NE ON Norflok Arts District Design Project
Architecture Student Hampton Univeristy Engineer Students Old Dominion University
Table of Contents Background........................................................................................................................... 1 Design team and Chesterfield Heights....................................................................... 2 Design team and the Hague........................................................................................ 3 Design team and NEON............................................................................................... 3 NEON.................................................................................................................................... 4 Community engagement............................................................................................ 5 Urban design challenge .............................................................................................. 6 Water management challenge.................................................................................... 6 Assumptions......................................................................................................................... 4 Chrysler/Opera House Mall................................................................................................ 4 Roadway reconfiguration ................................................................................................... 4 The Terraces......................................................................................................................... 4 Interventions........................................................................................................................ 4 At the Chrysler............................................................................................................... 6 At the Opera House...................................................................................................... 6 Along Olney................................................................................................................... 6 At Cedar Grove ............................................................................................................. 6 New Construction................................................................................................................ 4 Retrofit: Green roofs and cisterns............................................................................... 6 Mixed Use at Granby .................................................................................................... 6 Intersections................................................................................................................... 6 Conclusion............................................................................................................................ 4
Background: Design Team
and Chesterfield Heights In the fall of 2014, a group of architecture students from Hampton University embarked on a project with local NGO Wetlands Watch to study possible design interventions in a local historic district with the aim of helping residents and their homes be better prepared to deal with flood waters prior to a major storm. The neighborhood was Chesterfield Heights, a neighborhood listed on the National Register of Historic Places, and home to a population of predominately African-American and low to moderate- income families. With the help of the Chesterfield Heights Civic League, walking tours and community engagement sessions were organized and preliminary design strategies developed based on community members’ reports on current conditions, emerging conditions, and mutually held values and aspirations. By the spring of 2015, students were joined by engineering students from Old Dominion University, and created a working group called the Coastal Community Design Collaborative. Students’ work was informed by review and discussion sessions with area specialists in many pieces of the puzzle - policy makers, marine scientists, preservationists, landscape architects, and structural and environmental engineers. From this work emerged a preliminary engineering report that identified proposed interventions, the impact of each on flooding within the district, and preliminary cost estimates for each.
Also developed were a set of design parameters: -That all design work should grow out of discovery and discussion in community engagement -That both people and buildings should remain in place into the next century -That wherever possible preference was to be given to design strategies that did not require powered infrastructure, but rather natural structures like living shorelines and storage solutions relying on gravity rather than pumps. -That upgrading the undersized storm water system represented an expense unlikely to be made or indeed likely to be the best use of scarce resources. -Those interventions should work as a network of differently scaled installations that provide redundancies. A series of parcel by parcel interventions can create a mighty reduction in flooding. -That each property owner has a role to play
At a presentation of the project to the Watershed Task Force, several city officials were present. In the midst of planning an international design workshop called Dutch Dialogues Virginia, they were intrigued by the mix of proposed interventions and re-shaped the upcoming workshop to include the Chesterfield Heights area. Students and faculty were invited to participate in it. During the summer of 2015, faculty participated in crafting of the Commonwealth of Virginia’s entry into the US Department of Housing and Urban Development’s National Disaster Resilience Competition, which included the Ohio Creek Watershed, of which Chesterfield Heights is a part. The project was the sole one designated for funding. One hundred and fifteen million dollars has been awarded for implementation.
The student-initiated portions of the project scheduled for installation are: - A “living shoreline” - a remaking of the eroding shoreline to stabilize it and provide a layer of protection as well as an improvement of water quality and ecosystems through wetland augmentation and oyster reefs. - The raising of the Kimball Terrace roadway to serve as a dyke with a floodgate to allow the use of a pre-existing wetland area to retain storm water runoff from upstream areas until river water levels drop after a storm event. - The installation of permeable pavement at sidewalks and on street parking areas, and the remaking of the vegetated area between sidewalk and street as a bioretention filtration system, to reduce street flooding and improve water quality. - The initiation of a parcel by parcel program aimed at keeping all water that falls on a parcel on that parcel through the use of cisterns and rain gardens.
