The Calcified City

locating an Architecture of Impermanence

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Abstract
The city has become calcified. Bureaucracy, zoning laws and building codes make rapid innovation a near impossibility. New construction is slow and expensive, and it requires great foresight to plan a building that has not been rendered obsolete by the time construction is completed. At the same time, the way we consume cities is changing rapidly. The time between major technological advancements is shrinking as well as the time it takes those innovations to penetrate the market. Life moves at the speed of technology, and that means trends proliferate and die faster, people are more mobile, companies are more global, and patterns of consumption change faster than the architecture that supports it. Brick-and-mortar buildings are simply not equipped to keep up with the lifestyles of the people inhabiting them. Progress is gridlocked: we can no longer act. The result is wasted financial and material investments, missed opportunities, and neighborhoods left to decay. We must, then, develop a secondary layer of operation within the city: a process of working outside the realm of permanence that exploits new territories for growth, one that enables fast, (relatively) cheap interventions that can more immediately react to changing forces and demands. To begin, a catalog of temporary and mobile typologies is assembled, and their respective operational strategies and extra-architectural territories are extracted and organized into a functional matrix of precedent tools and untapped, potential projects. From that catalog, a narrow range is identified that fits the criteria of being fast, cheap and flexible. The food truck, parklet and pop-up are used as initial case studies that ground the investigations in real, current policy that can be mined for loopholes. The codes governing these spaces are analyzed in-depth and used as generative tools to reveal new territories and strategies to supplement or augment those illustrated by the precedent analysis. With four target applications identified, a series of design experiments is carried out that attempts to utilize the findings from the code analysis to inform an architectural strategy which achieves those four applications. The first experiment, a rapidly deployable system of scaffolding, creates a layer of rapid, reciprocal urbanism that non-destructively augments the buildings to which it attaches with the eventual goal of rehabilitating or enabling growth within the permanent structure and rendering itself obsolete. Subsequent experiments attempt to overcome some of the inherent limitations of a scaffolding system (such as scale and a secondary structure) while enabling the same results. By analyzing the strategies employed by intellectual predecessors as well as mining San Franciscos own extensive collection of codes for potential loopholes, this thesis hopes to define a strategy of rapid urbanism that creates a layer of reciprocity capable of mediating between the rigid infrastructure of brick and mortar and the volatile nature of modern consumption.

Abstract . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 Theoretical.Framework. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 Precedent.Analysis. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 Political.Implications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16 Design.Experiments. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21 . . . . . Code.Analysis .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .22 Target.Applications. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .24 Experiment.1:.Scaffold.City . . . . . . . . . .25 Experiment.2:.Inflatable.Faade. . . . . . .28 Experiment.3:.Lamppost.Parasitism. . . .29

Bibliography. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .30 Image.Credits . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .32

Appendix:.Spring.Proposal. . . . . . . . . . . . .34 . Spring.Calendar. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .36

Misa Grannis advisor: Brian price final Thesis Article december 2011

Introduction

Buildings with no capacity to change can only become slums or ancient monuments Archigram, 1966 Brick-and-mortar buildings are simply not equipped to keep up with the lifestyles of the people inhabiting them. Progress is gridlocked: we can no longer act. The result is wasted financial and material investments, missed opportunities and an erosion of the competitive edge that all cities rely on to attract and retain capital. Vacancies in prime locations that cant be filled because leases are too high, new construction that goes unoccupied because the economic winds shifted before the project was complete. Neighborhoods left to stagnate because any potential for revitalization has been locked out. This phenomenon isnt restricted to the urban environment, either: The post-war suburb, replicated across the country as the ideal home for the majority middle-class, now faces a two-pronged attack: the foreclosure epidemic, precipitated by a crisis of consumption, has left massive swaths of (very nice) single-family homes eerily vacant, and the emergence of e-commerce as a surrogate for driving to the mall is both draining the economic hearts of these cities as well as removing what had become the closest thing to public space in a privatized, commodified landscape. And yet, a secondary layer of operation exists within the city; it is the goal of this thesis to identify how that layer is currently being utilized and push it further. Between the buildings, the bodies and the vehicles is a territory that has the potential to enable fast, (relatively) cheap interventions that can more immediately react to changing forces and demands. With the existing buildings becoming increasingly irrelevant in the arena of progress, we are forced to look around and between them, and at the end of our search we find ourselves standing in the street.

The permanent city, with its towering edifices and rooted foundations, has become calcified. Old cities have become rigid, unable to adapt to rapidly changing practices and patterns of use, and entrenched bureaucracy and politically entangled zoning laws and building codes make rapid innovation a near impossibility. Fixed plans obstruct spatial reprogramming, lease structures are cost- and time-prohibitive to young businesses, and with every square foot already constructed, there is little room for expansion. New construction is an extremely long process hampered by restrictive code requirements, massive expenses and a permitting jungle, and it requires great foresight to plan a building that has not been rendered obsolete by the time construction is completed. Struggling against this calcification is the screaming pace of progress. The past two centuries have seen an exponential growth in technological development, one with which neither the stone and glass edifices of the city nor the idyllic landscapes of the suburbs can keep pace. The time between major evolutions in media technology is shrinking as well as the time it takes those innovations to penetrate a significant portion of the market. The proliferation of new media has accelerated the rate of change that was already outpacing the permanent city, from rapid adoption (and abandonment) of new trends to the encroachment of digital retail on the physical realm. People are more mobile, companies are more global, and patterns of consumption change faster than the architecture that supports it. The most powerful marketing is now crowdsourced, and new businesses can grow a clientele before selling a single product.

