Category: Architecture (Page 1 of 2)

Part II: It’s in the Details

April 9, 2024 / odrozd

By Sam Hayes

In my last blog post, I encouraged you to explore the hidden secrets of buildings by simply looking up. To continue on this path, I wanted to share a few details of other buildings across UNC’s campus, each harboring its own narrative etched in bricks and mortar.

You can tell a lot about a building by its brick. If you ever talk to historic preservationists or an architectural historian, you may be surprised to learn how much the conversation focuses on brick. Brick is a powerful tool for building construction that dates back thousands of years, and yet, not every brick is equal. In fact, as we walk around UNC’s campus you will notice hundreds of different types of brick. Sometimes, a single building may have several different types of brick, such as Person Hall across campus from New East.

If you look closely, you can see the different variations in brick color at Person Hall.

Person Hall exhibits a mosaic of brick varieties, indicating multiple renovations throughout its existence. We can also see sections of the brick that are deteriorating, a direct result of the University sandblasting the building to remove the original stucco.

A view of Old East. Look at the third floor brick and try and find the different patters compared to the first two floors.

Adjacent to New East stands Old East, a testament to the revelation’s brickwork can unveil. Looking at the third floor of the building, you will notice that the pattern is different than the first two stories. The first two are what’s known as a Flemish bond, where every row has a short brick and a long brick. The third floor transitions to a common bond, which has a row of short bricks, and then several rows of long bricks, and then another row of short bricks.

To the left of the cutter downspout, you will notice a line in the brick.

This gives us a clue that something has happened to this building, but the telltale sign that there was a change in the building is located at the northern end of the building. Adjacent to one vertical row of windows, you can see a line in the brick to the left of which there is a different brick pattern. Ultimately, the third floor and northern portion of Old East were added at a later point.

Our final stop on campus is the Old Playmakers Theatre. One of two National Historic Landmarks on campus, the Old Playmakers Theatre is a neoclassical-style building modeled off of a Greek temple. If you glance up at the columns on the front of the building, you might guess that they are traditional Corinthian columns, a standard column used in neoclassical buildings. But if you look closer, you will realize that they are made to depict corn!

To “Americanize” the Greek Temple, corn was used in the capital of the column.

This is an excellent place to end our tour, as it proves my point that if you stop, look up, and really take an opportunity to appreciate the buildings around you, you never know what detail you may find.

Sam Hayes is a second-year master’s student in the City and Regional Planning program at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. At UNC-CH, he specializes in housing and community development with an emphasis on how historic preservation can be used as an anti-gentrification tactic in changing communities. Sam loves hiking, reading, and spending time exploring cool historic buildings. When not in Chapel Hill, you will probably find Sam in Hendersonville, NC with his boyfriend Kane, dog Canyon, and cat Lucille.

Featured image courtesy of Sam Hayes

Materiality and Space: A Case Study of the New Jersey Floodplains

October 24, 2023 / odrozd

By Ivan Melchor

Does landscape form generate society? This is the question posed by Anthropologist Anna Tsing, whose fieldwork in Sorong, Indonesia tracks how rampant mining and construction of impervious concrete infrastructure transforms the city into a ‘pinball machine’ where mud and water interact, ricochet, and respond to this human development, causing the local landscape to flood.^[1] The question is applicable in many contexts, none more fitting than in the floodplains of New Jersey.

Instances of hurricanes are attributed a great deal of importance, and rightly so, but so often the dialogue in the aftermath seems to mirror one another. The common conversation topics post-hurricane includes the following: a critique of the federal government’s response, analogies of negative health outcomes that cannot be quantified, and metrics of the subsequent flooding indicative of the worsening consequences of climate change.

Climate events should be taken seriously, and sea level rise is undoubtedly a reality that coastal communities like Fire Island, a barrier island off Long Island, New York, are wrestling with already.^[2] But what is lost in this echo chamber is a discussion around how the human imposed landscape interacts with rather than reacts to these climate events. Often the dialogue around climate change is future-focused, geared towards generating new technologies and infrastructures. The consequences and answers to climate change are situated in the language of tomorrow but weight should also be placed on the history of the infrastructure in place and what could be recreated with the footprint we’ve already constructed.

I propose two entry points from which to interrogate the issue of flooding in NJ: the concept of the basement and the ‘unbuilding’ of a structure’s footprint.

Historically, the basement has been a common feature of residential buildings in New Jersey. Internet research quickly reveals a vague history explaining its use to deal with freezing pipes, supposedly critical to the infrastructure of the home. A review of FEMA flood claims filed in New Jersey revealed that 78% of claims filed by residential owners were for buildings with a basement.^[3] A finding indicative not of causality but rather of how commonplace basements have become.

Figure 1: ArcGIS 3D model of basement square footage per residential building in Princeton, NJ (Source: Ivan Melchor)

Last year, the VizE Lab for Ethnographic Data Visualization at Princeton University obtained tax and property value data from the town of Princeton, NJ in order to visualize their widespread use. Figure 1 illustrates basement square footage per residential home to represent the below ground impact of development.

Constructing a basement in an area with a high water table can lead to recurring flood problems, making homes susceptible to ankle deep waters after a heavy rainstorm never mind a hurricane. The displacement of soil in order to accommodate these structures can further concentrate stormwater runoff, worsening flooding effects in areas with already high impervious coverage.

Conversations with local zoning officials regarding the issue often contain a cynical undertone. They suggest that new houses are being developed and old houses redeveloped with increasingly large basements despite warnings because they increase property value. And while there may be truth in that claim, it is stated that below-grade living spaces recoup up to 70-80% of the construction cost but do not often result in a gain on investment. ^[4]

A plausible alternative is that the idea of ‘livable space’ is an expression of our cultural behavior; the increased isolation of single-family zoning in towns such as Princeton reinforce the notion of “private property” and make us less likely to interrogate the issues occurring within our “homes.” Figure 2 highlights how widespread low-density housing has become in Princeton, NJ for example.

