Nathan Laveau
Urban Design and Planning Portfolio
This portfolio contains work completed within my undergraduate and graduate programs, and my personal practice.
The themes highlighted are:
Affordable Housing
Low Impact & Resilient Design
Pedestrian Connectivity
Stormwater Management
01 - Duplex Units Concept
Rendered Images produced from Architectural Layouts.
- Towers in the Soup
Providing affordable housing whilst preserving NYCHAhousing stock.
- Tracing My Tracks
Showcasing the subjectivity of pedestrian experience and wayfinding.
- City Manual
Reimagining building typologies through ecology. 05 - Assessing and Improving the Walkability of St. Augustine
Research into ways to encourage walking in the town of St. Augustine, Trinidad and Tobago.
The following images were rendered upon receiving completed architectural layouts. All renderings were done using Twinmotion
Towers in the Soup
Graduate Spring Semester (2022)
Background
The New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) is the largest landlord in NYC serving over 330,000 residents, (approximately home to 1 in 16 New Yorkers). While NYCHA has played a significant role in tackling NYC’s affordable housing crisis, the organization faces two key issues. Firstly, NYCHA faces a 42 Billion USD budget deficit which hinders the maintainence and renovation of it’s current housing stock. Secondly, NYCHA campuses currently lack the preparedness to cope with the intensifying effects of climate change, specifically sea level rise and flooding. Currently, 30% of NCYHA’s housing stock (land equating to 12 Billion USD) is at high risk. Such is the case not only because of the deplorable conditions of the units themselves, but also the high risk locations in which the campuses exist as a result of historic redlining.
Group Objectives
As a result my group was tasked with the reimagination of NYCHA sites to achieve two main objectives:
- Firstly, to secure the building stock of NYCHA campuses against the aforementioned effects of climate change (Environmental Resilience).
- Secondly, to propose building and landscape design solutions that would both invite commercial activity on site (in an attempt to reduce NYCHA’s budget deficit), and faciltate commnitty cohesion amongst NYCHA communities and surrounding neighbourhoods (Economic and Social Resilience).
In having to choose a NYCHA site to deploy and test ideas, my group decided on the Baruch Houses site in lower Manahattan given it’s land value, large size and proximity to the coastline which was already being renovated under “The BIG U” project by Bjarke Ingels Group.
Personal Objectives
I was tasked with the site’s relandscaping which entailed the following:
1. Landscape Redesign:
- Site Re-contouring
- Proposed Planting Scenarios
- Site Plan
2. Building to Ground interaction:
- Building Section Drawing (Found at Website Link here)
Re-Contouring
Baruch Houses: Before
The principle behind the redesign of the site’s landscape was the coexistence with water as opposed to the repulsion of water. We as a group believed that this was a much more sustainable approach to cope with the future conditions presented by climate change.
The existing Baruch Houses site as shown on the left demonstrated a generally undulating landcape with the sites highest and lowest points ranging between 5ft and 15ft. Such terrain was unsuitable for the efficient drainage of the site and limited any idea of coexisting with water.
While NYCHA site’s possess higher tree densities in comparison to the average NYC lot, we as a group believed that vegetation needed to be further incorporated into the site’s landscape. With the existing condition (left), vegetation needed to be more than simply aesthetically pleasing, but be performative within an environmentally, socially and economically resilient system. More specifically, contribute to the mitigation of flooding and the insurance of on-site ecosystem biodiversity.
Baruch Houses: After
As a result, certain areas of the site were strategically elevated while others were excavated to better direct water to where we as a group believed was best. The placement of channels (“Tributaries”) through which water could flow was not determined simply based on aesthetic principles, but was more importantly informed by watershed and water accumulation analyses which may be found at the project website here.
The diagram to the left displays the new proposed topography. A landscape that directs water into an area of natural accumulation, namely a “NYCHA lake”. This lake is linked by tributaires throughout the site and will mitigate against flooding as sea levels rise. Furthermore, not only do the berms and mounds facilitate the flow of water towards the lake, but also act as supports for proposed building typologies which may also be seen here at the project website.
Upon the new topography, our new landscape plan involves a new planting strategy for the Baruch houses. The site plan (left) showcases bean shaped green spaces which are not only programmed differently but also possess different planting strategies. Each bean exists in it’s own condition which requires it’s own configuration of vegetation types. The diagrams on the next page demonstrates two examples of such conditions along with proposed vegetation configurations.