The Tokyo Plan Kenzo Tange, 1960

how.do.you.keep.cities. viable.in.an.era.of.rapid. change? -.Simon.Sadler

THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK
The problem of urban rigidity is by no means a recent concern. Even before the introduction of the world wide web, personal computers and cell phones exponentially accelerated the process, a number of architectural groups wrestled with the growing problems of urbanity in the face of rapid change during the mid-20th century, beginning conservatively with Team 10 and the Situationist International and moving into technological innovation and future speculation with the Japanese Metabolists and Archigram. All of these groups agreed that the current urban paradigm was no longer sufficient for the rapidly evolving society that inhabited it, but while Team 10 and the Situationists sought solutions in existing or historical cities, their successors attempted to design an entirely novel urbanism free of the constraints of existing cities. Constant Nieuwenhuys approach in New Babylons was to abandon the current city and relocate society to an infinite network of elevated platforms. Fairly unspecific and described as a conceptual diagram rather than an actual design, his project stands in stark contrast to the fairly pragmatic (and yet extremely ambitious) engagement with the current city in the projects of Archigram. The Metabolists took the idea of a secondary urbanism to its extremes, pushing the limits of scale beyond even the heroic visions of Peter Cooks Plugin City and placing primary importance on the ability for urban space to grow and change organically.
Kenzo Tanges plan for Tokyo Bay

Possibly the first metabolist project, Kenzo Tanges massive plan for a new city over Tokyo Bay argued that the traditional centripetal organization of intra-city transportation could not support the infrastructural needs of extremely large (>10 million) populations, and instead proposed the creation of a central linear axis with branches that fed smaller clusters of occupation.

Clusters in the Air Arata Isozaki, 1962 Also a megastructure, Isozakis proposal for super-dense housing in and around Tokyo moved vertically instead of horizontally like Tanges Bay project. Vertical tree trunks supported an array of plug-in modules reminiscent of Peter Cooks Plugin City, though Cook took the idea further by embedding those trees in a larger infrastructural framework.
Arata Isozakis plug-in clusters

ARCHIGRAM
The members of avant-garde group Archigram approached the problem of slow urbanism with fervor, heroism, a bit of pragmatism and a pop-art flair. Their proposals often involved a kit of parts approach that could be deployed on a massive scale while simultaneously being finely detailed with actual executability in mind. Many projects emerged as a result of their collaboration, but a couple stand out as being particularly relevant to the goals of this thesis. Walking City Ron Herron, 1964 This speculative project took the idea of mobility to its extreme, placing the wheels on the city itself. The giant mechanical behemoths could carry doctors or diplomats and travel to where their services were needed, and if necessarily several of the machines could raft themselves together to form a temporary metropolis.

TEAM 10
Amsterdam Playgrounds Aldo van Eyck, 1947-1978 Over the course of 30 years, working with the city and then later in his private practice, Aldo van Eyck constructed approximately 700 playgrounds on derelict or abandoned sites in Amsterdam. Each site was specifically requested by a community, and the resulting citywide network closed up holes in the urban fabric. (Liane Lefaivre, 2002)
Ron Herrons Walking City

Plugin City Peter Cook, 1964 Although Plugin City cannot move, its components do so freely. Rather than make the entire city mobile Cook proposed a modular system of plug-in units that could be added, moved and removed as quickly as society demanded. Mobility was enabled on multiple scales: transport was achieved through infrastructural tubes integrated into the larger diagonal framework of the system, but individual components were also completely transferrable using the cranes located at the top of the structures. Cooks eventual vision was that the infrastructure would begin as a tangential system to the existing city but that eventually it would aggregate until it replaced the urbanism it was supplementing.

Japanese Metabolism Drawing on biological metaphors (hence metabolism), the Metabolists believed that the fixed city was inherently incompatible with the demands of modern life and that organic growth and flexibility were essential for the city of the future. Many of the designs involved the construction of permanent or long-term infrastructure to support temporary or short-term modular components that could be adapted to fit current demand.

