South America Project

The South America Project (SAP) is a trans-continental applied research network that proactively endorses the role of design within rapidly transforming geographies of the South American continent. The project brings together a broad host of academic institutions, scholars and designers from diverse fields, building a trans-disciplinary platform for action in the South American regional integration movement. Through the lenses of architecture, landscape architecture and urbanism, SAP affiliates propose more comprehensive models of urbanization for South America.

The South American hinterland is currently undergoing unprecedented spatial transformations, particularly through fast-paced modes of resource extraction and regional integration at a continental scale. Regional highways, energy grids, fluvial corridors, and telecommunications networks are reconstructing the South American landscape. Too often this reconstruction is narrowly defined by utilitarian resource extraction and the deployment of mono-functional infrastructure.  SAP focuses on how a spatial synthesis best afforded by design can provide alternative physical and experiential identities to current modes of spatial transformation.

SAP undertakes its research through diverse mechanisms, including design and research studios, research seminars, digital and analog publications, conferences, seminars, lectures, round table discussions and documentary films. The network´s output is shared with diverse constituencies involved in continental planning, in an attempt to allow design to partake in decision making processes and exert a positive impact in the South American territories. Launched by Felipe Correa and Ana María Durán Calisto, the SAP is supported by of the Department of Urban Planning and Design at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies and the Loeb Fellowship.

Selected publications
Correa, Felipe. “Water and the Urban Project,” Globalized Water. Edited by Graciela Chneier-Madanes. New York: Springer, 2012.
“SAP. Continuamos con nuestra cobertura de The South America Project (SAP): Hinterland Urbanisms, presentando información sobre todas las investigaciones que se estan llegando a cabo.” PLOT.  7, 2012.

Principal Investigator
Felipe Correa

Collaborators
Víctor Muñoz Sanz (MAUD ’11), PhD candidate, School of Architecture of Madrid
Ana María Durán Calisto (Loeb ’11), School of Architecture, Design and Arts of Universidad Católica del Ecuador

Sponsor
The Santo Domingo Endowment and the Lemann Endowment of the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies at Harvard University, with additional support from the GSD Department of Urban Planning and Design and the Loeb Fellowship.

Boston Redevelopment Authority

Community Service Fellowship

Emily Mytkowicz, MUP ’12, spent her 2011 summer interning with the Boston Redevelopment Authority ’s community planning department which works to “engage local residents, businesses, agencies and institutions in guiding the future character of Boston’s unique neighborhoods and districts”. Emily worked on the public outreach and internal coordination efforts for a number of projects located throughout the City, including a Downtown Crossing retail and investment study, the rezoning of East and West First Street in South Boston, and the community design deliberations for the forthcoming East Boston Greenway multi-use path, among others.
She also continues to support the BRA-facilitated citizen review process for proposed mixed use real estate development over Massachusetts Department of Transportation Air Rights Parcels 12 – 15, located around the intersection of Boylston Street and Massachusetts Avenue in the Back Bay neighborhood. Development over the Turnpike Air Rights offers the City the chance to accommodate new uses and meet the needs of local residents, businesses, and institutions in an otherwise constrained market for developable land. With the City’s Civic Vision for Turnpike Air Rights providing the base planning framework, the citizen review process currently underway aims to ensure that the proposed developments adequately meet neighborhood and city-wide priorities.
Emily’s experiece was funded by the GSD’s Community Service Fellowship Program.

Summer 2011

Assessing the relationship between urban design and urban climate in selected Bronx neighborhoods

Research assessing the relationship between urban design features and urban climate in densely populated neighborhoods is becoming increasingly important as cities continue to grow and climate change occurs. In the summer of 2012, students from the Advanced Research Seminar on Urban Climate and local, community volunteers studied the effects of green infrastructure (parks) on the urban heat island effect in the two Bronx neighborhoods of Saint James Park in Community District 207 and Echo Park in Community District 205. Using temperature sensors and examining urban features and the built environment, the team collected information to begin developing a dataset useful for modeling the urban environment.

In addition to the summer field research, the advanced research seminar did an extensive spatial and demographic analysis of vulnerability to climate-health impacts, along with modeling outdoor thermal comfort in relationship to the built environment in these neighborhoods.

