URBAN DESIGN
UPDATE
Newsletter of the Institute for Urban Design March/April 2006 Vol. 22 No. 2
BASE CONVERSIONS PROMOTE DENSER HOUSING WITHIN CITIES AS WELL AS MORE ATTRACTIVE PEDESTRIAN AREAS AND PUBLIC TRANSPORTATION
Governors Island has a new director: Leslie Koch. Bayonne base conversion is announcing a new developer. And Lennar's Bob Santos may announce more master plan details for a new community for Irvine, CA converted from El Toro Marine Air Terminal. These topics will be on table when the Institute hosts a Base Conversion Workshop on May 25 at 2:00 in New York. Opportunities from decommissioned bases represent some of the last land available within cities as states, including New Jersey and California, toughen zoning laws. Among best conversions so far: Denver's Lowery - with successful affordable housing - and Chicago's Glenville Naval Air Station.
Governors Island
San Diego
Since December 29,1988 when the first Base Realignment and Closure Commission released its report, some 451 installations have been recommended for closure, 97 of them major bases. Less than three months ago, on February 25, another 24 major bases were recommended for closure. Naval bases, often located within existing cities, are providing new, denser, communities within old cities, especially in California. The biggest hurdle to base conversion remains removal of environmental contaminant and improvement of infrastructure says Tim Delorm, Vice President, EDAW, New York. San Diego, with two base conversions near downtown and El Toro, with new housing by Lennar linking two Irvine suburbs are among the most interesting conversions now. Bayonne as well as Governors Island are poised to change living/transportation patterns in New York harbor. San Diego is now the nation’s laboratory from which to learn about the challenges and opportunities of military base conversion to civilian use. The 425-acre San Diego Naval Training Center Conversion was launched in 1992 when the city received the base from the Navy. Now called Liberty Station, it has been redeveloped as a mixed-use project by the local Corky MacMillan development company. Located on San Diego Bay and adjacent to San Diego Airport, it provides some 350 units of middle- and upper-income housing and 57 acres of retail and office in 27 historic buildings. And, finally, 1,000 new rooms in two hotels. While Federal guidelines specify a set-aside for homeless shelter, this was not done. Instead, a coalition of homeless service providers located facilities offsite. Now local discussion is focused on the 16-acre U.S. Navy Broadway Complex in downtown San Diego, reports Michael Stepner, a former Naval officer and later City Architect. Should the second base be completed by, say 2010, the city will have acquired some 26 historic buildings on 28 acres for arts, culture and civic uses. These two conversions will give San Diego far more density in pedestrian friendly new neighborhoods than in more spread out neighborhoods that typify California suburban neighborhoods.
El Toro Marine Air Station, scheduled for closing in 1995, was originally favored as the site of an Orange County International Airport. After intense debate, a proposal for housing and mixed-use won out. And the selected developer of the 3,719-acre site was Miami-based Lennar who purchased the land for $650 million via an auction process. The mixed-use new town will increase density for nearby Irvine while providing a bridge for the two low-density communities on either side. Now that landscape architect Ken Smith has won competition for a Great Park, a Design Studio has been assembled with Steven Handel, the ecologist, Enrique Norten, architect and Mary Miss, artist.
Bayonne
On the East Coast, in New York Harbor, New Jersey’s former Military Ocean Terminal is being transformed by The Bayonne Local Redevelopment Authority into a mixed-use community extending two miles into the harbor. The BLRA has commissioned a master plan by Clarke Canton Hintz and EEK reports John Clarke. The most attractive element is the accessibility of site by rail and by ferry as well as car. The South Side of the peninsula will be set off with a large golf club adjacent to new shopping center. A two-mile Hudson River Waterfront Walkway will connect these facilities to six housing districts, including lofts and high-rise apartments. The program will include 6,700 affordable- middle- and upper-income housing units as well as 750 hotel rooms. The total 299 acres will retain 58 acres of open space. Fideleo/Roseland is being joined as the developers by another joint venture about to be announced. Estimated investment is $700-$800 million with build out in 2012-2014. By that date, New York Harbor will have been transformed from industrial to residential neighborhoods. When proposals arrive May 15 for the redevelopment of the 150 acres of Governors Island controlled by GIPEC (Government Island Preservation and Education Corporation), the name of the winning development team will be an indicator of how well the public – via parks and open space – will be served. GIPEC has now appointed EDAW to prepare a master plan. This plan will guide the development team when it is selected. The GIPEC developer strategy stands in contrast to Fort Mason, San Francisco, where the city mandated that all buildings be turned over to non-profit uses and designated a non-profit organization to carry out the program of converting the military base to public uses. But the trend is away from public-interest planning. In fact, the public auction process by which Lennar paid $650 million for the El Toro land is a step toward a new mind-set in which military services themselves may seek to retain funds when land is sold to private developer.
