Morphological Study

120224, Thesis Title & Abstract

A community empowerment center on red hook’s waterfront
Red Hook is a small neighborhood in Brooklyn, NY that has been shaped historically by different actors, resulting in an urban fabric that is isolated both physically and socially. On one hand there is an intriguing waterfront once dominated by warehouses and large scale infrastructure that connects Brooklyn to the larger metropolitan area. On the other hand there is a fragmented community that has to deal with high poverty rates, unemployment, a lack of facilities and gentrification phenomena. A community empowerment facility located on a waterfront parcel will provide a place for education, recreation and rehabilitation, building upon community involvement, social interaction and instructional programs. Through a mixture of program, atmosphere and relations between spaces, the willingness of the community to improve life conditions will become tangible on a location that has always been excluded to the neighborhood. 

120215, "the Greenpoint-Williamsburg Waterfront Rezoning"

Case-study Update

120203, First Design Presentation

Open publication - Free publishing - More architecture

Red Hook Community Justice Center

111125, Presentation on Red Hook

This presentation summarizes the work done so far on the relatively small neighborhood of Red Hook in Brooklyn, NY. Despite being smaller than most Brooklyn neighborhoods, it can be seen as a very diverse area both socially and spatially. We try to understand the current conditions through an extensive historical analysis and by defining the "traces" that remain in the urban tissue. Then we looked at how (or if) this relates to the division of different social groups in the neighborhood. Lastly, we've discussed a few future strategies that could reinstate Red Hook as a valuable port asset.

Open publication - Free publishing - More brooklyn

Case-study, "Greenpoint-Williamsburg Waterfront Redevelopment"

Greenpoint-Williamsburg as well as other areas, experienced accelerated displacement since the 1990s because of gentrification phenomena: Between 1991 and 2002, manufacturing employment alone dropped by 72% in Williamsburg and by 60% in Greenpoint and the number of industrial jobs declined with almost 40%. Large manufacturing firms are no longer present in the area. The employment in manufacturing for New York City as a whole has fallen by nearly 80% in comparison with 1947. The overall result of these changes on the working-waterfront is a dominant presence of vacant lots and under used industrial resources.

This case-study investigates the incentives of the City concerning planning and rezoning of the waterfront area of Greenpoint-Williamsburg and its industrial assets. 

Open publication - Free publishing

Experiment, 05.10.11

As part of our thesis research, we were asked do think of an experiment that would make yourself experience something that one would otherwise not encounter easily. I considered this as being rather personal/intimate rather than consisting of some action that provokes a response from others. I presented myself with following questions:

How to experience a feeling of alienation in a public space? Or better, what does it take for me to feel alone in a space? 

The idea would be to put myself in an unfamiliar (or uncomfortable) position and to create a feeling of isolation. I chose Columbus Park in Downtown Brooklyn as the scenery for the experiment and brought along the following:

- mp3 player (to filter out sounds of the city)

- a small sketchbook and a pensil (to write down my thougths)

- Diana F+ Mini Point&Shoot camera (to document what I observed)

- Pentacon Praktica MTL3 SLR camera (to document what I observed)

- sunglasses (to avoid eye contact with bystanders)

With these items around my neck and in my pockets I sat down near the C. Columbus Statue at Columbus Park. I had decided to stop talking and ignore everyone around me. 11:29

I stayed there on the ground for about five and a half hours. Despite people trying to ignore me, I can assume they would find it rather strange for me to be sitting there. Because it was a sunny day, the park was pretty crowded. Still, I didn't find it hard NOT to pay attention to my surroundings and listen to music instead of the sounds of the park. Systematically I wrote down my thoughts. It was after about an hour or two when I started feeling anxious. What was I doing here?
It took another three hours before I started to feel agitated and was moving about nervously where I was sitting. It became harder and harder not talking to myself or somebody else and the frustration kept on building up. Someone on the benches not far from where I was sitting had been yelling at everybody. I wanted to yell back. At that point I decided to stop. 17:42

My final note: "I've had enough"

Collective Culture: presentation at Columbia University 29.09.11

How do people collectively express their culture? How do they color their surroundings?

In order to find answers, we approached this matter through four types of public spaces –the community space, representative place, streetscape and the virtual realm- inwhich people demonstrate their collectiveness. We considered them as being equally important.

COMMUNITY SPACE

Community gardens require an engagement to be part of the collective culture, which distinguishes it from the general public space. It makes this community space by nature often exclusive. This exclusiveness could also be taken literally because of the fences around the gardens.
What is your influence as a designer? Can you allow the exclusiveness in terms of boundaries but design them differently so that they can be something more inviting?
Could you interfere in something which exists only of an informal group of people and doesn’t want a high end design? Or could you only be a gardener in the community space?

REPRESENTATIVE PLACE

We noticed a shift in representational space in terms of the big classical ideas to the contemporary.

