masters thesis | armature urbanism

University of Washington Abstract

Armature Urbanism: Trail Design in the Contours of Metropolitan InfrastructureHeide S. Martin

Chair of the Supervisory Committee: Assistant Professor Thasa Way

Department of Landscape Architecture

Vacant and interstitial lands are prevalent in cities across the nation and the globe. They lie within previously dense residential or commercial cores and at the edges of urban developments and infrastructural frameworks. They are de ned by patterns of hydrology, topography, and other systems which limit develop-ment. This thesis reassesses the meaning and value of such lands in Seattle and examines ways that they can and do serve social and ecological functions within the urban fabric. I am interested in the unique and sometimes odd landscapes that evolve between the dramatic, dynamic edges of infrastructure, the intimately scaled and inhabited spaces of our cities, and the urban ecologies that de ne the city. This project explores how minimal interventions and design can make these spaces accessible while retaining their inherent character and richness. I have focused on the potential of the path as a minimal move, a thread that weaves together spaces, making place, without erasing existing character and yet offering access of a kind. I propose a multi-use trail that will connect the existing spur of a bicycle path known as the Chief Sealth Trail into the South Seattle and Downtown Seattle trail networks. By exploring the idea of a path, the richness of edges, and the potential of interstitial/forgotten land, this project suggests investigations of sustainability at a series of scales. The framework of a trail pushes design into the broadest levels of regional connectivity, while also necessitating attention to moments, transi-tions, and narrative. This project questions how high performance network level landscapes can be designed to remain accessible, emotive, and grounded in the textures of place, and demands an urgent recognition of the popular imagination of complex, transitional landscapes as places of inspiration, freedom, and mystery. Armature Urbanism

trai l design in the contours of metropol i tan infrastructure

heide s martin

Armature Urbanism: Trail Design in the Contours of Metropolitan Infrastructure

Heide S Martin

A thesis submitted in partial fulllment of the

requirements for the degree of

Master of Landscape Architecture University of Washington

2010

Program Authorized to Offer Degree: Department of Landscape Architecture

University of Washington Abstract

Armature Urbanism: Trail Design in the Contours of Metropolitan InfrastructureHeide S. Martin

Chair of the Supervisory Committee: Assistant Professor Thasa Way

Department of Landscape Architecture

Vacant and interstitial lands are prevalent in cities across the nation and the globe. They lie within previously dense residential or commercial cores and at the edges of urban developments and infrastructural frameworks. They are dened by patterns of hydrology, topography, and other systems which limit develop-ment. This thesis reassesses the meaning and value of such lands in Seattle and examines ways that they can and do serve social and ecological functions within the urban fabric. I am interested in the unique and sometimes odd landscapes that evolve between the dramatic, dynamic edges of infrastructure, the intimately scaled and inhabited spaces of our cities, and the urban ecologies that dene the city. This project explores how minimal interventions and design can make these spaces accessible while retaining their inherent character and richness. I have focused on the potential of the path as a minimal move, a thread that weaves together spaces, making place, without erasing existing character and yet offering access of a kind. I propose a multi-use trail that will connect the existing spur of a bicycle path known as the Chief Sealth Trail into the South Seattle and Downtown Seattle trail networks. By exploring the idea of a path, the richness of edges, and the potential of interstitial/forgotten land, this project suggests investigations of sustainability at a series of scales. The framework of a trail pushes design into the broadest levels of regional connectivity, while also necessitating attention to moments, transi-tions, and narrative. This project questions how high performance network level landscapes can be designed to remain accessible, emotive, and grounded in the textures of place, and demands an urgent recognition of the popular imagination of complex, transitional landscapes as places of inspiration, freedom, and mystery.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

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03 THEORY + LITERATURE 03.01 landscape urbanism and layered infrastructures 03.02 potential of the void03.03 trail design: legibility, traces, and narratives 03.04 reading a deep geography of the city: methods and tools of psychogeography

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01 PREFACE xiv

02 INTRODUCTION 1

04 EXPERIENCE + CRITIQUE04.01 understanding pathways: walking the line04.02 understanding pathways: materials, movement, form

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05 PRINCIPLES OF DESIGN 67

06 APPROACHING DESIGN06.01 nding + understanding the path(s) 06.02 design goals and strategies

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07 DESIGNING THE THREAD 07.01 design of a narrative07.02 design of a moment

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08 REFLECTION 149

09 BIBLIOGRAPHY 155

10 APPENDIX ii 163

7 gure 1. Rhne River: prexisting vegetation languages 7 gure 2. Rhne River: design of viaduct route 8 gure 3. Pointe de Hourdel : design of quarry waterscape 9 gure 4. plan view of Trinitat Cloverleaf Park9 gure 5. aerial view of Trinitat Cloverleaf Park 10 gure 6. model of Trinitat Cloverleaf Park10 gure 7. view into the circulation of the Trinitat Cloverleaf Park12 gure 8. proposed Blue Thread and bike lanes that overlap it12 gure 9. screening and exposing at once 13 gure 10. character of a dense urban site at Queens Plaza15 gure 11. the Fremont Troll: activating Seattle voids17 gure 12. abandoned workshop as gallery, performance space18 gure 13. elevated walkways at Natur-Park Sdgelnde 19 gure 14. civic infl uence in the upper level of the park19 gure 15. horizontal surfaces in upper level of park20 gure 16. feral nature in the lower level of the park20 gure 17. paving textures in the lower level of the park22 gure 18. Richard Long: A Line Made By Walking 196723 gure 19. example of paving scheme of Cardinal Greenway23 gure 20. mile marker along Cardinal Greenway24 gure 21. The High Line in winter of 200024 gure 22. The High Line in summer of 200025 gure 23. elevated urban oasis: Promenade Plante27 gure 24. advertising to the High Line: a sign of success? 27 gure 25. buildings straddle the High Line, not touching it27 gure 26. promenade as program, as motivation28 gure 27. path winding around Lake Uri29 gure 28. repaired railing: new contrasting with the old29 gure 29. cleaning the erratics29 gure 30. Descombs belvedere32 gure 31. example of the Situationists artistic detournement33 gure 32. The Naked City, 195733 gure 33. Guide Psychogographique de Paris, 1956

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LIST OF FIGURES

7 gure 1. Rhne River: prexisting vegetation languages 7 gure 2. Rhne River: design of viaduct route 8 gure 3. Pointe de Hourdel : design of quarry waterscape 9 gure 4. plan view of Trinitat Cloverleaf Park9 gure 5. aerial view of Trinitat Cloverleaf Park 10 gure 6. model of Trinitat Cloverleaf Park10 gure 7. view into the circulation of the Trinitat Cloverleaf Park12 gure 8. proposed Blue Thread and bike lanes that overlap it12 gure 9. screening and exposing at once 13 gure 10. character of a dense urban site at Queens Plaza15 gure 11. the Fremont Troll: activating Seattle voids17 gure 12. abandoned workshop as gallery, performance space18 gure 13. elevated walkways at Natur-Park Sdgelnde 19 gure 14. civic influence in the upper level of the park19 gure 15. horizontal surfaces in upper level of park20 gure 16. feral nature in the lower level of the park20 gure 17. paving textures in the lower level of the park22 gure 18. Richard Long: A Line Made By Walking 196723 gure 19. example of paving scheme of Cardinal Greenway23 gure 20. mile marker along Cardinal Greenway24 gure 21. The High Line in winter of 200024 gure 22. The High Line in summer of 200025 gure 23. elevated urban oasis: Promenade Plante27 gure 24. advertising to the High Line: a sign of success? 27 gure 25. buildings straddle the High Line, not touching it27 gure 26. promenade as program, as motivation28 gure 27. path winding around Lake Uri29 gure 28. repaired railing: new contrasting with the old29 gure 29. cleaning the erratics29 gure 30. Descombs belvedere32 gure 31. example of the Situationists artistic detournement33 gure 32. The Naked City, 195733 gure 33. Guide Psychogographique de Paris, 1956