Figure 2: Dasymetric map of Princeton, NJ highlights the spread of low-density housing (Source: Ivan Melchor)

There is also the question of what materiality our infrastructure takes on. Susan Bristol, a policy director at the Watershed Institute in New Jersey, proposes the concept of ‘unbuilding’ as a design practice to lighten our footprint on both the environment and the ground.

Unbuilding would mean returning some of the understory of buildings to pervious surface area rather than only resorting to concrete pours at grade irrespective of environment. This would allow for water to flow horizontally through the building’s footprint rather than creating combative infrastructure.^[5]

Both the discussion of basements and the concept of ‘unbuilding’ invite us to think about space, not only how much of it we use but also what materials sustain its life force. The message of resiliency is commonplace, but our infrastructure must not only withstand climate events, but also be ready to interact with external forces such as stormwater.

What the ‘pinball machine’ effect reveals is that communities (and more explicitly property owners) continuously act upon their environment, changing its expression. Zoning laws and development serve as an archive of what a community has become, yes, but also generate a new interpretation of society, obfuscating issues that are ‘out of sight’ but that should be interrogated by urban planners and policymakers alike.

Citations

^[1] Anna Tsing, “Stop Blaming Global Warming: A Pinball Model of Chronic Flooding in Sorong, West Papua” (Clifford Geertz Commemorative Lecture, Princeton University, Princeton NJ, March 30, 2023).

^[2] Liam Stack. “Millions were Spent to Fix Fire Island’s Beaches. Some Have Completely Eroded.” New York Times, August 11, 2023.

^[3] FEMA (2023). FIMA NFIP Directed Claims – v2 [Dataset]. https://www.fema.gov/openfema-data-page/fima-nfip-redacted-claims-v2

^[4] Remodeling.com, “Basement Remodel,” accessed on August 19, 2023.

^[5] Susan Bristol (2022). “‘Unbuilding’: Out of sight/Out of mind.” AIA New Jersey.

Ivan Melchor is a Data & Research Assistant with the VizE Lab for Ethnographic Data Visualization at Princeton University. He is interested in how the language of climate change generates possibilities for current and future human development. He is part of a team of academic researchers hoping to produce a documentary on NJ flooding in 2024.

Edited by Kathryn Cunningham

Featured image courtesy of Ivan Melchor

Planning When it’s Not the Point: Urban Design Fun in a Non-City-Building Videogame

April 30, 2021 / odrozd

By Evan King

Imagine, if you will, life as a pixelated farmer in a remote pixelated village. You live in a small hut with a bed and maybe a window but nothing else. You wake every morning to tend to your plot of wheat and head to bed as the sun sets. Similar sites are scattered over vast distances, but these villages are the only intelligent life occurring across your entire world.

A different kind of being arrives one day- an unfriendly menace. Accustomed to little else but violence in videogames and pretty much out of boredom, he sets about burning down the place. He rounds up you and your fellow villagers and throws you all into a pit of lava with an elaborate sacrificial temple altar that he’s managed to construct in a matter of minutes. Another visitor from beyond arrives moments later, yelling “God damnit, Dan!” This was about ten years ago- we were building an empire. I was trying to be Caesar, and my college buddy was acting more like Genghis Khan and really ruining the whole thing. I had scoped out a corridor to bring a rail line out to the village, built some housing, installed better lighting for the villagers, and started erecting a defensive town wall. Now, we didn’t have anything to work with. I stopped playing with him soon after – I take Minecraft way too seriously.

A typical naturally occurring village you’ll come across. As seen from a horse – they added horses to the game a few years ago, I have favored railways – you can’t start a new village without a railway or waterway to bring your colonists

Trying to cooperatively build a city with some other friends later, I found myself trying to make rules. I suggested that they try to coordinate their buildings and monuments or that they try to build things reasonably close together so the AI villagers could navigate, live, and do their little activities on a genuine urban scale. Looking back now- ten years later- I should have known all along. “You’re acting like an urban planner,” my mother said over my shoulder during a college Christmas break, unwittingly changing my life.

*A friend of mine’s neighboring town, he’s struggling with scale but he’s getting there*

The function of these randomly generated villages and their inhabitants, as far as the game really has functions, is to give the player better access to rare materials and items through a currency-based trading system. The items serve the player in doing whatever else they want to do, which can be quite a few different things in Minecraft. People explore, build their dream castles, beat the crap out of each other, make artwork, follow some of the game’s treasure hunting plotlines, and even engineer computers with the game’s logic blocks. Most people, however, play the game as amateur architects, taking the landscape’s various raw materials and converting them into grand monuments – endless electronic legos.

Most people play this game in a way that falls short for me. People build their spectacular creations in the middle of nowhere, not relating to anything like the surrounding world or its people. Players do build “cities,” but for the most part they consist of empty boxes. They are merely models that don’t actually function in the game and are entirely out of scale with everything else. Dubai or Hudson Yards come to mind as some of the few real-life examples of this.

One can build at breathtaking scale and even realism in this game. Minecraft is about building, but even so I would argue that at this point you aren’t really playing the game, but using it as a CAD technique. No AI villagers will be able to navigate this (there are no working cars, nor do these ship sculptures do anything) or find it legible, and it doesn’t serve any gameplay use to you, the player – it is just a model. (Image: https://cubed.community/)

This is all well and good as it’s only a game after all, but for me, the mechanics of villages and villagers are a large part of the point. You can make villages that look good and function well in a hybrid city builder-architectural sandbox situation. The low-resolution block structure of everything ensures that you don’t focus too much on the purely artistic side. You can house residences (beds) and job locations (consisting of certain utility blocks) in any architecture or urban layout you see fit or can build. But basic planning principles happen to dictate how well they end up working. Can the villagers get from their houses or apartments to their jobs? Can they meet at the center of the village to trade and mate? “Mating” consists of a dance with hearts in the air and the instant appearance of a baby, who proceeds to start running around. There is no gender, although they sound as much like Squidward as they look. Is the area well-lit and defended? Various monsters spawn in dark areas. It makes sense in some cases to build a medieval style wall around a town, which can encourage compact, visually pleasing design as in real life. You can breed villagers with (inhumane- if they were real) enclosure facilities and put them in cages so they are right where you need them when you want to trade, and many players do this, but I prefer letting them function as the game intended and not having my villages be prisons.

