Lissome Urbanism: Rail Infrastructure as a Backbone for the Rethinking of Continental Catalunya
GSD 1509, Spring 2007, with: Felipe Correa

FRAMEWORK

The studio departs from the assumption that new urban pressures are taking place in highly decentralized regions and open territories. Traditional urban models structured around existing nuclei are being superseded by activities diluted within a much broader terrain. The conventional distinction between urban/rural (dense/sparse) settlement structures is slowly fading away, and settlement intensities are constantly being re-shuffled in response to a wide variety of variables. Key among these are changes in transportation infrastructure, new ways of marketing lightly populated land, development of new hard/soft industries, and the emergence of new tourism and recreational infrastructure outside of the traditional city. Given this framework, the role of the Designer, which traditionally has been bound to the ideals of the compact city must be reconsidered or enriched, and new operative procedures must be explored in order to engage effectively a reality that operates under very diverse procedures distant from traditional attitudes of land colonization.

The studio, temporarily suspends the traditional boundaries of the realm of the Urbanist, in order to explore alternate forms of occupation that can effectively proffer new ways of inhabiting and exploiting highly diffused regions. Furthermore, the investigation searches for settlement models that can effectively deploy skim and lissome entities at multiple scales. The work seeks territorial developments that are less subject to prescribed form and participate more from an open process of formation where morphologies are highly mutable and interchangeable.

BACKGROUND

In the last decade, the Catalan Territory is witnessing a major shift in rail infrastructure. Its role as a form of transport and its agency in future development is being significantly redefined through the introduction of new networks and advanced technology. The high speed train (primarily the French TGV), is restructuring the logic of this territory and establishing a new framework for interconnection within Europe. Rail has become an efficient option for long haul travel, and in the near future it will be seen as an alternative to air travel. The spatial and temporal relationship between large urban centers has changed drastically and one can even find travel maps that have been distorted to illustrate new and more effective travel times, hinting towards a new understanding of twenty first century Europe. Furthermore, this new specialized infrastructure also hints towards effective changes in secondary and tertiary rail networks in order to provide an even wider range of travel possibilities. The new axis defined by the TGV (the French high speed train) from France to Portugal (Paris - Barcelona - Lleida - Madrid - etc.) has provided the Catalan territory with a the potential to rethink its future forms of development in regards to the advantages that new forms of rail transport might bring to this territory.

Given this hypothesis, the studio speculates on the new role of rail infrastructure as a spinal chord that can proffer and organize low density settlements upon an extended territory within the Catalan region. The studio specifically focuses on the possibilities of extending the railway between the Lleida High Speed Train Station to La Seo and Andorra. It explores its transformative potential into a spinal chord along its valleys, placing much attention on tentative development scenarios and the re-use of existing settlements. This territory, which for years provided energy resources and raw materials, is now becoming more of a seasonal leisure and recreational environment.

The investigation departs from analyzing existing as dynamics at play in the terrain in question that can serve as a basic staple that can later ground other more ambitious programs that could be molded into the territory given the economic base already in place. The territory's environmental assets and its well anchored infrastructures should also guide the proposals for its transformation. Furthermore, the work must take into consideration that its unique orographic and ecological dynamics can be a secondary, yet significant asset for the development of future operations in the area.

STUDIO OBJECTIVES

The studio sets forward an agenda that seeks for alternate forms of occupation that can effectively proffer new ways of inhabiting and exploiting highly diffused regions. Using the newly updated rail infrastructure as a primary spine, the studio searches for new models and spatial devices that can efficiently respond to the dichotomy between the denser littoral settlements and the more dispersed inner zones establishing forms of exchange that can benefit and improve both urbanistic structures. Behind the exercise exists a hidden agenda that frames the dialectic process of rethinking and transforming large territories, by means of designing infrastructural fragments and singling out forms of ''contemporary nature''.

The studio pushes forward the following topics:

1. The rethinking of spatial / organizational models that can endow the territory with new geometries that engage more efficiently existing and new infrastructures.
2. Speculate upon the new spatial and programmatic potential of land locked geographies that are distant from the littoral strip, once their relative accessibility changes due to the new rail infrastructure.
3. The proposal of new uses and activities that can reactivate existing settlement patterns.
4. Rethinking the value of the terrain itself as an asset that can attract new forms of colonization, primarily leisure and tourism among other alternative economies.

