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Posts Tagged ‘Infrastructure’

Rail to Trail: 12 U.S. Park Projects Reclaiming Urban Infrastructure

10 Oct

[ By SA Rogers in Destinations & Sights & Travel. ]

A whole lot of valuable land in America’s densest urban centers is occupied by the disused and often toxic remnants of neglected infrastructure, industrial complexes and other blight that could be green space instead. Taking inspiration from New York City’s High Line, an elevated linear park along a former New York Central Railroad spur, many cities are transforming urban riverbanks, viaducts, underpasses, freeway structures and even the tops of tunnels into parks, bike paths, pedestrian routes and other public amenities.

11th Street Bridge Park, Washington DC by OMA and OLIN

An aging freeway structure over the Anacostia River in Washington D.C. is set to become the 11th Street Bridge Park, with officials announcing in October 2017 that a design by OMA + OLIN has been chosen. Each ‘lane’ of the bridge is pulled upward toward the middle, crossing each other to form an X shape; the space underneath these overhangs will host a performance area, cafe, plazas and other public functions.

Lowline, New York City, New York by James Ramsey and Daniel Barasch

Complementing New York City’s famous High Line park, a 1.45-mile greenway built on a former New York Central Railroad spur, the subterranean ‘Lowline’ has been given a green light. Set to be the world’s first underground park, it will be tucked into a former trolley terminal in Manhattan’s Lower East Side, with a design by James Ramsey and Daniel Barasch. “The transformation of an old, forgotten trolley terminal into a dynamic cultural space designed for a 21st century city is truly a New York story,” says Barasch. “We know with input from the community and the city, we can make the Lowline a unique, inspiring space that everyone can enjoy.”

The 606, Chicago, Illinois by Collins Engineering, Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates, Frances Whitehead

Chicago converted its abandoned Bloomingdale Rail Line into a 2.7 mile linear park called the 606 (named for the zip code prefix shared by everyone in the city.) The greenway connects four separate neighborhoods and includes a park and trail system with elevated trails for bikers, runners and walkers as well as event spaces and lots of greenery. The project was designed by the firm Frances Whitehead, which approached it as a ‘living work of art,’ demonstrating the vital role that arts play in the fabric of the city.

The Underline, Miami, Florida by James Corner Field Operations

Down in Miami, a stretch beneath an elevated rail line could become ‘The Underline,’ a new public park by James Corner Field Operations, one of the studios behind the High Line in NYC. The 10-mile-long park and urban trail would sit beneath the city’s MetroRail, following an existing bike path called the M-Path, but widening it and adding a parallel pedestrian path that winds through various ecosystems of native plants and habitats for birds and butterflies. Spaces for arts and recreation would be scattered along the way, like pop-up structures and a bike tune-up station.

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Rail To Trail 12 U S Park Projects Reclaiming Urban Infrastructure

[ By SA Rogers in Destinations & Sights & Travel. ]

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Occupy Urban Spaces: 10 Guerrilla Modifications to City Infrastructure

30 Nov

[ By SA Rogers in Architecture & Cities & Urbanism. ]

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Nobody knows the needs of a city better than the residents who navigate it each day, so who better to edit, adapt and upgrade urban spaces to make them cooler and more useful? Urban ‘hacktivism’ takes underutilized architecture and infrastructure, from street signs to empty subway stations, and subverts it for a new purpose. Whether installed guerrilla-style or with the blessing of city officials, these projects make the city a more fun and comfortable place to hang out.

Arche de la Defense Occupation by Parasitic Guerrilla Architecture

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What if citizens took the lack of affordable and accessible housing in cities into their own hands, and simply created their own residences wherever they saw fit? ‘Pocket of Active Resistance’ envisions how this would manifest in Paris, as guerrilla housing takes over monuments like the Arche de la Defense. Architect Stéphane Malka presents a modular housing system stuck right into the interior walls of la Defense, connected by scaffolding and catwalks.

Alleyway Squat Housing by WEAK!

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The firm ‘WEAK!’ encourages the organic growth of illegal structures on all sorts of city surfaces, including rooftops, disused fields and abandoned skyscrapers, reflecting “the citizen’s right to express himself through architecture.” Among the projects they’ve brought to life throughout Taiwan is this elevated alleyway dwelling made primarily of scaffolding, which creates a new two-level residence while leaving room on the ground for pedestrians to pass through.

