Sustainability « Rogue HAA

Category: Sustainability

Park(ing) on Woodward Ave.

Thursday, September 23rd, 2010

Last Friday, HAA joined hundreds from around the world to celebrate Park(ing) Day, a one day event that highlights the need for more livable and vibrant public spaces in our cities. With some help from Unilock and Landscape Forms, pavers and sod where placed on a parking spot at the corner of Gratiot and Woodward. Soon, there was a green patch of space, an unusual site especially when one is accustomed to see a car in its place instead. Onlookers were curious. Drivers paused. Parking enforcement stopped, then questioned, and questioned some more, but finally drove off. This was the idea—to get people to notice, ask questions, and interact. For those that stopped by, they got the message and left with a smile on their faces.

For more information on Parking Day: http://parkingday.org/

City Bird and Bureau of Urban Living Park(ing) Day

Tags: Detroit Urban Strategy, HAA, Park(ing) Day, Parking
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Park(ing) Day 2010

Thursday, September 2nd, 2010

In 2005, ReBar, a San Francisco art and design studio, converted a single 2 hour metered parking space in downtown San Francisco into a temporary public park. The goal was to provoke an examination of the values that generate public urban space by briefly transforming territory typically reserved for vehicles. The intervention aimed to address a broader range of public needs by providing a public green space.

Today, Park(ing) Day has evolved into an annual worldwide event that empowers the community to enact urban change by creatively altering parking spots for the betterment of the public. This year, Park(ing) Day will be on Friday, September 17^th. HAA will be participating in this unique project, and is in the process of selecting a location and designing the Park(ing) spot. Please check back for updates.

If you would like to create your own Park(ing) space or would like more information, please click here: http://parkingday.org/

License to Participate: http://parkingday.org/src/NPD_license_2010.pdf

Park(ing) Day network: http://my.parkingday.org/

Tags: Detroit Urban Strategy, HAA, Park(ing) Day, Parking
Posted in Architecture, Detroit Urban Strategy, Hit and Run, Landscape Architecture, Projects, Sustainability, Urbanism | Comments Off

STOOP AS MIDDLE GROUND 01

Thursday, May 13th, 2010

New Orleans Stoop House

The United States Green Building Council has initiated a nationwide design competition for a LEED platinum, single family home for the Broadmoor district of New Orleans, LA. This competition, entitled USGBC’s 2010 Natural Talent Design Competition, targets innovative design solutions from students and emerging professionals, while challenging designers to create an inexpensive (under $100K construction budget) contextually sensitive home.

A small group of HAA designers have challenged themselves to create the new archetypal home in New Orleans – a home that engages the existing neighborhood and city infrastructure from the elevated platform of post-Katrina housing. Four winning designs will be constructed by the Salvation Army, measured and verified during a designated sustainable testing phase, and then only afterwards will a final winner be selected. (more…)

Posted in Architecture, Competitions, Landscape Architecture, Projects, Sustainability, Urbanism | Comments Off

DISASTER RELIEF HOUSING

Wednesday, February 3rd, 2010

DISASTER RELIEF HOUSING. The president of Haiti, Rene Preval, is living in a tent. Or rather, he will be shortly, once they pitch it. He is doing this in part out of necessity and partly as a show of solidarity while he makes an international appeal for 200,000 tents. Potentially, these 200,000 tents will house as many as a million Haitian earthquake survivors.

As the Haitian relief efforts transition from rescue, food, and medical aide, to longer term reconstruction efforts like transitional and permanent housing, the world of architecture will likely revisit the design typologies of disaster relief housing. While much of the architectural and design community is uninvolved with disaster relief housing, some architects and entrepreneurs have produced effective prototypes that serve the global community in times of need. There are a number of considerations for the design and implementation of disaster relief housing strategies, not the least of which address sustainability, duration of use, vernacular architecture, climate, cost, and the lives of refugees impacted by the disaster. Most importantly, many in the scientific community predict that the global climate is becoming increasingly violent and the destructive power of natural disasters will be experienced all over the globe. It is imperative that we develop holistic methodologies for disaster relief housing, as their necessity will become more urgent. (more…)

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Grand Treatment

Monday, December 21st, 2009

Grand Treatment: Presently on display at Grand Circus Park, a Tinkertoy-inspired steel scaffolding system props up the facade of the old Fine Arts Building. Built in 1905, this building once housed the lobby of the famous Adams Theater. For many years, the building sat in a state of dormancy, waiting for the return of Detroit. Recently, the building’s owner funded an architectural study to determine the structural state of the building, only the façade was deemed salvageable. With surgical precision, construction crews recently separated the façade from the deteriorating structure, and then reinforced the masonry elevation with massive steel supports. As there are no published plans for the redevelopment of this site, the façade stands alone, stoically guarding Grand Circus Park. In its current state, the façade sparks creative curiosity. How does one reprogram a single façade? In a city that favors demolition, the preservation of this little slice of history is a small urban victory. (more…)

Posted in Architecture, Detroit Urban Strategy, Hit and Run, Sustainability | Comments Off

rouse[D] Competition and Exhibition

Thursday, December 3rd, 2009

During the summer of 2009, rouse[D] hosted a design competition that challenged its participants to “come up with designs that will rouse the city of Detroit and encourage an evolution of our understanding of its unique urban environment.” This international, open ideas competition further required design solutions to be “specific to the one-of-a kind condition Detroit presents.” While the proposed design interventions were allowed to creatively fluctuate, all solutions had to be grounded in a site specific to Detroit.