*Villagers enjoying well-defined urban space in the town square – they like posing for the camera*

At the center of the village is a bell, which is naturally generated in most cases, but also purchasable from certain villagers. This- along with two kidnapped villagers- can be used to start a new village from scratch. You can put the bell anywhere, but I like to make a central square or green with it as the centerpiece. Villagers all gather to it at the end of each day. The bell also functions as a safety alarm; when roving marauders called “pillagers” attack, you can ring it and the villagers will all rush inside their houses (fortifications are useful here too, though very rarely needed). Before they introduced bells you had to pay even more attention to urban design. You needed a central open area surrounded by intense use, precisely occupying the population barycenter to ensure this was the main congregating area. If you didn’t, the villagers would start to glitch and abandon the village or disappear, but there is more leeway for error here now.

A waterfront I am attempting to make progress on in my principal town – we recently dug a canal to connect two river systems and give this previously landlocked area access to the ocean

But all the while, there is the entire rest of the game to be played- climbing mountains, slaying dragons, pranking your friends and the like. You can play the urban planner when everyone else is doing something else. In this way, I value it immensely over ‘city builders’ like Sim City, where you preside over people meant for no other purpose than to simulate city building and administration. You also actually experience what you build in this game, it is not top-down.

*A view across the central part of my principal city from a rooftop – “old town” area in the middle ground, where an ugly megastructure once stood, is still a work in progress.*

While the villagers in Minecraft may not exist for their own sake either, they exist for a purpose other than your urban design schemes. But you can design environments to improve their functionality. Any urban design you do is for other players’, AI’s, and even your own wider purposes in the game. You can build a city to slay a dragon – it all connects, just like in real life. Both function and form can be manipulated in Minecraft.

*Ocean exploration, for treasure, creature encounters, or new lands, is one of many activities you can get up to in this game – and village design can serve here too*

Even the game’s distance from explicit or formal city building is the very thing that seems to draw some players – absolute freedom in terms of land use. I’ve always said Americans need to play Minecraft to get their antisocial or libertarian impulses out; one mother on Twitter recently remarked that her eight-year-old child likes the game because there are “no zoning laws,” a child I hope grows up to liberate us all from single-family zoning and the automobile. But this is true in the sense that you can do whatever you want in general, and also in the sense that you can do what you want without America’s ugly, racist rules stopping you.

*The appeal of Minecraft on the left and the right*

That is why I play it. In a little over a month, I’ll be starting at a planning job. I may very well need a virtual escape, where I can be a dictator for life – then I can happily serve the wishes of a real suburban public in real life. On the other hand, Minecraft makes you accommodate people and their needs in your schemes as effectively as you can, which also makes it engrossing. Essentially the appeal is the satisfaction of all your hopeless democratic yearnings but also your despotic impulses – in one convenient place. Maybe there’s a tyrant, a public servant, an urbanite and a hermit in all of us.

Large buildings are harder to keep safely lit, and shadows under these gratuitous freeway overpasses spawn more monsters – this is a view of my Corbusian zombie town, built out of materials from the game’s Hell. Diagonal designs are unpleasant or awkward in this grid and block-based game, while real life towers like these sit at angles that do not relate to streets or define space.

This post is not intended as an endorsement of Minecraft; the creation of a notoriously sexist programmer and now a massive, over-merchandized monstrosity owned by Microsoft. But for me, it is a guilty pleasure that likely influenced my life and career (as far as it’s really started). And hey, check out what I made – these are mostly screenshots from my server. Join me! I promise I won’t make you fill out any permits.

Author Bio: Evan King is a second-year master’s student in city and regional planning. His interests include transportation policy in the developing world, light rail, and freight movement on inland waterways. He can found in his free time trying to kayak long distances and making hand-drawn maps. Evan hails from central Connecticut and completed an undergraduate degree in Maryland. Opinions are his own.

Featured images courtesy of Evan King

From the Archives: Can America Replicate Singapore’s Garden Cities?

November 13, 2020 / odrozd

This week’s post was originally published on February 20, 2020.

By Lizzie Tong

In the realm of sustainability and urban planning, Singapore is often hailed as a city-state worthy of envy and comparison – a Garden City. Through 40 years of rapid economic development and a transformation into an international financial hub, Singapore has been mindful to protect its natural environment, developing a reputation as a leader in green design.

As a small island about half the size of Hong Kong, Singapore has limited resources available for agricultural production, clean water, and energy production. Thus, policymakers have been prudent about maximizing resources and maintaining a healthy and clean environment for citizens to live, work, and play. While Americans have the luxury of escaping city limits to a wild sanctuary, the urban island forces Singaporeans to have a heightened incentive to conserve energy use, minimize water waste, and prevent air pollution.

As a result, the city-state contains almost 50% green cover, over 150 acres of rooftop gardens and green walls, and at least 10% of land is set aside for parks and nature conservation. Further, 80% of households are within a 10-minute walk to a park. The Sustainable Singapore Blueprint details even more rigorous environmental targets for 2030, doubling the amount of skyrise greenery to almost 500 acres, creating over 50 more miles of park connector greenways, and cutting harmful emissions of particulate matter (PM 2.5) in half.

Vertical greenery and historically preserved trees along National University of Singapore. Photo Credit: Lizzie Tong

This path has been present since the founding Prime Minister, Lee Kuan Yew, stated that “the blighted urban jungle of concrete destroys the human spirit. We need the greenery of nature to lift up our spirits.” Since 1967, intentional, careful, long-term master planning directed by the government and the Urban Redevelopment Authority has succeeded in building an environment that citizens are proud of. Singaporeans have an inherent trust in policymakers to succeed in building a livable environment. Simultaneously, by pursuing a green city brand, Singapore has created a one-size-fits-all approach to sustainability.

