Interventions:
Skew Bridge: Unique decision made by the city and the railroad to solve a specific problem in a specific area... each piece specially made to fit in its own place, no interchangeable parts. The same can be said for the interventions on the site and the program overall. The city now has a specific problem that it needs to solve and it can be solved through the site of the former railroad giant.
Mural Arts Program:
Goes
out into the city and involves the community, instead of waiting for the communities to involve themselves.
The studios, galleries and exhibitions displayed in this site have the great ability to involve the communities surrounding the grounds as well as outside visitors. Given its 'megalopolis' location, the Reading Yard can draw large amounts of people, revenue, expansion, rehabilitation, etc from New York, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Washington D.C. etc firstly, due to its large expanses of open land and available exhibition AND studio space. A recent adaptive reuse in Reading, the Goggle Works (a former goggle factory, obviously) has been completed and is now open as an art facility, yet has very limited space for exhibits and studios and no outside land or greenspace, something highly lacking in Reading. Despite its lack of space, it has recently been considered Reading, PA's most successful building. (www.goggleworks.org) The Reading Yard and its art facilities can serve as a much needed expansion to this building.
The 200 acres of available land on the site also provide much needed green space for the local communities to use. The closest in the city belongs to the enormous cemetary on the northwest corner of the yard. Very few other areas of green space are scattered throughout the city, but are not close enough for immediate communal use, and most are split by high traffic roads. Though the yard is in a valley between the two sides of the city, it is raised up on its own land platform, providing a sort of escape from the street levels, a good feature for a park system to have.
Other communities, such as glass blowing, large scale artists and sculptors, etc form in places where land and space is available for their use, hence the formation of glass blowers in Washington State, sculptors in the Southwest U.S., etc. This area is large enough to draw from these crowds and bring such wonders to the east coast.
Why this here?
Why
not? What better way is there for a community to express themselves and allow their identity to show through than with artwork? Even graffitti is an art form, despite its urban sense of belonging, afterall, this is an urban area, and its community is largely immigrant, so why not allow this artwork to come through? There is
always someone who thinks
every piece of art looks like a large lump of trash in its site, yet there are plenty of people who absolutely enjoy the same piece of art.
Where is the architecture?
This is turning into a slight urban planning project, with bits of adaptive reuse to be implemented on the available structures already on the site, as I have been saying for quite some time. I DO NOT intend to place a banal glass box on the side of an incredible expression of industrial American architecture. Interior spaces, studios, offices, galleries, restrooms, support spaces, corridors, lobbies etc can all be designed into the fabric existing within the confines of the Reading Yard, the project is just not to that point as of yet, but it is getting there.
Case Studies:
Both Tschumi projects
Interface Flon, Lausanne
-City rising up on either side of the site, much like the city of Reading rises up on either side of the Reading Yard. Elevated bridges and pathways (only one was ever constructed, due to budget) connect one side to the other, much like in the quick thumbnails presented on Tuesday.
ZKM Karlsruhe
-Mostly used for the pathways as well, though it is a theoretical project.
Much more to follow within the next few days...
Above: Images from site of unused tracks being 'stored' adjacent to the active rails.
Possibility for more interaction between the surrounding community and the site and its artwork. This adjacent structure lies on the east side of the site and can serve as a blank canvas or projection screen for various art forms. The works projected or placed on this building can be continually altered to provide a variation in the program and layout. Due to its large size, the structure is visible from all around the site itself as well as from various areas outside of the street, which can form nodes with its artwork and draw further interest to the site.
Sketchup model of site as is... In place are all of the remaining buildings and most of the tracks.