One of Aldo van Eycks playgrounds

Peter Cooks Plugin City

Precedent Analysis: A CaTALOG OF IMPERMANENCE

In addition to the historical examples of mobile and temporary investigations, a number of contemporary examples of these strategies exist. Tents, recreational vehicles and mobile homes all provide degrees of portable housing, and farmers markets and street vendors are a well-established example of temporary commerce. Lunch trucks (affectionately known as roach coaches) have operated in office park lots for a long time, but in the past handful of years the gourmet food truck and cart have emerged as the new frontier for hip foodies and aspiring top chefs. Seasonal retail pop-ups are an expected part of the holidays in a capitalist nation, but Japanese clothing line Comme des Garons set a new standard for the hip, underground pop-up with their guerilla retail campaign that began in Berlin in 2004 and has since spread across the globe. Finally, a more recent trend in US cities is the pop-up caf or parklet as theyre known in San Francisco, a semi-permanent breed of public space that allows independent entities to reclaim parking spaces for public use. In order to study this field of existing strategies, a catalog of mobile and temporary archetypes is assembled that encompasses the pragmatic to the utopian, the micro- to the mega-project, and the inflexible to the flexible. Variables such as time and cost to market, degree of mobility and permanence, cost of maintenance and the mode of mobility (whether the object can drive itself or is carried, etcetera) are rated and sorted, and from these ranked lists a range can identified as fitting my desired criteria of being fast, cheap and flexible. Three specific archetypes were chosen as case studies for more in-depth analysis: the food truck, the parklet, and the pop-up. Each of these types employs a different strategy but all of them are successful in responding to specific demands and embodying a reasonable degree of flexibility compared to a permanent structure. Through in-depth analyses of these existing models and their governing codes, experimentation and manipulation can begin to draw out potential opportunities in the form of holes or undefined variables that allow for a subversion of the anticipated product and the generation of the unexpected.

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Archetype: Food Trucks

Although not completely free from the bureaucratic hoop-jumping required of more permanent forms of construction, the barrier to entry is low enough that the American Dream of entrepreneurship and property ownership has found a new face in this commerce-on-wheels. Getting started in the food business was once a choice between the impossibly risky venture of cold-launching a new restaurant or being content selling gyros on the side of the street, but with the help of websites such as Yelp and Chowhound aspiring chefs with business-savvy and a little bit of startup capital can grow a user base and launch a business in a fraction of the time at a fraction of the cost. Some of these vendors, having proven their worth on the street, eventually graduate to permanent status and move into a brick and mortar joint of their own, but without the accessibility of the food truck that successfully incubated idea would have died in gestation. From the halal and hot dog carts of New York City to the Korean Taco trucks of Los Angeles and San Francisco to the semi-permanent parking lots-turned-city blocks of food trailers in Portland, the mobile food establishment is proof that even in a suffering economy (and perhaps even thanks to it) the mobile business model can thrive. Not only is the establishment of a food cart or truck easier to accomplish, but since it is not tethered to a specific place, its ability to adapt to changing patterns of consumption or demand is infinitely greater than that of a physical plant. These Mobile Food Facilities, or MFFs, represent a reclaiming of power by the public from an aging leviathan that can no longer react as quickly as consumers require. For as long as they are immobile, these mobile units create temporary, previously nonexistent pockets of social intensity without the need for permanent infrastructure. The space adjacent to a food truck becomes something akin to the sidewalk seating in a Paris caf with less commitment to making a purchaseall the social interaction and public voyeurism without having to cross a threshold.
PARK(ing) Day

Food carts in Portland

Archetype: Parklets
Parklets cannot move, they are semi-permanent by nature. Designed to be noninvasive (no breaking ground) but with the potential for permanent construction if the city deems the experiment successful, the strength of the parklets strategy is in its grassroots origin. Parklets must be sponsored by an individual or business (or a group of either).
San Francisco Parklet

Precedents: Grassroots Public Space

PARK(ing) Day Rebar, annually since 2005
Food truck at the Oakland Eat Real fest

Contemporary Examples: Mobility

The food trucks strength is its mobility; it can drive to meet demand, wherever that may be. These projects, both real and speculative, utilize the same strategy to achieve very different ends. Parkmobiles - Yerba Buena Community Benefit District, 2011 Parkmobiles are a mobile version of the parklet and are essentially 6x16 dumpster-cum-planters with a bench that get moved around the Yerba Buena district by trucks every few months.

PARK(ing) Day was started by San Francisco-based nonprofit Rebar as a combination of public space, social experiment and political subversion. It began as a patch of sod, a tree and a park bench towed around the city with a bicycle, but has grown into a global phenomenon. The projects address different issues and take different forms in each city according to the local needs and desires. According to Rebars website, PARK(ing) Day has expanded to include a broad range of interventions well beyond the basic tree-bench-sod park typology first modeled by Rebar. Participants have built interventions ranging from free health clinics, urban farming and ecology demonstrations, political seminars, art installations, free bike repair shops and even a wedding ceremony. Rebar founder John Bela describes the project in an interview: That was really an exploration into the boundary of the short-term lease. We were interested in what happens if you reprogram space temporarily, how do people respond to it? How does it shift the social codes around that space and is there a loophole that we can exploit in terms of that lease arrangement? Literally that piece of real estate in the city, that 8 by 20 parking spot, is subsidized real estate for car storage. So, what if we took advantage of that subsidy and used it for something else, like in this case we made a public park.

PARK(ing) Day in Washington, D.C.

