Imagining a meshwork of urban nature

The unbuilt project of Panhandle Freeway in San Francisco from the early 1960s is a unique case in the politics of design during the heyday of urban renewal in the United States in the early 1960s. The close collaboration between highway engineers and landscape architect Lawrence Halprin on this project also exemplifies cross-disciplinary thinking in redefining natural processes in the city. While Halprin emphasized the visual and visceral experience of moving through the highways integrated with parks and residential apartments, the civic function of urban freeway clashed with the local communities that would be displaced by the construction. The aesthetics of mobility eulogized a regional vision shared by Halprin and his friends informed their active involvement with the infrastructural design of the Bay Area. It presents an alternative to the criticism of the urban renewal of the 1960s. Nevertheless, the residents worked with the city council on the successful revolt against Panhandle Freeway, and none of the alternative routes was constructed, leaving the gap between southern San Francisco and Golden Gate Bridge to local traffic. While some critics see Halprin’s freeway design as an ameliorative disguise, his schemes open up a dialogue between social and aesthetic aspects of the mobility. In doing so, his interweaving of urban ecology and infrastructure marked the evolution of scenic parkways to urban freeway in landscape architectural practices. The lesson of Panhandle Freeway is not only a matter of coexistence, it also foreshadowed the open-ended methodology in planning and design

The Circulari Project

The Circulari project was a collaboration with Paula Meijerink landscape architect for WANTED and associate professor at the Graduate School of Design Harvard.Within the context of the conference Topologies, Bodies, Sites and Technologies this paper presents the Circulari art project. Circulari could be described as a movement landscape, a video garden or a choreographic field. The paper reveals the different disciplinary facets of 'circulari' which triangulate movement, land art installation and screen technologies to investigate notions of mass movement from a macroscopic to a microscopic scale. With this project inscribing land and cultivating kinaesthetic rhythms is discussed with a historical and contemporary perspective .It focuses on the circulatory and the transformative relationships between landscape and the body. The paper references and makes tangible global shifts within landscapes of production, while simultaneously affecting the personal scale of the body in movement, resulting in site-specificity expressed though reference, materiality and proximity.Society of Dance and History Scholars, Conference Proceedings 2009 Stanford University

Ghirardelli Square: The Best Piece of Urban Space in the Country

Ghirardelli Square, which opened in 1964, is well known among many architecture historians and urban planners owing to its origins as the one of the first successful rescue and adaptive reuse of a factory site and its place among the shifting urban renewal policies within San Francisco. Previous analysis has focused primarily on the work of Lawrence Halprin and his impact within Northern California; however very little has been discussed in regards to Roth and his team’s original plan for the space along with the outrage taking place concerning urban renewal policies in San Francisco during this time. By examining Halprin\u27s design for Ghirardelli Square both to emerging theories of urban design and William Roth’s model of preservation-oriented private development, I argue that Ghirardelli Square represents a significant, but under-examined model of the 1960s’ turn towards a new synthesis of architectural modernism and palimpsestic urban design. The work of these two men, and the team of planners and architects that formed the Ghirardelli Project Committee, created an innovative plan of rescue and adaptation that resulted in Ghirardelli Square’s place as a significant phase in the history of urban aesthetics and design. With consideration for the ever-changing urban landscape, and the ongoing gentrification experienced today in many major metropolitan areas throughout the United States, this study stresses the importance of cultivating an understanding of historic urban planning and policy that originated in the early 20th century and the subsequent reaction against this same policy beginning in the 1950s

Emergent Landscape: Urban Shadow Space, Illuminated

This study defines a new approach to the transformation of unmaintained land within cities, or urban shadow space. Although urban shadow space can offer a place of free expression for the community and spontaneous vegetative growth within a city, it is often dismissed as blighted land by public authority. This study maximizes existing opportunities of these spaces, illuminating a realm of the city that is currently dark to the public eye. A proposed set of guidelines is utilized in the creation of three alternative designs that illustrate the emergent landscape, a sensitively designed, evolving landscape that encourages user interaction with the site. These guidelines and the results of their application are intended to assist design professionals who wish to move beyond the typical “clean and green” strategy currently employed by many municipalities to embrace a site’s existing characteristics

