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8/3/2019 Thesis Article10 24

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The Public Skyline:A Critical Method

Public space making in citiesis an ever evolving process thatinvolves decision making at vastlydifferent scales incorporating a widerange of inputs all dependent on thescope and agenda set forth by an evenbroader range of interested parties.Economic, temporal, infrastructural,and political factors align or set atodds private entities, citizens, andelected officials with possible tiesto either or both simultaneously.Codes, enacted by those officials areset in place to ensure standards ofpercentage, distribution, quality,and financing of these public spacesand their supporting infrastructureas they relate to networks of openspaces and services within specificzones and throughout cities.

San Francisco in particular hasover 17% of its relatively small landmass devoted to public space basedon city code which is constantlybeing revisited and iterated upon.In 1985 Section 138 was added tothe C-3 zoning code stipulating theincorporation of accessible publicspace, public artwork, and supportinginfrastructure as a requirement fornew construction and large renovationprojects falling within its bounds.The downtown district followingMarket Street from 10th Street to theEmbarcadero reaching as far north asClay Street and just crossing Folsomto the south is in no way rectilinear,but follows the zoning of mega blocks aswell as individual parcels. This codehas ingrained within it the political

histories of each property

lot has been traditionally cand how many have transfortime.

The 1985 requirements armeans perfect, in that madepartments themselves haforth new mandates for publdelineating areas within thelacking access to those most Additional mandates for imprin the same vicinities come Francisco Public Work, San FMunicipal Transit Authorimany other government agencoverlap in jurisdiction in to construction projects wiC-3 zone and most other partcity.

Sean SThesis Article F


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Art and Architecture

As stated before the city fabric is in no way apolitical, and with many redevelopment projects there are alwaysexploitation and gentrification of many already suffering financial hardship whether directly or indirectly respWhat, then, is architectures role in this often problematized context of public space? How does the architect limits of not only the patron/designer relationship but also the limits set by the city through code and gucommittees and bureaucracy? In two ways Architecture can take a lesson from public sculpture theory. The ovemany and the logic of public sculpture, and of conceptual fine art is at its core a critical exercise engagingat a multitude of scales.

Since the divergence between architecture and the fine arts as fields, of both exploration and creative expresimplications of their respective societal critiques have had both parallel logics as well as divergent impliWhile the distinctions between the two disciplines are constantly being pushed and blurred by individuals wi

in both concept and production, the rolls of each prioritizes different functionality, or even responsibilita subjective term, as a result of the nature of their profession. Architecture has been a means of critiquethe exploration of perception, organization, materiality, technology, and the list goes on, but due to the a realized product of architecture, limits are often imposed on much of the exploratory side of the discipcourse this is not a universal condition, but material and tectonic logic, for example, at the scale of shemultiple individuals, has to function very differently in different climate conditions, and economic scale cainhibit the exploration of those possibilities; possibilities that representational tools of the field cannosubsidize. In addition to these limitations, the nature of client - architect relationship does not often necor even allow for a criticality of concepts beyond the requirements of functionality.

Fine artists have had similar trajectories in their conceptual explorations with somewhat inverse, or at leashifts in both expectations as well as limitations associated with production. While all the disciplines of have investigated the production of space through the lenses of perspective, organization, and many other logics to the field of architecture, the performance of that space is often valued in terms of the conceptual it presents as opposed to its functionality. Functionality, associated with the mechanism of human interacti

way to freedoms in an artistic exploration and production. Logic in occupation may be subjugated to logics in sperception that allow for a concept to be pushed well beyond the failure of both of these rationalities illuminate emergent relationships otherwise reserved for speculation. With these freedoms from some of the larchitecture also comes limits of economy, venue, and even a conceptual accessibility associated with fine can inhibit a works ability to educate and empower. There is additional risk with public art to actually fathe recontextualization of a site to that of its redevelopment.

Rosalyn Deutsche presents one such critique in her examination of the Battery Park City redevelopment. Asdescribing the political strategies that seemed to have duped the city of New York, she addresses the

injustices and social polarization that the public art validated or even perpetuated by the suppression of hcontext, trading it for one of seamless coherence. By first approaching the site as one without history, through formal and conceptual integration with the manifestations of those injustices, public art at BattCity further integrate[s] the area with New York, but with a redeveloped New York -- ghettoized and exclus(Deutsche 45) Battery Park City:


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A Critical Method

Critical explorations in Architecture have similar risks.Felicity Scott describes the proposals submitted for theLower Manhattan Development Corporation (LMDC) competitionfor the World Trade Center site:

architects missed an occasion to problematize thedisciplines imbrication within complex and shiftinghistorical, social, institutional, and geopolitical contexts.They missed an occasion in which aesthetic practices andemergent technologies might have been regarded not justas palliative or functional but theorized as politically

engaged sites of encounter, dissensus, and contestation.