Relevant Historical Precedents

Ron Herron, Walking City
Yerba Buena Parkmobile

Relevant Historical Precedents

Aldo van Eyck, Amsterdam Playgrounds

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Archetype: Pop-ups
Pop-up retail is very common around the holidays and has made headlines as a marketing tactics for high-end brands and big box companies alike, but in San Francisco today the most popular version of this archetype is the restaurant pop-up. The basic operational strategy of the pop-up is to locate temporary, rotating program in a permanent space. The transient nature of the events generates buzz and interest for the visiting chefs (aided by mobile technologies such as twitter and facebook), and the rotating content encourages more frequent visits, benefitting the host business (the owner of the space).
Working on a Renew Newcastle storefront

Renew Newcastle (Newcastle, Australia) Renew Newcastle is a nonprofit in Newcastle, Australia, founded by festival organizer Marcus Westbury. Like La Cocina it functions as an incubator for new business, but rather than owning rights to any particular properties it merely negotiates terms between property owners and businesses in spaces as they become available. The company was created to help revitalize the citys dead Central Business District (CBD) that had suffered huge economic blows from the one-two punch of heavy industry decline and the flight to the suburbs. Westbury discovered that many of the vacant spaces remained that way because tax incentives made it cheaper for the property owners to write them off than maintain them as ongoing concerns, so he worked with the city government, insurance agencies and property owners to renegotiate lease terms and city codes to allow for short, 30-day leases. By hacking the real estate industry, as he puts it, he was able to create a permanent legal structure for temporary spaces. His company absorbs the risk to the property owners and offers extremely low-rate rent to entrepreneurs looking to jump-start a physical business, creating a win-win situation in which city government gains tax revenue, property owners monetize previously vacant lots and the barrier to entry to small business owners is lowered significantly. The result has been a very successful campaign of revitalization of a previously desolate area. After almost 30 years of increasing vacancy rates, almost all of the 20 vacant spaces have been filled by over 60 businesses since 2009. The increased economic activity has lured permanent tenants back to the area, spurring a complete rebirth of the local economy in the span of 2 years. (Source: renewnewcastle.org)

Precedents: Permanent Structure, Temporary Program

Corner SF (San Francisco) Corner SF is the most common example of the pop-up restaurant strategy in San Francisco. Originally a stand-alone restaurant, Corner gradually began inviting visiting chefs to take over for a lunch or dinner service until the pop-up programming almost completely replaced its own. Corner continued to hold the lease for the space but negotiated its terms to allow it to frequently rotate staff as long as a representative of the Corner staff fulfilled alcohol orders.
Corner SF (now closed) a RN shop interior called Makespace

La Cocina (San Francisco) La Cocina is a food industry incubator in the Mission District that provides shared commercial kitchen space and business training and consultation, the program targets low-income entrepreneurs who need a leg up to gain entry to the expensive and competitive food business. Rather than acting as a restaurant space, La Cocina acts as a teaching kitchen for these entrepreneurs (often female immigrants from Mexico) and organizes events outside the space to help promote the new businesses. The program is structured such that the first 6 months of participation in the program are focused on business development and planning and the second 6 months are spent developing products in the test kitchen. Graduates of the incubator program are considered alumni, creating a sense of community that strengthens the mutual support within businesses in the program (rather than engendering competition between participants).

Comme des Garons (Japan, varies) This high-end Japanese fashion brand launched the first popular example of guerilla retail that has since been replicated by companies as mainstream as Target (the bullseye bodegas in NYC in 2008). By launching temporary storefronts in vacant or abandoned spaces, often in dilapidated areas, Comme des Garcons used the element of surprise as well as the novelty of the contrast between the clothing and the context to generate excitement for the brand that surpassed the typical potential of mainstream advertising. Through this strategy the company was able to grow its customer base, increase loyalty and extend its reach globally without the inflexibility or expense of a full-term lease.

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The La Cocina kitchen

Guerilla store in Warsaw, Poland in 2007

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primary stakeholders

city government
parking regulations health codes zoning laws permits

parklets

existing businesses

The Politics of Impermanence

The archetypes of the food truck, parklet and pop-up are produced out of a partnership between a handful of entities, each of which controls its own set of assets and liabilities. The major constituents in order of descending power are the city government, the companies that own the urban properties, the current business owners leasing brick-and-mortar spaces, and entrepreneurs hoping to enter the market. By drawing the relationships hierarchically we can chart the products of collaboration as well as the potential power struggles or conflicts that arise out of the typical process. This arrangement also illustrates two different attitudes that can be taken towards the production or promotion of a mobile or temporary strategy. From the top-down perspective, its in the citys best interest to create a permanent legal infrastructure for these temporary systems because they generate additional tax revenue, permit fees and allow a greater monetization of the curbside than is possible with standard metered parking. In many cases these efforts are also free or cheap for the city, and studies have shown the interventions to have positive social effects in the neighborhoods in which theyre active. In short, the city allows its citizens to pay to improve their own neighborhood in ways and at speeds impossible for a government agency. From a bottom-up perspective, these strategies enable entrepreneurs to be nimble and efficient, moving product to market very quickly and reaching a wide audience with the help of technology. It allows a bypassing of the standard bureaucratic process that blocks smaller entities from entry. It also allows individuals and communities to take back some power and control over their environment, enabling them to instigate change in their neighborhoods much faster than the city ever could.

property owners

[vacant] property liability control of lease structure

renew newcastle

incubators

food trucks

fully-equipped space claim to sidewalk

pop-ups

carrying product

product startup capital [online customer base]

entrepreneurs

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food trucks

primary stakeholders

collaboration

parklets
increased value of parking tax revenue permit fees very low-cost lowrisk entry to market association with trusted brand

tax revenue (indirect)

can follow demand lower barrier to entry than brickand-mortar

renew newcastle

assets (controls)

parking regulations tax revenue (indirect) tax incentives health codes zoning laws permits

low-risk interim rental income between long-term tenants

increased foot traffic increased visit duration improved public image community magnet

pop-ups
diverse client base community magnet very low-cost lowrisk entry to market innovative product association with trusted brand startup capital