Background: Design team
and the Hague
The Sponge group worked at several scales. It was proposed that existing public park areas over poor soil and high ground water be regraded to continue to serve as parks but also to do service during floods to retain water. Park areas over better soil with lower ground water were proposed to have cisterns installed beneath them or to be configured as walled rain gardens. At the scale of city streets, it was proposed that After a significant community engagement process with meet- sidewalks and on street parking areas be paved with pervious ings organized by residential block, and with community stakehold- materials and that the verge area between sidewalk and street ers such as the Chrysler Museum of Art, design work began. Students be replanted as bio-retention collection areas, with the aim of were divided into teams. One worked on barriers to keep sea water reducing on-street flooding. As in Chesterfield Heights, it was out; the other designed “sponges� - strategies for retaining rain water proposed that a parcel by parcel retention be established and until the storm water system recover after a weather and tide event. promoted with the aim that all rain falling on a parcel be held The Barrier group provided three proposals: the installa- on that parcel for re-use for irrigation, for re-charging ground tion of check valves on stormwater outfalls to keep sea water from water through eventual infiltration, or for release after the flowing back into the neighborhood streets is a critical compo- storm water system had recovered functionality after a storm. nent. When modeled using EPA SWMM software, this proved to be the single most effective intervention. The team also looked at two options for raising the sea wall around the basin: one a sheet pile extension and one a water-actuated wall deployed by buoyancy. Both solutions worked to maintain the utility of the public park
The Hague
By the fall of 2015, the design team took on assessing adaptation strategies for another National Register of Historic Places neighborhood, the area of Ghent around the armored tidal estuary called the Hague. The area is lower than Chesterfield Heights, has experienced significantly more regular and destructive inundation, has a higher water table, and poorer soils. Much of the land on which buildings stand is filled creek bed.
Barrier Sponge
Background: Design team and NEON The next project being undertaken by the team is Norfolk’s emerging arts district. Currently something of a hodgepodge of roadways, vast paved parking areas, and a vast variety of building types, the area floods dramatically. It is adjacent to the prior project at the Hague, overlapping it at the Chrysler Museum of Art. As such, the students felt they could focus on managing flooding from solely rainfall, on the assumption that the sea level rise issues that impact the area had been solved with proposals in their prior project. The district is home to both the Chrysler and the Harrison Opera House, which face each other across a tangle of roads. Its section of Granby Street, a principal through street across the city, is supporting small arts-focused venues, eateries, breweries, and a small public park. Scattered elsewhere in the district are the d’Art Center, Glass Wheel Studio, and a theater group. Public art is springing up to help brand the area, but the web of streets and the predominance of parking lots resist a cohesive identity and way finding is a serious challenge. During heavy rainfall the streets and intersections flood so badly that roadways are essentially impassable.
NEON:Community Engagement Although there are a number of established arts venues within the district there, at present, few residents. The team’s customary community engagement process, as a consequence, involved interviews with stakeholders. These included the assistant director of the Chrysler Museum of Art, the head of the d’Art Centre, and a session with what is known as the NEON Steering Committee. Students also volunteered at the NEON Festival, where they met more stakeholders and participatted in an exciting annual event. Finally, students met with Work Program Architects, who were tasked with organizing branding and way finding issues in the district; and with Ray Gindroz, the city’s urban design consultant, who also holds commissions for providing master planning services for the Chrysler, and design consultation to a private developer who is planning redevelopment of a full block within the district.
NEON: Urban Design Challenge A significant challenge to the district is a visual chaos that surpasses a state of eccentric individuality to achieve a series of experiences that are seemingly disconnected and disorienting. The principal cultural institutions – the Chrysler and Opera House - stand opposite each other with a tangle of roadways making safe pedestrian passage erratic and confusing. The apparent third principal building in the composition is a convenience store on a non-aligned geometry intruding into the axis between the two buildings. This collection is at some distance from the developing incubating arts-oriented businesses on Granby Street. Between them lie many blocks defined principally by parking lots with few occupied buildings fronting the streets. A remote city parking lot at Cedar Grove is intended to serve visitors to the NEON district, but passage from it requires another erratic path over busy roadways, after which neither the Chrysler/Harrison node, nor the Granby node are immediately noticeable or welcoming. Interviews identified a real concern among stakeholders that the district needed both a way finding program and a strengthened branded identity program.
