Design

Urban Planning at Silverdocs

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At one of America’s best theaters this week, the Silverdocs film festival is showing The Pruitt-Igoe Myth: An Urban History. Pruitt-Igoe was a St. Louis public housing project, notorious among Planning 101 students as athe worst example of urban planning/social engineering/redevelopment ever. The photo of its implosion–dusty and collapsing, is iconic.

This film “reclaims the mythology of Pruitt-Igoe by questioning and recontextualizing its demise.” The interviews with former residents should be interesting.

Also of interest to planning junkies–The Revenge of the Electric Car, and Surpriseville.

Eco -logy meets eco -nomy: it all comes down to home.

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Excerpts from David Korten’s “Living Buildings, Living Economies, and a Living Future” from Yes! online, May 18, 2011:

“Integrating multi-purpose buildings into a larger multi-building neighborhood or district system adds opportunities to develop public green spaces, community gardens, edible landscaping, and small-scale poultry and livestock production, as well as natural wetlands and living machine water purification to continuously recycle nutrients, water, and energy.

Integrative projects also create opportunities to balance the utility loads of businesses, which generally have greater energy needs during the day, and residences, which have greater needs during nonbusiness hours. Bringing residences, employment, shopping, and recreation together in close proximity minimizes transportation requirements and facilitates the sharing of autos, bicycles, appliances, and tools, and community connections … Continue reading

Dangerous by Design

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No, not the bad boys your mother warned you about, but the streets you may (try to) walk along everyday.

Transportation for America’s latest report has plenty of media-catching data:

between 2000 and 2009 more than 47,700 pedestrians were killed in the United States, the equivalent of a jumbo jet crash every month in that same time period, a pedestrian was struck by a car or truck every 7 minutes while motorist deaths have dropped 27 percent in the past decade, pedestrian fatalities have fallen at only half that rate, by just over 14 percent.

But you won’t be surprised to hear that a scant fraction of federal transportation funding distributed to states for local projects is dedicated to pedestrian safety. … Continue reading

A Learning Opportunity from NCPC: Contemporary Design, Historic City

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What: 2011 NCPC Speaker Series Contemporary Design, Historic City: The Balancing Act Between Innovation & Preservation When: Tuesday, June 7, 2011 6:30 – 8:00 PM Where: Koubek Auditorium – Crough Center for Architectural Studies School of Architecture and Planning Catholic University of America

 

As a city filled with historic structures and landmarks, architectural preservation in the nation’s capital receives a lot of attention. Yet, as Washington continues to evolve, there exists a growing need for new development and a desire for more modern and inventive architecture. Making sure the two can successfully co-exist is the responsibility of the agencies involved in the planning and design review process. Join a panel of distinguished design and planning experts as they explore … Continue reading

Bicycle Conference Follow-up

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guest post: David Anspacher

Last Saturday, the Montgomery County Civic Federation’s bicycle conference got representatives from various agencies together, including M-NCPPC, MCDOT, MDOT, MD SHA, and WMATA, to talk about their bicycle planning and implementation activities.

In the late morning, attendees  began developing an action plan for advancing bicycling in the County. There were lots of good ideas, many dealing with ways to reduce the speed of car traffic.

Francoise Carrier, Chair of the Planning Board, provided concluding remarks. She identified three ways that the Planning Board can work to improve bicycling:

through master planning, find opportunities to break up large blocks and expand the street grid, creating a network of low volume, low speed roads overlaid with  bike … Continue reading

learning with legos at NBM

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The ongoing Lego (R) exhibit, Towering Ambition, at the National Building Museum has some very cool models of famous buildings, but also provides a play area for kids and families.

More interesting than the models, however, are the prompts about land use and community planning hanging around and adorning the space where kids (and adults) can play with the Legos.

Rather than focus on cool buildings, like the exhibit, these prompts ask budding designers to think about places beyond the bounds of an individual building, to think like a town planner (and a rather progressive one at that).

Unfortunately the prompts still relegate land uses to separate building forms, but do suggest locating them near one another.

I think … Continue reading

Where is the green space for apartment-dwellers?

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If you don’t have a plot of land, you can still grow flowers, herbs, and vegetables. Fern Richardson writes a great blog on container gardens, Life on the Balcony. And Treehugger has put up a synopsis of her recent designs for using pallets as vertical planters.

Building of the Month, May 2011

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The Seymour Krieger House (1958), in Bethesda’s Bannockburn neighborhood, was designed by internationally renowned architect Marcel Breuer. The structure is the only single-family dwelling designed by Marcel Breuer in Montgomery County, and is one of four residential buildings he designed in Maryland.  The residence was built for Seymour Krieger, a communications lawyer, and his wife Rita.  The Krieger family lived here until 1964.

The resource is an outstanding example of an International Style residence.  Its transparent volumetric form, exposed steel framing, lack of applied ornamentation and balanced asymmetry are hallmarks of the style. The triangular-shaped corner lot was landscaped by prolific landscape designer Dan Kiley.  The project was the first of five collaborations between Breuer and Kiley nationwide, and was one of only two … Continue reading

Plant Chicago: more on the apparent topic of the day.

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Adaptive reuse of existing buildings for agriculture: Plant Chicago – vertical farming and industrial reuse.

Take a quick look at their philosophy in 2 minutes.

Don’t think we’d have any 40-story buildings, but what if we used less and converted … i don’t know … some of our numerous self-storage facilities to vertical farms?

Agriburbia–are we already there?

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This Utne Reader article describes what may be a subdivision trend–designing residential neighborhods integral to farms.

New developments in Chicago, Atlanta, and Colorado are moving beyond community gardens and contracting with farmers to run and manage the farm next door. And as the article points out, there is the potential for conflict, “pesticide drift,” etc. This is why we zoned in the first place, to separate percieved noxious uses, and even though these residents will be a self-selected group ready to get their hands dirty, fresh tomatos are one thing, manure is quite another. When you look at the websites, there is a definite “people like us” vibe that makes you wonder if agriburbia is the green equivalent of a gated community.

But … Continue reading