[vacant] property lease structure

fully-equipped space claim to sidewalk permanent presence in neighborhood

[online customer base] mastery of social media

city government
limitations
slow bureaucratic process not directly involved in community needs

property owners
loss of revenue from vacancies subject to market fluctuations liability issues tied down to location of property

existing businesses
ability to pay rent tied to strength of economy tied down to location of property (mostly) process of moving is costly

entrepreneurs
not very much startup capital no established physical user base

competition

conflicts

barrier to entry: expensive leases barrier to entry: long and expensive startup process liability: ability of tenant to pay

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precedent strategy matrix

rolling
park(ing) day food truck

hauptstadt

Design Experiments: SETUP

Before a novel solution can be proposed, its necessary to establish a baseline; the existing body of work represents a wide array of pre-tested data that may be mined for possible strategies, missed opportunities and potential provocations. The precedents and typologies identified in the catalogue are thus rigorously dissected in several exercises: First, to establish a set of precedent strategies from which to draw, the projects in the original catalog are distilled into their core components: the territories in which they operate and the method by which they interface with their environment. The resulting four territoriesInside (the buildings), Around (streets), Between (interstitial spaces), and Aboveand four interfacesInserted, Flush, Floating and Rollingare then cross-bred to generate a matrix of possible contextual strategies. Some of the intersections clearly describe existing precedents, but more interesting are the intersections not yet claimed by a project. These holes in the matrix point to potential areas for further exploration and exploitation. Second, new strategies and territories are generated from local conditions. As city-sanctioned operations, the Mobile Food Facility, parklet and popup are highly regulated, and the codes that govern those spaces are embedded with social/political/economic implications. The codes may also be spatialized to reveal the new territories within which they are allowed to operate. By building these code-maps in reversebeginning with the largest possible territory (for example, all sidewalks) and carving away only the minimum amount dictated by the codethe maximum possible space of operation is identified. At the scale of the sidewalk, codes relating to the construction of bay windows are also investigated since they directly control the space above of the sidewalk, the first layer of territory outside the permanent building fabric. Additionally, not only does this mapmaking exercise give form to written law, it also draws focus to the area that exists in-between the new territory and the buildings; these non-places such as bus stops, fire hydrants, street corners, schools and public parks begin to appear as generators of apertures in the system. Only by fully understanding the current legal structure will it be possible to identify opportunities for subversion and exploitation.

INTERFACES

floating

parklet

flush

renew newcastle / POP-UP

aldo van eyck / local codes / pet arch.

inserted

between

around

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above

in

plug-In city

TERRITORIES

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food truck code interpretation code analysis

food trucks

food trucks
Reverse-mapping the city: Begin with the largest possible territory (all streets) and systematically delete only when dictated by the code. Whats left is a new map of the city, one that depicts a new territory of operational opportunities. As a commercial establishment food trucks and carts may not be parked in residential zones. They must also maintain a 1500 distance from middle and high schools. Looking at the codes and working backward: Rather than starting with the assumed single parking space, begin with the largest possible territory (all parking spaces) and trim territory away based on the legal constraints as a way to identify possible loopholes or opportunities in the code
GUIDELINES: 1) 5 from corner 2) 6 from path of travel 3) 6 from street furniture 4) 7 from hydrants 5) 8 from bus zones 6) 8 from Street Artists 7) 12 from blue zone 8) 1500 from middle/high school 9) not in a residential zoning district not located in a building business hours do not exceed zoning districts hours not on property for more than 3 days/week or 6 days/week max 12 hours/day COSTS $125 processing fee $200 notification fee $383 inspection fee $125 annual renewal fee $271 plan check fee $181 plan check renewal fee $330 fire dept fee $344 fire dept license fee

street-scale code interpretation

parklets parklets

parklets

bay windows

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GUIDELINES: 1) MAX 6 WIDE 2) DECKING FLUSH WITH CURB 3) 3 WHEEL STOP REQUIRED 4) MAINTAIN 4 FROM WHEEL STOP 5) SOFT HIT POSTS REQUIRED 6) MAINTAIN DRAINAGE BELOW 7) VISUALLY PERMEABLE OUTSIDE EDGE 8) TYP. 2 PARKING SPOTS LONG (40)

PUBLICLY ACCESSIBLE at least 1 stall FROM CORNER STREET LIMIT 25MPH OR LESS minimal slope NO RED ZONES NO HYDRANTS

The parklet code does not specify a maximum height, only that the parklet be flush with the curb and be visually permeable. This opens up possibilities for creating vertical structures or enclosure not typically associated with parklet design.