STUDIO STRUCTURE

The studio is made up of three discrete investigations which that will add up to one comprehensive project:

Part 1 - Rail Infrastructure and its Ubiquitous Geometries
The first portion of the studio focuses on a mapping exercise at a territorial scale that allows for a clear reading of the multiple rail infrastructures at play and their broader geographies of influence. Furthermore, throughout the mapping process students begin to single out particular tracts of land that could easily be infused with new forms of dispersed settlement networks in relation to the newly updated rail infrastructure.

Part 2 - New Programs and their spatial implications
The second portion of the studio focuses in the accretion of a wide matrix of programs that can be discretely deployed within the territory in question creating a variety of activities which in summation can induce significant change along the territory in question.

Part 3 - the material fragment
The third, and longest portion of the studio concentrates on the development of a particular thesis towards in regards to a series of abstract models that could be conceived at a regional scale, and test their specific transformative potentials at the scale of the fragment, through a precise design intervention.

LOGISTICS

The Studio is part of a much wider research project that aims to develop new readings of cities in relation to their immediate realities. The Studio should allow for the potential to speculate on new spatial possibilities for the area in question and to testa wide array of possibilities through inquisitive modes of representation, drawings, models, etc. In this particular case, speculations delve into the role of the urbanistic project in extreme low density scenarios.

The studio is open to students from all departments. It requires a high level of representation skills and design ability, since the studio ranges from large scale mappings to precise architectural interventions. A keen interest for precise, yet explorative forms of representation is a must for students enrolled in the studio.

A studio trip to Barcelona and the greater Catalonian Region is scheduled for February 17th to the 24th. The studio is kindly sponsored by the ''Ferrocarriles de la Generalitat de Catalunya'' and travel expenses and accommodations are fully covered.

Beijing: The University Campus as an Operative Device to Reshape the Metropolis
GSD 1509, Spring 2006

Objectives
In the last thirty years, China has been subject to a series of pressure systems that have aggressively altered the traditionally and culturally rooted morphologies of its urbanization patterns. Since the de-collectivization of agriculture in the late 1970's, the country has aggressively moved towards a socialist-market economy, causing major transformations in the structure, organization and growth pace of its major urban environments.

This studio focuses on Beijing, exploring its urban morphology, and the most significant patterns of transformation that have affected the city throughout the century, focusing specifically in the change of the last thirty years. The studio constructs a wide array of mappings of the new spatial configurations that have resulted from the distinct urban strictures imposed in the city in the Post Maoist Era, and use them as a primary source for the rethinking of new organizational structures for the Tsinghua University Campus. The objective is to explore the possibility of reconfiguring the campus into a more operative district within the city, and speculate on how this process can be useful when reconsidering other quarters in the metropolitan area.

Background
Beijing's original urban structure is an amalgam of monumental historic buildings and low construction high density quarters in a rather intricate morphology. That system was heavily altered during the Maoist period. This new urban structure driven by the aspirations of socialist dogma established new live work scenarios known as work units or Danwei. This organization altered the functional differentiation of the traditional district in favor of new self sufficient districts that offered work, housing, healthcare and most other basic services, eliminating the need to travel between units. These were primarily walled complexes with three to five story rectangular buildings.

The current scenario (Reformist era) has been marked by a huge influx of capital, both local and foreign- in state owned land, which teamed with new forms of housing tenure have drastically changed the urban nature of Beijing, both in scale and assembly. This has resulted in major morphological alterations in the city where circulation infrastructure has been rescaled, vertical buildup has exploded, and traditional fabrics and layouts are continuously erased. The rhythm of urban growth is extraordinary.

Studio

The studio is made up of three investigations at three discrete scales which then will add up to one comprehensive project:

Part 1. Beijing's emerging morphologies
The first portion of the studio focuses on a mapping exercise that tackles Beijing at a metropolitan scale, and construct a series of mappings that splinter the intricate morphological composite that makes up the city. Students select a series of districts throughout the metropolitan area that have been subject to extensive change. This material, generative in nature, serves as the primary source for the second portion of the studio.

Part 2. The campus as an operative district
The second component of the studio, focuses on developing new organizational patterns for the densification of the Tsinghua University campus and a recalibration of its grounds. Tsinghua University, has a campus structure characterized by well defined edges and is made up of a series of sub-campuses with scattered modern buildings sprinkled throughout a green carpet. This portion of the studio looks at inventive strategies to reconfigure its relatively loose ground condition, and develop strategies that might allow for the integration of city and campus.

