Foundational Research:
Main Layers Towards a New Speculative Urban Ecological Imagination
For the midterm, each student will prepare a document containing images and texts, that illustrate the main layers and provocations of your initial urban ecological research. This research will serve as the detonator for the design and construction of a final urban-ecological speculative group proposal (PART 2 of the assignment). This document will be composed of a visual component and a written component.
VISUAL COMPONENT:
1. Selection of urban-territorial area
Each student will select from 3 different areas of the San Diego-Tijuana region. These geographic zones will be provided during the first week of the term. Each student will research a variety of ‘patterns,’ natural, artificial, infrastructures, vegetation, large and small constructions, topography, etc. The more complex the patterns the better. The selected area emblematizes the collision between natural and artificial systems, the conflict between urban and ecological domains. You should select first the scale you will be focusing on, in other words, zooming in or out accordingly. The resulting aerial image will be the visual base map for all your experimental research.
After selecting this working zone, it is time to begin developing this visual component, which is composed of two efforts, mobilized in tandem!
1A. Mini urban-ecological research of existing conditions:
To further deepen your understanding of what is happening inside the
particular, geographic juncture you selected, each student will-conceptually-research a series of topics including zoning, planning and policy maps. In other words a series of policy layers that you will use as design and conceptual tools for your visual speculations.
Below you will find a few suggested research layers. This research is really about finding evidence to substantiate your visual intuitions, to further elaborate conceptually and creatively about what are the mechanisms that have produced these urban ecological conflicts in the first place. It is from this critical understanding of the conditions that have produced these collisions that each student will produce an alternative design approach, a different narrative- proposition, a new urban-ecological conceptual systems to challenge the status quo.
Land use: A map that shows the different city uses denoted in zones with colors, such housing (yellow), (retail-mixed use red), industrial, educational, green space, etc., etc.
Zoning: regulates the quantity and the size of buildings permitted in particular zones.
Ownership-jurisdiction: Shows public and private jurisdiction, etc: What is private what is public? also you can find this in google maps showing the size of actual parcels.
Water-Flood: demarcates the flood plains across 50-100 years intervals, etc., and now even shorter periods of time; but also other information pertaining to water.
Demographics: Shows the ethnic diversity, amount of population, etc., in a given zone.
Environmental zoning: demarcates areas that are protected, or green zones, etc. Also, open space areas, parks, etc. Transportation and circulation: maps showing main lines of circulation and mobility.
Ecological systems: Estuaries, wetlands, creeks, conservation, protected lands, etc. Mythologies, perceptions, cultural values: Shifting meanings of democracy, nature, nation, the American dream, the collision of private and public priorities, etc.
Phenomenological systems: The qualities of the urban-ecological context, visual, psychological, etc.
>Please simply search for information among these topics, that might be relevant to reveal the problematics of this specific geography of conflict, and validate and advance a particular idea, a proposition (this proposition will be developed during the final assignment). Use your intuition and your early analysis and visual observations to advance a conceptual research on these issues. An example will be offered in class. As each student researches these layers, they will also operate visually and intuitively on the actual selected geography, through a series of visual experiments.
1B. Visualizing urban-ecological geographic conflict as creative tool
1B.a. Visualizing existing patterns
Once you commit to the particular urban-territorial zone, now you have to ‘pull it apart.’ Please analyze it visually, in depth, and expand, elaborate on the main critical issues you notice. It is important that you interpret -critically- what you see, asking deeper questions about the patterns, textures, contrasts and critical relationships among elements, that you notice. This also means a process of masking, editing, framing to identify each pattern on its own.
Select at least 5 patterns (each of these are presented in separate sheets), i.e., water ways, vegetation, transportation (freeways-roads, etc.), canyons (dramatic topographic features), buildings at different scales, parking lots. By isolating each of these layers you will see the drama of their shape, as individual operative diagrams (more on this during class)
Based on your critical observations, please add to these 5 patterns a series of personal graphic annotations -using digital or manual, Illustrator or any other graphic program, manual collages or hand sketches. These graphic notes should reinforce some of the observations you have made. These annotations include adding graphic systems, such as arrows, dashed lines, solid lines, circles and other geometries or symbols, to indicate the main critical ‘conditions’ you are prioritizing, etc
Once you have a visual and conceptual approximation of these existing patterns (this involves not only understanding what they look like, but it is about speculating about what these patterns ‘do’ to the territory, how they ‘perform,’), now it is time to begin combining them to open critical design research topics found in this area of study, and the conditions that have produced the urbanecological conflict.
1B.b. Visualizing existing patterns
Then combine some of these patterns or layers to dramatize the conflicts, between them, but also to suggest design possibilities. Develop 2 combinations, denoting 2 critical collisions – each combination is a graphic system conveying a particular idea (see sample on course essential module on CANVAS) about existing urban-ecological conflicts, within the area you selected.
Each combination, or critical juxtaposition should communicate a main issue you are interested in investigating: Maybe one of the ideas you are interested in investigating is how the ‘flow’ of water collides with urban development, and therefore you visualize this juxtaposition between natural water spaces and a more geometric, artificial spaces of urbanization. In essence, I am proposing that you develop this part of your research visually, noticing a dialectical relationship between two conditions.
WRITTEN COMPONENT:
These images, diagrams, doodles, collages, etc., and their research, across these various topics listed above, will be the basis to write 4 concise statements. These are brief, provocative abstracts, accompanying the visual experimentation:
1. WHY THIS ZONE OF CONFLICT? (250 words minimum)
A brief narrative about the nature of the Geography of Conflict you selected: Submit a statement that narrates why you selected this particular juncture of conflict. This includes naming your zone, in a provocative and conceptual way. What is the different meanings and provocations found on the conflicts embedded in this area of analysis.
2. WHAT DOES IT CONTAIN? (250 words minimum)
A brief narrative about the specific layers of conflict you selected: This is about interpreting the main patterns you selected and elaborated, elaborating on the main conditions that characterize this specific zone. What are the different meanings of the layers you explored, what do they signify? How do they perfom? Why are they important to the territory and its function or lack of?
3. WHAT ARE THE INSTITUTIONAL MECHANISMS THAT PRODUCED IT? (250 words minimum)
A brief narrative about the evidence you found to support your visual and conceptual assessment: This includes elaborating on a few of the research topics listed above, integrating facts, data, policy-oriented information, ecological definitions, urban informatics, etc., as well as other cultural and socio-environmental research that is important to include to support your position.
4. WHAT POSITION DO YOU TAKE? WHY IS THIS URGENT? WHAT TO DO ABOUT IT? (750 words minimum)
A brief but provocative statement that summarizes your critical position about this zone of conflict, and what to do about it: How this area of analysis is emblematic of the polarization of natural and artificial systems? The first part of this statement should be a pointed and direct critical statement about your findings, written as a critique of the politics and economics, value systems and patterns of growth that have endorsed the polarization of urban and ecological domains. The second part of this statement should give us a broad, general sense of what is to be done? Here you should use as backdrop the visual diagrams that emerged from your visual research. In other words, the 2 combinatory diagrams you constructed. What possible urban-ecological design strategies they suggest? to transform and adapt this zone into a more intelligent, inclusive, and resilient urban-ecological environment. This visual and written work will be assembled into a portfolio of images and abstracts (and will be the foundation for the final assignment)