The Sea Ranch: Planning Precedent

The Sea Ranch, California (1960’s): An oceanfront, largely vacation community located some 100 miles north of San Francisco, Sea Ranch is known both for its master plan, which sought to mitigate the impact of buildings in the landscape, and its architecture, which draws from vernacular agrarian building forms and materials. The master plan was devised by the landscape architect Lawrence Halprin. The most notable buildings were by the prominent Bay Area architects Joseph Esherick and MLTW (Moore, Lyndon, Turnbull, and Whittaker). The purpose of studying this precedent was to spur the students’ thinking about designing in a sensitive landscape

Superstrade urbane. Dall\u2019alta velocit\ue0 alle trasformazioni contemporanee

This article focuses on urban freeway deconstruction processes that recognize this infrastructure as a resource to be reclaimed for urban regeneration. Since they first appeared, freeways have been more than simple carriers of traffic flow. Following the suggestions provided by Le Corbusier, Drexler and Rudofsky in their \u201cROADS\u201d exhibition, Lawrence Halprin, Reyner Banham, particular attention is paid to the shift towards a larger set of aesthetic assumptions applied to highways. Fifty years after the iconic evocation of Autopia, urban freeways no longer embody the modern value of speed: they must increasingly deal with ecological challenges and re-cycling processes. The nodes where infrastructure comes together with architecture and public space are explored in a rapid survey of case studies. At a metropolitan scale, the recent cases of the Central Artery in Boston or the Cheongyeccheon expressway in Seoul, demonstrate unprecedented efforts in urban design, in which at the core of a multifaceted redevelopment project the highway disappears, replaced by a ground-level boulevard. This trend, seen earlier in San Francisco or Portland, differs from the situation in Europe, which raises a case -to-case approach. The Concrete Collar in Birmingham, or the many studies on the P\ue9riph\ue9rique in Paris, seek to implement specific actions the purpose of which is to resolve fractures in the urban fabric, issues involving linear voids along the edges, and lacerations in the urban continuity, in an attempt to reinvent the often adverse qualities of this infrastructure by relying on the architectural ambition of infrastructural design

Design in support of playfulness

Playful environments can be conceived as landscapes able to support an individual’s internal sense of playfulness and its external manifestation. These environments cultivate a sense of place where recreational, therapeutic, and educational resources are merged based on the conviction that nature is a positive influence. This project explores how outdoor spaces encompass the built and natural world, convey a sense of connection to spatial ephemera and phenomena, and ultimately how space can become spaces for individuals. The project explores the notion of playfulness and the meaning it may acquire for design within landscape architecture. The study aims to positively contribute to making people’s lives more playful, joyful, and cheerful. It intends to touch people\u27s lives gently, improve their quality of life, and influence the way they build and view the world more positively. Throughout the thesis, drawing acts as a tool for noticing, linking, and wayfinding the relationship between individuals and space as well as structural and ephemeral elements in the landscape. Through drawing, the investigation examines the process of communicating powerful and meaningful experiences and conveys a personal aesthetic approach to the landscape moments

The Sea Ranch: Unforeseen Failures and Statewide Successes of an Ecologically Conscious Coastal Community

The term “residential development” or “planned community” brings to mind images of a stereotypical suburbia. The planned community of The Sea Ranch, along the Sonoma County coast in Northern California is a direct challenge to the suburban ideal. Construction of the nearly 1500 homes began in the late 1960s and continues to present day. All of the homes must meet specific design requirements including being ecologically sound and they must fit within the landscape. The strict architectural elements is what provides the distinct look of the community. The construction of a housing development along a ten-mile strip of untouched and inhospitable California coastline was challenged by conservation groups. One result was the formation of the California Coastal Commission, which gained regulatory powers for all coastal developments in California. This paper is an interdisciplinary examination of The Sea Ranch community. Through the humanities disciplines of art and design, landscape response, philosophy, history, and the legal challenges faced by this community, these findings show how the Sea Ranch overcame the obstacles to provide a thriving ecologically minded community