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7 gure 1. Rhne River: prexisting vegetation languages 7 gure 2. Rhne River: design of viaduct route 8 gure 3. Pointe de Hourdel : design of quarry waterscape 9 gure 4. plan view of Trinitat Cloverleaf Park9 gure 5. aerial view of Trinitat Cloverleaf Park 10 gure 6. model of Trinitat Cloverleaf Park10 gure 7. view into the circulation of the Trinitat Cloverleaf Park12 gure 8. proposed Blue Thread and bike lanes that overlap it12 gure 9. screening and exposing at once 13 gure 10. character of a dense urban site at Queens Plaza15 gure 11. the Fremont Troll: activating Seattle voids17 gure 12. abandoned workshop as gallery, performance space18 gure 13. elevated walkways at Natur-Park Sdgelnde 19 gure 14. civic influence in the upper level of the park19 gure 15. horizontal surfaces in upper level of park20 gure 16. feral nature in the lower level of the park20 gure 17. paving textures in the lower level of the park22 gure 18. Richard Long: A Line Made By Walking 196723 gure 19. example of paving scheme of Cardinal Greenway23 gure 20. mile marker along Cardinal Greenway24 gure 21. The High Line in winter of 200024 gure 22. The High Line in summer of 200025 gure 23. elevated urban oasis: Promenade Plante27 gure 24. advertising to the High Line: a sign of success? 27 gure 25. buildings straddle the High Line, not touching it27 gure 26. promenade as program, as motivation28 gure 27. path winding around Lake Uri29 gure 28. repaired railing: new contrasting with the old29 gure 29. cleaning the erratics29 gure 30. Descombs belvedere32 gure 31. example of the Situationists artistic detournement33 gure 32. The Naked City, 195733 gure 33. detail of The Naked City, 1957

35 gure 34. Detroit desire lines: evidence of alternatives36 gure 35. mapping the Motor City37 gure 36. imagining the architecture of a line38 gure 37. Stockport mapping38 gure 38. Stockport mapping: detail39 gure 39. practice of sensory deprivation in Newham 39 gure 40. sensory deprivation map of Newham: detail43 gure 41. powerful impression of movement, mass, and society44 gure 42. the High Line in 2000, prior to design44 gure 43. changing relationship and urgency: 2010 BP oil leak45 gure 44. qualities of infrastructural form, pattern, rhythm46 gure 45. coin-operated public lighting structures in Rotterdam46 gure 46. bridge as temporary bar/gallery in Magdeburg, DE47 gure 47. time and personal imprints in Prague, CZ52 gure 48. walking across the Wenatchee52 gure 49. allowing for small discoveries and mysteries 54 gure 50. standing inside decaying snow shed tunnel 54 gure 51. clear, dened pathways typical of lower trail 56 gure 52. relics within walking path 56 gure 53. path cutting along top of high concrete wall with dramatic edge 58 gure 54. altered perceptions of stage, show, space 58 gure 55. parade mascot or accidental symbol?60 gure 56. view into complex landscape of ferns and highway infrastructure60 gure 57. boardwalk into blueberry patch60 gure 58. extreme monotony and confusion: a sidewalk? trail? which direction is appropriate?62 gure 59. materials found along trail and in site architecture64 gure 60. narrow gravel pathway cut into grass in Japanese garden64 gure 61. loose gravel pathway meanders through a meadow landscape 66 gure 62. stop-motion sequence over elevated nature-protection area walkway68 gure 63. materials which t into surrounding scene 68 gure 64. broken horizontal plane68 gure 65. pulling horizon into vertical plane 69 gure 66. view of pilotis and tree trunks


69 gure 67. markings on concrete walls visually pulls into forest70 gure 68. detail of steel planter 70 gure 69. steel frame as sculptural detail and trail node71 gure 70. pulling eye into scene, allowance of historic form71 gure 71. overlap between existing and designed space71 gure 72. clearing the site for construction 72 gure 73. contrast between path and landscape 72 gure 74. path form as waynding device72 gure 75. multiple relationships of path to site and use73 gure 76. cobblestones and cut granite pavers, Copenhagen DK73 gure 77. desire lines and movement through site77 gure 78. map of vacant lands, site highlighted with yellow78 gure 79. aerial overview of site, key areas highlighted79 gure 80. seattles big parks 80 gure 81. tying the loose ends 81 gure 82. shifts of meaning82 gure 83. frames of reference82 gure 84. frames of reference: detail83 gure 85. buildings83 gure 86. topography83 gure 87. landslides + steep slopes83 gure 88. parcels83 gure 89. soils84 gure 90. activities84 gure 91. ecologies85 gure 94. edges, speed, sound, time 87 gure 95. mapping measures, meaning 89 gure 96. space and texture #1 93 gure 97. addition/subtraction93 gure 98. trace of movement93 gure 99. massive overlap94 gure 100. models of trail design strategies95 gure 101. marking site over time: ferdinand p-patch on site v


69 gure 67. markings on concrete walls visually pulls into forest70 gure 68. detail of steel planter 70 gure 69. steel frame as sculptural detail and trail node71 gure 70. pulling eye into scene, allowance of historic form71 gure 71. overlap between existing and designed space71 gure 72. clearing the site for construction 72 gure 73. contrast between path and landscape 72 gure 74. path form as waynding device72 gure 75. multiple relationships of path to site and use73 gure 76. cobblestones and cut granite pavers, Copenhagen DK73 gure 77. desire lines and movement through site77 gure 78. map of vacant lands, site highlighted with yellow78 gure 79. aerial overview of site, key areas highlighted79 gure 80. seattles big parks 80 gure 81. tying the loose ends 81 gure 82. shifts of meaning82 gure 83. frames of reference82 gure 84. frames of reference: detail83 gure 85. buildings83 gure 86. topography83 gure 87. landslides + steep slopes83 gure 88. parcels83 gure 89. soils84 gure 90. activities84 gure 91. ecologies85 gure 94. edges, speed, sound, time 87 gure 95. mapping measures, meaning 89 gure 96. space and texture #1 93 gure 97. addition/subtraction93 gure 98. trace of movement93 gure 99. massive overlap94 gure 100. models of trail design strategies95 gure 101. marking site over time: ferdinand p-patch on site

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69 gure 67. markings on concrete walls visually pulls into forest70 gure 68. detail of steel planter 70 gure 69. steel frame as sculptural detail and trail node71 gure 70. pulling eye into scene, allowance of historic form71 gure 71. overlap between existing and designed space71 gure 72. clearing the site for construction 72 gure 73. contrast between path and landscape 72 gure 74. path form as waynding device72 gure 75. multiple relationships of path to site and use73 gure 76. cobblestones and cut granite pavers, Copenhagen DK73 gure 77. desire lines and movement through site77 gure 78. map of vacant lands, site highlighted with yellow78 gure 79. aerial overview of site, key areas highlighted79 gure 80. seattles big parks 80 gure 81. tying the loose ends 81 gure 82. shifts of meaning82 gure 83. frames of reference82 gure 84. frames of reference: detail83 gure 85. buildings83 gure 86. topography83 gure 87. landslides + steep slopes83 gure 88. parcels83 gure 89. soils84 gure 90. activities84 gure 91. ecologies85 gure 94. edges, speed, sound, time 87 gure 95. mapping measures, meaning 89 gure 96. space and texture #1 93 gure 97. addition/subtraction93 gure 98. trace of movement93 gure 99. massive overlap94 gure 100. models of trail design strategies95 gure 101. marking site over time: ferdinand p-patch on site

98 gure 102. armature of complexity99 gure 103. the overpass: impressions100 gure 104. the jungle: impressions101 gure 105. the corridor: impressions102 gure 106. the overpass: character in section102 gure 107. the jungle: character in section102 gure 108. the corridor: character in section103 gure 109. trail design matrix105 gure 110. emotive map of site interventions: full map106 gure 111. emotive map of site interventions: detail107 gure 112. emotive map of site interventions: north end108 gure 113. emotive map of site interventions: south end110 gure 114. nding meaning of site: at the overpass110 gure 115. nding meaning of site: at ferdinand p-patch110 gure 116. nding meaning of site: at the overlook112 gure 117. the aesthetic of discovery112 gure 118. Queen of the Wheel demonstrating pleasure of bicycle movement in 1897113 gure 119. rail reach: Tullys 113 gure 120. rail reach: rail houses 115 gure 121. railroad intersection 117 gure 122. I-5 underpass cut119 gure 123. highway berm perch121 gure 124. stormwater stair123 gure 125. stormwater stair: cross section124 gure 126. stormwater stair: plan view125 gure 127. rubble pond overlook127 gure 128. earth berm pass129 gure 129. earth berm pass: section130 gure 130. earth berm pass: plan view131 gure 131. hunting the light133 gure 132. hunting the light: section134 gure 133. hunting the light: plan view135 gure 134. overlook