Supportive Berms
Proposed Planting Strategies
Example 1: Dry/Boggy Condition
The bean to the right is located near the permiter of the NYCHA lake at the south eastern section of the site. This bean also borders the FDR to it’s east. For this condition, boggy soil tolerant species have been proposed e.g. Flowering Dogwood, along with deciduous species that exist within somewhat drier soil conditions e.g. American Sycamore and Hornbean.
Example 2: Wet Condition
The bean to the right is located on the western perimeter of the NYCHA lake and is characteristic of a descending gradient into the lake.
For this condition, vegetation which thrive in wet and boggy soil conditions take precedence, especially at the edge of the lake E.g. Black willow, Broadleaf cattials and Royal Ferns.
Such vegetation is also proposed along the tributary given the similarity of conditions.
Tracing My Tracks
Graduate Spring Semester (2022)
Background
We all possess a unique assortment of personal experiences and perceptions that shape the way we interact and interpret our urban environment. Inspired by Mark Barton’s “World View Map”, in this project I sought to explore and represent the experiential aspect of movement through urban space; allowing the representation of urban elements to be dictated not by GIS mapping, but rather by personal experiences and perceptions of urban elements.
With our differences in perception and experiences come instinctive methods of association when we see things in our urban environment. While for one, a tree perhaps evokes memory of their favourite childhood fruit, for another this same tree may associate with their favourite movie. The differences in these associations can then inform how valuable an urban element is to an individual. Understanding and visualising these differences across individuals on a large scale can therefore become an effective exercise in approaching urban challenges influenced by public perception.
Personal Objectives
Within this individual project, I was tasked with producing 3 deliverables:
- The Mapping out of my Urban Experience
- The production of a video highlighting the most significant components of my urban experience
- Producing a hypothetical competition briefing related to my study which can be found here.
Tracing My Tracks
Tracing My Tracks
Tracing My Tracks
Trainstation
Unfamiliar
Unfamiliar tracks between stations
Familiar
Woodlawn
Mapping out My Experience
The “Tracing My Tracks” drawing depicts the linear path of my commute from my home in Scarsdale to Grand Central Station. On this path, one can identify several train station stops along the way represented at different scales of radii. The radius surrounding a station is dependent on my familiarity with the space around the respective station. Train stations with larger radii are therefore stations in more familiar areas, while train stations with smaller radii are those in less familiar areas.
Layered upon this familiarity, along the left-hand side of the drawing, is my associative process; the past experiences and memories that are evoked as I move from station to station. These experiences are also scaled, but scaled based on the intensity of them in my memory; intense memories are represented at larger scales and less intense memories at smaller scales.
Important to note is that all train station stops between Scarsdale and Grand Central Station are not all depicted on this map; many have been left out of the map. Such is represented by the dotted lines in between stations to notate unfamiliar space in between the familiar. The stations shown are rather those that I can recall based on their significance to my personal experience travelling this route.
Lastly, along the right-hand side of the drawing, I attempt to depict the accessibility to transport around the three most significant stations on my journey. The way I get around these particular stations has a considerable impact on both my journey and the memories of the journey that are evoked as I move along in the train.
I attempt to bring my experiences to life in the video found here
City Manual
Graduate Fall Semester (2021)
Background
The global trend of urbanization has seen both the influx of people into cities and the expansion of the physical urban environment; increasing the percentage of impervious area that is occupied by cities. Studies of a city’s “urban fabric” indicate that about 60 percent of urban surfaces are covered by roofs or pavements (Global Cool Cities Alliance (GCCA)). With respect to New York, about 72% of its urban surface is impervious with roofs accounting for 65% of this impervious area.
These Impervious surfaces have had direct influence on the extent to which cities are affected by rainfall events. The events of hurricane Ida in New York city proved testament to such. Futhermore, not only are these impervious surfaces inefficient in stormwater managmement, but also characteristic of high heat absorption and emittance rates that exacerbate the urban heat island effect (US EPA), which in and of itself possesses negative effects on human health and energy consumption.
Group Objective
Noting the latter, within this project my partner and I sought to reimagine the city’s impervious surfaces to be performative through augmented ecology for efficient rain/storm-water management, heat mitigation, reduced energy consumption, ecosystem biodiversity and improved human health. In so doing, contributing to a city manual that advocates for ecology centric design.
