The Green Church

If "green” is an environmental concept applicable to the design and construction of buildings and landscapes, then we should not limit the scope of the concept solely to the natural environment. Rather, we should include key "environments” in which designers operate, including the socio-cultural, political, and natural environments. In this paper, I present a case study in"green” design that expands the scope of the concept and recognizes the interrelationship between these multiple environments. Using recent construction and renovation on the campus of the FirstPresbyterian Church of Berkeley as the case, I show how these environments are mutuallysupportive. Moreover, I argue that if designers simply consider the natural environment, theirlaudable goals may never be realized. In the first part of the paper, I provide a background on the project and its physical and socio-cultural setting. Second, I discuss how the different "environments” were addressed in the planning and design of the project. I then introduce specific"green” strategies that were employed in the design of the new and renovated buildings. These include considering renovation as the first imperative, thinking holistically about the entire campus,and applying a simplified approach to "greening” the buildings. I conclude by offering suggestionsfor future designers interested in reducing the environmental impact of their buildings.Keywords: Sustainability, Adaptive Reuse, Human Contex

The Boulevard Study: From Arterial to Asset -- Examining the Role of the Multi-Way Boulevard in Coordinated Transportation and Land Use Planning

Cities that were once considered the most-desired places to live or for businesses to locate are now seeking ways to unclog their increasingly congested roadways and regain their quality of life. U.S. Department of Transportation Strategic Plan Background Cities across the U.S. that are struggling with congestion resort to remedies that are increasingly difficult to implement. Adding capacity is a more challenging proposition given limited land availability, greater environmental constraints, and fiscal barriers. Replacing individual trips with transit has seen limited success and can typically only be justified at greater levels of density than many communities currently support. Multiway boulevards offer one possible but little studied alternative to congested arterials in metropolitan areas. These streets, which are common in Europe, have several lanes of faster moving through traffic in the middle separated by medians from parking and access lanes on the sides. With local traffic traveling in the slow moving access lanes, these streets support a wider array of land uses than typical arterials. Ground level retail uses can take advantage of on-street parking in the access lanes. Residential uses are attracted to the park-like quality of the landscaped boulevards. This study will investigate the transportation and land use potential of replacing the ubiquitous arterial with multiway boulevards. Objective. This is an applied research project that will examine the opportunities and constraints to converting an auto-oriented five-and six-lane arterial into a multiway boulevard with transit as a way of reducing congestion, improving pedestrian and automobile safety, and supporting more unified land uses. Hence, the study is well aligned with OTREC\u27s theme of integrating land use and transportation planning as well as U.S. Department of Transportation (USDOT) strategic objectives focused on improving safety, enhancing mobility, and minimizing transportation related environmental impacts. Method and Scope The project will use a case study approach and will focus on the Franklin Corridor in the Eugene-Springfield area. Through a series of public workshops, planning studios, and student research efforts, University of Oregon graduate and undergraduate students in architecture, landscape architecture, and planning, along with local professionals, and members of the general public will work together to analyze existing conditions, develop planning objectives, prepare conceptual diagrams for development of the corridor, examine alternative right-of-way sections, and calculate potential future development capacities in terms of densities and open space. The work effort will be focused on developing a conceptual analysis of existing and proposed conditions rather than on detailed traffic modeling and design. The study area will include Franklin Boulevard from the eastern edge of Glenwood to Eugene\u27s Ferry Street Bridge. The corridor is under intense development pressure. On the west end, Eugene\u27s new Federal Courthouse will be the anchor for a 50-acre redeveloped industrial district. In the middle are proposals for the 80-acre Walnut Station Mixed Use Area. On the east end are redevelopment concepts for a 43-acre portion of Glenwood. In this project, we will look beyond these individual projects and study the potential for the corridor as a whole