137 gure 135. elbow pass and overlook: section138 gure 136. elbow pass and overlook: plan view139 gure 137. bunker installation141 gure 138. frontyard forest143 gure 139. power line arches145 gure 140. emergent wetland boardwalk147 gure 141. power line alternatives151 gure 142. focus and extension162 gure 145. wild cherry tree in bloom164 gure 146. midreview boards164 gure 147. nal review boards165 gure 148. exhibition boards for Barcelona European Landscape Biennial (full series) 166 gure 149. exhibition board for Barcelona European Landscape Biennial (1 of 3)167 gure 150. exhibition board for Barcelona European Landscape Biennial (2 of 3)168 gure 151. exhibition board for Barcelona European Landscape Biennial (3 of 3)

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I would like to express my sincerest thanks to my advisory committee for their support throughout the process of writing this thesis: to Thasa Way, for her inspiring insight, knowledge, and ability to always ask the most appropriate and difcult questions of me; to Ben Spencer, for his keen eye, poetic design language, and constructive criticism; and to Joel Loveland, for his unfailing support and kind humor. I must also extend a special thanks to Jennifer Dee and to Garrett Devier, whose enthusiasm for and interest in my work was a constant motivation throughout my design process.

I would also like to thank my family, who supported my long journey of becoming a landscape architect with humor and grace.

x

DEDICATION

fr Sieglinde und Gerhard

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01 PREFACE

A Walk in The JungleNovember 22, 2009

I park my car near the end of the power line corridor, at its visual intersection with the freeway rushing below, just beyond the ridge. It is a sunny day, but the space feels vacant, wide, yawning. I walk up into the line of the transmission corridor, where it stabs into the surrounding neighborhoods. The void of the corridor seems to rise and fall indenitely, the topography of the transmission lines opening and closing onto the topography of the landscape itself rising up to meet the pylons, falling down again, flattening, arching, stretching. The landscape exists like a series of plates below the power lines and the land ap-pears to have been cut, flattened, and built up to meet the transmission pylons as needed. The buttressed slopes between the plates are often quite steep, nearly impossible to walk up. I have to climb on all fours. The houses which back up on or face onto the corridor do so awkwardly they seem defenseless against the imposing scale and form of the high voltage structures, somehow appearing fragile and almost out of place. Some homeowners have reconciled themselves with the vast corridor by appropriating the space for their own use gardens spill into it, challenging its anonymous presence. Here and there, desire lines exist as markers of daily routines, cutting across and through the transmission corridor. Their narrow curved lines are delicate and abstractly anonymous, like animal tracks in the forest. Who was here? Where were they going? When will they pass by again?

I climb back down from the transmission line to the edge of the freeway that exists as a droning squeal beyond a fence and a mass of brambles. Heading north, parallel to the freeway corridor, I begin to walk down a sidewalk towards a dead end sign at the opening of a small residential street. The sidewalk, wide and flat at the start of my walk, deteriorates quickly as I walk toward the dead end. While the road is still clear, the sidewalk is slowly eroding from lack of use moss, leaves, and clumps of grass eat away at its edges. Soon I have to step from the sidewalk altogether, as the overlay of mosses, wet leaves, shifting soil, and crumbling concrete make it too slippery and uneven, even for the hiking boots I am wearing.

Walking along the narrow road I follow it until its end, where a steel fence carries another dead end sign as well as a sign warning against illegal dumping. An odd, dense tangle of vegetation lies beyond it. A battered pickup truck appearing to be held together with a series of bumper stickers (I get paid weekly very weakly Obama 2008) stands parked next to the fence and in front of the last house on the street. It gives me a moment of pause. Am I going to be alone past the fence? I reach into my coat pocket to make sure my cell phone is there. I pull my hat closer over my face, and then step around the gaping fence. My heart is pounding, though I am not sure why. From fear, anticipation, the transgression?

The road erodes quickly as I walk into the dead end. Moss and leaves cover the asphalt, save for two parallel paths that look like they have been cut by automobile tires and, I guess, maintained by the steps of local dog walkers and hikers. The rush of the highway is still present, but is now punctuated periodi-cally by the squawk and flutter of birds in the trees. As I walk along the eroded street, the contrast between the formal logic of the street grid is pressed upon

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everywhere by the chaotic flush of the emergent forest. I nearly stumble over a manhole cover, whose face has morphed with the additional layers of mosses and vegetation. A willow tree has forced its roots through the pavement, and the street bulges and buckles along its growth.

Soon, the street disappears entirely, but the footpath continues ahead into the woods and undergrowth. The ground is soft as I step off of the crumbling street edge, and my feet sink into layers of vegetation and spongy forest decay. My own rustling steps are now clearly audible over the drone of the freeway, and I can no longer see even glimpses of the cars passing below the ridge. I follow the trail through the forest until it begins to fork and fade into the landscape. As the vegetation grows thicker around me, I suddenly remember the battered pickup again, and I am gripped by an oppressive sense of fear. A woman should not walk alone here, I have been told. I am surprised by the fear as someone who has traveled and lived alone often, I am used to overcoming fear so that it will not limit my freedom. Frustrated and annoyed, I turn to retrace my steps, walking quickly this time and not stopping to photograph or sketch. As I walk, I imagine what it would take to feel safe here, and how I could feel safe without detracting from the thrill of the fear itself. Was the fear oppressive now only because the unknown was so great? Was the fear based on my own solitude and my own vulnerability as a woman unarmed? Could the thrill of fear and the liberating sense of safety coexist here?

Once I pass from the wooded trail onto the deteriorating stretch of road, my fear subsides considerably. The openness of the roadbed, however rough and uneven it is, allows for an overview that is calming. I can see ahead of me to the opening formed by the gate itself, and occasional breaks in the vegetation allow for views of the freeway passing below. The mix of fear and wonder the walk through the woods invoked was so distinct from the experience of walk-ing under the powerful, anonymous power lines. My frustration of not being able to enjoy the woods simply because of my gender was both annoying and exhilarating. There are possibilities here. I will have to come back soon.

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02 INTRODUCTION

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What is to be done with these enormous voids, with their imprecise limits and vague denition? Arts reaction . . . is to pre serve these alternative, strange spaces. . . . Architectures destiny [by contrast] has always been colonization, the imposing of limits, order, and form, the introduction into strange space of the elements of identity necessary to make it recognizable, identical, universal. (Sol Morales-Rubi 1994)

We saw the path was a way of researching the landscape, of experimenting with the alternatively big and little things with the often overlooked and neglected blades of grass, flowers, stones, tree roots, small streams, and so on. I recognized that I could not carry out the practice of building I was accustomed to; this place demanded a totally different attitude. (Georges Descombes 1999)

I begin this work with two quotes that illustrate the complexity of the project I selected to explore in my thesis: the design of a trail network through a series of interstitial spaces located in the fringes of metropolitan-scaled infrastructure systems. The site I chose to address is complex and contradictory: it is brutal and loud, measured and amorphous, mysterious and abstract, legible and frightening. It is marked by a high tension power corridor, English ivy and Himalayan blackberry-choked forests, mounds of discarded concrete and twisted steel, shallowly buried gas lines, a silent rail freight spur, and an interstate highway system that stretches from Canada to Mexico. It is also dened by dramatic vistas and overlooks, tangled and carefully tended community gardens, rogue compost piles and bee hives, well-worn dog-walking paths, wild cherry trees, and a lusciously errant Camellia vine. More than any place I have studied or designed, this place has eluded denition, deed expectations, and conflated summations. The space demands design that is more art than architecture; it necessitates a practice of and attitude toward building that is able to stretch between its aggression and vulnerability. My program for this space or better, for this series of overlapping spaces also requires a distinct design approach.