Harlem
PEOPLE ON THE MOVE
Harlem, toward the east end of 125th Street, may get a new gateway, reports Fellow Blake Middleton, whose firm Handel Architects LLP, is working with Drew Greenwald, Grid Properties and Joel Pickett, Gothic Development. The property, a former MTA bus parking site, will be redeveloped as moderate-income and market-rate housing. Ground-level retail and restaurants will animate the 2,000,000 square-foot project and provide services for residents in some 1,500 units of housing. The proposal also includes emergency egress for a planned Second Avenue Subway and a Latin Cultural Media Center. The project has been supported by Daniel Doctoroff in the Mayor’s Office. Approval and construction of the $500 million project to come in 2007. Lance Jay Brown returned in early March from Tblisi where he participated in international design workshop to convert 100-acre former government estate into new town-in-town. Tblisi seems to have no mechanism to bridge the gap between public and private space . . . Michael Kwartler returned to Kona, Hawaii in late March for a charette to help develop a Growth Management Plan for an area expected to receive some 20,000 people in 20 years. The arid site, at 35,000 feet, is said to be as high as Mont Blanc . . . Grahame Shane returned from Edinburgh University in late February where he spoke about city form as explored in his new book Recombinant Urbanism, which goes into a second edition from John Wiley in June . . . Ellen Posner explored "New Views of Memorialization" especially as related to Berlin in a recent dialogue with James Young, chair of jury that selected Peter Eisenman's proposal for Holocaust Memorial in Berlin. Jewish Museum, N.Y.C. was site for event . . . Ronald Fleming, Townscape Institute, travels often to Newport, where he may convert a historic estate into a conference center.
EDUCATION University of Michigan Ann Arbor
Pratt Brooklyn
Harvard Cambridge
University of Texas Austin
Douglas Kelbaugh, dean of architecture and urban planning at the University of Michigan, reports that the urban design program is up to a record high of 15 students, with applications now topping 60 per year. This year’s annual Detroitarea design charrette, titled Aerotropolis, tackled a 200-acre area around two large airports, Willow Run Airport for freight and the passenger Detroit Metro Airport. In addition, the school has opened a community design center in downtown Detroit, offering pro-bono design services and educational programs for high school students. In other University of Michigan news, well-known developer Chris Leinberger has been hired to run the school’s new real estate development program, which is led by the architecture school and shared with the business and law schools. Last winter, the college of architecture and urban planning published the Michigan Debates on Urbanism, a series of three books that cover Everyday Urbanism, New Urbanism, and Post Urbanism. At Pratt Institute’s urban design program, led by Bill McDonald, students are participating this semester in two studios in New Orleans, in conjunction with the architecture program at Tulane. “New Orleans is in a terrible situation,” states McDonald, “but it provides very fertile ground as an intellectual incubator, from a regional planning to urban design to architectural and infrastructural scale.” The two studios are run by Anne Save de Beaurecueil and Franklin Lee, and by Hernan Diaz-Alonso and Florencia Pita, respectively. Reed Kroloff and Ila Berman are the studios’ Tulane liaisons. Last semester, urban design students from the Graduate School of Design at Harvard also completed a studio on New Orleans, says program director Richard Sommer. Prior to the Katrina disaster, GSD students had participated in a studio led by Felipe Correa and Joan Busquets that spawned the book New Orleans: Strategies for a City in Soft Land, written with Tulane’s Ila Berman. Busquets and Correa also curated an exhibition entitled Cities: 10 Lines, Approaches to City and Open Territory Design, on view at the GSD last winter. Other studios this year have included a study of university planning as a model for city masterplanning in Beijing, and an examination of extreme forms of development in Dubai, in addition to a study of mass transit at Tyson’s Corner in Washington, D.C. Led by Mario Schjetnan, Ruth Carter Stevenson, and Lynn Osgood, urban design students from the University of Texas at Austin are participating in a studio this semester that examines the brownfield site of the former PEMEX oil refinery at the edge of Mexico City. Students visited the location in February, and are working in two phases, comprising a site evaluation and design proposals for alternative new use. By Anna Holtzman, Education Reporter.