Even when addressing the concepts Scott lays out,Architectures ability to go beyond critique to actuallyaffect the circumstances an architecture is critical of israrely achieved purely due to the fact that the project ofcritical architecture positions itself at odds with thepatronage that engages it, the budget that finances it,the site that grounds it, and/or the program that justifiesit as described by Unsolicited Architecture (OUA).

Jeffery Kipnis describes how Rem Koolhaas of OMA has beeninfluential in the conception and practice of criticalarchitecture:

Taking resistance broadly to mean the commitment,organized and framed by discourse, to mount impediments toentrenched powers vectors of colonization and instrumentsof indenture, then all of architectures projects ofresistance to date have unfolded in two stages: (1) exposean offending force through critique, and (2) neutralizethe offending force through negation. [within negation]architecture had evolved three distinct modes: formalintervention, symbolic appropriation, and infrastructuralsubterfuge Koolhass [advocates the later,] arguing thatformal devices, whatever their ilk, are all too easilycommodified, he shifts attention to the infrastructurethrough which entrenched power retains contemporaryarchitecture in its service then re appropriates thoseelements in the service of architectural critique. The

problem with this mode of criticality is that it is at theexpense of the inhabitant or the client, as capitalism,and at larger scales, politics are indifferent. If certainaspects of the intervention are the mechanism through whicharchitecture is empowering the individual at the expenseof the existing power structure all those in power will dois limit the availability of those mechanisms, such as thepublic access to the CCTV tower.


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Can this power be subverted? Yes, through a democraticprocess that regulates capitalism, for example. Canthis power be subverted through architectural methods?Yes, albeit abstractly. Architectural projects have anopportunity to address the codes (critique, subvert,enhance, evade) that are implemented through democracy.In a bottom-up method of approaching a project

This is a practice that encompasses certain aspects ofother contemporary movements in subtly critical processesin architecture that address a pragmatism as having anopportunity to not only identify and analyze phenomenaarchitecture may be critical of, but to begin to affect

that phenomena in a positive manner. Michael Speaksdescribes the tactile nature of Everyday Urbanism andits limitations:

ultimately everyday urbanism is a commentator on the city,and interpreter rather than a force of transformationthe projects are pedestrian, mundane, ordinary. Theyoperate at.. a tactical level where change occursthrough accretion over time. Or at least that is whatseems potentially viable about it. But in reality itnever develops any kind of comprehensive proposals thatmight be activated by the small scale interventions[nor does it] seek to understand the implications of itsinterventions It is anti-design and begs the question:How do you design with the banal and to what end?

Roemer van Toorn describes a way to incorporate thistactile analysis into an architectural methodology:

Projective practices respect and reorganize the diverseeconomies, ecologies, information systems, and socialgroups present during the process of creation. Projectivearchitecture also promotes a return to the discipline ina pragmatic and technical approach that takes account ofthe interdisciplinary influences that play a role tinthe realization of projects.

This methodology facilitates an understanding of therealities architecture works within for a given projectin order to exploit and make visible aspects of those

realities that can expand and improve the functionand experience through architectural interventionwithin them. This sort of nuanced investigation lendsitself to an internal criticality of method. One inwhich the understanding of the multiple, overlappingfactors contributing to a project allows for them to bereconceptualized in terms of elements within architecture;budget, client, program, and site.

Designing with the Banal

MVRVD: Pig Cit


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The four cornerstones of Architecture (OUA)

A reexamination of the four elements present in the architectural project is away to reinvent and validate the practice of architecture as well as further thediscourse within the critical, architectural process.

These architectural methods can be overlaid with the methods of various cityagencies tasked with the maintenance and implementation of our public spacesand infrastructure to determine not only sites of intervention and improvement,but also as a way to implement an architectural agenda where overlaps and/orloopholes occur in jurisdiction and code occur. This bottom up approach has anopportunity to be critical of not only established architectural processes, butalso the rules and regulations in place that impact these processes.

Unsolicited Architecture, an organization within the architectural departmentat MIT, uses an exploration of these methods to combat the shrinking domain ofarchitecture. As stated on their website: Because there are no clients requestingthis, it is by definition an unsolicited act that addresses both an opportunityas well as an urgency within architecture as well as other cultural componentsin need of architectural solutions such as social, environmental, technological,and political.