I propose a series of multi-use trails as such a program responds to these complicated splinters of land that stretch between and knit together densely urban and highly contradictory terrains. Commonly mapped as vacant and viewed as voids, these lands are often linear in nature and exist within the seams of cities, functioning as corridors, borders, and buffers. As a programmatic approach, a trail ts within the physical and geographical realities of these land-scapes; as a conceptual framework, a trail, as a foot path, allows for an exploration of the corporal experience of moving through these complicated lands. Designing a trail necessitates a delicate balance of scales and an awareness of the relationships between these scales and the influences they can have on the experience of space. A trail is in many cases thought of as a line pulling together two unique points, as simply a way to move from one event to another within a sequence. And yet, as Descombes articulated during his design of a portion of the Swiss Way, a pathway is also a story of the landscape, a narrative of its histories and the depths of all things big and little found there. Pathways knit territory, measure scales of reference, and mark accretions of desire and motivation through time. I developed my topic of study and chose my site because trails are more than simple waynding tools, rather they offer unique design challenges and valu-able, flexible public spaces. Interstitial lands are more than enormous voids within the city waiting to become legible, recognizable, and useful; I see these

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landscapes as a form of fragile, rich public space. The relationship I nd between these two topics the trail as design typology, the interstitial space as site is a relationship embedded in current urban evolutions and growth patterns, and one that is critical yet regrettably peripheral to our profession. Designers and urban planners are increasingly tasked to do very much with very little; we are carving public space from the existing framework of the city, and the reclaimed slivers are often those that are found in and along the thick edges and imprecise boundaries that Sol Morales-Rubi describes above. As we simultaneously change the way we move through cities and our transportation infrastructure becomes increasingly recognized as bloated and out of scale with urban life, those slivers take shape: they are found in the shadows of derelict viaducts, in the footprints of silent rail corridors, at the margins of oversized freeways, and in the right-of-ways of power and utility lines. These are often difcult spaces, mysterious relics or half-ruins that have complex ecological and cultural identities. Bostons Central Artery, New Yorks High Line, Philadelphias Reading Viaduct, and Seattles Alaskan Way Viaduct: through agonizingly slow and politically-fraught processes, many of these linear systems are being or have already been reclaimed as public space. Linear parks, greenways, and trail networks are becoming increasingly central as public space typologies, yet our profession is slow to engage in rigorous, spatially-conscious debate about how these spaces are understood, researched, and designed. The popularity of recent projects such as the High Line illustrate the potential of the pathway and the promenade to engage the public; minimally programmed and physically constrained, the High Line engages the visitor in movement through space, in the simple pleasure that can be found in moving through the city. As I was developing my thesis, I was introduced to the work of the Situationist International, a group of urban theorists and revolutionaries who in mid-century Paris studied how cities and urban life evolved with the advent of capitalism and the automobile. As popular culture begins to reevaluate our relationship with the automobile and questions the value of unbridled capitalism, the work of the Situationist International becomes increasingly salient; I found value in their theories for approaching the design of trails and design within interstitial spaces. The Situationists were searching for something beyond the spectacle and what they saw as the associated alienation of consumption and emptiness of the modern world. The Situationists were struggling for the Paris of the 1950s that was quickly disappearing under the thrust of redevelopment and sanitation. The Paris that they appreciated was the in-between Paris, the accidental Paris, the Paris of messy edges and voids exemplied by terrain vauge qualities and thrilling sums of possibilities. They conducted drives of the urban fabric, purposeful wanderings that they argued had the potential to reveal the lived maps of the city, the informal pathways and networks that dened urban life. The drive, unlike the blunt tools of the aerial photograph or cartographers map, would allow the participant to understand the true patterns of urban life that were experienced at a much ner grain, to understand the cities psychogeographical relief and the constant currents, xed points, and vortexes of which it is composed. (Debord 22) I nd value in these theories of the Situationist International in approaching the design of interstitial landscapes in the network of the city, these spaces might be eddies, or tidal pools, among the xed vortexes and currents of historical development. These spaces reflect the growth and change of the city and their marginalized condition measures the continual becoming of the city, our constant struggle to nd a model of sustain-able development that is driven by creativity, sensibility, and inspiration rather than responsibility, rationality, and guilt. Designing within these in-between spaces requires an intense sensitivity to their role in the dened, delineated city these spaces have no prescribed meaning but possess instead imbedded, heterogeneous meaning that allow room to breathe, to grow, to question. In addressing trail design, the concept of the drive intrigued me as a way to study the terrain and the way it is currently ts into the surrounding landscape and neighboring communities. The drive

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also presented a design challenge for me how can you design a trail in a way that it feels as if it should be, while also giving people a sense of discovery and exploration? How can you mark a path that continues to be novel and surprising always, yet also consistently familiar and right?

This thesis explores the design of trails and interstitial spaces through a process that is built on a theoretical base underpinned by walks and wanderings of trails and marginalized landscapes that are marked by the influence of infrastructure. I applied the knowledge gained through empirical and experimental research to articulate a set of design principles that can be used when approaching design in interstitial spaces. I also developed of a series of site-specic analytical tools and design methods that I employed in the design of a trail network in southeast Seattle. The design proposal that is presented in the nal chapters of this thesis does not claim to be nished, nor do I desire it to be regarded as such. The design interventions I have proposed are necessarily ambiguous, transitory, and in flux; attempting to straddle art and architecture, discovery and design, memory and artifact.

03 THEORY + LITERATURE

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In order to approach the design of a trail through urban interstitial land in Seattle, I developed a review of the literature that would allow me to address the site and to situate my design response within a theoretical framework. I decided to concentrate on interstitial spaces, specically at the edge of urban infrastruc-ture, because I was interested in exploring and expanding my own concept of what sustainability could mean in contemporary cities. I wanted to focus on the design of a trail because I feel that urban trail systems will be increasingly relevant as planners, designers, and urban inhabitants seek alternative ways to move through and experience cities in the post-auto era. Finally, I was interested in exploring alternative ideas of representation of site experience, analysis and design, and how these alternative representations might influence how a site is read or interpreted. These objectives have framed my research. In this review of the literature, I divided my research into four categories, and present each of these categories with an overall framework and a set of case studies. These four categories include: landscape urbanism and layered infrastructures; potential of the void; trail design: legibility, traces, and narratives; and, reading a deep geography of the city: methods and tools of psychogeography. Over the course of this project I have found these categories to be intensely overlap-ping and intertwined a topic that I shall return to during my reflection on the design process.

03.01 landscape urbanism and layered infrastructures Over the past decade or so, the development of both theory and practice in landscape architecture have signaled changes in the way we, as designers, understand the role of the profession, particularly in its relation to infrastructure and the larger urban framework. The work of landscape architects is increas-ingly devoted to the exploration of the processes that shape the function and evolution of a site and its networks, not just the nal product or design. These changes relate to and reflect evolutions of thought and practice concerned with what constitutes good planning and design in highly livable cities.