Part 3. The paradigmatic fragment
For the last and longest portion of the studio, students are asked to propose an architectural or urban project for the university grounds, one that acts as a synecdoche, a fragment that might be paradigmatic for a more comprehensive plan, and mediate between the more ambitious organizational patterns proposed by the studio while addressing today's immediate reality of the campus.

The Studio is part of a much wider research project that aims to develop new readings of cities in relation to their immediate realities. The Studio should allow for the potential to speculate on new spatial possibilities for the area in question and to test the possibilities through inquisitive modes of representation, drawings, models, etc. In that case speculations is geared towards testing the scale of the "urban district" as a device for reshaping a large metropolis.

A parallel Studio is run by the School of Architecture at Tsinghua University, sponsors of this studio. The studio travels to Beijing from February 21 to the 28th. During the trip, GSD faculty and students meet with the academic counterpart at Tsinghua University. Travel expenses and accommodations are covered for students.

New Orleans: Redesigning a Fragile Edge
GSD 1511, Spring 2005

1. City Emerging from the Water
The City of New Orleans is located at 90 degrees West longitude, and 30 degrees North latitude, 30 miles north of the mouth of the Mississippi River. New Orleans teeters on the edge of the continental shelf of North America, and, from a geological standpoint, what we know today as lower Louisiana was submerged under a huge embankment of the Gulf of Mexico. The Mississippi slowly, over a period of millions of years, began depositing silt along the ocean’s bottom, until eventually land formations allowed for very selective geographies to be colonized. About 1 million years ago, the river had built up for itself a fragile delta extending out into the Gulf. It is in this interstitial space between the water and the land flanked by the Mississippi River and Lake Pontchartrain that the city of New Orleans exists. The objective of this studio is to delve into an investigation of the dynamically complex topography of New Orleans and the lower Mississippi River Basin and to determine alternate ways of colonizing the river’s edge, particularly in a postindustrial era in which the existing programs and infrastructural spaces that sit along the river need to be revisited.

2. Between Water and Land: The Port
The primary focus of this studio is to observe New Orleans as a city with a precise operative nature and to use the outcome of such research as a primary source that would guide a series of interventions along the river’s edge. In fact, the settlement of the city within this fluid system and its harbor potentials is what allowed for the development of the city. A key interest of the studio is to observe the river’s obsolete postindustrial tracts of land and their potential transformation into a more adequate landscape that accommodates programs more attuned to the city’s current economic engines: primarily, cultural / academic, leisure, tourism, and recreational facilities, among others. Using the “RiverSphere” area as a paradigmatic site, the studio will explore multiple alternatives that allow for this edge condition to accommodate a new center for bioenvironmental research accompanied by a wide array of cultural and recreational programs, as well as the introduction of more qualitative open space.

3. The City and Its Land: Fabrication of Ground
The studio capitalizes on the research and cartography prepared during the initial portion of the semester which concentrates on two distinct lines of inquiry. The first one is the relationship between the river’s “constructed” edge and the infrastructural domain that calibrates the border condition and allows for an extended area of human settlement below the natural water level. The second line deals with the relevance of a variety of morphed grid systems that structure/facilitate urban development. This analysis is complemented by an investigation of more universal forms of riverfront development, in a very delicate topographical condition, drawing from many examples in North America, Asia, and Europe. Ultimately, the final goal for the studio students is to generate proposals that negotiate between the idiosyncrasies of the city’s geographic location and the spatial requirements posed primarily by RiverSphere, as well as by other programs that are currently colonizing and activating riverfronts.

Bringing Harvard Yards to the River
GSD 1511, Spring 2004

This studio deals with an immediate reality, that of simulating a process of improvement and transformation of the main university quads; at a point in time when the campus is subject to changes within its strong internal dynamic and the University’s role in a post-industrial society is in constant reevaluation.

Most likely, the most immediate spaces around campus, those we experience on a daily basis might seem rather fixed and we might easily take them for granted. On the contrary, a critical reading of these everyday spaces allows us to understand its spatial limitations and its qualitative potentials. Furthermore, to think in terms of design, these urban campuses allow major improvements on its operative nature, and a more efficient integration of existing and new services.

