bowdoin Govt Center State

Aquarium

Boston Harbor 8

0

.25

.5

Miles 1

Seaport

MBTA Blue Line Proposed bike lane 1

New bike lanes

2

Programming & awareness

3

Bicycle signal priority

4

24 hour access

5

Improved links to waterfront

6

Pedal & Park bike cage

7

Harborwalk

8

Greenway extension

17

Blue Line Ridership

2070 Flood Prediction

Beachmont 3,045

335 194

Beachmont 3,045

335

535

Suffolk Downs 1,125

313

194

Orient Heights 2,833 287 159

159

626

716

316

581

312

711

558

856 195

Maverick 10,106

317 682

BLUE LINE RIDERSHIP

Maverick 10,106

616 47

10 100 1,000

428 856

682

TOTAL COMMUTERS

Airport 7,429

236

428

10 100 1,000

Wood Island 2,507

544

1093

Airport 7,429

558

581

342

TOTAL PUB. TRANSIT COMMUTERS

711

362 574

870

544

1093 236

716

316

Wood Island 2,507

362 574

870

317

632 626

396

312

195

Suffolk Downs 1,125 Orient Heights 2,833

287

632

396

342

535

313

1,000

616

221

47

10,000

221

124

124

Aquarium 4,776

PUBLIC TRANSIT USAGE 50%+ of Block Group

Aquarium 4,776

BLUE LINE Above Ground Open Cut

Miles 0

18

0.25

0.5

0.75

1

Miles 0

0.25

0.5

0.75

1

Underground Flooded

Greenway Sectional Study

16 14

15

13 8

16

9

10

11

12

North

15

8

9

10

11

12

13

14

7

7

6

6

4

Central

5

3 2

1 2 1

3

4 5

South 19

Option 2 3

4

Intervention: Greenway South Location Characteristics: Multi-Family Housing Underutilized Land (Parking Lots) Low-Lying & Susceptible to Flooding Relatively Well-Connected to Neighborhood

Option 3

Characteristics: - Multi-Family Housing - Underutilized Land (Parking Lots) - Low-Lying & Susceptible to Flooding (without effects of SLR) - Relatively Well-Connected to Neighborhood

20

Option 1

Option 2 3

4

Selected Option

Option 1

Option 2

Option 3

14 13

Intervention: Greenway North Location Characteristics:

Selected Option Option 3

Adjacent to Blue Line Single Family Housing Adjacent Open Spaces Adjacent to Coast Poorly Connected to Neighborhood

Option 1

Option 2

Option 1 14 13

Option 2

Option 3 21

Neighborhood Campus: Allston

Harvard University | Urban Design for Planners | Boston, Massachusetts | Spring 2017 Overview

Proposal

This course, properly titled Urban Design for Planners, challenged planning students to let go of typical planning conventions and think solely as urban designers. The instructor encouraged creative thinking and design not inhibited by political, social, and economic barriers. The final assignment required students to choose a local site and re-design it as an urban designer.

The design for the site seeks to tie together the now divided sections of the neighborhood and create a “Neighborhood Campus” via infill development, a focus on pedestrian-friendly circulation, and a reconnection to the waterfront.

The chosen site is located in the Allston neighborhood of Boston, a neighborhood characterized by the vast land speculation and expansion of Harvard University. The site is currently filled with infrastructure from the I90 highway, obsolete toll booths, and CSX rail yards. The railyard is no longer in use and the toll booths are gone as MA has recently switched to an EZ Pass and “pay by plate” only system. These two conditions have provided an opportunity for the site to be redeveloped. A large portion of the rail yard was recently sold to Harvard with plans to reduce the curve in I90 and develop the northern portion of the site. MassDOT plans to build a new commuter rail station “West Station” on the southern portion of the site.

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In order to prepare the site for development the existing infrastructure is overhauled. The unused railyard is demolished and the highway is buried. This allows for new connections across the neighborhood as well as a reconnection to the waterfront.

The new rail station and highway proximity help justify more dense development. Due to Harvard’s presence in the neighborhood and ownership of the site, the programming for the site is planned as a mix of institutional, retail, housing, and open space. With Boston University’s campus also directly south of the site, it is in a prime location for student housing & programming. Furthermore, the new rapid access to downtown would provide opportunity for programming aimed at young professionals as well.

The design responds to the local context through strategic arrangement of building uses, types, and heights. Where the site meet the existing low-rise single-family portions of Allston there are more single-family, small scale, residential typologies. As the site opens up toward the waterfront building footprints become larger and more institutional and commercial spaces are introduced. Finally, the tallest buildings are situated along the waterfront, taking advantage of both the distance from the existing neighborhood and desirable views.

Context

Site

ALLSTON

Soldiers

harvard business school

Field Rd

.

harvard square

CAMBRIDGE

existing highway (to be buried)

ALLSTON

e 90

Interstat

SITE

existing railyard (to be removed) existing commuter rail lines (station to be built)

boston university

boston university LONGWOOD Common

wealth Av

e

23

Initial Concept

Plan

section

Expanded Concept

residential

24

commercial

institutional N

0

50

100

200

500

feet

Axonometric

Design Iterations

RENDERING

Donald Taylor-Patterson

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