The failures and unfortunate miscalculations of modernist urban planning and design have been criticized by urban theorists and designers for decades. In the 1960s, the discipline came under re from those who argued for more vibrant, flexible cities, such as urban theorist Jane Jacobs, who critiqued the stifling, deadening realities that resulted from modernist and City Beautiful planning practices. Jacobs was particularly critical of the compartmentalized view modern planning took to city organization, a separation of uses that led to dangerously dead zones within the urban fabric. Landscape architect and educator James Corner has argued that the discipline of landscape architecture has much to offer urban theory and that thematics of organization, dynamic interaction, ecol-ogy, and technique make possible a looser, emergent urbanism, more akin to the real complexity of cities and offering an alternative to the rigid mechanisms of centralist planning.(Corner, Terra Fluxus 23)

Chris Waldheim, current chair of the landscape architecture department at the Harvard Graduate School of Design and editor of The Landscape Urbanism Reader, considers one of the primary advantages of landscape urbanism to be found in the conflation, integration, and fluid exchange between (natural) environmental and (engineered) infrastructural systems. (Waldheim 43) Landscape urbanism offers a lens though which to view the city, an understanding of metabolic patterns that emulate natural systems. (Waldheim 43) This integration and fluid exchange has inspired increasing numbers of designers, including West 8, Field Operations, DIRT Studio, and Hargreaves Associates, as well as architects including Bernard Tschumi and Rem Koolhaus. Early precedents for this integrated, matrix-oriented thought can be found in the work of French landscape team Desvigne & Dalnoky, who in the 1980s developed works that strove for authenticity in form and function: Building a pretty land would be very strange, observed Desvigne. (Delluc 14) Projects for the Thom-

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son Factory, the Rhne River rail viaducts (gures 1 & 2), and the Pointe de Hourdel quarries (gure 3) are examples of landscape manifestos that aim to work with and through the aesthetics and form of infrastructure frames to create systems that are dynamic and flexible, rooted in an awareness of time and history: of memory.1 Philosopher Sbastien Marot has commented that the work of the French design team represents a shift in viewing the site as the material of design, rather than as a place for design a moment where the site is no longer considered merely the landing place for a project, but begins to take on the sense of being a departure point itself.(Marot 7) To cre-ate dialogue that Waldheim describes between an introduced design and a sites existing set of systems and flows, whether manufactured or natural, infrastructural or biological necessitates this rst step of recognizing site as memory and root of design. Landscape designer and educator Elizabeth Mossop, in her contribution to Waldheims reader, Landscapes of Infrastructure, argues that landscape ar-chitects have an opportunity to address issues of urbanism within an eco-logical framework, a mindset that was advanced as early as Olmsted but thwarted by a divided theory of discourse. She points out that in landscape architecture the longstanding and opposing paradigms of the McHargian School and a narrowly design-focused practice have limited the profession. The two paradigms have divided themselves theoretically (ecology, sustain-ability, and science versus art, design, and development) and in terms of scale (large-scale environmental planning versus site-based design).(Mos-sop 169) Neither of these approaches has been able to engage with urban-ism and truly nd a balance between ecology and design. She argues that with the emergence of landscape urbanism, the lines between these two schools have begun to

1 It is interesting also to examine the graphic representation used by Desvigne & Dal-noky: complex, shifted mappings are typical of their site analysis and design diagrams. These recall recently popular graphic styles explored in design schools through examples of work by James Corner (see Taking Measures Across the American Landscape 1996) and Mathur and Cunha (see Mississippi Floods, 2001 and Deccan Traverses, 2006). Do the concepts of land-scape urbanism require alternative languages of graphic and site exploration?

gure 1. Rhne River: prexisting vegetation languages Desvigne & Dalnoky studio

gure 2. Rhne River: design of viaduct route Desvigne & Dalnoky studio

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become blurred with shifting understandings of the naturalness of nature and humans role in and relationship with it. Hybrid typologies have necessar-ily been developed, both for understanding nature and for dening the role of designers. She urges an understanding of landscape as an infrastructure that underlies other urban and natural systems, revealing relationships between urban morphology, hydrology, and topography. Such an understanding, she argues, will enable us to make the necessary design shifts in the infrastruc-ture of our cities. Mossop considers one of the biggest challenges and oppor-tunities to be found in the relationship that our cities have with automobiles. A reexamination of infrastructural space involves the recognition that all types of space are valuable, not just the privileged spaces of more traditional parks and squares, and they must therefore be inhabitable in a meaningful way.(Mossop 174) She describes ways in that designers have been able to take a more civilizing approach to the development of freeways, road networks, and parking lots.(Mossop 173-176) Understanding these infrastructures as potentials for open spaces that allow for differing speeds of human motion can be seen reflected in the development of the linear park typology. In developing the contemporary interest in linear parks, designers can again look to the precedents set by Frederick Law Olmsted. Linear parks boule-vards, parkways, and greenways were explored in the mid to late 1800s by Olmsted in cities including Seattle and Atlanta. Parkways were primarily shaped by the social and aesthetic concerns of the day, and were conceived of as a way to provide access to landscape parks bringing their influence into cities.(Hellmund & Smith) Olmsteds later design of Bostons Emerald Neck-lace (1878-1890), expanded upon these considerations to address issues of drainage, water quality, and patchwork linkages.(Ahern) This concept of a hy-brid, multifunctional linear park saw resurgence in the late 1980s when pro-fessionals and academics began to explore what greenway and open space planner R.M Searns has called Generation 3 greenways: multi-purpose networks that pursue objectives such as habitat protection, flood hazard re-duction, water quality, historic preservation, education, and interpretation.2

2 R.M. Searns has classied three generations of greenways. Frederick Law Olm-gure 3. Pointe de Hourdel : design of quarry waterscape

Desvigne & Dalnoky studio

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gure 4. plan view of Trinitat Cloverleaf Park www.demakerealestate.blogspot.com

gure 5. aerial view of Trinitat Cloverleaf Park www.demakerealestate.blogspot.com

The meaning and function of these types of parks changed with the golden era of the automobile, when accommodations for the automobile began to upset balances of speed, scale, and efciency in roadway design away from a scale that had been most sensitive to people. In the early 1990s, landscape architect Diana Balmori wrote about the ways in which the role of parks and open space was changing in America, and in this change she recognized the potential for a new type of park, the linear park. These linear parks were dis-tinct from those designed by Olmsted; in part because they were direct results of and responses to the ways that transportation infrastructure had shaped our cities over the past 100 years. Balmori introduces linear parks as repre-sentatives of a fourth type of narrative of the American landscape, a narrative that is able to forecast change in the nature of national identity.(Balmori 44) By changing the way we understand transportation, the linear park assumes the narrative power that once belonged to the railroad, then the automobile, and, most recently, the airplane.(Balmori 44) The contemporary linear parks envisaged and designed by Balmori and others are new hybrids which have to carve space out of fractured urban landscapes, often following the footprint of abandoned rail corridors, polluted and armored rivers, or bloated auto in-frastructure. By occupying residual spaces inherently layered with patterns of the American relationship with the landscape, these types of parks provide opportunities for designers to explore the conflation, integration, and fluid exchange between (natural) environmental and (engineered) infrastructural systems that are characteristic of landscape urbanism.(Waldheim 43) The case studies that follow were selected as they demonstrate ways which de-signers have sought to reinterpret this relationship of exchange.

sted is generally credited with developing the rst predecessors to the modern US greenway in the early 1860s, the leisure parkway (Generation 1 greenways). 1965 to 1985 saw the rapid development of Generation 2 greenways, which were guided primarily by goals of recreation and human access to nature, rather than principles of ecological health. Generation 3 greenways are the hybrid, multifunctional landscape discussed above, which were developed in response to a rising national interest in open space protection, as well an increase in popular consciousness regarding issues related to degrading natural habitat, increasing pollution, and threatened water quality.

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Trinitat Cloverleaf Park and the Cinturn Ring Road, BarcelonaEnric Batle, Joan Roig; Oriol BohigasOne of the most oft-cited examples of landscape urbanism as conceptualized on a city-wide scale is that of Barcelona. Barcelonas is a culturally unique situation after the fall of Francos totalitarian government in 1975, director of culture Oriol Bohigas and his young hires at the city planning agencies were able to take lead and strongly influence the re-making of Barcelona until the mid 1990s.(Ingersoll 116) Bohigas intended to interrupt the old and counter-productive dichotomy between urbanism and the politics of public works and to approach urbanism with the tools of public works; build an urbanism that is capable of uniting and harmonizing the projects of urbanization.(Ingersoll 116) A city strongly influenced by the works of Antonio Gaudi and Joan Mir, every act of infrastructure was treated as an opportunity for art and social improvement, with many projects infused with a mixture of abstraction and surrealism.(Ingersoll 117)