Learning from Lower Manhattan
Competitions
Learning from Lower Manhattan, a 56-page report accompanied by an illustrated downloadable pdf file is now available. The conference scope intentionally went beyond the 16 acres of Ground Zero to include adjacent communities on which the report is based. Copies may be downloaded by going to www.aia.org. The conference took place 17 to 19 September 2004 and included Lance Jay Brown, Eugenie Birch, Amanda Burden, Daniel Libeskind, Michael Arad, Mark Ginsberg, Ernest Hutton, Bruce Fowle and James McCullar. Western Railyard Project in Manhattan's Far West Side has been entered by Victoria Marshall in the ASLA's Annual Awards program. Based on an urban eco-system approach, the plan codesigned by architect Meta Brunzema, proposes a mix of residential, office and retail space within an 11-acre site. Over the MTA railyards, the plan proposes a Blue Roof, where grey water is recycled from buildings and released as a thin sheet for cooling and heating for the convention center. Douglas Durst, whose firm sponsors the plan, is recognized as leader of Green Building Movement, especially for upcoming Bryant Park building on 42nd Street. Results of jury are to be announced in late April. Next consideration of plan will be by Convention Center Development Corp. as an alternative to Richard Rogers plan for Javits Center.
BOOKS
Ken Smith Landscape Architects: 2 Urban Projects. By Jane Amidon, series editor. Color, black/white illus. 144 pages. Princeton Architectural Press. $29.95. A hybrid of landscape architecture and environmental art is the way MOMA Curator Peter Reed describes Ken Smith’s work. His humorous, ironically low-brow tone, in the vein of Martha Schwartz, is evident in the plastic and rubber roof garden at MOMA’s 17,400 square-foot roof garden sitting six floors above street level and one of two main projects featured in this monograph. Also covered are six ferry landings, including 34th Street in Manhattan where Smith adds a pedestrian system that revives atavistic plantings. Another project, PS 19 in Queens, uses graphics on school wall and on paving. FXFOWLE Architects. By Kira Gould. Preface by Thomas Fisher. Color/black white illustrations. 256 pages. Images Publishing. Mulgrave Australia. $65.00. To accompany this handsome book, the editors have inserted Building a Green Practice, a chart at the top of which are two naturally ventilated houses from 1968. In other words Bruce Fowle has been preoccupied with natural ventilation, solar hearing and, since 1994, has been certified to design green buildings. The 4 Times Square building for developer Douglas Durst won AIA Honor Award. Glouster Green was a Density Competition winner. In 2005 the Calhoun School’s Green Roof opened for students. This year The Center for Global Conservation is being built. This impressive green practice has benefited from work by talented partners including Mark Strauss and Sudhir Jambhekar especially for public transportation projects, including Roosevelt Avenue Station and Stillwell Avenue Station in Coney Island. Kira Gould’s clear and elegant text makes this book a pleasure to read and convinces the reader that FXFOWLE’s practice is, indeed, among the greenest and a model for others to follow.
New Fellows
Allen Bromberger, Esq., Perlman & Perlman, New York, NY; Aliye Celik, Managing Director, Institute for Urban Design, New York, NY; F. Christopher Dimond, Chairman, Planning Services, HNTB Corporation, Kansas City, MO; Gulden Dogan, Chief Rep. at ECOSOC, Marmara Foundation, New York, NY; Philip Giang, Associate Project Manager, Cooper Robertson & Partners, New York, NY; Randolph Jones, President, The Jones Payne Group, Boston, MA; Helen Ng, Housing Portfolio Manager, Acumen Fund, New York, NY; Grahame Shane, Cooper Union, New York, NY; Robert Siegel, Principal, Robert Siegel Architects, New York, NY; Jeffrey Soule, Policy Director, American Planning Association, Washington, DC; Pablo Vengoechea, Architect, Zone Architecture, Staten Island, NY; Michael Washburn, Michael Washburn Partners, New York, NY.
UPDATE, published six times a year, welcomes contributions from members.