1 min from edge

5 between bays 9 max width at face 15 max width at base 7 min vertical clearance

pop-ups
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renew newcastle / POP-UP

DESIGN EXPERIMENTS: TARGET APPLICATIONS

The desired functional capabilities for the final proposal emerge from the precedent research and the initial problems of stagnation, calcification and wasted investment that were identified. Each strategy or application serves a different one of the stakeholders identified earlier.

atomization
around

DESIGN EXPERIMENT: SCAFFOLD city

Scaffolding is a ubiquitous element in many cities, inherently extraarchitectural but incredibly powerful as an enabler of change outside the building envelope. This experiment uses the scaffold as a potential parklet framework for a fast, reciprocal urbanism: a temporary infrastructure for temporary things which both serves and augments the structures to which it attaches; where the true measure of its success lies in rendering itself no longer necessary. Scaffolding emerged in part as a response to the vague vertical restrictions placed on parklets as well as the requirement that vertical elements be visually permeable. In addition, they are rapidly deployable, able to aldo van eyck / the city move around local codes to meet demand, and are relatively inexpensive. / pet arch. Combined with a plug-in system of modular spaces that did not rely on additional infrastructure such as conditioning or plumbing needs would create a second layer of usable space outside the buildings. At the street level, these modules could function as annexes of adjacent retail space or as independent retail or public space elements (similar to a food truck or parklet), and above the street level they could plug in directly to the adjacent interior space and provide a temporary extension extremely quickly.
hauptstadt

around + plug-in

Atomization (Existing Business)

Existing tenants are able to extend their reach beyond their fixed walls to reach additional customers or expand their territory of influence while they accumulate enough capital to finance an additional full lease.

{extension of reach by existing tenant}

between

Upgrade path

Upgrade Path (Entrepreneur)

Access to cheap, temporary spaces would be ideal for new entrepreneurs hoping to enter the market rapidly, giving them a means to raise capital to eventually move into a permanent space.

above

{intermediate step for entrepreneurs}

Scaffolding in downtown SF

plug-In city

Reverse Parklet (Property Owner)

In the case of vacancies, the system could function as a revitalization engine. By placing modules in front of a vacancy, property owners would effectively make the scaffolding more valuable than the permanent real estate behind it. If enough interest could be generated in the temporary addition, the increase in customer traffic to the area could be enough to lure new tenants back into the permanent space.

reverse parklet

{revitalization engine for vacant spaces}

placeholder
Placeholder (City Government/Property Owner)
For the rare vacant lot in a busy urban area, new construction is both extremely costly and time-consuming and often impossible in bad economic conditions. A standalone scaffolding system of modular units would allow the lot to still be lightly utilized (thereby generating revenue for the property owner and the city) in the interim.

{temporary occupation of vacant lot}

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The inherent functional nature of scaffolding supports several different potential organizational strategies, each of which must operate within the physical dimensions identified in the code analyses.

25% of sidewalk width

6 from curb 15 over street

7 over sidewalk

Street Bridge
Frequently used in New York City to protect pedestrians from falling debris during faade maintenance, these scaffolding tunnels could become functional with plug-ins running parallel to the street. Occupying the territory of mobile food facilities and parklets, the modules in this scenario would logically be related to the ground-floor retail spaces across the sidewalk.

Inverse Setback
This organization uses minimum clearance and obstruction allowances to create a new setback envelope over the street that trades some of the pedestrians light and air space for a significant expansion of territorymost of the surface area of the street grid would be reclaimed as occupiable space. This scenario includes street-level modules as well as elevated modules which would begin to engage sectionally with the units in the adjacent buildings. Offices in need of additional space but which cant yet afford to lease a larger space or even individuals desiring requiring extra square footage but short on cash would be able to temporarily extend out over the street in a non-destructive manner.

Faade Occupation
Here we can use the traditional vertical organization of the scaffold to occupy and extend the faade. Functionality of the units would be similar to the Inverse Setback scenario, but rather than expanding horizontally across the street the territory would be the space above the sidewalk as controlled by the bay window code and the required allowances and clearances at street level.

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DESIGN EXPERIMENT: INFLATABLE FAADE

The strength of the first experiment lay in its rapid deployability, flexibility and non-invasive nature. However, it is potentially limited by its modular nature, the resulting limitations of scale, the reliance on a separate structural framework and the dependence on a host building. Therefore, the second experiment attempted to eliminate the scaffolding and the box and instead integrate both structure and module into one unit. The Inflatable Faade proposes a portable system that employs pneumatic tubes or another such flexible, inflatable material to temporarily add square footage for an existing tenant. The space would be accessed via apertures in the faade (windows and doors) but could potentially span the width and height of the entire building above the required head clearance. Potential advantages of this system not found in the first experiment include the ability to embed services within the structure (for example, running power or water through the tubes), the ability to turn the system on or off without disassembling anything, and the creation of a secondary space of occupation in the negative space of the faade.

DESIGN EXPERIMENT: lamppost parasitism

While the inflatable faade is able to combine the two systems into one, it is still very limited in scale due to its connection through existing apertures and dependence on a host building. The final experiment, Lamppost Parasitism, attempts to eliminate that dependence. In order to maintain a symbiotic relationship with the existing city fabric, this system trades one infrastructural element for another: instead of relying on the building faade for stability, it latches onto the citywide network of lampposts and streetlights to provide a structural anchor. Modules could become much larger in scale than those in the scaffolding or inflatable model, and there is the potential for tapping into the electric power either in the lampposts or MUNI wires above. Weaknesses of this strategy include the limitations inherent in the height, strength and frequency of the lampposts and streetlights, as well as the slippery territory of parasitism. If this proposal is to remain pragmatic and function in the commercial realm, the issue of piracy and illicit subversion of the law (versus the legal subversion sought after in the code analysis) would introduce a degree of complication that could become problematic.