In 1992, the selection of Barcelona for the Olympics motivated a series of infrastructural improvements. The Cinturn ring road is well-known for the way that infrastructure is balanced with landscape, an effort that Waldheim notes as unique for the way it resulted in a more complex synthesis of re-quirements than traditional engineering projects, in which neither civil engi-neering nor landscape dominate.(Waldheim 45) This balance has led many critics to praise the highway project; architect and urban designer Jacque-line Tatom, in her essay Urban Highways and the Reluctant Public Realm, thanks the planners and designers for picking up where Halprin left off and rediscovering a theoretical continuity in the concept of urban roadways as public space.(Tatom 184) The highway is trenched and embedded in the landscape, and parks were introduced as connective tissue where the road had caused a fracture.(Ingersoll 120; Shannon 147) One such park, Trinitat Cloverleaf Park, was introduced at a dense freeway interchange, and the park master plan includes a small lake, tennis courts, playgrounds, and or-chards (gure 4). The design follows the curves of the surrounding freeway, and a layered organization system makes it possible to t a large variety of

gure 6. model of Trinitat Cloverleaf Park www.vulgare.net

gure 7. view into the circulation of the Trinitat Cloverleaf Park www.demakerealestate.blogspot.com

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Queens Plaza Bicycle and Pedestrian Landscape Improvement Project, NYCWRT Design, Marpillero Pollak Architects, artist Michael SingeQueens Plaza, located at the foot of the Queensboro Bridge linking Queens and Manhattan, is an area in New York City that has evolved over the last century to become one of the citys most dense transportation hubs. It exists today as complex infrastructural web of layered streets, bridges, subways, and elevated train lines that serve thousands of pedestrians, bikers, drivers, and mass transit riders every day. In 2001, the NYC Planning Department designated the area a new Central Business District, which in turn led to the development of an international design competition that asked entrants to reinvent the Plaza in ways that would improve its environmental integrity and embody the new economy of information and cultural exchange.(Van Alen Institute - Queens Plaza: An Open Ideas Competition) Integration with the existing site infrastructure was a key for the design competition, and design-ers were challenged to embrace the largest design questions of a society still relying on the old infrastructure of transport, even as it connect(s) to the new infrastructure of communication. (Ford 90) Though the competition and winning design have faced criticism, particularly due to the low levels of input and influence from local residents, the winning design by WRT Design, Marpillero Pollak Architects, Margie Ruddick, and artist Michael Singe offers examples of how designers can work within complex, highly urban infrastruc-ture landscapes. It is also the rst example of a design that has followed the High Performance Infrastructure Guidelines, a precedent-setting document that was published by the NYC Department of Design and Construction in October of 2005. The project is primarily a pedestrian and bicycle infrastructure improvement. The designers decided to work with the existing infrastructure of the site, to treat the rumbling of the trains and the scale of the structures as part of the palette they had to work with, rather than something that should be hidden or neutralized. In an interview, the designers spoke of the surprising fact that many of the design proposal graphics of other rms did not even include im-

uses in a condensed space (gures 5, 6 & 7). Designed by Enric Batle and Joan Roig, the project is acknowledged by Tatom and others for its innova-tion, but on a practical level some claim that the experience of the park itself is lacking; architectural and urban design historian Richard Ingersoll writes that: Despite the good intentions to create at La Trinitat a green lter for the ferocious interchange, the noise, speed and fumes are frankly overwhelm-ing, and the parks users are somewhat at risk even from the acoustic pol-lution.(120-121) An early example of integrating infrastructure more deeply into the urban fabric, Trinitat is held up as a model project, one that is ex-amined for its flaws and challenges as well as for its successes. While the case of Trinitat is interesting for its distillation of the concepts of landscape urbanism, it is somewhat limiting as a precedent for my work because it is an integrated project, conceived and developed in tandem with the highway itself, rather than as an insertion into an existing framework. The following case study provides such an example.

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gure 8. proposed Blue Thread and bike lanes that overlap itwww.urbanomnibus.com

gure 9. screening and exposing at once www.wrtdesign.com

ages of the elevated train structures that dominate the site.3 Designer Sandro Marpillero claims that the design attempts a take on sustainability that is based on an alternative to traditional historic preservation: I think our attitude about recycling or salvage is much more about being able to see how exist-ing pieces of our cities, of our buildings, can perform in relationship to new operational challenges. Its not so much a matter of preserving and invoking the past as model, as of reframing the role that existing sites and buildings and infrastructures can have.(Urban Omnibus - Queens Plaza) The designers have proposed to introduce a stormwater treatment system they dub the Blue Thread, which runs from the plaza to the waterfront. The stormwater system is composed of a series of narrow vegetated sliv-ers which lter and channel stormwater from the subway stations and the Queensboro Bridge. The Blue Thread supports a bike and pedestrian lane, and the vegetation serves to also buffer people from the noise and pollu-tion of nearby auto trafc (gure 8). However, protection from infrastructure was not seen as a goal of the design, but rather one approach in a set of complementary strategies. At times the designers aimed to balance expo-sure to heighten the appreciation of the infrastructure itself (gure 9). For example, voids in the train trestle were highlighted with mesh screens and light, allowing the structure to become an urban canopy and a place, an action designed to allow the imminent arrival of a train (to) become an event (and)part of public space, not a noisome distraction from it. (Urban Omni-bus - Queens Plaza) The designers strove to create a design that could help create awareness about the immense resource that a piece of infrastructure can be. (Urban Omnibus - Queens Plaza) At the time of this writing, construction work on Queens Plaza is in its initial stages. It remains to be seen if the project will suffer the same criticism that has faced Trinitat, particularly in the balance the designers sought between exposure to and protection from the gritty, noisy qualities of the site. The

3 The RFP was put out in 2002, and my guess that this balance of graphic and design strategies would be much different today.

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designers at Queens have attempted to challenge the anticipated division between natural landscapes and manufactured or highly urbanized land-scapes, and public reactions to the design itself have been mixed. It remains to be seen how far the balance lies within the hybrid.

gure 10. character of a dense urban site at Queens Plaza www.urbanomnibus.com

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03.02 potential of the voidAs illustrated above, concepts of integrating interstitial spaces into a discussion of urban design and planning are closely related to discussions of the role of infrastructure within the contemporary city. One aspect of this relationship is the fact that, as discussed earlier, many interstitial spaces are formed by the edges and voids left by infrastructure development. Architectural theorist and author Grahame Shane, in his article The Emergence of Landscape Urbanism: Reflections on Stalking Detroit, discusses the potentials of landscape urbanism and its openness to new combinations in addressing vacant lots and other spaces where cities shrink and die back into the landscape.(Shane 2) Another aspect of the relationship is that both integrated infrastructures and intersti-tial spaces are characterized by gritty, wild aesthetics that challenge conventional concepts of beauty, order, and the correct organization of urban life as reflected in rational, modernist planning schemes so abhorred by theorists such as Jane Jacobs. Landscape designer and educator Christophe Girot writes about the possibilities and difculties of wastelands, or zones of conspicuous neglect that emerge when nature meets the hard lines of city and industry; the mystery and inspiration that exists in this other nature, having inspired the likes of Pissaro, Henti Cartier Bresson, and Robert Doisneau.(Girot) This is not the manicured garden of the Italian baroque or the cultivated pastoral landscape, but rather a deant symbol of the strength of beauty and nature over adversity. In the discussion of urban interstitial spaces, a question has remained central how can these spaces be integrated into the larger urban fabric while still retaining their wild, independent, and oddly inspiring characteristics? Many theorists, designers, and individualist urban pioneers have struggled to dene a balance. In the 1990s, architect, critic, and educator Ignaci de Sol-Morales Rubio began to use the term terrain vagues to describe urban interstitial spaces, and he explored their meaning and role in the city through his Anyone series together with prominent contemporaries such as Rem Koolhaus, Peter Eisenman, and Andr Glucksman.(OLoan) The French term has subtle duplicities of meaning: vague has carries the meaning of vacant, void, devoid of activity, unproduc-tive as well as a sense of something that is imprecise, undened, without xed limits, without a clear future. (Ignasi Sol-Morales Rubi 23) Sol-Morales considered this term appropriate for landscapes that carry similarly contrasting meanings; these are landscapes that, in the words of photographer and artist Joan Fontcuberta, exist at the intersection of two stages: the before and after, that which is still functional with that which is already useless, the exuberance of urban vitality [and] the melancholy of its humblest relic.(Fontcuberta 267) Sol-Morales considers terrain vagues to be spaces of freedom that allow people contact with memories, histories, and possibilities, and in so doing act as an antidote to the banal, productivist present that was critiqued by Jacobs and others; he encourages a sensitive design approach to these values.(Ignasi Sol-Morales Rubi 23) Author and educator Tim Edensor refers this unique characteristic of terrain vagues (particularly in reference to brownelds and industrial relics) as a modern gothic that allows for a certain relationship with a disquieting sublime: these pleasures are of a vicarious engagement with fear and a confrontation with the unspeakable and ones own vulnerability and mortality, a diversion which is also a way of confronting death and danger and imagining it in order to disarm it, to name and articulate it in order to deal with it.(Edensor 15) He argues that redevelopments of these spaces should not treat them as wastelands, but should rather respect the qualities that allow them to exist as alternatives to highly regulated urban spaces. Landscape architectural professors (University of Shefeld) and theorists Anna Jorgensen and Marian Tylecote have explored interstitial urban spaces through an examination of the cultural meanings of the spontaneous plant communities that develop in such landscapes. Their analysis is useful for under-

