In 2014 Michael Babbitt and Hebah Abu Baker suggested catalytic intervention as a possible design reaction to the needs of this neighborhood. Such interventions may be small and DIY at the initial stages, but they have the potential to snowball further changes and engage multiple stakeholders. Babbitt suggested that the best location for such interventions may be along edges. By using the term “edges” he was referring to border zones, spaces that occupy a position between and betwixt multiple sites, social spaces and zones. Border zones are powerful spaces because they are domains where new ideas, hybrid forms and shared concepts are prevalent.
Using this theoretical concept as our point of departure the 2015 studio carefully studied Martin Drive E neighborhood, located at the edge of Washington Park, the 30th Street industrial corridor and Vliet Street as a site of catalytic interventions.
Using this theoretical concept as our point of departure the 2015 studio carefully studied Martin Drive E neighborhood, located at the edge of Washington Park, the 30th Street industrial corridor and Vliet Street as a site of catalytic interventions.
About this project
This project seeks to make an impact on how people see and experience the Martin Drive East Neighborhood. Our goal was to employ a participatory research and design process in order to explore catalytic and tactical interventions within this neighborhood.
Johnathan Bartol, Jaclyn McDowell, Taryn Singh, James Wall
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Individual Projects
Urbanity as a strategy
James Wall, Jaclyn McDowell Wall and McDowell focus on urbanity as a solution in itself. They see the location of this neighborhood, uniquely situated within crisscrossing networks of institutions and relationships, and consider the urban experience of walking within the neighborhood as a resource that reproduces community and recreates a sense of place. They utilize qualities of heterolocalism, a term used by geographer Wilbur Zelinsky to refer to the networked nature of contemporary cities, and territoriality, the more traditional understandings of neighborhoods as ways to rethink development of this neighborhood. Design Strategy: Rethinking Infrastructure |
Building morphology and history as strategy
Johnathan Bartol, Taryn Singh Bartol and Singh capture the importance of thematic form that exists in the vernacular urban fabric and argue that the existing building stock is a resource. Singh argues that the vernacular building form has developed over years and is an implicit language of conventions and social values that residents share. She uses N J Habraken’s notion of form as a thematic convention and explores how, once understood, that form can become the core of collaborative community based conversations. Bartol argues that the thematic form of the 19th C needs to change (as it always has in the past) and he works within certain constraints in order to redesign a residential duplex that serves the needs of the 21st C. As a result, Bartol moves through a series of form-transformations within the overall theme in order to produce a new building type. Design Strategy: Flexible Prototyping |
James Wall |
Jaclyn McDowell
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Johnathan Bartol
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Taryn Singh |
Nan Ellin, Integral Urbanism, (New York: Routledge, 2006).
Chapter 7, Quentin Stevens, The Ludic City: Exploring the Potential of Public Spaces, (New York: Routledge, 2007), 152-177.
Sue McGlynn, Ian Bentley, Graham Smith, Alan Alcock, Paul Murrain, and John Bennett, Responsive Environments, (London: Architectural Press, 1985).
Chapters from Common Ground: Readings and Reflections on Public Space, edited by Anthony M. Orum and Zachary P. Neal. New York: Routledge, 2010.
Nabeel Hamdi, Small Change: The Art of Practice and the Limits of Planning in Cities, (London: Earthscan, 2004)
See also,
Ana Luz, “Places In-Between: The Transit(ional) Locations of Nomadic Narratives,” Koht ja Paik / Place and Location: Studies in Environmental Aesthetics and Semiotics V, Eva Näripea, Virve Sarapik, Jaak Tomberg Tallinn (editors), The Research Group of Cultural and Literary Theory, Estonian Academy of Arts, 2006 – 320. PDF available at http://www.eki.ee/km/place/koht_5.htm
Chapter 7, Quentin Stevens, The Ludic City: Exploring the Potential of Public Spaces, (New York: Routledge, 2007), 152-177.
Sue McGlynn, Ian Bentley, Graham Smith, Alan Alcock, Paul Murrain, and John Bennett, Responsive Environments, (London: Architectural Press, 1985).
Chapters from Common Ground: Readings and Reflections on Public Space, edited by Anthony M. Orum and Zachary P. Neal. New York: Routledge, 2010.
Nabeel Hamdi, Small Change: The Art of Practice and the Limits of Planning in Cities, (London: Earthscan, 2004)
See also,
Ana Luz, “Places In-Between: The Transit(ional) Locations of Nomadic Narratives,” Koht ja Paik / Place and Location: Studies in Environmental Aesthetics and Semiotics V, Eva Näripea, Virve Sarapik, Jaak Tomberg Tallinn (editors), The Research Group of Cultural and Literary Theory, Estonian Academy of Arts, 2006 – 320. PDF available at http://www.eki.ee/km/place/koht_5.htm