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bibliography

Mobility/impermanence
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Faraone,.C ..and.Sarti,.A ..(2008) ..Intermittent.cities:.On.waiting. spaces.and.how.to.inhabit.transforming.cities ..Cities.of.Dispersal. (Architectural.Design),.78.(1),.40-45 .. Hughes,.J .,.&.Sadler,.S ..(2000) ..Non-plan:.essays.on.freedom. participation.and.change.in.modern.architecture.and.urbanism .. Oxford:.Architectural.Press .. Sadler,.Simon ..(2005) ..Architecture.Without.Architecture ..Cambridge:.The. MIT.Press . van.Schaik,.&.M .,.Macel,.O ..(Eds .) ..(2005) ..Exit.Utopia:.Architectural. Provocations.1956-76 ..Munich:.Prestel.Verlag . Wall,.A ..(1999) ..Programming.the.Urban.Surface ..Recovering.landscape:. essays.in.contemporary.landscape.architecture.(pp ..233-249) .. Corner,.J ..(Ed .) ..New.York:.Princeton.Architectural.Press .

[Articles]
Banerjee,.Tridib ..(2001) ..The.Future.of.Public.Space:.Beyond.Invented. Streets.and.Reinvented.Places ..APA.Journal,.67.(1),.9-24 ..Accessed. via.web:.7/28/11. Cornes,.Serban ..(2008) ..User-focused.public.space ..Cities.of.Dispersal. (Architectural.Design),.78.(1),.80-83 . De.Meulder,.Bruno ..(2008) ..Old.dispersions.and.scenes.for.the. production.of.public.space:.The.constructive.margins.of.secondarity .. Cities.of.Dispersal.(Architectural.Design),.78.(1),.28-33 . Sloterdijk,.Peter ..(2007) ..Foam.City ..Log,.9,.63-76 . Verbakel,.E ..and.Derman,.E ..(2008) ..Urban.[IM]plants:.Tactics.for. recombining.landscape.and.collective.space.in.Bonheiden,.Belgium .. Cities.of.Dispersal.(Architectural.Design),.78.(1),.74-79 .

[Websites]
http://rebargroup .org/parking-day/ Space,.place.and.play,.in.Aldo.van.Eyck:.The.Playgrounds.and.the. City,.ed ..Liane.Lefaivre.and.Ingeborg.de.Roode.(Amsterdam:. Stedelijk.Museum,.2002),.27 .. http://www .lacocinasf .org/ http://renewnewcastle .org/ http://www .pps .org/blog/how-lighter-quicker-cheaper-interventions-cancatalyze-city-wide-renewal-one-place-at-a-time/

Secondary Sources

Urbanism
Christensen,.D .E ..(November.1966).The.Auto.in.Americas.Landscape. and.Way.of.Life ..Geography,.51.(4),.339-348 ..Accessed.via.web:. 7/23/2011. <http://www .jstor .org/stable/40566161> Fishman,.Robert ..(1990) ..Megalopolis.Unbound ..The.Wilson.Quarterly,.14. (1),.24-45 ..Accessed.via.web:.7/23/11 ... http://www .jstor .org/stable/40259475. . Meyerson,.Martin.and.Mitchell,.Robert ..(Nov,.1945) ..Changing.City. Patterns ..Annals.of.the.American.Academy.of.Political.and.Social. Science,.242,.149-162 ..Accessed.via.web:.28/07/2011.. http://www .jstor .org/stable/1026070 Mumford,.L ..(1961) ..The.city.in.history:.its.origins,.its.transformations,. and.its.prospects ..New.York:.Harcourt,.Brace.&.World .

Suburbs and Urbanism

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Marshall,.Alexander ..(2000).How.Cities.Work ..Austin:.University.of.Texas. Press . The.Temple.Hoyne.Buell.Center.for.the.Study.of.American.Architecture .. (2011) ..The.Buell.Hypothesis ..New.York:.Columbia.University. Graduate.School.of.Architecture,.Planning.and.Preservation .. Accessed.via.web:.9/19/11

Society and Politics

Garnett,.Nicole.Stelle ..(Oct.2004) ..Ordering.(and.Order.in).the.City .. Stanford.Law.Review,.57.(1).1-58,.Accessed:.28/07/2011. http://www .jstor .org/stable/40040202 McLeod,.Mary ..(1983) ..Architecture.or.Revolution:.Taylorism,.Technocracy,. and.Social.Change ..Art.Journal,.43.(2),.132-147 ..Accessed.via.web:. 7/28/11. http://www .jstor .org/stable/776649. Teaford,.Jon ..(1985) ..New.Life.for.an.Old.Subject:.Investigating.the. Structure.of.Urban.Rule ..American.Quarterly,.37.(3),.346-356 .. Accessed:.26/07/2011.. http://www .jstor .org/stable/2712661.

Public/collective Space
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Crawford,.Margaret ..(1999) ..Blurring.the.Boundaries:.Public.Space. and.Private.Life ..Everyday.Urbanism ...Eds ..John.Chase,.Margaret. Crawford,.and.John.Kaliski ..New.York:.Monacelli.Press .

