Urban Ecology Center Menomonee Valley

as mentioned in a previous post. i've been fortunate enough to work with milwaukee's urban ecology center on an expansion branch in our very own menomonee valley.



three of us have authored a book of the designs, process, and experience of the course with all it's ups and downs. it's now for sale via lulu's self publishing site.

holocaust memorial design competition

we've recently completed another competition for the atlantic city boardwalk holocaust memorial.
here are some process images that we can share now.
the final images will follow shortly after the judging. [when it's legal]

conceptual sketches

plan sketch + notes

rendering sketches + notes

thanks to everyone for all their help:

dave tesch_ m.arch 2010 - creative contribution

adriana artega_ m.arch 2011 - models
sam brannon_ bsas 2011
luke cvikota_ bsas 2011
ashleigh fischer_ bsas 2011
richie hands_ bsas 2011
therese hassett_ m.arch 2011
jodi masanz_ m.arch 2010
ben mather_ bsas 2011
michelle sletten_ m.arch 2011
paul steidl_ bsas 2011
blake villwock_ m.arch 2011

monterrey housing development

ELEMENTAL wins brit insurance design award.
they've created an investment, not a social expense.

busy alejandro.... this is an ingenious project.

q: what happens when you only have the capital to build half a house?
a: provide the half that is the hardest, or impossible, for an individual to do themselves.
in this case, the architect provided the structural framework [ which in residential housing accounts for 80% of the project budget ] and allowed the families to infill as they accumulated the means to expand.


according to ELEMENTAL there were essentially five design parameters:
i. location
ii. urban layout
iii. position of unit on lot
iv. structure for final size
v. middle income dna

forecasting mke for the urban age

below is the 'commercial' for the 2010 marcus prize studio i've been participating in this semester.

MARCUS PRIZE 2010 from Spirit of Space on Vimeo.

as i've stated in a previous post; the title of this year's marcus prize is: FORECASTING MKE; for the urban age. this title was spurred on from discussions with Alejandro Aravena - the 2010 recipient of the marcus prize and our 'professor' for this semester [ along with the helpful guidance of mr. ryan o'connor ].

we are to propose projects that have the potential to attract 'knowledge creators' or the 'creative class' in an effort to put mke back on the map...

there's quite amazing potential in this city, from repurposing abandoned or outdated infrastructure [the many grain silos that dot the urban landscape or envisioning a new life for our iconic hoan bridge], to harnessing mke's claim as the 'freshwater capital of the world' and the 'city of festivals', to projecting the future of the working environment.

5 groups, 5 projects, 1 opportunity, 10 more weeks....

thanks to red mike and adam goss at spirit of space for all their hard work.

Gathering Place

Our go at the International Glass competition (this year's challenge to reinvent the "community gathering space") had to go off in a well-organized fashion because of the time constraint. Well we took our sweet time on Detroit, we were left with less than a week to represent, finish, print and send the physical thing to Tokyo. But this limitation, I believe, rendered some solid results. Our main objectives had to be simplified, ordered and presented quickly, clearly and diagrammatically.

The project we saw was the re-thinking of how people gathering in contemporary times. There is no "central place" but many unique places; as well, people do not "GO" to a "Place," but more easily and with excitement "bump into" one another along a way. We thought these ideas were the basis of what a new gathering place should be. We did not want to build a place, but reconsider how people live, in order to put in place a framework which would 1) make the "going" more experiential, so as to encourage a more human-paced way of "going," 2) introduce to this "community" what community can be through the encouragement of easy "bump-into" interaction and 3) keep in place several gradients of individual or "owned" places without getting rid of the symbolic American "home."

Strategies:
We took an ex-urb / sub-urb on the edge of Milwaukee as example.
We designed for the better part of a century, showing stages of work that would be done to change the physical environment.
1) bringing in the wide- no-man's-like streets over a period of years
2)planting more and more trees that will add a canopy to the empty suburban pathways and encourage the branching out of people to their front yards
3) collecting half of each owner's backyard and creating a "fortress-like" block-owned area for a variety of activities, and lowering fences to half the human height
4)placing parches and gradients on front of home to encourage the use of "see-and-be-seen " space
5) infilling in-between and re-using garages as the larger corridors (like Capitol Drive) get turned into rail corridors in the future
6) envisioning both economic, agricultural and neighborhood-spurred recreation that line the inner suburban forest, creating no need to go to great lengths for such necessities as food, entertainment, park-systems, or casual community interaction amongst people.

There will be no need for a "center" of gathering, when every place encourages interaction along the normal path of living and moving. Gathering will make its own place amongst a framework designed for interaction.

home remedies

we moved to riverwest about a year ago. loving the neighborhood. the corner bars. the co-op. the parks. the activism. the artists. the general level of humility and outrage existing in some symbiotic tension.

we moved into a refurbished 'unit' above an emergency sign distributor. the place used to be an old irish tavern. the labels are still on the breaker boxes. a funky mix of wood panelling and cream city brick - painted creamier - keep us warm and out of the wind.

... that be said our rooms were small... so, we put our minds and hands to work. check out the conversion.

[before; up]

[after; down]

no more stuff on the floor.