City Design Lecture Series: Linking Transportation and Land Use Planning

The objective of this multidisciplinary educational program was to host a lecture series that will inform area professionals, students, and the broader public about the need to consider transportation and land use strategies in concert that can jointly create more livable cities with enhanced safety, reduced congestion, greater mobility choices, and more housing variety. This lecture series meets the Oregon Transportation Research and Education Consortium’s (OTREC) goal of encouraging “… multidisciplinary educational programs and experiential learning across disciplines in the transportation field.” The lecture series brought a variety of nationally known experts in the fields of transportation planning, urban design, and transit-oriented development. These lectures were free and open to the public. Attendance was required of University of Oregon students enrolled in urban design courses. Over 600 participants attended the lectures. In addition, the videotaped lectures are available from the University of Oregon’s website as podcasts

From Arterial to Asset: Examining the Role of the Multiway Boulevard in Coordinated Transportation and Land Use Planning

Cities struggling with congestion need options to automobile-dependent transportation and land use patterns. Multiway boulevards are one alternative. Through lanes in the middle are separated by landscaped medians from side access lanes for bicycles and slow-moving local traffic. Using a case study from Oregon’s Eugene–Springfield metropolitan area, this project considers what could happen if cities built arterials as multiway boulevards. This interdisciplinary study, which included widespread stakeholder and public participation as well as detailed land use and transportation modeling, was instrumental in the Eugene Planning Commission’s decision to endorse converting a portion of the arterial into a multiway boulevard. Although the case study arterial, with its existing bus rapid transit lanes, requires an unusually wide right-of-way, the results show that the arterial could better accommodate residential and mixed-use buildings at the edges if reconfigured as a multiway boulevard. Projected benefits include the possibility of supporting 8,400 dwelling units, reducing annual vehicle miles traveled by nearly 100 million miles (161 million km), and reducing annual carbon emissions by nearly 110 million lb (50 million kg). Development along the boulevard can preserve up to 1,680 acres (680 ha) of farmland and lead to an annual transportation savings per household of about $1,500. New residences could generate more than$17 million annually in property tax revenue. This study offers lessons for communities interested in promoting environmental protection, enhancing quality of life, and reducing energy consumption

The Green Church

If “green” is an environmental concept applicable to the design and construction of buildings and landscapes, then we should not limit the scope of the concept solely to the natural environment. Rather, we should include key “environments” in which designers operate, including the socio-cultural, political, and natural environments. In this paper, I present a case study in“green” design that expands the scope of the concept and recognizes the interrelationship between these multiple environments. Using recent construction and renovation on the campus of the FirstPresbyterian Church of Berkeley as the case, I show how these environments are mutuallysupportive. Moreover, I argue that if designers simply consider the natural environment, theirlaudable goals may never be realized. In the first part of the paper, I provide a background on the project and its physical and socio-cultural setting. Second, I discuss how the different “environments” were addressed in the planning and design of the project. I then introduce specific“green” strategies that were employed in the design of the new and renovated buildings. These include considering renovation as the first imperative, thinking holistically about the entire campus,and applying a simplified approach to “greening” the buildings. I conclude by offering suggestionsfor future designers interested in reducing the environmental impact of their buildings. Keywords: Sustainability, Adaptive Reuse, Human Contex

The Missing ‘Brazilianness’ of Nineteenth-Century Brazilian Art and Architecture

This chapter examines a few of the landmark narratives on the issue of national character published between 1880 and 1940. Following the views of Lucio Marcal Ferreira Ribeiro Lima Costa patron, Costa held that it was instead the simple architecture of anonymous master builders that embodied the functional, technical, and aesthetic homogeneity of Brazilianness. In the drive to rehabilitate nineteenth-century Brazilian art and architecture, the actual discourses by which it came to be ostracized have themselves been suppressed from scholarship. The late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries saw the decline of colonial and imperial plantation elites from northeast Brazil and the rise to power of coffee-growing and cattle-ranching oligarchies from the southeast, followed by the rise of industrial capitalism. The unchallenged ethos of national genius that Costa helped construct for Niemeyer remains to the day a favourite topic of debate on the nature of professional practice in Brazilian architecture