The Americana

Is The Americana the way in which future retail and housing should mesh together in order to densify the city and generate a plan that would lower the carbon footprint? The perfect combination of shops creates this place a destination for people who live near and far. The difference in height, frame and building materials helps the shoppers build a sense of a public realm in a privately own domain.  Although the “mall” itself is in an area hidden from the major street corridors, local stores and restaurants, which also includes the Glendale Galleria, serves as a way finding towards the shopping community known as the Americana. This is what our group had envisioned as the possible retail environment in the city of San Bernardino. The future of retail is constantly evolving, and hopefully more of this mixed-use environment will make its way east to provide help and inject economic prosperity in cities in need of help. 

Mac Arthur Park

If there was ever a park filled with vibrant activities and overflowing with culture from all of its adjacencies it would be Mac Arthur Park. Its location in Westlake, Los Angeles calls for a high number of gang related activity, which is evident throughout the entire site. The rundown façade of the park can be a bit overwhelming within the site but the green fabric and shooting water serves as an area of escape from the concrete city that surrounds it. Apart from the vast amounts of people who frequent the park, there is also a serious bird problem in the area. Currently the park is undergoing reconstruction in the northern part of the site to incorporate more physical activity but if the southern area would go through a remodel that would better mesh the edges of the park with the lake, the public would feel more welcomed and therefore connected to Mac Arthur Park. 

AECOM’s Open Space Lecture

Sometimes it is hard to explain the concept of open space in regards to landscape architecture because people automatically believe that these are filled with grass and therefore not good for the environment. But in actuality the planning of an open space can consist of habitat preservation, natural education and cultural programming weaved within its design intent. The six types of open spaces in the world of landscape architecture fall under the category of

Streetscape

Urban Park

Pocket Park

Infrastructure Park

Roof Garden and

Trails and Open Space

By having these green infrastructures to provide for the community with an agenda for their public realm designers can more effectively plan to accommodate to the need of any site.

TOD 2.0 Lecture

The last of the lectures that I believe is currently helping in the fight to lower the carbon footprint with the aid of a design program would be implementation of transit-oriented developments throughout a larger amount of cities throughout the country. By reshifting the focus of our car driven society into one that encompasses higher density developments with the addition of mixed use infrastructure then the demand for more public transportation variety would create hubs of developments that in the long run help out the environment in more than one aspect. I wish that the transportation system here in California would mimic the one that is currently found in the city of New York and its adjacencies. That is the future of movement, and it needs to be implemented here to revive the metropolitan city of Los Angeles and neighboring cities. That will be the future of Southern California. 

AECOM’s Sustainability Lecture

One of the major factors which is, and I believe will continue to be a driving force of future designs is sustainability. In the lecture presented by Deanna Weber, the explanation of how the sustainable decisions are made clarifies the importance of various disciplines in the effort to create the one model that will perfectly encompass water, waste, cultural education, transportation, “eco- services” and energy all together. When a design scenario is completed then the three most important questions will weed out the week proposals:

Which creates a least adverse impact?

Which has the greatest potential?

Which has the greatest performance?

The most important fact that I took from this lecture would be the importance that an eco grid has on a design and the type of impact that it could create on a site. This will lead to the implementation of a pedestrian network that will connect to eco-centric parcels that will ultimately tie in the sustainable aspect of any given design.

 

Homi Bhabha commented that “[i]t is always too early, or too late, to talk about cities of the future.”  In the response to Andrea Branzi’s “Weak Metropolis,” Charles Waldheim created a thesis in which he comments on the contradictions that Branzi presented, to which he commented that “one is in effort always working with the problems of the past, but these problems appear differently in a new emergent contemporary conditions.” Branzi seems to have a concrete focus in what is in great part the reusage of the past to accommodate the present.  By creating this “urban refunctionalization” she expects the spaces within an area to change in real time, but in reality the only way in which a city can thrive to become a metropolis is by allowing a fraction of the design to be dedicated to the future. Although the New Athens Charter only focuses on the present, there will never be a future if it is not planed to have one. Therefore, the eighth suggestion should encompass a potion of any design to take a glimpse of the future stance of the current city. 

The weak metropolis as Andrea Branzi explains it, is constantly evolving and does not consist of any type of “permanent solution.”  The architect points out a very common flaw of previous designs that only seem to focus on the present but never on the metropolis of the future. Another example as to why the designed metropolis is weak is in part due to the fact that there is no designed medium that links the existence of both humans and animals in the same site. We live in a materialistic world where everything revolves around technology and ourselves where if we as designers would want to create the perfect utopia we would have to begin by reshifting the functions that were previously established in order to fulfill a defined agenda that is geared towards the society of the future.

If we want to create a world in which the perfect harmony lies within a metropolis then we have to have the initiative to preserve areas and open spaces for not only the safety and future of animals but that of humans as well. 

Sustainability can be defined as the linkage achieved when there is a balanced connection between social, economical and environmental scopes In the essay Ecological Urbanism and the Landscape written by the landscape architect Martha Schwartz we get a better explanation of the interconnection between landscape and urbanism, one that was thought to be on polar opposites. But in order to achieve sustainability we do not only have to focus on the three opportunities that have been previously defined to be the components of sustainability, but instead we also incorporate the cultural aspect of design as well. “Collectivization is the best means we have to conserve natural resources and slow global warming…” by having these, the natural and social systems can function simultaneously and has the opportunity to become the habitat of “landscape (ecological) urbanism,” an environment that can soon become dense population hubs that will take over the wasteful suburbs. 

Spiro Pollaris’ Sustainability and Lifestyle explains how there are several building blocks that need to be looked upon on any sustainable model city design that revolves around “vision and consensus.” In order to integrate the virtual and physical space in a site, a designer must begin with informational technology as the fundamental building ground as stated by Pollalis. The next components consist of environmental sustainability programs that are followed by urban planning and design which helps set out the grid for the city model. After the grid is laid down, (landscape) architecture provides the design with buildings and spaces that helps by luring people to the site. While we as designers “are planning and building cities, especially in the developing world, as we intervene in old cities, we should focus on lifestyle, on scale, as well as on design and technology.” Sustainability has to constantly transform as the lifestyle patters evolve with time. By reshifting the past patterns and molding the future city we can fully achieve a sustainability emphasis with a stronger stand for the future of design. 

Mostly everyone complains about the impacts that our past and current lifestyle has brought on us, but there is an insignificant amout of people that partake in the change for a brighter future. In order to see a difference in the world everyone has to put into action their grain of effort. Conjointly, the collaboration of everyone’s actions can lead to a more sustainable environment. Alex Krieger took into consideration the fact that habits are slow to change and also acknowledged the fact that “[u]rban density is more efficient [then] sprawl.” Eventually every action matters in the long run and the correlation amongst Comfort and Carbon Footprint are more interconnected than one would think. Krieger also mentioned “individual decisions are important to ecological urbanism.” Our social priorities and our individual decisions are what ultimately shape our community. Conclusively, if we want to achieve an ecological urbanist metropolis we need to keep in mind that a “greater reciprocity between individual action and cumulative societal impact would assist sustainability.”