Supergraphics. Sea Ranch and the proto-Pop authenticity

[EN] The end of the works of the Condominium I in 1965 supposes the conclusion of a Californian model of domesticity that goes a step further in its relation with the inhabitant through a last process of non tangible transformation of the space. To do this, Charles Moore, accompanied by William Turnbull and making his own home a training camp, goes in search of the authentic; an immersion in the perceptual possibilities provided by the pictorial, de-scaled or encrypted modification of spaces capable of being reread in surprising codes. The groundbreaking approach to the later Supergraphics takes shape at the facilities of the Moonraker Recreation Center thanks to the multidisciplinary collaboration of Lawrence Halprin and Barbara Stauffacher. There is a unique language and plastic daring here in a strange limbo, prior to the pictorial explosion of the posterous years that form a delicate and astonishing balance, definitely proto-Pop.[ES] El fin de las obras del Condominio I en 1965 supone la conclusión de un modelo de domesticidad californiana que da un paso más en su relación con el habitante a través de un último proceso de transformación no tangible del espacio. Para ello, Charles Moore, acompañado de William Turnbull y haciendo de su propia vivienda un campo de entrenamiento, se adentra en la búsqueda de lo auténtico; una inmersión en las posibilidades perceptivas proporcionadas por la modificación pictórica, desescalada o cifrada, de espacios capaces de ser releídos en claves sorprendentes.La pionera aproximación a los posteriormente denominados Supergraphics, toma forma en las instalaciones del Moonraker Recreation Center gracias a la multidisciplinar colaboración de Lawrence Halprin y Barbara Stauffacher. Conviven aquí lenguaje único y atrevimiento plástico en un limbo extraño, previo al estallido pictórico de los años posteriores que dan forma a un delicado y asombroso equilibrio, definitivamente proto-Pop.Juanes Juanes, B. (2018). Supergraphics. Sea Ranch y la autenticidad Proto-Pop. EGA. Revista de Expresión Gráfica Arquitectónica. 23(33):190-201. doi:10.4995/ega.2018.7880SWORD1902012333JENCKS, Charles. The Language of Post-modern Architecture. New York: Rizzoli, 1977.BACHELARD, Gastón. La poética del espacio. México D.F.: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1965.DIAMONSTEIN-SPIELVOGEL, Barbaralee, and I. M PEI. American Architecture Now. New York: Rizzoli, 1980.LITTLEJOHN, David. Architect: the Life and Work of Charles W. Moore. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1984.MCMORROUGH, John. "Blowing the lid off paint", en Hunch 11: Rethinkinh Representation, ed. Penelope Dean,MOORE, Charles Willard y otros. The Sea Ranch, California, 1966. Tokyo: A.D.A. Edita, 1971.MOORE, Charles Willard y otros. The Sea Ranch Condominium and Athletic Club 1 & 2, Sea Ranch, California, 1963-69. Tokyo: A.D.A. Edita, 1976.MOORE, Charles Willard, and Kevin P KEIM. You Have to Pay for the Public Life : Selected Essays of Charles W. Moore. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2001.OTERO-PAILOS, Jorge. Architecture's Historical Turn : Phenomenology and the Rise of the Postmodern. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2010. https://doi.org/10.5749/minnesota/9780816666034.001.0001McMorrough, John. "Blowing the lid off paint," en Hunch 11: Rethinking Representationn, ed. PenelopeDean, 64-75. Rotterdam: Episode Publisers, 2007RaySmith, Charles. "Bathhouse Graphics", Progressive Architecture, Marzo, 1967, 156-161.RaySmith, Charles. "The Freeway comes Indoors", Progressive Architecture, Octubre, 1967, 164-168.RaySmith, Charles. "The Permissiveness of Supermannerism", Progressive Architecture, Octubre, 1967, 169-173.RaySmith, Charles. "Supergraphichs", Progressive Architecture, Noviembre, 1967, 132-137