::Holes in a Wall
David Campbell
:: Holes in a Wall
:: Masters of Architecture Thesis 2015
College of Environmental Design
University of California Berkeley
:: Advisors
Maria Paz Gutierrez
Simon Schleicher
David Campbell
The highway is a wall. It does not separate one
from another, us from them, or here from there: it
separates one from itself, us from us, and here from
here. The noise and speed and pollution and simple
inexorable physical mass sever arterials, dismember
neighborhoods, and tatter places.
The highway is a symbol. The car was billed as a
liberatation of the population from the city, but what it
achieved was the realization of sprawling megalopolises
like Los Angeles and Houston. As is often the case, the
intention of the framework is now barely relevant. The
physical impact of the networks laid down as support
for a desired way of life has had far more impact on the
spatial conditions we find ourselves in today.
The divisiveness of highways has been decried for
as long as there have been urban highways. The
freeway revolt in San Francisco in 1959 that halted
the construction of a planned network of elevated
highways dismembering the city is just one of many
similar protests that took place around the world in
urbanizing countries.
As tens of thousands of miles of highway spread across
the country under Eisenhower’s National Interstate
and Defenese Act, planners and architects discussed
the viability of air rights and speculated on the impact
of the intersection of space made for cars and space
made for pedestrians. Paul Rudolph proposed cities
that became highways, while Frank Lloyd Wright
sketched futurist-style renderings of cities in which the
highway became the central icon of the city, replacing
the plaza, the church, and the courthouse as the pillar
of a stable society.
Without exception, these visions of the new city revolved around
a vision of a population that embraced the highway as the
centerpiece to urban life. However, the trend toward pedestrianism
in urban cores and the dismantling of urban viaducts underscores
just how little that holds true. People want places for people, not
for cars. Tax bonds are no longer carried for expanded highway
networks, but ratehr for burying urban arterialsin the same way
as we’ve buried our telecommunications, power, and utilities.
As Boston’s Big Dig and Seattle’s current boondoggle show,
going underground at the scale of the highway is a tremendously
complicated, slow, and expensive process. Solutions must be
found to supplement these projects, so that it doesn’t take billions
of dollars to reestablish newtorks and create continuity in cities.
In examining the problems created by urban highways
it became clear that the highway intersection is both
the biggest problem and the most tactile possibility.
At the intersection the highway unravels, delaminating
into spaces complex and unique, exposing its concrete
infrastructural skeleton to soft ground and open sky.
The highway is physically porous at these nodes, but
they remain largely vacant or underutilized. The noise
and speed surrounding these massive voids keeps the
boundary intact.
DIVISION
PERFORATION
REORIENTATION
ENCLOSURE
The normative mitigation strategy for highways is to
build soundwalls, which reclaim some of the bordering
hinterland created by highways, but intensify the
barrier and increase the segmentation of the urban
fabric.
If the highway delaminates at highway intresections, it
follows that the soundwall can delaminate as well. Through
perforation, reorientation, and adjacency for enclosure,
the soundwall can buffer space within as well as create
links along and through the site. Program can arise out of
the form and the interaction of this shift in wall typology
rather than dictating its placement.
In the past, travel at human speed allowed for the intersections of
circulatory networks to grow into nodes of activity. They became
hubs of commercial and social interaction, becoming towns and
cities in the natural course of development. The speed at which
we travel today, however has inverted the intersection’s social
prominence, creating a network of voids. These non-places
infest our cities, dividing neighborhoods and disconnecting
populations.
This thesis questions the intractability of these massive social
voids and seeks to reclaim these crossroads as plazas, places
for unconventional recreation, and armature for exploratory
urbanism. The primary means of investigation is through a
conversion of the sound wall typology into a porous and variable
surface, which acts as both filter and circulation, delaminating
within the highway’s own delamination to encapsulate and
delineate varied program.
:: network of derivatives
The first step in any process is to
identify what has been examined
already, how it has been approached,
what approaches demand to be
carried forward, and where the
gaps and shortfalls currently lie.
In some cases, however, it is more
productive to define a scope and
intent by the negative theorem.
To that end, this section contains
several anti-precedents that help
ed to define what this investigation
is not, as well as some procedural
precedents that help to formulate
what this investigation has become.
IMAGINED NETWORKS
Anti::Precedent
Boshwash Shareway
Howeler + Yoon Architecture
The Boshwash vision of the saturated transportation corridor between Boston and
Washington D.C. is based on Leibniz’s tenant that the world we live in is the best of all
possible worlds. In what other context could instantaneously morphing roadways convert
pavement into solar energy harvesting and then into soccer fields? In what other context
could the fascillitation of this metamorphosis be proposed as mechanisms that wouldn’t
survive a low stress environment? While the world needs dreamers, there’s an issue with
proposing an approach that assumes an entirely different social context and limitless
resources. Rather than idealizing contexts and then idealizing a solution for that context,
architectural solutions to big problems should approach them from an at least marginally
pragmatic perspective. How can we address what’s in front of us with the tools we have?
IMAGINED NETWORKS
Anti::Precedent
High Line
Field Operations and Diller Scofidio + Renfro
While the success of the High Line is by no means in doubt, the problem which was solved is
what can be done with defunct, obsolete, infrastructure? Here the engagement is geometric,
formal, and dependent in large part on the juxtaposition of social spaces grafted to heavy
infrastructure. However, the question of how to augment an existing function is much more
charged with challenge and opportunity. How can you make something which divides
communities and repels social activity into an attractor or hub without removing the
function for which it exists?
IMAGINED NETWORKS
Anti::Precedent
Slow Uprising (Parasite City)
Ja Studio
Poposals like these are also unfortunately exceptionally common in speculative design.
