School of Architecture + Design

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Browsing School of Architecture + Design by Content Type "Article"

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    Urban Geologics / Topographic Spectres
    Rosier, Shaun (2024-08)
    The conditions of everyday modernity are saturated by an oft-unrecognised relation to mineral life and memory. The vital energies of various urbanisms are in a double bind where it is at once parasitically devouring subterranean material to fuel its growth whilst obscuring these feeding patterns. Geologic strata crushed and sifted to form concrete, aggregate, and sand. The forces of contemporary development and capitalism seek to extract material from a constructed notion of sub terra nullius. This paper argues for a return to the aesthetics of geologic material in the effort to avoid pure commodification of strata in the construction of everyday urban fields and encounters. It does so through graphic and textual accounts of two urban landscapes of extraction; Horokiwi in New Zealand, and Twin Creeks in Virginia, USA; highlighting the role of material in their surrounding built environments and potential as portals to the affective force of the underworld. We no longer understand where the material invested in concrete, benchtops, beams and columns was taken from. Revisiting the aesthetic force of strata and geologic material provides us an opportunity to re-situate our sociocultural relationships to longue durée inherent to the places in which we live, work, relax, and stand.
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    Using Sections to Assess Sequential Experience along the Baltimore-Washington Parkway
    Kelsch, Paul J.; Schiavoni, Alexandra; Cortez, Amanda; Fettig, Jake (2019-10-27)
    This paper presents a study of the spatial experience of the Baltimore-Washington Parkway through the use of repetitive and systematic cross-sections as an analytic tool. The sectional study is part of a cultural landscape report for the parkway, and it complements map-based and plan analyses that examined regional contexts, forest character, planted vegetation, structures, and small-scale features. The Baltimore-Washington Parkway was constructed in the early 1950s and is considered a transitional parkway, a hybrid of earlier scenic parkways and later modern highways. It is historically significant for its role in the preservation of significant tracts of forest and because it shows that a conventional modern highway alignment can become a parkway rather than a mere highway through careful design of structures, vegetation and small-scale features. Spatial sequencing is also part of this parkway vocabulary, but it is harder to document than the other ‘things’ like bridges, guard walls and forests. To document and assess spatial sequence, we constructed sections at half mile increments along the full 19-mile length of the parkway, recording topography, forest edge conditions, planted vegetation,mowed grass, and open space in each section. The following issues are discussed: -The value of a quick, ‘draft’ version to test the method -Spacing of the sections -Use of Google maps street view coupled with field verification -Balancing realistic representation with ease of production -Use of graphic ‘modules’ to represent recurring conditions We compiled sections at two scales to reveal different aspects of the spatial experience. At 1:70, they document two-mile sequences of the driving experience and were used to identify spatial conditions that characterize each segment. At 1:200 they were overlaid on maps (1:2000) to reveal distinct spatial sequences in the landscape, and these became key determinants of character areas. The findings in the analysis informed design recommendations focused on differentiating spatial experience in places with long, unchanging sequences.