NEON: Water Management Challenge The team’s work in other districts has led to the conclusion that solutions to flooding rely on building storage capabilities for water, ideally allowing infiltration back to ground water or, where soils conditions do not allow it, holding it until it can be released into the storm water systems. The latter, given the increase in levels of precipitation, and the need to close outfalls to prevent incursion of sea water into inland areas, are undersized and significantly dysfunctional during storms. But, after a storm has passed and sea levels have dropped, are useful for a measured release of stored water. Even if this is achieved In the NEON district, however, there is also so much paved street and sidewalk area, that storage facilities that accumulate in the streets, is necessary. Much of the district is built on filled creek beds which are attempting to reassert themselves during flooding. Kyle’s overlay of historic shoreline Fig. 2 . Overlays the historic creek line on the district plan, show clearly the position of Chrysler and Harrison within old creek bed, as well as the eastern most branch subsuming much of Olney Rd. Historic plats at the Sergeant Memorial Room show that this stretch of creek was once channelized into a canal serving manufacturing facilities in the area. All over the region, it is filled creek beds that re-fill with flood waters most reliably. The materials used to fill used in creeks - the organic matter of pre-existing wetland now presumably peat, the clay and mud of the original creekbed, loose brickbat and random available soils types - are now presumably efficient wicking materials for sea water.
As in all of our district studies, finding reliable studies of subsurface soils is a great challenge. While city officials offered to help out, the studies were never completed. From the prior year’s work we had been given a soils report done for the Chrysler for its last expansion. The city also provided two shallower borings studies further west on Olney at Boutetourt and Olney. base plan marking borings sites with A,B, and C marked. From these studies we can see that the soil has a relatively high clay content, which makes infiltration solutions difficult to rely upon, and a relatively high groundwater presence at 1-5 feet.
The high groundwater means that storage systems cannot be buried deep into the ground. Given the volume of storage required to alleviate the areas flooding, storage facilities must, we concluded, rise above grade to achieve useful volumes. Since our ideal strategy of burying storage systems that rely on gravity to fill them and provide infiltration seepage into subsurface soils, cannot be achieved with such soils and ground water conditions, the team reluctantly concluded that pumps will be necessary. We propose generating sufficient stored power through photovoltaic collection in batteries to allow them to function even during power outages. Also explored was eduction pumping, which harnesses pressure from fire suppression lines to provide pump power. The percentage of impervious surface within the district has been noted as a cause for deep waters, as well as deep concern. The team proposed a number of interventions including pervious parking grids for the opera house, water retaining parking garages on sites where we were allowed to consider options, planted bioretention installation along sidewalks and bike lanes, permeable sidewalks and on-street parking zones. Green roofs would also be added on existing buildings, the structural bearing capacity of which could be assessed and proposed new construction. Clearly, individual property owners who could be persuaded to join this parcel by parcel retention program would make important contributions to flood mitigation.
Assumptions The team began the design project assuming that the solutions proposed in the study of the Hague represented a viable solution to sea water incursion. Specifically the proposed installation of check valves on storm water outfalls should safeguard the area from sea water backing up into the streets from submerged outfalls. Second, it was presumed that one of the three barrier solutions designed to stop flooding in the Hague - the Fugro proposal to put a barrier under the Brambleton Avenue bridge which the city was unable to fund, might be built. Of that, one of the team’s two proposals to raise the bulkhead around the Hague would be adopted and installed.