In Singapore, green roofs, green walls, and skyrise greenery take priority over any other sustainable building solution. Cool roofs, which reflect light that would otherwise be absorbed by building materials, are much less expensive and effective at decreasing city temperatures and mitigating urban heat island. 95% of Singapore’s energy comes from natural gas and yet the Singaporean government has only recently began pushing to increase targets on solar panel coverage. Alternative sustainable building solutions are being pushed to the wayside because of the limited area of rooftops and self-imposed requirements to improve city greenery. In pursuing greenery objectives, nations like the United States overlook more feasible methods of reducing urban heat island and improving other measures, like air quality and overall well-being.

Researchers at the National University of Singapore are developing innovative ways to improve individual well-being in compact, high-density environments. Projects like Cooling Singapore consist of a research team of engineers and climatologists that are determined to collect data on the optimal outdoor thermal comfort (OTC) levels for everyday citizens and create comfortable environments to follow suit. Participants in the research respond to questions on wearable devices, gauging their individuals comfort levels based on temperature, humidity, wind speed, amount of shade, vegetation, and a variety of other factors. The research team then hopes to design indoor and outdoor environments that can be adjusted to individual comfort. For Singapore, improving well-being and livability is the final frontier in urban design – and increasing integrated greenspace is the solution to this challenge.

ParkROYAL on Pickering, Singapore, by WOHA. Photo Credit: Creative Commons, HeyItsWilliam

Yet, this blanket sustainability approach of a Garden City may only be worthwhile in certain areas. Research from the Center for Liveable Cities plots cities on a chart with livability against population density and finds that Vancouver City, Sydney, Melbourne, and Singapore rank the highest. Aside from Singapore, these cities with high rankings are also low-density. Singapore is one of the few high-density, compact environments that succeed in prioritizing well-being and livability. While residents of sprawling American cities have the option of escaping to concentrated areas of greenery, integrated greenery is the only option for a nation with limited resources and finite land.

Cloud Dome in Gardens by the Bay. Photo Credit: Lizzie Tong

The 160-foot tall Supertree Grove, powered by photovoltaic cells, along with the Cloud and Flower Domes at Gardens by the Bay are notable attractions. Designs and developments like these contribute to Singapore’s green city brand, driving the city’s tourism industry. Singapore is now the 5th most-visited city in the world. Although the design is envious, a City within a Garden transformation in American cities is likely less feasible. Unless more American city governments decide to stop developing sprawling neighborhoods and start building denser and higher, maximizing a diverse range of sustainable building solutions – cool roofs, solar panels, green roofs – will be the most low-cost, effective way to mitigate urban heat island, air pollution, and improve city well-being.

Gardens by the Bay, Singapore. Photo Credit: Creative Commons, J. Philipp Krone

Feature Image: Singapore Changi Airport, The Jewel. Photo Credit: Lizzie Tong

Works Cited

https://www.clc.gov.sg/research-publications/publications/digital-library/view/singapore-the-first-city-in-nature

https://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/23/world/asia/eresources.nlb.gov.sg/history/events/a7fac49f-9c96-4030-8709-ce160c58d15c

About the Author: Lizzie Tong studied economics and computer science at UNC and is interested in applying data science to solve challenges tied to urban sustainability. She currently works as a research assistant for the Community Development and Policy Studies Team at the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago. In her free time, she enjoys trying her hand at oil painting, competitive running, and new Bon Appetite recipes.

A Walking Tour of McMansion Hell

April 21, 2020 / odrozd

By Jacob Becker

Just like you, hopefully, recently I’ve been spending the majority of my day inside my house. For me, after a spring break visit turned into a semester-long stay, that means staying at my parents’ house in New Jersey. I don’t want to give the Garden State a bad name—it’s full of natural beauty and wonderful bagels, with a competent governor who made the decision to close state parks to the public. But, because of those park closures, my outdoor recreation can only happen in two places: my neighborhood and Animal Crossing.

In Animal Crossing, a mask can still be a good idea.

After my college roommate came to visit one summer, I learned my neighborhood is officially considered an exurb, which is a suburb, but somehow even less convenient to get to work from. There are no sidewalks, probably because there is nowhere worth walking within the town borders. This lack of sidewalks means that most of my walks are around the same culs-de-sac where traffic is lightest. It’s surrounded by some nice forests, so birds, squirrels, deer and foxes are frequent sights, but they are welcome sights after spending most of the day inside. The houses I see almost every day are not.

This walk is filled with some of the ugliest houses I have ever seen. You might say that’s a harsh judgment, that architecture and aesthetics are subjective—but I feel qualified to judge this, as What Makes McMansions Bad is one of three concrete skills I have learned in my planning graduate experience thus far (the other two being telling a computer to make maps and how to have imposter syndrome). Also, just look at them. My opinions owe much to McMansion Hell, which, unsurprisingly, has many examples from my county of Bergen.

This isn’t the worst house, because I’m saving that one for last, but it’s terrible.

The color of this house doesn’t pop in this picture like it would on a sunny day, and you should be thankful for that. It’s somewhere between beige, light olive and mustard yellow, all of which make this list of the ugliest colors in the world, and we will be referring to this color trifecta as yeige. But the architect didn’t stop there. They also added a stone tiling to emphasize the oversized, out of place window over the door which only exists to let neighbors know they have a chandelier. My editor told me to refer to this window as central, but I would argue this house is far too unbalanced to have anything resembling a “center”. Speaking of the windows, the left side of the house has a selection of differently sized, randomly placed windows on an otherwise featureless void of yeige. Beyond that, there is no physical center to the house, instead different features and shapes are haphazardly pushed in and out of it. The overall appearance can only be described as lumpy.

Here, yeige stucco makes a comeback, but instead of stone, tiled brick is added to—well I don’t really know what the purpose of adding it is other than to amuse me. This house is also far too large for anything resembling a single family, and I heard a rumor from my dad that it’s only used on Thanksgiving.

I couldn’t fit the entire house in one shot, even with panorama mode.