To deploy our ideas into a real world context, we were provided the Trump Golf Links site, located in the Bronx, NY.
Personal Objectives
Within this group project, I was tasked with producing 2 deliverables:
- Coding building typologies that maximized performative surface area in CityEngine
- Running hypothetical vegetation combinations on these building surfaces to explore their benefits in water conservation and flood mitigation.
Building in CityEngine
Building Construction using CGA
Central to the construction of the buildings was the provision of spaces for vegetation to thrive. It was imperative that the buildings provided ample horizontal surface area for the growth of various vegetation combinations. To achieve such, each floor of each building was displaced at random to provide balconies for planting. The diagrams below display the sequence by which building construction took place in CityEngine using C++ coding.
Parcel
Setbacks and Extrude Split Building into Floors
HighDensityLot --> FrontYardGarden
FrontYardGarden --> setback(meterConverter.feet(FrontYard))
{ street.front: Garden| remainder: RearYardGarden}
RearYardGarden --> setback(meterConverter.feet(RearYard)) { street.back: Garden| remainder: SideYardGarden}
SideYardGarden --> setback(meterConverter.feet(SideYard))
{ street.side: Garden| remainder: HighDensityBuilding}
HighDensityBuilding --> extrude(world.up, meterConverter.feet(waste. Height)) SplitBuilding
SplitBuilding --> label(“building”) split(y){meterConverter.feet(15): comp(f){street.front: FirstFloor.
street.back: NIL
|street.right: NIL
|street.left: NIL
|object.bottom: FirstFloorColumns}
| ~1: OtherFloors }
split(y){meterConverter.feet(12): feet(12): set(floorNo,
#DoNothing.#at
else:
case
else:
OtherFloors -->
SlideFloors --> case
else:
else:
Slide Floors Apply Facade Texture
split(y){meterConverter.feet(12): SlideFloors | meterConverter. feet(12): DontSlideFloors keep.}*
Floors -->
comp(f){ object.top: FloorTop
| street.front: Tile | street.back:Tile
Apply Green Roof Vegetation
ReportTopSurfaces(surfaceType) --> case surfaceType == “Balcony”: set(roofArea, meterConverter.sqmeterTosqft(geometry.area()))
set(floorNo, split.index + 1)
case split.index < 2:
|
#DoNothing.#at first floor
Commercial
case split.index +1 == split.total: translate(rel, object, meterConverter.feet (rand(20)),0,meterConverter.feet(rand(20)) ) Floors
ecology.ReportTopSurfaces(“Roofs”)
translate(rel, object, meterConverter.feet (rand(20)),0,meterConverter.feet(rand(20)) )
Tile -->
| street.right: Tile | street.left: Tile}
split(x){ meterConverter.feet(9): Balcony }*
Balcony --> extrude(meterConverter.feet(rand(2,6 ))) label(“balcony”)
Facade -->
setupProjection(0, scope.xy, 5, 5) texture(FacadeTexture) projectUV(0)
colorTiles --> color(“#608341”) Floors --> comp(f){ object.top: FloorTop | street.front: Tile | street.back:Tile | street.right: Tile | street.left: Tile}
Tile --> split(x){ meterConverter.feet(9): Balcony }*
Balcony --> extrude(meterConverter.feet(rand(2,6 ))) label(“balcony”)
Facade -->
setupProjection(0, scope.xy, 5, 5) texture(FacadeTexture) projectUV(0)
else:
report(“Roofarea”, roofArea) report(“Soil Grade”, soilGrade) set(rainfallIntensity, meterConverter.feet(geometry.height()))
set(runoffSavings, ReportRunoffSavings(rainfallIntensity, roofArea, soilGrade)) report(“Runoff Savings”, runoffSavings) vegetation.balconyPlantMachine(vegetation.VegetationGroup1)
set(roofArea, meterConverter.sqmeterTosqft(geometry.area())) report(“Roofarea”, roofArea) report(“Soil Grade”, soilGrade)
set(rainfallIntensity, meterConverter.feet(geometry.height())) #report runoff saving will go here: set(runoffSavings, ReportRunoffSavings(rainfallIntensity, roofArea, soilGrade)) report(“Runoff Savings”, runoffSavings) vegetation.roofPlantMachine(vegetation.VegetationList) NIL
Planting in CityEngine
Once the buildings were coded, vegetation was applied to the building surfaces. A vegetation catalog which plant species type and it’s stuitable placement in the building system was developed. Combinations of each type were placed on different building surfaces based on the following parameters: growth in full sun or shade, required depth, pesticide resistance and deer resistance. All data was adopted into code and then color coded for representation in City Engine as seen below.