The SuperNutral project is one that takes on the environment in terms of bothopportunity in terms of rethinking resources, as well as an urgency in termsof combating climate change. They enter the project by filtering environmental/sustainable concerns and rhetoric, identifying a phenomenon as an opportunity,and then architecturalizing that through aligning and/or problematizing it withbudget and site. The first step is a rejection of budget as a traditional service

based architectural project and a new mean of generating funding is conceived ofthrough the Kyoto Protocols reconceptualization of greenhouse gas immersionsas a new commodity. Their contention is that there is potential for economicreimbursement in exchange for an architectural service of designing of architectureon otherwise unused sites (due to minimal square footage) with the intent tooffset the carbon footprint of the client. The remaining architectural elementscan then be examined through their pre-established lenses and reinterpreted.

In terms of the highlighted project it is in regards to the environment. Urgencyhaving to do with climate change and an opportunity in term of resources.

In 1985 there was an extensive rewriting of the city code, especially in regardto the down town area, or C-3 zone, that is again being revisited and updatedthrough based on statistics from the last 25 years. These statistics, based onthe methods employed by the SF Planning Dept. determined the darkest areas weremost in need of public open space base on demographics of youth, density, seniors,and low household income levels.

These and other methods employed by the planning and other city departments havingto do with public space and infrastructure and areas in need of revitalization ,for example, are the anomalies through which an architectural methodology suchas OUAs can enter the project. This need and other aspects of the SF planningcode for the C-3 zone can start to be appropriated and reconceptualized in termsof budget or additional elements of an architectural project.


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An OPEN SPACE VISION for San Francisco:

San Francisco Planning Departmenthttp://openspacesf.org/files/Recreation_and_Open_Space_Element.pdf?phpMyAdmin=B3a%2C-

cbmDK07AdsMpUGthHU0xfa

As we imagine our future we must focus our collective eye on securinga single, broad-minded goal: To achieve an open space network thatprovides a diverse system of equitable, multi- functional and highquality open spaces. And as we set the course to meeting the openspace challenges of the future, our open space vision assembles a widearray of opportunities combining familiar open spaces with unique and

creative uses of non-traditional spaces.

Method Analysis:

The architect can overlay additional information to either expand orfilter the scope and possibility of the project. If circulation isoverlaid and an analysis of station location and peak travel times arehighlighted, as indicated by additional bus services, as an example,circulation logics and temporal aspects within the C-3 zone begin tomanifest.

When multiple aspects of site, determined by the architect, to bothexamine certain relationships within the site, but to also facilitatethe agenda of the architect. The indication of more temporal aspectsof site such as public transit use and farmers markets will begin tospeak to additional opportunities for funding, as well as public healthand mobility, especially when considering the underlaid demographicsof youth, the elderly, and the impoverished, but also could indicatea temporal aspect to an architectural project.


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0 500 1000 1500250

Feet

SCALE: 1:14,000

Minimum Amount of Open Space Req

Use

District

Ratio of Square F

Space to Gross Squ

Uses with Open

Requiremen

C-3-O 1:50

C-3-R 1:10

C-3-G 1:50

C-3-S 1:50

C-3-O (SD) 1:50

Public Open Space

Transit Station

MUNI Peak Routes

80x, 81x Routes (Meets Caltrans)

BART

C3 Zone

< 50

50 - 99

100 - 174

175 - 300

> 300

Farmers Markets

Sunday

Saturday

Thursday

Wednesday

Tuesday

Monday

New Housing Downtown 1985-2009

Less Need

Greatest Need

*The Federal Building (605,000 sq. ft.) requires 12,1

of Public Open Space, of the $144 million budget $1

is designated for Public Artwork.

Planning Code Section 138 details the requirements fo

for nonresidential uses in the C-3 zoning districts.

sion was part of the Downtown Plan text amendments,

approved 09/17/85.

Planning Code Section 138(c) allows the open space re

for new building to be off- site as long as it is wit

of the new building and is located entirely within th

district.

Stipulations:(1) Be of adequate size;

(2) Be situated in such locations and provide such ingress and egress as wi

easily accessible to the general public;

(3) Be well-designed, and where appropriate, be landscaped;

(4) Be protected from uncomfortable wind;

(5) Incorporate various features, including ample seating and, if appropria

service, which will enhance public use of the area;

(6) Have adequate access to sunlight if sunlight access is appropriate to t

(7) Be well-lighted if the area is of the type requiring artificial illumin

(8) Be open to the public at times when it is reasonable to expect substant

(9) Be designed to enhance user safety and security;

(10) If the open space is on private property, provide toilet facilities op

(11) Have at least 75 percent of the total open space approved be open to t

daylight hours.

Sec. 429: Artwork Requirements in a c-3 District.