There are many contenders for the worst house on my regular route, but this one showcases my favorite New Jersey McMansion feature—an abundance of unnecessary columns. Under the light, there are 6 pure white columns perched on top of piled up stone bases that serve no discernible purpose. The house would be better off without the two random triangles they are pretending to hold up. The only way I can imagine this house was built is that either a couple both owned exceptionally ugly houses and decided to attach them to each other when they moved in together, or the architect wanted to prove that he could make a monstrous McMansion with only one story. This one could eat three houses the size of my parents’ and still have room for the 5 cars these people undoubtedly own.

In my life I doubt I’ll ever own my own house, and I certainly won’t be able to pay off a raccoon to build my own McMansion and fill it with dinosaur bones that I refuse to donate to the museum like I can in Animal Crossing. You might think that the one benefit of homes this large is an easier time social distancing, exploring the rooms you never even knew were there, but from my walks that doesn’t seem to be the case. I feel like the curmudgeon I’ll eventually become every time I see people not practicing social distancing around my neighborhood. Maybe these homes have seven cars, but the kids I see longboarding together can’t all be siblings!

All image credits: Jacob Becker

About the Author: Jacob Becker is a second-year master’s candidate pursuing a dual masters in City and Regional Planning and Environmental Sciences and Engineering. His research interests include mapping air pollution, climate change adaptation and transitioning to clean energy sources. For fun, Jacob takes his mind off the slow heat death of the planet by hiking around it and indulging in improv and sketch comedy. Jacob received his undergraduate degree in Biology from the University of Chicago.

Interaction with Memory: Preserving the Past While Embracing Change

August 9, 2019 / odrozd

“The process of planning is very valuable, for forcing you to think hard about what you are doing, but the actual plan that results from it is probably useless.” – Marc Andreessen

“Who controls the past controls the future; who controls the present controls the past.” – 1984, George Orwell

Cities not only represent the future but also have the responsibility to preserve their past. This summer, while exploring ancient monuments and historic sites in India, I also read about modern and newly constructed memorials all around the world representing various incidents of significance including the war in the Middle East and the world’s first memorial for a melted glacier in Iceland. Most cities today are rapidly growing without taking into account their history and character. In many cases, city planners do not acknowledge monuments or memorials as integral parameters in long-range planning. Hyderabad in India is one such example. I have been lost in this city numerous times, both alone and accompanied, and always end up with the same experience: the streets seem to fold onto me suddenly and every single corner I turn to seems familiar and surrounded with history while simultaneously having high towers that rise from nowhere. I have wondered how my city reinvented itself around me all these years.

Qutb Shahi Tombs, Hyderabad Photo Credit: Siri Nallaparaju

As professionals, we think of urban planning as a two-dimensional subject that consists of “space” and “utility” or in generic planning terms, “land” and “use”. I, however, have recently discovered that there is a third dimension: human behavior. Planning, today, has the need to influence a certain human behavior. This instinctive behavior needs to be captured through design and should be channeled into being a monitored definitive movement. It need not be something that is momentarily influenced but as a continuous loop that is structured by a fixed dimension, such as space. While we do look into physical aspects of design, the question of ‘who’ gets influenced by the design arises. Various themes revolving around concepts of inclusivity, gender specificity, and even neutral cities have risen. However, with a continuous growing circular economy, there is a need for cities to cater to global interaction unlike traditional beliefs of modern followers of the Bauhaus. One such aspect is the concept of memorials and monuments and how these spaces symbolize the value of freedom of expression as well as introduce a sense of belonging.

Planning theory states that cities, in order to grow, need to be established from a specific focal point. An alternate theory comes to mind: what if they need to be established based on human behavior and certain incidents that play a vital role in the growth and well-being of the citizens? Planning in ancient India was evident through the great Indus Valley civilization where spaces were designed based on social behavior. Similarly, in the Western world, Paris was built with the Notre Dame as its center and the preliminary road network nodes forming a star shape. Likewise, temple cities in India such as Madurai and Thanjavur grew from the focal point of temples.

While eminent journalists such as Jacobs, Geddes, Mumford, and others focused on physical and materialistic aspects of planning, Henri Lefebvre focused on people’s expression. He adopted the techniques of these ancient cities and civilizations, understood their importance and mirrored them to reflect today’s cities. In ancient planning, non-market values, such as civic responsibility, were resources for planning as a purely societal tool. In an era where planning is dominated by slum rehabilitation in Mumbai or massive structures such as The Vessel of the Hudson Yards in Manhattan, where urban revival and affordability are the most sought after problems, the necessity of protecting the sense of character and history of a city is secondary.

However, in his book Production of Space, Lefebvre focused on specific elements of urban design that help build a city for the future as well as preserve it. Whether it’s the valley of Kanchanaburi in Thailand with its never-ending Hellfire Pass, the long-forgotten Tombs of the Qutb Shahi rulers of India or even the National 9/11 Memorial that’s surrounded by Manhattan’s dense urban fabric, these memorials are a symbol of a relationship of an eternal memory surrounded by a city that is constantly changing and developing. With developing countries having rapid urbanization rates, their heritage is at risk unless Planning takes it into account as a necessary parameter.

New York City, 9/11 Memorial. Photo Credit: vikwaters, Creative Commons.

While Lefebvre’s analysis and perception of cities are noteworthy, what was staggeringly profound was his description of the advancement of technology and its inability to change social relationships as well as the relationship between people and memory in a positive manner. Citizens will one day need these spaces to escape the monotonous cacophony of urban lifestyle, he says. Today, Space is defined as something quantitative in a financial district while it can be analyzed as a more qualitative and pure aspect in reference to a memorial. We are now stuck in a circle where development overruns bring to light more issues such as agglomeration, lack of urban services, etc. Furthermore, modern capitalism has strengthened the value of place arousing a longing for a specific community which thus, led to the concept of community planning.