Parasite 2.0 Colony in Venice

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Young Italian collective Parasite 2.0 took over a series of disused spaces throughout Italy as part of a 2013 urban occupation project, including the fort of the Sant’Andrea island in the Venetian lagoon. Stretching polyethylene through the frame of an abandoned building like a web, they created an amorphous series of rooms with built-in hammocks.

Cascade Project by Edge Design Institute

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A staircase in Hong Kong that took up lots of space yet saw very little foot traffic temporarily became the setting for a vibrant geometric mesh sculpture with built-in seating and planters, creating a miniature park right in the middle of The Centrium. ‘The Cascade Project’ by Edge Design Institute features a living canopy of Bauhinia trees and other plants, giving the staircase an alternate and ultimately more useful purpose.

Art & Culture Center Beneath a Railway in Japan

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While this project was completed with the blessing of the city of Yokohama, it’s a pretty cool example of how underutilized urban spaces can be taken over and transformed for the benefit of all residents. Situated on a once-obsolete and uneasily quiet street, right beneath a railway track, the new arts center includes a gallery, cafe and studio.

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Occupy Urban Spaces 10 Guerrilla Modifications To City Infrastructure

[ By SA Rogers in Architecture & Cities & Urbanism. ]

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Networks of New York: Field Guide to Internet Infrastructure

13 Feb

[ By WebUrbanist in Travel & Urban Exploration. ]

network guide

We tend to think of the internet as something akin to aether, present all around us in the void – or perhaps something traveling down a series of tubes – the reality is much more complex, rich and intriguing.

networks of new york

In an upcoming book titled Networks of New York: An Internet Infrastructure Field Guide, Ingrid Burrington presents an urban variation on a naturalist’s handbook, giving you the tools to tour the real-life objects that are often obscured or simply hidden in plain sight all around cities.

network internet infrastructure handbook

From the author, “New York’s network infrastructure is a lot like the city itself: messy, sprawling, and at times near-incomprehensible. However, the city’s tendency toward flux is a strange blessing for the infrastructure sightseer: markings and remnants of the network are almost everywhere, once you know how to look for them.”

network field guide notes

The story starts with manhole covers and progresses through street markings, which follow a federal color-coding standard: “Orange refers to the broad catch-all of ‘Communications, alarm, signal lines, cables and conduit.’ This means that orange lines can be internet cables, television cables, telephone lines, or other kinds of conduits.”

network deciphering symbols systems

“The markings are sometimes really sloppy, and often in fragments. Sometimes you’ll see several different labels in the same place. A lot of these cables are bundled up together running through ducts under the city.” Suddenly all of the strange acronyms are comprehensible, including but not limited to: CATV, NXTG, T, ECS, RCN, MCI, L3, XO and FO.

field guide example

The book also branches out to cover different kinds of antennas security cameras we are so used to seeing but many of which we do not understand the purpose of at a glance, from subway wifi devices and distributed antenna systems to CrimeEye, MTA and NYPD surveillance camers.

field guide examples

Finally, the authors builds up to the biggest elements of the built environment: architectural structures housing various large-scale elements of internet infrastructure along the city. Some of these are well-known, but the book brings to light a series of buildings less frequently visited, and provides tips on how to identify others.

field guide illustrations

Recognizing “these buildings when looking on the street is not always easy, but one telltale sign is to look for signs of ventilation and cooling systems. Alternatively, look for windows, or more accurately, the absence of them. (Note: on much larger buildings, in particular skyscrapers, vents also could just be a sign of a mechanical floor, the centralized space dedicated to maintaining utility needs for the entire building).”

[ By WebUrbanist in Travel & Urban Exploration. ]

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Buildings That Don’t Exist: Fake Facades Hide Infrastructure

30 Apr

[ By Steph in Architecture & Cities & Urbanism. ]

Fake Building Facades 1

From the sidewalk, this Paris building looks just like those around it, complete with doors, windows and balconies. but take a look at Google Maps, as Paul of the blog Paris by Cellphone did, and you’ll notice something strange: there’s nothing behind that facade. Like many others all over the world, this ordinary-looking building is just a shell to disguise unsightly infrastructure.

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The building, at 154 Rue La Layette, is hiding a giant ventilation chimney for the metro. The chimney is about as large as one of the real buildings that surround it. In another location in Marais, artist Julien Berthier constructed a false door to go on the side of one of these buildings that wasn’t quite as well-disguised.

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The facade meets local architectural codes and bears an address plate reading ‘J.B. & S.B. Specalistes.’ Wonder how many people have knocked on it over the years, waiting for someone to answer?