The overriding subject of the Studio deals with the monographic working “pieces” within the contemporary city — like university areas — and the new concepts that proffer their own ambitious development and even more important their integration to broader urban systems. The studio uses the Harvard campus as an urban laboratory to experiment on the issues described above.

A specific reading of the current campus morphology. In fact, the particular urban condition of the “city campus”l generates modes of interpretation that depart from the traditional urban analysis conventions. In this manner, the evaluation of the “yards” and other seminal urban spaces, the reinsertion of adequate public transport and traffic management, the functional relationships between the different university campuses and other activities, will begin to take a very specific and precise dimension.

An in-depth understanding of the Anglo-Saxon campus and its evolution through case studies of other American and European campuses.

The relationship of the campus and its public spaces with the river has been rather shy and distant, despite the fact that previous plans for the university have extensively suggested such connection by designers such as Olmstead, McKim and Sert and others. In reality, the urban life and spatial structure of the different university areas is fairly autonomous and does not capitalize on the spatial potential a tentative extension to the Charles River might proffer, where the existing traffic flows could be complemented by more comprehensive recreational and outdoor activities.

The working hypothesis for the studio consists of using the Harvard Campus as a spatial laboratory considering:

1. an “incrementalist” method, which allows for major transformations that emerge from the reinterpretation of monographic spatial analysis.
2. establishing a design methodology through a process of contrast, where the current spatial configurations are tested with certain proposals that suggest a stronger link to the river. In this context, it is important to be aware that the University is considering a future expansion into Allston, and the latent potential to use the river as a central “place” for the overall expanded campus.
   

A general study of public and collective spaces, the definition of relationships among campus areas, the restructuring of such spaces, and the introduction of new uses and activities are the main focus of discussion. The studio generates and tests a new vision or set of visions for the campus and their ability to revitalize its spaces and foster new perspectives on an intermediate run.

The studio is part of on-going research and has a large amount of cartographic and bibliographic information that is available to the students at the beginning of the semester.

This option studio is primarily geared to students who are interested in working both at an urban scale as well as a more immediate one that tackles the design of a particular campus area or certain infrastructural pieces. A keen interest for precise and expressive representation is a must.

The studio schedules a few visits to different campuses in order to understand its spatial transformations and contemporary urban transformations.

New Metropolitan Entrance
GSD 1511, Spring 2003

In the metropolitan city of Barcelona, the Gran Via is the great horizontal avenue running parallel to the coast, around which growth has been structured since the late nineteenth century. It extends from the airport to the Maresme region, on the way crossing the most diverse of urban morphologies: we might call it a +'panoptic view' of the city.

In the south-west sector, between the municipality of Hospitalet and Barcelona at the approach to the airport, a unique condition is created due to changes in transport infrastructure: the Gran Via may have a depressed section and two lines of the Metro system will have stations here. Current low building levels suggest the possibility of a large-scale transformation, creating the possibility of an area of new centrality on this major metropolitan axis.

Our working hypothesis suggests that the increased accessibility of this axis will allow the inclusion of new central activities: commerce, offices, services, facilities and a certain type of housing, which will channel a transformation in the image of the Gran Via, as well as leading to improvements to the activities already sited in these sectors.

The exercise consists of producing an urban project for the sector, taking the latter as the basis for a new interpretation of this axis in the south-west sector of the metropolis.

The various phases of the study allow:

1. a morphological reading of this metropolitan reality,
2. an understanding of some of the city's seminal projects, but also a study of similar transformations that can be used as comparative points of reference, and
3. the definition of the urban project with a discussion of the most applicable instruments by means of which both to express it and to 'guide' its execution, as appropriate.

In the course of this process, students logically accord priority to the implementation of those instruments and/or techniques which they consider to be of most interest, according to their background, while preferably applying conceptual elements that allow us to define the field of physical intervention in the city.

Pedagogical objectives

The study seeks to experiment with the urban project on an intermediate scale along a large but relatively unconsolidated avenue in a European city. The content of the workshop must cover an understanding of the peri-urban condition in a big city and the potential for transformation on the basis of certain decisions regarding transport infrastructure and urban form. It seeks to work with the urban form of the city without defining the totality of the elements: the urban project is therefore marked by this condition of a 'metaproject', able to direct a complex urban process without fixing all of its parts.

The study is set within a line of broader investigation that seeks to reflect on the role and the diversity of the urbanistic project in present-day reality, and is carried out during the academic year in the form of a Research Seminar.