In the case of construction of a new building or add

floor area in excess of 25,000 square feet to an exis

in a C-3 District, works of art costing an amount equ

percent of the construction cost of the building or a

determined by the Director of the Department of Build

tion shall be installed and maintained (i) in areas o

the building or addition and clearly visible from the

walk or the open-space feature required by Section 13

the site of the open-space feature provided pursuant

138, or (iii) upon the approval of any relevant publi

adjacent public property, or (iv) in a publicly acces

Filtration may also be more focused. Zoas an example is rejected at this the process due to the lower requirempublic space and subsequently less rooarchitectural intervention.

Additional analysis of code indicatanomalies that may come into play the process such as the stipulation oart, (possibility of additional fu

well as opportunities for critique) as code section 138(c) describing a circumference where public space can beoff site. This could be an opportunitysquare footages of multiple public spfunding not to mention programmatic ov


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timeRebar: Park(ing)

Location: San Francisco, CA1 Parking SpacesCost: ~ 2 hrs metered ParkingDuration: 2 hrsInitiated: 2005

One such loophole in San Francisco

city code discovered by Rebar, the SanFrancisco based Art and Design Studiowas the lack of specificity in definingwhat was allowed to be parked in ametered parking spot in downtown SanFrancisco. The reinvention of whatsite could be for the 2 hour limit wasalso a reclamation of that spot as apublic open space. By utilizing therecognizable components of a park likegrass, a potted tree, and a park bench,an intuitive understanding of the newlyconceptualized parking spot was easily

accessible.


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SF Public Works: Parklets

Location: San Francisco, CA2 - 3 Standard Parking SpacesCost: $7000 - $40,000Duration: 1 YearInitiated: 2010Pavement to Parks projects are selectedbased on the following criteria:

Sizeable area of under-utilized roadway

Lack of public space in the surroundingneighborhoodPre-existing community support for publicspace at the locationPotential to improve pedestrian andbicyclist safety via redesign

SF Public Works used the strategies ofRebar and reinterpreted this phenomenonas a product while also furthering theconcept as one that could be aggregated.This is made possible due to the ownershipand continual development of street

infrastructure by the California cityand state government and within that, theDepartment of Public Works. This agencyis able to take advantage of innovationand reconceptualization of street parkingthrough the ability to edit city code/regulation and then oversee proposedprojects for its own economic gain. Therewas a reconception of a product at boththe scale of the site as a new spacefor rental in terms of the city as alandlord and the business as the tenant,as well as the design of the space as an

architectural product. In the same sensethe parking spot was reconceived as ayear long rental space and gene rator offunds for the city.


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timeProduct

PotentialThesis

reinterpretation of method

Through an understanding and possible exploitation of code/standards/regulation/policy for various SF city departments in charge of public spaceand infrastructure an architectural agenda can begin to manifest base onpragmatic lenses of site that can begin as a bottom up approach. Throughcertain aspects such as economic ingenuity the methods may be appropriated bygovernment agencies at the city and/or national level, and into the very code

it sought to exploit. These methods would then become a means of generatingcapital for those agencies and thus furthering the project of public service.

The architect has the disconnection from city agencies and private investorsthat can allow for innovation in ways that may be at odds with the inherentlogic of the systems within the scope of a project. Criticality of thosesystems in terms of rejection, reinterpretation, reconceptualization, orreclamation provide the breathing room for a method of architecture tooperate.

Reinterpretation of method: Th


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Reinterpretation of method: ThSkyline

Moving forward, an analysis of the C-3 zone, tinitiated since the 1885 code, and the resulspace projects will lead to a contextual unthat will inform architectures opportunitiesthat code in the terms developed for a crit(budget, client, program, site, time, produfootages of public space in comparison to thain the code for new projects in the C-3 zone to sectional qualities, and temporal qualiopen to the public) become the second tier o

in the exploration and the eventual interveplanimetric dispersal. This can begin to be as a new dynamic topography in terms of puespecially considering the development of tterminal will be a substantial contribution tospace in the C-3 zone. Analyzing these aspean additional lens of a networked urban stthe city has undertaken for a city wide unof public space. The third tier in this sta continued consideration of public transpa way to overlap possible funding and an idaily occupation in terms of commuters.

The over arching goal of this explorationonly explore how guidelines and code for pu

can be exploited within the various contexpush the definition and limit of architectwith regards to budget, client, program, and product, but to also subsequently augmeitself through economic viability as a fututo the city government, the architectural

and to citizens occupying public space.

C-3 Zone

Snippits

Urban Parks

Sun Terrace

Indoor

Plaza

SF Transbay Terminal

thesis article10 24

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