Fake Building Facades 4

BLDGBLOG discovered another such facade, in Brooklyn. The windows of this particular house are blacked out, making it a bit curious. What are those people trying to hide? Upon closer examination, answer is revealed: it’s a ventilator for the subway. Once, it was a real brownstone, built in 1847, but it was gutted in 1908 when subway service was started in Brooklyn. See more photos of the facade at BLDGBLOG.

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The Brooklyn Daily Eagle explains, “the exit disguised as a brownstone leads to a grimy-lit set of metal stairs that ascend past utility boxes and ventilation shafts into a windowless room with a door. If you opened the door, you would find yourself on a stoop, which is just part of the façade.”

[ By Steph in Architecture & Cities & Urbanism. ]

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Windows Zero: 9 Telecom Infrastructure Buildings

03 Feb

[ By Steve in Architecture & Offices & Commercial. ]

They may not have windows, workers or office space yet telecom infrastructure buildings are an essential part of the urban megalopolis. Their lack of an obvious human presence, though, has made these towering, nondescript boxes of wire and machinery the subjects of mystery, wonderment and conspiracy theories.

AT&T Long Lines Building (33 Thomas Street), Manhattan

AT&T Long Lines building Manhattan http://euphues.tumblr.com/post/2837253379/an-image-of-at-ts-long-lines-building-i-took-this

The AT&T Long Lines Building, or as it’s known now by its street address: 33 Thomas Street was designed by architect John Carl Warnecke and opened in 1974. The building was built to last with the expectation that its granite-over-concrete exterior and integral power generators would protect the machinery inside from a nuclear explosion.

AT&T Long Lines Building Manhattan (image via: Michaeln3)

The 550 ft (167.5 m) tall building has only 29 floors because each story has ceilings 18 ft (5.5 meters) high. Odd tubular protrusions on the 10th and 29th floors are for the purpose of ventilating the considerable heat that can build up inside. While often praised for its no-nonsense style that complements other buildings in the area, the stark Brutalist design is a favorite of photographers who wait for lighting conditions that accentuate its “inhuman” aspects.

AT&T Long Lines Building, Kansas City

AT&T Long Lines building Kansas City (images via: Eric Bowers, Wikipedia and KCMeesha)

Another AT&T Long Lines Building, another city, a different design philosophy. Opened in 1976, AT&T’s Kansas City, Missouri telecom building once housed 1,700 workers who manned call centers and helped route the bulk of the region’s long distance phone calls. These days a mere handful of employees rub shoulders with AT&T’s switching equipment in the underutilized yellow brick fortress.

AT&T Long Lines building Kansas City (image via: KCLUVSKC)

At 298 ft (91 meters) and rising 26 stories, the AT&T Long Lines Building at 1425 Oak St. is the 16th-tallest building in Kansas City, so it’s got that going for it, which is nice.

Digital Beijing Building, China

Digital Beijing Building (images via: Galinsky and Coolest Gadgets)

While the USA is still the champ when it comes to wired and wireless telecommunications, the new century has brought new challengers such as China where the Digital Beijing Building offers a new perspective on buildings for non-humans. Designed by Chinese architect Pei Zhu of Studio Pei Zhu/Urbanus, the building opened in 2007 only to be immediately overshadowed by the spectacular neighboring structures built for the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympic Games.

Digital Beijing Building (images via: Oobject and We Make Money Not Art)

The 187 ft (57 meter) tall building wasn’t built for show and compared to its neighbors not everyone is a fan of the structure, either. “It is shaped, cheesily, like a mainframe computer from the 1960s, cut with linear glass strips evoking a circuit board,” sneers Tom Dyckhoff of Times Online. “Four gloomy stone slabs, divided by glass atria, do an excellent Orwellian Ministry of Truth impression. It’s slightly less spirit-crushing inside.” Harsh.

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Posts Tagged ‘Infrastructure’

Rail to Trail: 12 U.S. Park Projects Reclaiming Urban Infrastructure

11th Street Bridge Park, Washington DC by OMA and OLIN

Lowline, New York City, New York by James Ramsey and Daniel Barasch

The 606, Chicago, Illinois by Collins Engineering, Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates, Frances Whitehead

The Underline, Miami, Florida by James Corner Field Operations

Next Page – Click Below to Read More:
Rail To Trail 12 U S Park Projects Reclaiming Urban Infrastructure