As a corollary, the team assumed water storage proposals from their prior project along Olney - cisterns under Botetourt Gardens, and dry swales in the open areas along Olney, would reduce the volume of water draining to the NEON district
Initiatives
During the last and current project, discussions with staff at the Chrysler, currently entered from Memorial Drive on the Hague, there emerged an interest in having the Museum have an entrance facing the opera house, opening itself to the NEON district. The team assumed this could be proposed. The block bounded by Olney, Grace, Duke, and Boush is, we have learned, under consideration as a development property. Indeed several team members had worked on the proposal as a studio project the prior year and we were encouraged by a consultant to consider taking the proposal most favored by the developer in that studio and develop it with water management capabilities. This was done. A second newly acquired development site might also be considered for such treatment but the team was unable to find a meeting time with the second developer, so have left said property as is, but have hope that it too can contribute to water management in the area.
Our aspirations were to:
Finally, we have made a bold and impertinent assumption of acquisition: the 7-11 fronting Olney has been a great and profitable success since its opening. However its siting and form are so disruptive to any attempt to organize the area between the Chrysler and Harrison into a cohesive cultural inclined public open space (housing water management features), that we have led ourselves to assume a fantasy that an alternate site might be found for the building.
-Find areas to store water during storm events to mitigate flooding, -Use interventions to strengthen the legibility and the utility of two strong existing nodes, the area between the opera and museum, and the area of Granby supporting store front activities -To demonstrate the viability of a parcel-by-parcel rooftop disconnection program which, if adopted, would reduce street flood waters, to that which falls on the street -To strengthen the connections between the Cedar Grove parking area and the NEON district, and -To increase water management strategies and way finding strategies along Olney to strengthen connectivity and pedestrian pleasure between the two existing nodes cited above.
Chrysler/Opera House Mall :
Roadway reconfiguration:
Many have dreamed over the years of an open park or mall area stretching between the imposing and handsome principal structures of the district, the Harrison Opera House and the Chrysler Museum of Art. A public space commensurate with the architectural dignity and cultural value of the institutions would be a significant public amenity. Sadly, between them instead lies a tangle of roadways and a Seven-Eleven convenience store. As mentioned previously, the team allowed itself the design parameter of assuming a relocation of the latter.
The Boush/Llewellyn corridor is a principal north south connector between downtown and the northern suburbs. It was assumed it must continue to carry its traffic unimpeded. did we reshape it at all? . Virginia Beach Boulevard does not carry a significant volume of traffic between Granby Street and the Chrysler. Proposals are included that make use of the outside lanes for water management, reducing the cartway to one lane in each direction. Virginia Beach Boulevard, at its terminus, still focuses on the handsome facade of the Chrysler on Olney, and also allows for a connection between the Boulevard and Duke Street.
The Terraces: Between the reconfigured terminal block of Virginia Beach Boulevard on the east and the fenced back yards of housing fronting Mowbray Arch on the west, a terraced public park area is proposed. The terraces are created atop semi-submerged, semi-emergent “Storm Trapâ€? cisterns. Each terrace proposes a different setting including a formal garden for private reflection, a playground, human-scale chess sets, , a flexible public gathering space with provisions for food sale and a display of sculpture. It rises from a sunken pool adjacent to Olney to a height of 4 ½ ft above grade on Llewellyn. Access from Llewellyn is provided by a ramp way with water features. The bike path connection from Llewellyn to Olney rises and falls with the terraces along their eastern side. Along the western side, facing Virginia Beach Boulevard is a series of plantings and benches, continuing proposed installations along Olney. The intent of the terrace intervention is to provide a variety of public open spaces, of different scales and characters, tailored to different sorts of leisure and pleasure, Also intended was the reinforcing of the axial relationship between the front facades of the Chrysler and the Harrison, each of which is reinforced by a pair of towers. The terraces have a storage capacity of __________ gallons of water. Ideally, stored water at such a scale is used to recharge ground water, which will be possible to a small extent given the character of the soils below. Some stored water can be used to irrigate plantings in the park areas, some will need to be released
back to the storm water system when it returns to functionality after a storm. For this intervention, pumps will be required both to fill the cisterns and to release it. We believe the pumps can and should be powered by renewable energy, specifically photovoltaic energy stored in batteries. The team also explored education powered by connection to the pressurized water within the fire hydrant system.