While acknowledging the success of many cities in achieving planned growth, it is perhaps the intangible aspects of personal and public spaces, as Lefebvre mentioned, that bring the symbolic eternity into focus while being surrounded by a heavy, dense yet mundane environment. With New York City working on its first-ever master plan for public memorials, it is important for planners to decide whether to lock down areas today for a future where commemorative planning can remain open to various themes and forms of remembrance that are yet to be imagined or even accepted.

In a busy world such as ours, humans need the sanctity that these memorials and monuments offer, a true space with sentimental purpose while bringing about collective identity. Memorials and monuments act as spaces for engagement and interaction which makes cities more efficient and inclusive not of gender, race or creed but of thoughts and opinions.

About the Author: Siri Nallaparaju is a second year Master’s candidate in the Department of City and Regional Planning at UNC-Chapel Hill. Her research interests mainly focus on global climate change, international development, and environmental degradation. As a planner, she is interested in bringing about a positive change in the world through sustainable development. In her free time, she enjoys cooking and experimenting with various cuisines of food while simultaneously trying to solve all the planning questions that constantly revolve in her head.

Featured Image: Evening Kites, Hyderabad, India. Photo Credit: Frank Starmer.

Citations:

Henri Lefebvre, The Production of Space, Wiley-Blackwell; 1992

Henri Lefebvre, The Critique of Everyday Life, Verso, 1991

Knapp M L, Nonverbal Communication in Human Interaction, Rinehart & Winston, Holt, New York, 1978

Lewis Mumford, “What is a City,” (first published in Architectural Record, 1937) The City Reader, (Fifth Edition) Richard T. Le Gates and Frederic Stout, (London and New York: Routledge, 2011), pp. 91-95

Phil Freelon, Durham Architect and Architect of Record for the National Museum of African American History and Culture, Dead at 66

July 16, 2019 / odrozd

Philip Goodwin Freelon, local architect and the Architect of Record for the lauded National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC) on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., died on July 9th, 2019, at the age of 66. His death was due to complications from ALS, or Lou Gehrig’s disease.

In addition to being a nationally prominent architect, Mr. Freelon was an important local figure. He graduated in 1975 from North Carolina State University’s College of Design. Later, he served as an adjunct professor at his Alma Mater and designed both the Partner III building and the contemporary expansion of the Gregg Museum of Art and Design, both on NC State’s campus. At 25, he became the youngest architect to ever be licensed in North Carolina.

NC State’s Gregg Museum of Art and Design, Photo via Perkins + Will

Notably, he founded the Freelon Group in Durham, North Carolina in 1990. In addition to being one of the largest African American-led firms in the country, the Freelon Group was arguably the most prolific, responsible for major projects across the country. The firm was dedicated to the design of public spaces and the celebration and acknowledgment of black and minority culture, history, and rights in America. Reflecting that mission, the Freelon group was responsible for the Museum of the African Diaspora in San Francisco, the Harvey B. Gantt Center for African-America Arts + Culture in Charlotte, the Reginald F. Lewis Museum of Maryland African American History and Culture in Baltimore, the National Center for Civil and Human Rights in Atlanta, the Mississippi Civil Rights Museum in Jackson, and Emancipation Park in Houston.

Imagery of the mosaic greeting visitors to the Museum of the African Diaspora (MoAD) in San Francisco. Photos via Perkins + Will

Phil Freelon aimed to do more than “wrapping a gallery or a library in a pretty box.” Instead, he focused on creating beautiful spaces that contributed to the vision of his clients, the goals of the institutions he served, and the fabric of the community. His work has a humanistic and contemporary appeal, with warm colors and light spaces that emphasize openness in a way that invites people in and conveys a sense of belonging.

National Center for Civil and Human Rights, Atlanta, Georgia. Photo via Perkins + Will

The Freelon Group was also part of the design team to win the competition for the National Museum of African American History and Culture in collaboration with Adaye Associates and Davis Brody Bond. In doing so, they prevailed against other world-famous architects and firms. Later, they were also joined by Smithgroup, to create a design team informally referred to as FABS (Freelon Adjaye Bond Smithgroup).

National Museum of African American History and Culture. Photo credit: Alex Fradkin via Architect Magazine

Freelon Group was acquired by Perkins&Will in 2014, at which point Phil Freelon joined the board of directors and became the managing director of their North Carolina studios. In this role, Freelon continued to lead design teams on critically acclaimed work. His local projects since the acquisition include the North Carolina Freedom Park in Raleigh and the Durham Transportation Center. He is succeeded in this role by Zena Howard, one of his long-time mentees who was also deeply involved in the design and construction of the NMAAHC project.

Phil Freelon and Zena Howard stand for a photo outside the NMAAHC, via Perkins + Will

Phil Freelon was a striking figure in a field that continues to struggle with a dearth of diversity. Too often, architects focus more on the buildings they’re designing than the people that will occupy them. As a result, the field has failed to grapple with the systemic issues that plague it and remains one of the whitest careers in the country. In fact, while 90% of licensed architect are white, just 2% are black or African American. Because of this, African Americans often don’t have a voice in the design and development of buildings meant to define and support their communities. Phil Freelon worked hard to engage with these underrepresented voices and lent his own where he was able. He was a role model, a furiously hard worker, and a pioneer dedicated to expanding the purview of architecture. His influence will be sorely missed.

Featured Image: “After Phil Freelon was diagnosed with ALS, he decided to start a foundation with his wife Nnenna Freelon to support ALS research. ” by Sufis Doucet, via WUNC Public Radio.

About the author: Nora Schwaller is a rising third-year Ph.D. student in the Department of City and Regional Planning, where she focuses on disaster recovery. Prior to UNC, she worked for an architecture firm in San Francisco.

Carolina Angles’ First Semi-Annual Photo Contest

November 6, 2018 / odrozd

Fall break is a great opportunity to explore a nearby town or city. This year, Carolina Angles launched its first Semi-Annual Photo Contest. Planning students submitted their favorite photos from fall break for a chance to win. The winning photo shows us the Biltmore Conservatory in Asheville, NC. Other entries include beautiful scenery from Hanging Rock State Park, a Mid-century Modern Home from Moyaone Reserve, and happenings from around the Triangle such as the N.C. Bike Walk Summit held in Raleigh, N.C. The entries to the Fall 2018 Photo Contest are below, enjoy!