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gure 11. the Fremont Troll: activating Seattle voids author

standing the human/nature duality of these spaces; a similar duality exists in what theorist Elizabeth Meyer and designer Julie Bargman have referred to as the often dissonant beauty of sites disturbed by the infrastructure needs of human settlement.(Meyer) Jorgensen and Tylecote argue that our histori-cally separated concepts of the natural and the urban make the wilderness of interstitial spaces difcult to culturally understand, but that it is precisely this cognitive break that creates the greatest value of these spaces and lessons for an urban planning and design status quo that needs to become more temporal, dynamic, and regenerative.(Jorgensen & Tylecote) Jorgensen and Tylecote argue that interstitial spaces, and particularly the spontaneous veg-etation that often characterizes them, can be considered obviously hybrid-ized spaces because they do not t our conceptions of the lines between hu-mans and nature, between cities and wilderness.(Jorgensen & Tylecote 458) This hybrid identity necessitates viewing nature and urban environments as necessarily linked and interdependent, and it can make visible the active aspect of landscape, the identity of the landscape that James Corner has termed one of time, network, event, and production.(Corner, The Obscene (American) Landscape 12) The wild characteristic of interstitial spaces and vacant lands that distin-guishes them from the more rigidly programmed urban spaces lend them a flexibility of use and allows multiple meanings for different social groups. Ar-chitectural theorists Karen A. Franck and Quentin Stevens in their anthology Loose Space: Possibility and Diversity in Urban Life, describe loose space as occurring where the assigned use for a landscape type ends and new users are able to appropriate these spaces for new uses through freedom of choice.(Jorgensen & Tylecote 452) These sites then allow for alternative ways of being and doing that are not scripted or controlled by outside au-thority.(Imrie 1117) Gilbert has coined the term urban commons to describe this functioning of contemporary vacant lands, a phrase intended to invoke the tendency of human ecology to opportunistically stake a claim to avail-able territory.(Jorgensen & Tylecote 455) These opportunistic alternatives can have surprising, creative results, as illustrated in the recent compilation

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published by the City of Berlin titled Urban Pioneers: Temporary Use and Ur-ban Development in Berlin (2007). This book contains interviews with several prominent pioneers and urban designers, and includes proles of projects that range from campgrounds, gardens, and horse pastures to skate parks, outdoor theatres, and even a ski run.(Senatsverwaltung fr Stadtentwick-lung (Berlin, Germany) 48-98) These projects are often approved by the local authorities who typically own the land through the granting of licenses needed to make the use legal and permissible, but the projects often come about quite organically as people move into underutilized spaces with the intention to carve out something new, something they are missing in the for-mal city. This tendency for people to appropriate underused spaces can help address problems that may not have been previously addressed or even recognized by city planners or designers. University of Washington professor Daniel Winterbottom explains this potential in the City of Seattle:

In Seattle, the rediscovery of residual spaces is helping to address a number of problems. One is the fragmentation of neighborhoods through insensitive siting of arterials, bridges, freeway ramps and strip development. Another concern is that as inll housing projects are built, the amount of informal open space available to communities is decreasing. Meanwhile, budgets for public land acquisition are shrinking, and voters have proven less willing to fund parkland projects.(Winterbottom 40)

Winterbottom recognizes that not only do these spaces allow people to recognize and fulll needs within their neighborhoods, they also can act as agents of social development. Because they are often spaces where no im-mediate plan or use is foreseen, they can provide reasonable and immedi-ate opportunities for linkages and readaptive open space uses for communi-ties who take initiative (gure 11). (Winterbottom 41)

The qualities of interstitial spaces or terrain vagues as discussed above flexibility, wild beauty, layered meanings are qualities that are often missing in the neat, prescribed uses of our cleanly zoned cities. Sol-Morales encour-

ages us to consider these qualities when addressing these lands, in order to allow for space within the city for openness, questions, for the development of new memories and the rising of old ones. Jorgensen and Tylecote write that these spaces allow us to ask questions of the relentless production, reproduction, consumption (and destruction) of over-programmed urban environments and they challenge us, as designers, to take risks in the de-velopment of approaches to these spaces.(Jorgensen & Tylecote 460) The following case studies explore how designers have addressed this challenge.

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gure 12. abandoned workshop as gallery, performance space author

Natur-Park Sdgelnde, BerlinAndreas Langer, koCon & PlanlandNatur-Park Sdgelnde, while relatively unknown to American audiences, has become well-known in Europe in recent years, and is considered by some to be one of the most remarkable urban landscapes of the last de-cade for its innovative implementation, design, and management strategies. (Hazendonk, Hendriks, & Venema 53) The park exists on a former railyard on the southern border of Berlins inner core, and is located in the district of Schneberg-Templehof. Train service to the large railyard was discontinued in 1952, and although some of the repair shops remained in service, the majority of the 18 hectare site was slowly overtaken by natural plant suc-cession. In 1981 and 1991, research by Berlins urban ecologists revealed that the nature of the fourth kind that had developed in the railyard was an incredibly species-rich mix of dry grasslands, tall herbs, shrub vegetation, and individual woodlands.(Kowarik & Langer 288) When a new railway station development was proposed in the area by the city in the early 1980s, local residents who had begun to think of the area as a local park protested with the argument that the city needed to protect the unique plant community that had taken over the abandoned site. Construc-tion plans for the new rail station were halted, and in 1999, a portion of the site was recognized as a Naturschutzgebiet (nature protection area), becom-ing one of the st conservation areas in Germany where an urban-industrial landscape was protected and made accessible to the public.(Muller) Land-scape architects working on the site saw themselves more as managers than designers, and conducted careful inventory of the plant and animal species in order to be able to enhance and support the natural evolution that had already begun.(Langer) Their research revealed a high level of biodiversity, including several rare and endangered species native to the area. A primary challenge for the designers was to conserve the naturally evolved landscape that existed on site while also allowing for access to the area by the public. They approached this challenge by basing the master plan on a

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gure 13. elevated walkways at Natur-Park Sdgelnde author

model of simultaneity of culture and wilderness, of distance and nearness to the visitor.(Kowarik & Langer 291) This was achieved through instituting three types of zones within the park as follows: clearings are to be kept free of shrubs over the long term; stands that are light and open are to be maintained as groves; in the wild woods the natural dynamics can pro-ceed fully unfettered.(Kowarik & Langer 296) For much of the park, people are able to move about freely amongst the vegetation and the paths that are formed by the old rail lines; one third of the park is designated as a nature protection area, and elevated translucent walkways were created in order to guide visitors through and protect the ecosystem (gure 13). A second challenge for designers was to balance nature and culture, and to allow the history and evolution of the site to become visible through change. Some railway relics were restored, including the water tower that continues to serve as a landmark of the area. The park designers collaborated with a group of artists to create art installations throughout the park, including the walkways in the nature protection area. The old buildings were either sur-rendered to a controlled decay or used for artists studios and exhibits (gure 12).(Kowarik & Langer 297) The approaches that designers took on this site, balancing redevelopment, preservation, and continual change and evolution, is a unique approach that has created a dynamic landscape that manages to preserve some of the cha-racteristics of its time as a true terrain vague within the urban landscape, and in so doing has potentially increased awareness of the value of these spaces, both ecologically and culturally. As stated by the designers: to wake Sleep-ing Beauty...means to open the urban wilderness to a multitude of visitors who did not have an inherent sympathy for the nature of abandoned areas. (Kowarik & Langer 297)