The Terraces:
Interventions at the Chrysler: The team had the pleasure of working with the Chrysler for several semesters. As mentioned previously, from prior semesters’ work the team had learned that staff is considering relocating the entrance to Olney from Memorial, or making a second entrance on Olney. The team believes this is a good way to bring the museum into a closer and more legible relationship with the rest of the district and has looked at integrating the new entrance way into its street-scaling interventions. Also developed in prior semesters was a proposal for a semi-submerged parking structure on the surface lot on the south side of Grace Street. As visitors during significant weather events are rare, it seemed a particularly appropriate fit for such a garage, the storage capacity of which would be _______ gallons. A terraced pubic park was proposed for its roof.
This semester, the team also looked at a roof top disconnection program for the Chrysler. During its last renovation all basement areas and crawl spaces were shorn of all utilities and artifacts. These abandoned areas are proposed to serve as housing for a series of large scale cisterns which could hold the __________ gallons which otherwise run-off and increase flood waters during a ten year storm.
Interventions at the Opera House: The Harrison Opera House sits on a vast lot, nearly all of which is impervious, making it a generator, in a ten year storm, of _______ gallons of run-off and _______ gallons in a one year storm. While the vast areas of parking are put to use during performances, these events are usually at night and are not in daily use. These represent perfect conditions for the installation of grid parking material. Originally developed as the proprietary Hastings Paver, there are now many competing materials marketed. What all have in common is a rigid grid (of concrete or plastic) within which grass can grow and water can infiltrate. Beneath both the planted and parking areas of the Opera House property, our engineering student teammates have proposed many subsurface retention devices which have been sized to hold _________ gallons. In front of the opera house, the team has proposed using, again, a “Storm Trap� cistern system, semi-submerged and semi-emergent as a monument sign/way finding device on Llewellyn. Sized for a _________ gallon capacity, the forms could also be used for changeable outdoor art display.
Interventions along Olney: Olney Road was once an important east-west cross-town connector and may one day be again. Today, especially in the zone between the two principal nodes of the district, it is rather forlorn. At one point there was an industrial canal running through the area, and the team considered proposing re-instituting it. However, we were persuaded the potential of Olney to connect parts of the city disconnected by the installation of super-blocks of public housing to the east and so focus was placed on reviving it into a pleasant through-street for bicycles, pedestrians, and the slight volume of automobiles it carries east of Boush Street. Water storage interventions were proposed that will deploy only when flooding has already made the street impassable. For the long block of Olney running between Boush and Granby a proposal is made for a system created in part by a series of benches along the sidewalk, which alternate with planted areas. Between the benches and across Olney at each end of the block, it is proposed that self-deploying flood barriers be installed. The system, manufactured in Belgium, is activated by buoyancy when water fills a well in which the wall is housed below grade. (We note there is a competing Austrian system that claims to produce energy through solar radiation as well, although its specifics have been less researched by the team.) As flood waters rise, then, so do the walls. The intent is to use the paved surface of Olney as the bottom of an on-demand cistern created by the impervious street and the water-actuated walls. As cars cannot get through the area during floods, making use of the block in this way should cause
no greater inconvenience than when the streets are flooded. Again, the intention is to store water until the storm water system can recover. A new series of bike lanes has recently been added in the area. In most installations, a lane previously used to carry automobile traffic has been appropriated and divided into a bike lane of approximately five feet. Shielding cyclists from automobiles the remainder of the lane, 3-5 feet in width, is painted with caution stripes and fitted with white plastic bollards, an assemblage not popular in the neighborhood. The team proposes that these buffer areas be used for planted bio-retention basins. While the available width is less than Virginia’s Department of Environmental Quality specifications for water management interventions that can be used for Total Maximum Daily Load calculations, this does not mean a contribution would still not be made to water management. The team intends to work with DEQ on the design and presumed function.
