Midthesis.

That is the major qualification to my life right now.  I have spent one term in school designing thus far, and now I will spend another refining.  To spend 20 weeks on a project that culminates your learning for the past 5.5 years of school is a very daunting task.  I constantly feel as though my design decisions should be faster, simpler, better- and perhaps they are compared to even two years ago, but they are still simply slow in my mind.  As a result I have definitely been losing myself in this project in an attempt to end my school years on a high note.

The project is one I would have not expected myself to choose, but at the same time it fits the slant of my scholastic career thus far.  My studio professor was concerned with the redevelopment plans for an extension to his neighborhood here in Portland, and led my studio for the first four weeks to develop a lower density alternative (sort of a Brooklyn versus Manhattan scenario).  After working for eight months in an urban design firm, I was looking forward to this part of the project, and I felt the design I created was fairly well done.  I wanted to be far-reaching  in my focus, and as a result I concentrated heavily on reorganizing the transportation hierarchy in order to grow this small neighborhood into a cohesive piece of northwest Portland.  I was fairly heavy-handed with the street grid, restoring it whenever possible, moving freeway off-ramps to better connect with arterial routes that had transformed since the freeway’s construction in the 1960’s, and giving over much more space to the pedestrian and bike.  I believe it is these elements that encourage neighborhoods over any other-the neighborhood will automatically thrive if it is walkable and bikable.  This element is particularly important in Portland, where many such neighborhoods already exist and must compete with one another for residents in order to continue to thrive.  Afer establishing my vision for the tranportation grid of the neighborhood, my designation of services and block development was much less forceful.  Here I favored allowing the neighborhood to grow itself organically over time rather than in a rigid, prescribed fashion.  I did designate some streets as retail (an extension of what has already developed in this area), and these streets are also treated differently within the transportation hierarchy compared to nieghborhood streets. I also created a central plaza along this retail extension that interrupts the restored street grid and establishes a center to the neighborhood between two major parks and aerterial routes with some major retail and community activities to occur around it.

Other than these strong moves, I only suggested small pocket activities that could be scattered throughout the neighborhood and therefore  easily accessible to all.  These pockets of activities included small parks, community gardens, and community services such as libraries, schools and rec centers.  One of my reviewers called this strategy shockingly “laissez faire,” but I think it would be an interesting plan to implement, particularly for a neighborhood that has a history of good organic growth.  In fact, it is potentially more unwise to try to overdirect growth in such circumstances, a move that could interrupt the good growth patterns the neighborhood has already established.

After spending four to five weeks on this element, we switched into designing buildings for the rest of the studio.  We are all architecture majors in the studio, after all.  For this portion of the project, we are each developing a building scheme of our choosing that is appropriate to our urban design visions for the neighborhood extension.  Here is where I surprised myself- rather than choosing a commercial or community building to round out my portfolio (which had been my goal upon entering my final project), I chose a housing complex.  It is still a larger scale than most of the single family to small multi-family development projects that currently dominate my portfolio, but it is still housing.  Apparently I love the subject, which, of course, I already know I do. I find places we live, our homes, to be of the utmost importance in our emotional states, and therefore some of the most important and meaningful architectural spaces that we can design.  Which translates to difficult, which translates to fun.  So after a short debate with myself, I decided why not go with something you would love to design and have some pre-existing experience with?  It worked for my undergraduate final project (a surf “shack” at a time when I was throughly in love with surf culture and had lived with a surfing romate for two years), so it could work for my thesis.

I chose to design a cohousing apartment complex right on my new plaza, sort of a beacon of community to this newly established extension.  For those of you who are not familiar with the term, cohousing is “community housing.”  It is not a commune, although it does have a strong community association and shared community spaces that the members are encouraged, and sometimes required to use.  Each resident still gets their own private apartment, although its size is somewhat reduced because of the plethora of community spaces available.  My professor compares it to European apartment living.  The ideals behind every cohousing community include a strong sense of community with each member providing support and friendship to eachother (much like an extended family) and the encouragement of diversity in all its forms. These ideals line up with my vision for the neighborhood, so I thought it an appropriate “catalyst” project for the neighborhood center.  It is not a living situation for everyone, but I think the neighborhood I have envisioned would benefit greatly from such a beacon in their community.

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