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gure 14. civic influence in the upper level of the park Jane Amidon

gure 15. horizontal surfaces in upper level of park Jane Amidon

Allegheny Riverfront Park, PittsburgMichael Van Valkenburgh AssociatesThe Allegany Riverfront Park (ARP) is an example of a park that maximizes the potential of a seemingly unusable interstitial urban fragment. The park, completed in 2001, was commissioned by the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust, whose mission is to: convert 14 contiguous blocks of the red-light district into the citys Cultural District by restoring and rehabilitating old buildings into performing-arts venues and lling in with new buildings, parks, and plazas.(Freeman) The multi-level park, squeezed between an armored river and a multiple-lane freeway, exemplies the challenges of contemporary parks that are often carved out of dense, layered infrastructure networks. In discussing the rst site visit, Michael Van Valkenburgh describes a forgot-ten, marginalized landscape: We wandered around the dirty, gritty, noisy, impossibly thin reality of the sites width. There was a six-lane highway on the upper level and a four-lane highway on the lower level with parking. It was a piece of land that nobody would think twice about.(Amidon 35) The designers, working together with artist Ann Hamilton, transformed this site into a community asset that makes maximum use of the marginalized space while attempting to remain honest to its intensely urban character. The MVVA design team recognized three landscape paradigms that existed on the site and that they wanted to reveal and enhance in the nal site de-sign. These include: the infrastructural, dened by the highway and its ramps, bridges, and abutments; the natural, dominated by the river and its flood-plain; and, the civic, due to the strong presence of existing cultural district at the upper edge of the park (Amidon 53). They also had to creatively work with the narrow, vertical nature of the site, thus it exists as a set of scissoring, layered landscapes an upper level reflects the civic character of the site, and a lower level concedes to and is consumed by the river and its floods. To reveal the desired characteristics, the design team employed a strate-gy they dubbed hypernature, where they exaggerated the natural palette found on site in order to compensate for the limited scale of the narrow strips

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gure 16. feral nature in the lower level of the parkJane Amidon

of land. The plants and materiality of the upper and lower levels differ sub-stantially, but complement one another well. Figures 14 and 15 show the civic character of the upper site an orderly plantation of London Plane trees and nely ordered slabs of native bluestone paving. The lower level is characterized by more wild plantings that evolve through the influences of the rivers freezes and floods, and roughly textured concrete paving shaped by the impressions of bull rushes (gures 16 & 17). The case study of the Allegheny Riverfront Park differs dramatically from Natur-Park Sdgelnde. There is far less ambiguity and flexibility in the -nal design, which is due in part to the more highly urban nature of the site. However, both studies demonstrate approaches within the spectrum of urban interstitial space design, and both employ sensitive and site-relevant design strategies. While the Allegheny Riverfront Park is arguably quite neat and clean, subtle design decisions succeed in lending the site a mystery and ambiguity that references the transitional nature of the space. The two parks may appeal to different audiences, but I feel that their deeper intentions and impacts remain quite similar.

gure 17. paving textures in the lower level of the parkJane Amidon

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03.03 trail design: legibility, traces, and narratives In discussions of landscape urbanism, as in those concerning terrain vagues, questions of reading the underlying landscape patterns and site histories often arise. How can design communicate and make legible the history of a place, expose the forces that have and will continue to shape it? How can the often rich palimpsest of urban sites be revealed in a way that allows for mystery, new memories and inspired questions of: what is this place? As we strive to shape the relics of our aggressive industrial processes into new, healthy, and relevant landscapes, it may be difcult to resist the impulse to create a tabula rasa easy, uncomplicated, clean. But in that way we lose the richness of the story, and eliminate the memory of what got us here. Restoring a landscape does not mean putting it back into its original state, declares critic and educator Melanie Hauxner, but making the processes that shaped it become visible, making it understandable. (Hauxner) The design of trails and trail networks presents an interesting overlap with the questions of exposing narratives, histories, and site trajectories over time. The linear nature of trails creates a narrative structure that is both physical and experiential the experience of moving along a trail or path is an experience of site that by denition has a beginning, middle, and end. Trails demand that a designer understands and forms a relatively narrow experience of place over time that is primarily understood as the body moves through a series of spaces. While landscape design demands that a designer shapes movement through space and considers how this movement will be appreciated and experienced, trail design can be thought of as an extreme distillation of this aspect of design. The narrow nature of trails limits elements of physical design to an extremely conned amount of space, while the linear, A-to-B aspect of trails af-fords the designer an uncommon amount of control in the way people move through and experience site narrative and sequencing. Furthermore, many trails have extreme control over access, and the designer determines the exact moments of entry and exit, and by extension also strongly impacts the amount of time that is actually spent on the trail. The amount of control a designer has over the sequence and scope of experience in trail design can be creatively and playfully manipulated to allow for rich and varied experiences, but also can have a deadening, limiting effect when seen as a strictly linear, singular narrative. Because of the control afforded the designer in influencing sequencing and narrative, there seems to be a temptation to design for a single beginning, middle, and end of the story, as if all users would experience and read the site(s) the same way. Both approaches will be discussed here. Through the process of conducting a review of the literature discussing trails, it became clear that there is a relative lack of research and critical review of trail creation as a matter of design, rather than one of planning. An illustration of this can be seen in the results of an Avery Index search for articles with trails or trail design as keywords. In the periodical of the American Society of Landscape Architects, Landscape Architecture Magazine (LAM), 34 articles mention trails or trail design from 1925 to the present. Of these only 16 deal with the planning or design of trails themselves, and of this number only a handful address the physical , experiential aspects of trail design. One of these articles, titled Winning with Rail Trails carries the byline award winters sug-gest guidelines for trail planning and design. The guidelines are presented along with examples of case studies; the guidelines include: practice responsible environmental design; create transit links; consider rails with trails; rehabilitate and reuse historic infrastructure; aim for interest and variety; design to reflect community character (Donovan). The last category, design to reflect community character, focuses specically on design in detail. The case study used for this example is the Cardinal Greenway in Indiana, designed by Claire Bennett Associates and recipient of the Rails-to-Trails Conservancy Innovative Design Incorporating Community Character award (gures 19 & 20) (National Planning Awards 2006). In this example, the designers studied local vernacular

22

Ahern, Jack. Greenways in the USA. Ecological

networks and greenways : concept, design,

implementation. Ed. R Jongman. Cambridge UK

;;New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004.

Print.

Amidon, Jane. Michael Van Valkenburgh Allegheny

Riverfront Park. 1st ed. New York NY: Princeton

Architectural Press, 2005. Print.

Balmori, Diana. A New Kind of Park. Landscape

transformed. Ed. Academy Editions. London

;Lanham Md.: Academy Editions ;;Distributed to

the trade in the USA by National Book Network,

1996. 44-47. Print.

Bowring, Jacky. Lament for a Lost Landscape: The

High Line Is Missing Its Melancholy Beauty.. gure 18. Richard Long: A Line Made By Walking 1967Richard Long

architecture in order to create a design language they applied to seating, fencing, pavement treatments, signage, lighting, bridges, interpretive areas, markers, and trash receptacles along the greenways 60 mile length (Dono-van 79). According the LAM article, the design features are unied along the length of the trail, but in order to respond to the variety of communities the trail passes through each county has its own color scheme for local identi-cation (emphasis added)(Donovan 79). Without studying the trails design in detail it is impossible to make a qualitative evaluation of the trails quality and uniqueness, but it is possible to criticize the LAM article for highlight-ing a color scheme as benchmark strategy for site-sensitive, relevant trail design. It is difcult to imagine that the same standard of evaluation would be applied to the design concept of a park, public plaza, or campus. Another example of this disregard for the importance of design and materiality in trail construction can be seen in a second LAM article titled The Subtle Side of Texas, with the byline In a state where constant driving makes one oblivious to the nuances of land

masters thesis | armature urbanism

Documents

trail design

edges of urban developments

chief sealth trail

interstitial lands

multiuse trail

richness of edges

south seattle

urban ecologies