Second place went to this photo of Gathering Place Park in Tulsa, Oklahoma. It was designed to be an inclusive, interactive, and educational space for all residents and visitors. It opened in September of 2018, and is the largest privately-funded public park in the U.S. Sustainable water management, biodiversity, and connectivity of park spaces, formerly divided by a roadway, were priorities for design. The park also features many attractions, including a boathouse, skate park, stage, and adventure park, pictured here.

First place goes to this image of the Biltmore Conservatory. Tourist attractions are an important part of a community’s economic well-being. The Biltmore Estate brings visitors to Asheville from all over the United States. I saw license plates from Florida, Maryland, Pennsylvania and others at the Biltmore parking lot. The revenue that tourism yields can really have an impact on the local community, especially if properly managed. According to Tourism Economics, these revenues covered 63% of police spending, 72% of the fire budget, and all of the planning, development, and transportation spending in Asheville. These are all integral components of local communities.

Advocates, professionals, and a Raleigh City Councilor pose for a photo during the 2018 NC Bike Walk Summit on Saturday, October 20th, 2018 in Raleigh, NC. The summit is meant to provide information useful to a variety of audiences, from transportation planners to tactical urbanists. Experts and professionals from all over the state gather to share their expertise. The mission of the summit is to foster collaboration, educate community members and stakeholders, promote sustainable modes of transportation, and highlight efforts in North Carolina to become a bike-walk friendly state.

This photo was taken at Hanging Rock State Park. Expansive parks like Hanging Rock are important to planning because they provide opportunities for resource preservation, recreation, tourism and environmental education. Planners have an important role in making and informing decisions related to park planning and land use. On a different note, I like this picture because it provides a bird’s eye view of the different land uses that exist beyond the park. As planners, we often look at things spatially on maps, so I love the opportunity to get a good view from above.

This home was on a Mid-Century Modern (MCM) housing tour in the community I grew up in, the Moyaone Reserve. It is part of one of the nation’s earliest view shed, designed to protect the view from Mount Vernon. MCM houses are loved for their focus on bringing nature in through light, views, and materials crossing the boundaries between indoor and outdoor space.

This photo was taken on a planning trip, where we explored everything from resiliency to urban design to historic preservation to economic development. Resiliency refers to a community’s ability to absorb the outcomes of natural hazards, and to be able to quickly recover and implement adaptive techniques. Historic preservation is crucial for preserving national or local heritage. It also yields a lower environmental footprint as buildings are preserved rather than demolished and replaced via new constructions projects. Additionally, historic preservation can be an important component of economic development as it can help revitalize a downtown area, increase job numbers, and raise property values.

This photo was taken from atop the Old Cigar Factory in Charleston, SC and overlooks the Cooper River and Arthur Ravenel Bridge. This factory has been renovated to house several business and Clemson University graduate programs. Many similar sites in Charleston offer a unique blend of historical preservation and forward-thinking, innovative features related to planning and resiliency. This trip served as a reminder to always allow the history of our past development to positively inform the way we think about our present and future plans.

About the Author: Kathia Toledo is a candidate for the Master’s in City and Regional Planning at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. There, she is pursuing the Land Use and Environmental Planning Specialization. Kathia is particularly interested in the dynamic between varying urban landscapes, sustainability, and planning. She graduated from UNC-Chapel Hill with a Bachelors of Arts in Geography and Environmental Studies and a minor in Urban Planning. Her hobbies include creative endeavors like urban sketching and photography, biking on the American Tobacco Trail, and exploring new cities and towns.

Featured Image: Biltmore Conservatory. Photo Credit: Kathia Toledo.

Water resilience in the city

January 23, 2018 / odrozd

North Carolina has many water-related problems. To mention some: Droughts, pollution of streams and lakes, quantity and quality of drinking water. Additionally, the cities and communities in the state are particularly vulnerable to severe flooding, an increasing problem due to climate change effects. Severe rainstorms, limited run off capacity by streams and rivers, rising ocean levels, but also here and there missing links in urban planning will cause damage to property, people and economy as well as environmental issues.

Could we learn from similar situations elsewhere? Let’s turn our attention to the Netherlands, mostly beneath sea level and with many rivers running through the cities and communities. Just a week ago, water levels in the Rhine rose to appr. 50 feet above its normal level. However, no uncontrolled flooding or damage has happened.

A couple of decades ago, the Netherlands stopped building ever higher dykes channeling the water rapidly downstream. As a response, the country created designated flood areas storing the overflow of water temporarily.

Similar is the approach towards heavy rain fall, where decennia old sewage systems could not take care of the extreme amounts of water. The Dutch city of Rotterdam, partner in the resilience program by the Rockefeller Foundation, has an innovative approach to water resilience. Rotterdam is located close to the coastline, is harboring one of the largest ports in the world, and has one of the main river systems running through the heart of the city.

Let’s focus here on one particular and successful approach that would work well in flood areas in North Carolina cities and communities: the so-called “water squares.”

Benthemplein water square. Photo source: De Urbansiten-Rotterdam

Using natural and roadside slopes and rooftop drain pipes, rainwater is collected in minor canals and directed towards squares in the city. The square is deepened into different levels, allowing it to store water. Nice architectural elements, design of streams and ponds, and several art and recreational elements make the place a fun place to be for citizen, young and old. This is an affordable approach to temporarily store overflowing streams from heavy rain fall in a controlled way.

Featured Image: Rotterdam. Photo Credit: Cor Rademaker.

About the Author: Cor Rademaker has worked in urban planning and design with regards to sustainable and social development since the end of the eighties with his company, Strateq. Throughout the years, Strateq has been involved in more than 70% of urban development in The Netherlands. Strateq is involved in diverse Smart City Projects, both within the USA, The Netherlands and other countries such as Brazil and Indonesia.