Working independently from HAA, my competition submission focused on the recent closings of Detroit Public Schools throughout the city. During Detroit’s more populated past, many of the city’s neighborhoods had elementary schools as their community anchor. Following the city’s population decline of the past five decades, these same neighborhoods have struggled to populate the very schools that once provided community stability. Most recently, the Detroit Public Schools announced closure of 23 schools as the city grapples with mounting budget problems. (For a more detailed of Detroit’s current depopulation conditions, refer to previous post titled HAA RESEARCH : Consolidating Detroit). My submission sought to address the reuse of one of these vacant elementary schools. (more…)

Posted in Architecture, Competitions, Detroit Urban Strategy, Hit and Run, Sustainability | Comments Off

Walter Hood Lecture @ UDM

Tuesday, November 10th, 2009

On Friday, November 13, Landscape Architect Walter Hood will be lecturing at the University of Detroit Mercy’s School of Architecture.

As stated on UDMSOA’s website, Walter Hood is a Professor and former Chair of Landscape Architecture at the University of California, Berkeley, and principal of Hood Design in Oakland, CA. Hood has worked in a variety of settings including architecture, landscape architecture, art, community and urban design, planning and research. He was a fellow at the American Academy in Rome in Landscape Architecture, 1997. He has exhibited and lectured on his professional projects and theoretical works nationally and abroad.

Location:
University of Detroit Mercy | School of Architecture
Genevieve Fisk Lorenger Architecture Center
4001 West McNichols Rd
Detroit, MI 48221

Friday, November 13, 2009
NOMA reception @ 5:00 pm
Lecture @ 6:00 pm

For more information, click here

(image provided by Hood Design) (more…)

Posted in Events, Landscape Architecture, Lectures, Planning, Sustainability, Urbanism | Comments Off

CRUISING TOWARDS ECO-INDUSTRIAL TOURISM

Friday, October 2nd, 2009

Eco-Industrial Cruise Line Detroit Itinerary

Hybrid Sustainability. Just as urban design cannot be thought of simply as architecture on a larger scale, sustainable urbanism is not merely a collection of ‘green’ buildings, spaces, and infrastructure upgrades. The transformation of America’s former industrial capitals from beleaguered shrinking cities into thriving urban centers depends not only on an agglomeration of high tech interventions – such as solar and wind farms, green roofs, electric cars, etc – but on a radical paradigm shift in the nature of land use, density, transportation and the role of our industrial heritage on future policy.

This blog post outlines such a paradigm shift, narrating the proposed evolution of Detroit’s post-industrial region through the introduction of Eco-Industrial Tourism via an Eco-Industrial Cruise Line. (more…)

Posted in Detroit Urban Strategy, Research, Sustainability, Urbanism | Comments Off

rouse[D] competition + exhibition

Monday, September 14th, 2009

[D]escription:

rouse[D] is a two part competition and exhibition. rouse[D] will focus on re-inventing the city of Detroit through the use of digital computation methodologies!

rouse[D]

Tags: rouse[D]
Posted in Architecture, Competitions, Detroit Urban Strategy, Events, Landscape Architecture, Planning, Research, Sustainability, Urbanism | Comments Off

HAA ANNOUNCES LECTURESHAA – EVENT 02

Monday, August 10th, 2009

lecturesHAA is dedicated to creating a broader creative discourse through open and collaborative dialogue. The program includes lectures and discussions throughout the year that will consider important contemporary design issues associated with the urban environment. The initial program for 2009 will be “Challenging Detroit: (Re)generating Urbanism.” This program will provide an important platform for consideration of innovative, multidisciplinary strategies designed to help the city not only create reinvestment and redevelopment, but also begin to regenerate the social, economic and environmental attributes that define it. Now, more than ever, we need to come together to understand how we can effectively participate in the thoughtful, creative regeneration of Detroit.
The public is encouraged to attend these free events. Please return to rogueHAA for future dates and topics.

EVENT 02: Lecture
SWEET JUNIPER!
The Afflatus of Ruin: Talking Differently About Detroit’s Unique and Endangered Assets
Jim Griffioen, Artist & Author

Jim Griffioen is a former corporate litigator turned writer, photographer, and stay-at-home dad. Every day thousands of people from around the world visit his website, sweetjuniper.com, to read his thoughts on parenthood, contemporary culture, and the state of his adopted home of Detroit. Griffioen’s photography has been featured in Harper’s, Vice, Landscape Architecture, New York, and CS Interiors among other publications. He has appeared on American Public Media’s The Story with Dick Gordon, CBC’s national arts and culture Program Q, as well as in the Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, and The New Yorker.com.

August 18, 2009 @ 6pm
Johanson Charles Gallery
1345 Division
Eastern Market, Detroit

EVENT 03: Lecture
Lars Graebner, Architect
October 13, 2009 @ 6pm
Johanson Charles Gallery
1345 Division
Eastern Market, Detroit

Tags: Detroit Urban Strategies
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