Obviously, nowadays we don’t have institutions with that kind of power anymore and the representation of new public spaces has changed to the local and the temporal. Things that can be built up quickly and go away again. So what can a designer do to create new public spaces? Is it limited to small scale design such as painted public spaces and temporal installations as a container bar?

STREETSCAPE

There is a diverse and active urban culture in the streets of Brooklyn. Whether it is about expressing discontent with institutions, like a mural, or a form of poetry on a large facade, the built environment can serve as an art board for inhabitants. One could say that the streetscape has the capacity to generate urban activity and invite people to interact with their environment.

Could this capability be more profound if a designer was asked to redesign Brooklyn’s streetscape?

Or do sidewalks and streets need to be designed like the great parkways that cross Brooklyn’s grid?

VIRTUAL REALM

The virtual realm is a relatively new public space which supports collective culture in general. People can join online communities, which reflects a feeling of belonging. The Internet is an easy way to reach out ideas to a large group of people and bring them together for a common goal or interest. There are a lot of blogs in andabout the different neighborhoods in Brooklyn.

Sources: 
http://www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com
http://crowhillcommunity.org/index.shtml
http://maps.google.be/
http://www.brooklyn.com/maps.html 
http://factfinder2.census.gov/faces/nav/jsf/pages/index.xhtml
http://www.openwifispots.com/citylist_free_wifi_wireless_hotspotBrooklyn_NY.aspx
http://www.nyc.gov/html/dcp/html/landusefacts/landusefactsmaps.shtml
http://www.nycgovparks.org/facilities/
http://nycwireless.net/
http://www.prospectpark.org/about/history/historic_places/h_gap
http://www.socialexplorer.com/pub/maps/map3.aspx?g=0&mapi=2000+Census+Tract&themei=1
http://www.pps.org/civic-centers/brooklyn_essay/
http://tourdebrooklynplaygrounds.blogspot.com;

suckerPUNCH: get punched by Design

This extremely designerly website is a helping hand for young designers and architects. Architecture Firms can post job opportunities and almost all of the proposals deal with unique projects. By organizing competitions on various themes in and around New York City, SuckerPUNCH is trying to promote design and architecture. It is also a medium for graduating students to "publish" their hard work and share it with others. Definitely worth checking out and maybe our own thesis's could one day be published here? Visit the website here.

Lavender Lake Artist's Factory

One of the competitions that was held, concerned a site at Red Hook bordered by the Gowanus canal to the East, a privately owned building to the South, Smith street to the west, and 5th street to the North. Gowanus canal borders vibrant Brooklyn neighborhoods of Red Hook, Park Slope and Caroll Gardens. Due to heavy industrial pollution in the past, the canal got a noticable purple "sheen" and this lended the nickname lavender lake. During the beginning of the twentieth century, the canal was one of the busiest waterways in the United States. But in the 1950's most of the industry abandoned the area whilest leaving behind a canal filled with sewage, fuel oil, scrap metal and other pollutants, and surrounded by vacant warehouses and "scrap heaps". In 1975 the site was taken over by the City and declared a "public space". The goal was for it to become a public recreational park but it has been sitting behind locked gates ever since.

Aerial view of Gowanus canal with East River in background

Several years ago a new interest in the area arose because of booming activity in the neighborhoods so plans were made to revive the canal surroundings. Soon enough several bars, music venues, outdoor event spaces and artists studios sprawled next to Gowanus canal (bar tano - the bell house - the yard - the sweater factory). Zoning allows for the site to be build op to 12 stories wich presents a wide range of possibilities for future development as soon as the environmental cleanup of the canal is completed:

"On March 2, 2010, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) declared the Gowanus as a Superfund site, ushering in nearly 12 years of studies and work to dredge the contaminated mud at a cost of $500 million. The city is also at work on a three-year, $150-million project to clean the water by rehabilitating the canal’s flushing tunnel and pumping station. A city rezoning proposal to add residential to the manufacturing zone is currently on hold while the agency decides how to move forward and how the federal cleanup designation would impact appropriate redevelopment and remediation." 

"Public Space" site

The competition proposed a new artist factory for the new public space site. The designers were asked to generate a proposal that houses creative production and attracts visitors to the new area. The factory itself had to contain private/shared art studios, a storefront gallery/bar, analog/digital shops and live/work spaces for artists. The original goal of the site, a public space, was an absolute requirement for the proposals and had to be carefully integrated in the design as a programmatic part of the whole. 

Here are two of the submitted designs I found most interesting:

Design Board by David Jaubert

Design Board by Andrew Brown

On the suckerPUNCH website you can review most of the submitted proposals along with other competitions held in previous years. They also have a flickr page with the top20 proposals organized per competition and downloadable in high quality. 

Sources:
http://www.suckerpunchdaily.com/
http://www.suckerpunchdaily.com/2009/12/09/lavender-lake/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/22816379@N03/
All images courtesy of suckerPUNCH Daily