I have worked with several universities on various projects, including The Hague University’s Innovative Entrepreneurship program, the Technical University Delft’s Green Campus project, and the Green Village – a test facility to make areas and buildings autarkic on energy, water and waste. In North Carolina, at the School of Information and Library Sciences at the University of North Carolina, he works on Smart City programs for students and professionals. I have realized the Smart City Event at the UNC CleanTech Summit and worked on a Smart and Connected Community Center NC. I am the chairman of the National Advisory Board for Strategies for Smart Cities in the Netherlands, and is involved in the EU SSCC Smart City Coordination Group. This includes new and innovative strategies, processes and technologies involved in Smart Cities, such as platforms, sensors and big data applications.

Previously, I have been VP at one of the larger public transit authorities in the Netherlands, the HTM in The Hague. I studied urban planning and urban design, mobility management, and human geography. I hold a masters of engineering on urban planning and design from NHTV Breda/Tilburg, a Msc in Human Geography from Rijksuniversiteit Utrecht and an MBA from Erasmus Rotterdam.

Hey UNC Planning Community, What’s Off about New East?

April 28, 2017 / odrozd

The first time I walked into New East, I was overwhelmed by the sensation that something was off.

This happens to me from time to time, usually when I am in an unfamiliar space or a familiar space that has changed. This is not normally a hair-raising feeling, but it can become bothersome – particularly if the usual suspects have been eliminated and the impression persists.[1] If left unresolved, mild annoyance can fester into madness (e.g. what happened at the Overlook Hotel in The Shining).

New East is a special case. From the awkward foyer, to the single-occupant but double-stall restroom, to the fourth-floor staircase: the entire building suffers from spatial incongruence.

The north side of New East. Photo Credit: Alison Salomon

Last fall, I began looking for an explanation – a potential root cause from which all of these other bothersome (mis)uses have sprung. About two months into the semester, I developed a hypothesis: New East is backwards. Or, rather, we treat New East backwards. We primarily enter and exit through the back of the building, instead of using its intended front.

1-Glass_Negative_0255_New_East_March_1901_Scan_1

Undated photo of New East. Photo Credit: University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Image Collection #P0004, North Carolina Collection Photographic Archives, The Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Here is my evidence:

The building’s cornerstone. Have you ever noticed it? Probably not, unless I pointed it out to you (thanks for feigning excitement). New East’s cornerstone is partially obscured by a small brick wall and is located on the northeast corner, far from the hubbub of the southeast and southwest corners. The north side of the building is closest to Franklin Street and the Planetarium. We treat it as the building’s “rear façade.” But cornerstones are usually found on front façades.
Architectural features of the building’s north side. Look at how attractive it is! In particular, notice the bump out that distinguishes this side from New East’s south side (a.k.a. the “front” of the building). The current approach to New East feels very anticlimactic, in part because the southern wall is so long, flat, and uninterrupted. The north-facing wall, by contrast, draws one in. Almost as though it is the building’s true front.
Old photographs of the building. I talked to a few librarians who maintain the North Carolina Collection over in Wilson Library. They showed me a bunch of archival photographs of New East. Prior to 1920, most of the images feature the present-day “rear façade” of the building. Why were people taking pictures of New East’s backside? Maybe because it was the front.
The layout of campus at the time of the building’s completion. Construction on New East occurred in the late 1850s and early 1860s, at which point McCorkle Place (the north quad) was the center of campus. According to the aforementioned librarians, the buildings on campus at that time would have fronted the quad. That means the northern side would have served as the main entrance to New East.

Undated photo of New East. Photo Credit: University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Image Collection #P0004, North Carolina Collection Photographic Archives, The Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

It is clear to me that at some point the building got turned around. Externally and internally. I suspect that the construction of Cameron Avenue precipitated these changes. Following the reconfiguration of the building’s main entrance, New East underwent a series of interior renovations. The dual doors on the north and south walls were replaced with single entryways. The staircase was repositioned to open up to the newly christened front door on the southern wall, and assumed an ungodly amount of space in the process. Many of the building’s small rooms (New East was originally used as a dormitory) were grouped together to create lab space for the geology department. Out on the north lawn, the “New East Annex” was built and promptly demolished. For a brief moment in time, the basement held cadavers.[2]

The “New East Annex” was built and promptly demolished. Photo Credit: University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Image Collection #P0004, North Carolina Collection Photographic Archives, The Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

I wish that I could say for certain that my hunch is correct. Another librarian over at Wilson is looking for archival blueprints for me. If those can be located and if I am granted access (it turns out blueprints are restricted documents), perhaps I will get my answers. In the meantime, I maintain my sanity by avoiding the central staircase, using the north door as much as possible, and reimagining the Reading Room.

If any of these things bother you, too, you might be interested in an upcoming group workshop focused on New East. The goal of the workshop is to understand how New East works and doesn’t work for its users. Your input will be compiled into a short report that can serve as a future resource in deciding how to allocate space in New East or make improvements to the building, as the need to do so may arise. The event will be on Tuesday, May 9th at 2pm in New East’s 2nd floor Reading Room.

There will be a brief introduction, followed by a half hour exercise identifying:
1. Important learning/working spaces.
2. Important social/supportive spaces.
3. Underutilized spaces or people and uses in need of space.
4. Important spaces for other functions including circulation, communication, and maintenance.

Student volunteers will be available until 5pm to hear any input you may have on the four subjects above.

[1] The usual suspects include, in order of frequency of offense: poorly arranged furniture, disproportionately-sized furniture, awkward area rugs, partitions, walled-over windows, stairways to nowhere, trap doors, and false mirrors.

[2] New East housed the medical school for a few years in the 1890s.

About the Author: Alison Salomon is a first year student pursuing a dual Master’s degree through the Department of City & Regional Planning and the Gillings School of Global Public Health. She studies the intersection of land use and health behavior and is passionate about food systems, placemaking, and active transportation. She takes pride in her buttermilk biscuits, shoe tying skills, and ability to turn anything into a game.