The results of these efforts will be used to understand the effectiveness of heat island mitigation methods used by cities and suggested by US. Environmental Protection Agency, which include increasing surface permeability, creating more vegetative cover, using cool reflective materials, installing green roofs and cool roofs on buildings. Once the effectiveness of different mitigation techniques is know, the best methods can be used to lessen the negative health consequences arising from heat in cities.

Research Assistant:
Naz Beykan (MDes ’12)

Sponsored by a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Seed Grant from Harvard Center for Population and Development Studies

New Norc City

Names

Jack Becker, MAUD 2012
Nicolas Rivard, MAUD 2012

Project Title

New Norc City, Elements of Urban Design Studio

Instructor

Professor Felipe Correa

Date

Fall 2011

New Norc City redefines the maxi-block parcel structure and Tower in the Park housing typology at the “Tower City” complex in Coney Island, Brooklyn.

The selected site’s urbanistic and social problems arise from a lack of continuity with the surrounding neighborhoods. The primary design strategy is to re-inscribe Tower City with the finer-grained street structure of adjoining Coney Island and Brooklyn at large. This urban gesture is examined in the context of an individual Tower City parcel, the Luna Park Cooperative.

Programmatically, this project interprets the Tower City district was as an emergent NORC (Naturally Occurring Retirement Community) with a high proportion of elderly citizens in towers. 

The combination of these two criteria led to the design of a campus which encourages aging in place: New Norc City. The intervention uses a strategy of adaptive reuse for five, twenty-story towers. To those towers, a mixed-use base was added. That base reinforces the new street grid as well as the larger maxi block campus by providing a cohesive urban form within the district.

A new layer of private exterior spaces is grafted onto the towers in the form of balconies. The entire campus unifies around a second floor walking track which organizes related programs and provides a space for exercise, circulation, and social interaction. By reintroducing the normative grid of the area and retrofitting the towers with new and appropriate program, New Norc City creates a comfortable enclave for an aging population to exist in Brooklyn.

Extreme Urbanism I: Reimagining Mumbai’s Back Bay

The Back Bay of Mumbai—underdeveloped, sandwiched between high rise office and residential blocks, historic buildings, a fishing village and slums—is perhaps the most contested locality in the city. It’s a place where the “Static City” or planned urban environment collides with the “Kinetic City “ of temporary materials and constant flux. Beginning in 2011, Rahul Mehrotra, Chair of Urban Planning and Design at the Graduate School of Design, has undertaken the challenge of honoring this duality while imagining a future for the site in the Extreme Urbanism Studio. The multiyear project incorporates an annual visit to Mumbai and takes advantage of the expertise and creativity of Loeb Fellows as mentors and advisors for students drawn from the GSD, Harvard Business School, and the Kennedy School.

Collaborators

Harvard Kennedy School of Government, Harvard Business School, Real Estate Academic Initiative at Harvard University, and the Loeb Fellowship at the Graduate School of Design.

Extreme Urbanism is part of Reconceptualizing the Urban, a four year investigation of urban studies funded by the Mellon Foundation. Learn more at the Harvard Mellon Initiative . 

Designing Process: Creating long-term replicable community building solutions in Port-au-Prince, Haiti

The earthquake of January 12, 2010 turned the already critical shortage of housing in Haiti into a brutal crisis. A year and a half later, 80% of the rubble has yet to be cleared, and an estimated 680,000 residents still live in tent camps. Because of this precarious situation, political leaders are pushing hard for housing solutions, which has created three potentially drastic situations: first, building houses first without consideration for ecological forces of soil and water systems on a site puts any new community in danger; second, without understanding long-term infrastructural requirements, new communities will find themselves without basic provisions; and third, without building livelihoods, job opportunities, and job training, new communities will foster social unrest.

It is clear that sustainable long-term urbanization of the Port-au-Prince region cannot be created through the construction of houses alone.