Finally, the team proposes using the city-owned lot on Olney, which formerly housed a business called Cofer’s and is now vacant, for a skate board park designed to store water during floods. By excavating and the installation of appropriate substrate of media, many of its features would hold water during storms, and eventually the water would recharge the groundwater through infiltration. A low wall around the park would confine activity within and also, with the use of self-deploying flood gates, increase the amount of water that could be stored to __________ gallons. The length of this block of Olney is flanked principally by parking lots, which contribute little to street life but much to flooding. The team proposes that discussions be initiated with private property owners about the installation of cisterns and/or wall-and-floodgate systems to store water below grade where possible and on the surface where possible.
Interventions at Cedar Grove: Visitors to NEON are directed to park at Cedar Grove, a hummock atop an abandoned gasification plant. It is east of the district, across Monticello Avenue. Stakeholders interviewed pointed to how hard it is for pedestrians to cross Monticello, and how it is hard to find the nodes of activity from a path along Virginia Beach Boulevard. The team decided to address these issues. Since the parking lot is already quite high above the ambient grade of the area, the team proposed an artful light weight pedestrian bridge to make the journey back to grade begin on the far, safe, side of Monticello. While the team generally abjures elevated pedestrian walkways in preference to on-grade activity enlivening streets, in this case there were several attractions. Conceived as a light-weight timber suspension structure, the bridge would provide a sense of gateway, sculptural interest, and safe passage across an intractably busy intersection. Pedestrians would thus arrive within the district rather than having to fight their way through a stressful tangle of traffic. In terms of water management, the acreage of impervious surface at the cedar Grove lot is vast and the amount of run-off it dumps on the streets below enormous. The team proposes to retain floodwaters within the lot by the installation of a 3’ high wall around its perimeter. Access and exit points would be fitted with flood gates. The volume of water that could be retained would be _______ gallons.
Mixed Use at Granby: The team proposes a new infill building at the corner of Virginia Beach Boulevard and Granby to house a mix of commercial and residential uses. The structure is designed with several goals in mind: First, it will increase options for living within the district. Second, it will provide a potential increase in revenue for the city. Third, it will provide a crucial welcome and way finding element for the district. The pedestrian, approaching from Cedar Grove would move toward what should be designed as an eye-catching corner tower element. It would mark both a gate toward the Chrysler node, and herald the intersection of Granby and its node immediately to the north. The proposed building would be best fitted with a green roof, and have cisterns below the ground floor level. It could thus create no additional run-off. Similar features are proposed for new construction on the block bounded by Olney, Grace, Duke and Bute Streets. Not only are green roof areas proposed, but the design would contain garage areas that could be used to store water during serious flooding. Further the proposal uses a terrace, mandated by current building codes elevation requirements in flood zones, to retain some ________ gallons of water. The form of the building is cut back at the intersection of Duke and Olney to reinforce the geometry of the terraces and the principal cultural buildings of the Chrysler and Opera House. The plaza it makes is also designed to retain water, which is lead to it by the regraded intersections.
Retrofit: Green Roofs and Cisterns: Reducing run-off is clearly an important component of reducing flooding. In addition to including green roofs - planted and capable of keeping a significant amount of rainfall off the streets - on the two new buildings proposed, it is hoped that retrofits of existing structures will be possible. While the team was able to determine that the bearing capacity of the Work Release building was adequate for such a retrofit, each building considering such an installation will need to verify the strength of their existing roof structure. The team believes all property owners should be encouraged to consider it. Similarly any property owners who are subject to persuasion should be encouraged to retain their run-off from roof areas and parking with cisterns and/or the sort of retention area proposed for Cedar Grove with walls and flood planes.
Intersections: Currently flood waters drain to low points, which include intersections. Many of our storage interventions are located adjacent to these intersections. Proposed is a reconfiguration of the intersections so that they are raised, with gentle slopes, thereby directing flood water into off street storage areas. The intervention is also intended to contribute to branding and way finding for the district: the raised intersections are read as colorful circular forms. The exterior band of the circle will be highlighted with NEON-themed color to highlight paths toward other NEON district nodes of activity. It is believed that this relatively low cost, water-management intervention will also make pathways easier to follow and bring a fun and useful reinforcement of district identity.