misa grannis

the calcified city

Buildings with no capacity for change can only become slums or ancient monuments. - Archigram

The city can no longer keep up with the people who inhabit it. The solution may be an inexpensive, flexible strategy of rapid urbanism capable of mediating between the rigid permanent city fabric and the volatile nature of modern consumption.

POTENTIAL APPLICATIONS
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. The codes governing these spaces are studied in depth and mapped in reverse; by beginning with the maximum possible territory and carving away space only when specified by the code, the greatest possible new territory for growth is revealed. At the street scale, this method also reveals undefined variables that may become a tool for innovation, such as the lack of a maximum vertical dimension for parklets. Finally, territories and interfacing strategies are extracted from the collected precedents and then cross-bred in a matrix of potential projects. A design experiment is carried out at the intersection of the territory around buildings and a plug-in interface. The existing element of scaffolding is appropriated for a more substantial usecreating 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. The system can then be simply disassembled and moved to a new location in need of rapid stimulus. 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.

atomization

Upgrade path

{extension of reach by existing tenant}

{intermediate step for entrepreneurs}

reverse parklet

placeholder

{revitalization engine for vacant spaces}

{temporary occupation of vacant lot}

precedent strategies
PRECEDENTS/TYPOLOGIES TERRITORIES OF OPERATION SUBTRACTIVE CITY MAPPING

code analysis

WITHIN (VACANCIES)

renew newcastle / POP-UP

AROUND (STREET)

BETWEEN (INTERSTITIAL)

parklet

ABOVE (ROOFTOPS, SKY)

INTERFACE WITH ENVIRONMENT

park(ing) day food truck

INSERTED

FLUSH

aldo van eyck / local codes / pet arch.

FLOATING

MOBILE

plug-In city

QUALITIES
FAST CHEAP

hauptstadt

FLEXIBLE

PARKLET CODE INTERPRETATION

design experiments

scaffold city

pneumatic space

FOURTH STREET

RECIPRO CALPRAG MATICFA STCHEAP FLEXIBL EOPPORT UNISTIC NIMBLE

FIFTH STREET

PROPOSED SITE: MID-MARKET

brian price, latent politics