In January 2011, a multidisciplinary team of designers and planners led by Christian Werthmann, Associate Professor of Landscape Architecture at Harvard Graduate School of Design, and Phil Thompson, Professor of Urban Politics and Planning at MIT School of Architecture and Planning, were charged by Deutsche Bank and the Clinton Foundation with the development of a small 125 unit Exemplar community at the outskirts of Port au Prince, in the small suburb of Zoranje. The goal: to create a replicable model and process for resettling earthquake refugees. In the face of 680,000 homes needed for earthquake refugees across the region, the research team substantially increased their scope and scale of study, successfully proposing to their funders that, in order to achieve successful, sustainable, community development, a series of core principles must be enacted before the construction of houses:

First and foremost, to yield long-term sustainable urbanization, the process of reconstruction must be designed for replicability within Haitian capabilities. In order to achieve that, sites in the periphery such as Zorange must be connected to the larger formal and informal urbanization processes and material flows of Port-au-Prince. At the same time, such communities should foster and sustainably harness the natural systems of their sites for food, water, and energy to maintain a level of autonomy from centralized infrastructures. Additionally, by weaving social engineering and job creation with physical design, these sites will build community. By pursuing these principles, new communities will thrive with significantly increased resilience to future disasters.

Based on these principles, it became clear that performing design research only on a scale of 125 units was inadequate. The research team therefore identified four scales for its strategic framework: the scale of Port-au-Prince, the scale of 70 hectares around Zoranje, the scale of the town Zoranje, and the scale of a neighborhood in Zoranje. Then a phasing process was designed that mediated between scales through both physical design and social planning. In particular, the team identified principles of sustainable water management, reforestation, and regenerative building materials, construction training and incremental housing as immediately achievable goals within the process.

In June 2011, a core team consisting of GSD Professor Christian Werthmann, MIT Professors’ Phil Thompson and Lawrence Sass, GSD MDesS Candidate Dan Weissman, and MIT MCP graduate Anya Brickman Raredon traveled to Port-au-Prince to present this holistic vision to both Haitian President Michel Martelly and former President Bill Clinton. The team also met with stakeholders, government officials from both Haiti and the US, and the Exemplar Executive Committee to discuss next steps.

Clearly, many Haitians are in dire need of adequate shelter in short order. However, long term sustainable community building requires careful design, planning and ongoing engagement. The GSD+MIT proposal seeks to facilitate the balance between these two seemingly conflicting necessities, fostering the creation of jobs, infrastructures, and social services in concert with home building in a process that may ultimately be employed across the Port-au-Prince region, and all of Haiti.

Download a full version of the report. This report is the research teams’ ongoing attempt at structuring thoughts on the extremely complex topic of rebuilding livelihoods around Port-au-Prince. It may also serve as a case study for other similar conditions across the world. For more information or to provide feedback on the report, please contact [email protected].

Lead Faculty: Christian Werthmann, Associate Professor in Landscape Architecture, Harvard Graduate School of Design Phil Thompson, Associate Professor in Urban Politics, MIT School of Architecture + Planning
Consulting Faculty: Joyce Rosenthal, Assistant Professor in Urban Planning, Harvard Graduate School of Design Larry Sass, Associate Professor, Computation, MIT School of Architecture + Planning Hashim Sarkis, Aga Khan Professor of Landscape Architecture and Urbanism in Muslim Societies, Harvard Graduate School of Design Reinhard Goethert, Principal Research Associate in Architecture, MIT School of Architecture + Planning Adele Maude Santos, Dean, MIT School of Architecture + Planning
Student Project Management: Dan Weissman (MDes ’12); Anya Brickman Raredon, Master of City Planning, MIT School of Architecture + Planning
Research Assistants: GSD: Tomas Folch, Anna Clarke Baker, Nathan King MIT: Emily Lo, David Quinn , Miriam Solis
External Consultants: Andy Meira (Clinton Foundation) Herbert Dreiseitl (GSD Loeb Fellow)
Exemplar Community Foundation: Leslie Voltaire, Honorary Chairman Maryse Kedar, Chairman, 2nd Vice President and COO Greg Mevs, Land Owner and Secretary Charles Clermont, Treasurer
Funding and Oversight: Deutsche Bank: Gary Hattem Clinton Foundation: Greg Milne