Purple/Fire Moss (Ceratodon purpureus)
Wild Carrot (Daucus carota)
Stahorn Sumac (Rhus typhina)
Daffodil (Narcissus)
Buttercup (Ranunculus)
Coneflower (Echinacea)
Grass (Poaceae)
Sensitive Fern (Onoclea sensibilis)
False Indigo Bush (Amorpha fruticosa)
Hedge Bindweed (Calystegia sepium
Cattail (Typha)
Warnstofia Moss (Warnstorfia exannulata)
Cabomba (Cambomba) Hornwort (Anthocerotophyta)
Soft Rush (Juncus effusus)
Water Mint (Mentha aquatica)
Water Lily (Nymphaeaceae)
Iris (Iris)
Saponaria officinalis (Bouncing Bet)
Cinnamon Fern (Osmundastrum cinnamomeum)
which indicated each vegetation required soil representation
Facade Vegetation
Bromeliod (Bromeliaceae)
Devil’s Ivy (Epipremnum
Stahorn Sumac (Rhus typhina)
Coneflower (Echinacea)
False Indigo Bush (Amorpha fruticosa)
Hedge Bindweed (Calystegia sepium
Japanese Honeysuckle (Lonicera japonica)
Winter Creeper (Euonymus fortunei)
Trumpet Vine (Campsis radicans)
Oriental Bittersweet (Celastrus orbiculatus)
Cinnamon Fern (Osmundastrum cinnamomeum)
Purple/Fire Moss (Ceratodon purpureus)
Pin Oak Tree (Quercus palustris)
SweetgumTree (Liquidambar styraciflua)
Red Maple (Acer rubrum Bromeliod (Bromeliaceae)
Wild Carrot (Daucus carota)
Grass (Poaceae)
Sensitive Fern (Onoclea sensibilis)
Sensitive Fern (Onoclea sensibilis)
Saponaria officinalis (Bouncing Bet)
aureum)
Croton (Codiaeum variegatum)
Testing the Trump Links Site
Once a full system incorporating performative ecological surfaces was functioning, my partner and I began to speculate the hypothetical scenario of deploying the system on the Trump Links site shown in the map below.
Before
To understand the possible improvement in stormwater management, a control scenario was first imagined. If one were to develop the site with the same percentage of impervious roof surfaces that is present in the Bronx, for a 3inch rainfall event, the site would only save about 5 million gallons of rainfall. Moreover the site would lack biodiversity, and continue to be conducive to the Urban Heat Island effect.
After
With the conceptualized system deployed on site, in the same hypothetical scenario of a 3 inch rainfall event, the site saves 185 million more gallons of rainfall as a result of added performative horizontal surface area. In addition, a variety of vegetation species are added which contribute to carbon sinking and a cooler urban environment for site residents.
20, 000 + plants
38 different plant Species
1.3 sq. miles of horizontal building surface Area on a site of 0.5 sq. miles
185 million more gallons of rainfall saved
Assessing and Improving the Walkability of St. Augustine
Undergraduate Final Semester (2020)
Abstract
This study sought to obtain a general pedestrian perception of the walkability of St. Augustine, Trinidad and Tobago. Learning the public’s perception would provide insight into the improvements required for a more walkable urban area. Within this study, the walkability factor is broken into 5 main components to be assessed qualitatively through questionnaire distribution. These components comprised of Security from Criminal Activity, Protection from Moving Vehicles, Thermal Comfort, Physical Walkable Infrastructure and Accessibility for the Differently Abled. Of the 5 walkability components, Security from Criminal Activity, Physical Walkable Infrastructure and Accessibility for the Differently Abled were proven to be the least satisfactory by questionnaire respondents and were therefore most accounted for in the redesigns of 3 of the least walkable streets in the area. Along with addressing the gap that exists between walkability principles applied globally and their applicability to small island developing states, this study also addresses the gap between effective urban policy formulation and the actual implementation of such policies in Trinidad and Tobago.
Key Concepts: Walkability, sidewalk security, sidewalk comfort, Small Island Developing States