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...
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1 comment:
Adam,
getting across your site history and unique qualities painting the picture in a quick an effecent amount of time is going to be key, every time - otherwise the jurors are going to move forward on thier assumptions and stereotypes, and take it from me its hard to get them beyond those, architects like to think they know all that stuff and therefore it's harder to get them beyond it.
EDGEs- the more we go over this the more essential i think the surrounding neighborhood is and it is at the edge where they formerly could cross and are now invited to that is of architectural importance. The important parts are not the old structures, or the exsisting fabric, but how you newly frame both to each other with your slices through the space. they architectural interventions you use to do this HAVE to be on a personal scale, a relatable scale, and it's more than just a straight path chopping through, you have to make the entrances inviting and enticing with you architecture, and weave it into these to used-to-be seperate lands to make them stronger as one.
"Hiding/Rebirth/Transforming/Bridging/Evolving" all words you said this was about and then did not give examples of or define - left the jury wondering where you were headed.
Case studies and examples - there are only a few you have to do but they encapsulate your ideas so you owe it to yourself to quickly present them and move on.
Accuracy vs. expression:
You spent way (and i mean waaaaaaaaaaaaaaay) to much time worrying about the accuracy of your drawings, trust me no one is gonna double check you on these. I'd rather you got what it FEELS like across than what the absolute is. I really think you spent too much time on the map, and I told you so last week. I was further surprised when, after spending all that time you didn't print it out and bring it along!!
Case Studies (again) - Artwork. We know Serra, we can talk about him, we don't know the Kinetic Sculptures, or DAIM, and the jury certaintly doesn't. If you want these to be a force in your space, and what your designing for you have to give the jury something to work with, otherwise it's the plain old vanilla serra discussion.
Lesson to learn from this: ALWAYS BRING YOUR WORK< ALL OF IT!
"Forming a cultural identity" when you said this phrase i thought you were opening to something big, at the heart of your idea, because it is - but then you backed down. I want you to finish that sentence.
What does cultural identity mean (not the dictionary, how do you define it for reading, lack thereof and need, and how will it be fulfilled)
Site draw- better explain who is going to come here and why.
Stop ignoring the community. It's not about hiring them to be cleaning ladies, they are the ones who will patronize this place the most, it's about involving them, how you gonna do it. Like the mural program, outreach and insertion of program is a must - This goes for you and Tim AND Kristin. It's thesis your not limited by regulation and site boundaries. MassMOCA works because it involves the community around it more than just jobs, jobs are secondary the priamary is to bring the community together and the tool to do that is art, and the conduit is architecture.
Diagrams are TOO LARGE. They aren't helping you, they are football fields, there is no human scale to them, and the jury will never rap thier heads around them without scale. I think you need to pick you potential hot spots and zoom in, using these diagrams as fertiliizer for the next group. Also the diagrams are castrated when they are not presented together, layered as they were drawn...at least i hope they were drawn that way. They need to be a building up not a starting over each time. Pick the best, and loose the rest.
The architecture and art, the community and park moments should be focuses to zoom in on, and should be diagrammed as we make our way through, eventually the older out of date drawings will fall away.
ALWAYS present the idea nad back it up with pertanent drawings, NEVER present the chronology of work you've pinned up.
I wrote all thesee notes to myself in bold
-ZOOM in on the buiildings and places your working with
-desperately need architecturally scalled plans
-Stakle your own architectural claim and don't be worried about failing and being accurate
-LOOSEN UP and relaaaaaaaaax
Answer the question WHY, This, Here?
See you monday
Andrew
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