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image credits

All images not specifically referenced here are original photographs or illustrations

P. 4
Rate of technological growth graphs Source: kurzweilai.com

P. 6
One of Aldo van Eycks playgrounds Source: www.amazon.com/Aldo-Van-Eyck-Designing-Playgrounds

P. 13
San Francisco Parklet Source: sfpavementtoparks.sfplanning.org PARK(ing) Day Source: www.dwell.com/articles/parking-day-website.html PARK(ing) Day in Washington, D.C. Source: inhabitat.com/parking-day-takes-to-the-streets

P. 7
Kenzo Tanges plan for Tokyo Bay Source: http://archinect.com/features/article/56468 Arata Isozakis plug-in clusters Source: www.fgautron.com Ron Herrons Walking City Source: www.archigram.net Peter Cooks Plugin City Source:www.archigram.net

P. 14
Corner SF (now closed) Source: Google Maps The La Cocina kitchen Source: www.lacocinasf.org

P. 12
Food carts in Portland Source: www.terrafluxus.com Photo credit: California Planning & Development Report Food truck at the Oakland Eat Real festival Source: http://www.akitachow.com/blog/2010/09/08/eat-real-2010-in-oakland/ Photo crediit: Renate Valencia, 2010 Yerba Buena Parkmobile Source: http://sf.curbed.com/archives/2011/10/03/more_parkmobiles_are_coming.php

P. 15
Working on a Renew Newcastle storefront Source: creativeinnovation.net.au/Features/ideasphere/RENEWING-NEWCASTLE.html Photo credit: Solange Kershaw A RN shop interior called Makespace Source: renewnewcastle.org/projects/about/project/make-space Comme des Garons guerilla store in Warsaw, Poland in 2007 Source: hypebeast.com/2007/11/comme-des-garcons-guerilla-store-warsaw

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APPENDIX: spring proposal

Argument/Position
The city has become calcified. With advancements in technology, the way we consume our environment changes rapidly, outpacing the adaptive capacity the permanent city fabric mired in endless bureaucracy, high costs and the inherently slow nature of new construction. The result is wasted financial and material investment, stagnation and decay, particularly in times of economic hardship. We must, then, develop a secondary layer of operation outside the realm of permanence that exploits new territories for growth; one that enables fast, cheap and flexible interventions that can rapidly react to changing demands. By analyzing the strategies employed by intellectual predecessors as well as mining San Franciscos own extensive collection of codes for potential loopholes, this thesis hopes to define a strategy of rapid urbanism that creates a layer of reciprocity capable of mediating between the rigid infrastructure of brick and mortar and the volatile nature of modern consumption.

One important characteristic to carry forward into a final proposal is that the system is symbiotic with the city fabric instead of removing itself from it. Many large-scale modular precedents such as Plug-In city operate mostly independently of the old city with the intention of eventually replacing the old with a newer, more efficient system, but this proposal hopes to prove that the material and financial investments embedded in the existing structures should not be tossed aside. Instead, it takes a pragmatic and capitalistic approach to revitalizing and jumpstarting struggling parts of the city. The challenge will be balancing this pragmatism with a more ambitious and provocative scale or method.

Program
The most rapidly changing aspects of the city are related to commerce and how the city is consumed, so I am proposing that the program of my spring proposal be related to spaces of exchange, whether that means retail, commercial, support or public spaces involved in goods exchange or its facilitation.

Design Trajectory
Somewhere between the design explorations lies the trajectory for the spring semester. This proposal aims to be as cheap and nimble as the food truck, as ambitious in scale as an Archigram project, with the reciprocity and rapid deployability of the scaffold and the technological capacity of advanced materials and systems. It should be impermanent, flexible and mobile, but not necessarily as autonomous as the food truck or as simple as the scaffold. This proposal is likely a strategy more than a building, but will be more specific than an urban-scale suggestion. I hope to develop a specific instance (with potential variations) of this system in action to a relatively fine level of detail. Once a territory and strategy are decided, physical modeling will be employed to test design ideas. Scaffolding as an urban tool for rapid change or flexibility is not a novel concept; many projects, both historical and contemporary (such as the Metavilla French Pavilion by Exyzt at the Venice Biennale in 2006) have employed similar strategies. However, there is potential in the idea of appropriating existing infrastructure and attempting to subvert or reprogram it or the codes that govern it to meet new ends. It also presents an opportunity to architecturalize the non-architectural. Before the start of the spring semester, I will attempt to rethink the problem inductively, beginning with the proposed program and working outwards toward a design proposition at the scale of which Ive been discussing. This may provide an alternative reading as well as formal program-driven constraints that will shape the specific parameters of the system.

Site
Due to its diverse collection of high- and low-end retail and booming and abandoned storefronts (to match the variety of potential applications previously outlined), I propose a to-be-determined stretch of Mid-Market Street as my spring site, though the system should be flexible enough to work in many different areas.

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spring calendar
PHASE 1
design charrette final conceptual experimentation material explorations (physical models, testing) narrow test site location schematic design review prep final schematic design physical modeling (larger scale/detail level) design development review prep final design decisions presentation planning final drawing production final model production
week 1 1/17 1/23 1/30 2/6 2/13 2/20 2 3 4 5 6 7 2/27 8 3/5 9 3/12 10 3/19 11 3/26 12 4/2 13 4/9 14 4/16 15 4/23 16 4/30

PHASE 2

PHASE 3

PHASE 4

jury review #1

jury review #2

jury review #3

final review

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