Combining defunct systems with dreamy formal gestures, Slow Uprising proposes hanging
suburban houses and trees from thin strips of what are presumably some newly discovered
super material. Despite the highly suspect feasibility of the project, it simultaneously
assumes a defunct, dramatic geometry and an idealization of how a resident could use the
space. While a highway interchange in a generic neighborhood may not be as romantic, it
has a much higher potential for resulting in a proposal that is relevant and not reactionary.
HIDDEN LINKAGES
Precedent::Investigation
New York Setbacks
Hugh Ferris
The form of a constructed context has as much to do with unseen influences as it does
observable pressures. Hugh Ferris’s graphical demonstration of the influence of New York’s
changing setback regulations on built form show that any engagement with a regulated
context must be driven, at least in part, by line after line of statute and rule. Constructs in
such an environment are underlaid by the same logic regardless of differences in expression.
HIDDEN LINKAGES
Precedent::Investigation
Vancouver Residential Tower
BIG
Much like Hugh Ferris’s sketches, BIG’s proposal for a Vancouver overpass reveals invisible
pressures on the site. As with many of BIG’s projects the building is a diagram for itself,
explicitly responding to actual forces while formally gesturing at conceptions of forces like
sound. The building tends to retreat from the noise of the highway off ramp until it reaches
a height sufficiently removed from the hustle and bustle.
HACKED PLACES
Precedent::Intervention
Turda Salt Mine
In some ways the Turda mine resembles the highline, in that it repurposes a defunct piece of
infrastructure because the inertia of the construct is too large to raise, or in this case, fill in.
Here, howerver, the opening of the mine to the general public is an unveiling, giving access
into underground halls whose vastness smacks of mythology rather than spice. The site has
become a museum for itself.
HACKED PLACES
Precedent::Intervention
Odessa Floating Castle
The dramatic cantilever of the Floating Castle is a counterpoint to Hugh Ferris’s sketches:
rather than unseen forces revealing themselves through constructed form, the unseen form
of a long-dismantled communications tower footing is revealed through its integration and
quite literal leveraging by the architectural intervention.
:: highway interactions
The examination of the interaction
between the intersection and its
context leads to a taxonomy of
understanding. There are three
fundamental ways in which a context
responds to the spreading of the
highway at intersections: retreat,
fortification, and integration.
RETREAT
The most common impact highway intersections have on their surroundings is the pulling
back of urbanized and semi-urbanized spaces from the higway edges. Property closest to
the roads is often used for material storage or manufacturing, and creates a buffer zone
between human and automobile-occupied space. The enormous amount of space discretized
by this response becomes exceptionally problematic in urban contexts, where the distances
that must be crossed form an additonal barrier to reconnecting contexts regardless of the
use of the actual space.
FORTIFY
In dense contexts highways are often accompanied by fortifications such as trenches, sound
walls, tree lines, and buildings whose program can accomodate the high noise and vibration.
All too often these functional defenses serve to exacerbate the divisions created by the
highway, causing the intersecting crossroads to remain vacuous and empty.
INTEGRATE
In rare occasions the highway intersections in dense urban contexts are integrated into
the built environment. This relatively rare interaction is generally driven by necessity
and occassionally results in designed responses, although this has been limited to a single
building in every known case.
:: site analysis
Alemany maze was selected as
the site of this investigation, as
much for its local proximity as its
complexity as a site. Fundamentally,
the strategies being explored and
developed can be applied to any
intersection, although the results
should vary substantially. The
geometry of the highway as well
as the geometries present on the
site, noise, traffic, and existing
programmatic networks were
examined.
ALIGNMENTS
The geometry of a highway is described by essentially three things: The horizontal curvature,
which is always circular, the vertical curvature, which is parabolic, and the superelevation
or ‘bank’ of the roadway. There are additional equations defining the transition between
elements, but using these three pieces a robust understanding of the road can be derived
from satellite photos and local terrain.
SPINAL ALIGNMENT
HORIZONTAL ALIGNMENT
HIGHWAY AND ARTERIAL INTERCHANGE
INTERCHANGE AND CONTEXT
PROGRAM ANALYSIS
The existing programmatic networks around and
across the site were examined to determine what’s
missing from the area. While the intent is to create
a framework that is adaptable for a variety of uses, a
gradient of specifictity in programming the site allows
for hard and soft areas to react and interact with each
other. If the program is overly specific it risks becoming
outdated; if it’s too general it will not attract enough
interest to truly activate the area. A chain link fence
and a hoop do not make a community basketball center.
RESIDENTIAL
SERVICES
NEIGHBORHOOD COMMERCIAL
COMMERCIAL :: INDUSTRIAL
PUBLIC LAND :: PROGRAMMED
PUBLIC LAND :: OPEN
TRAFFIC :: WEEKEND
TRAFFIC :: WEEKDAY
AASHTO COLUMN ORDERS
CLASSICAL COLUMN ORDERS
HIGHWAY TAXONOMY
0
10
20
GEOMETRY OF SPEED
The projection of a space into the collective consciousness depends on the speed at which it is
engaged with. Walking, bicycling, driving and riding in high speed rail all create dramatically
different experiences and impressions from the same root geometry. This variable experience
is one of the main causes for the empty crossroads at highway intersections. The question is
how can this difficulty be used to drive design that can be engaged with at multiple speeds
of movement while not negating any one. A space of multiple velocities is needed.
30
40
50
Elapsed Time
60
:: material studies
To reclaim the intersection the
soundwall had to be reconstructed
into a wall that didn’t behave
like a wall, but rather aided in
cross linkages developing. This
reconstruction began with an
exploration into the porosity of
concrete, thereby inverting its
normal material characteristics
and tectonic impact.
The panels that arose as the processes were refined
speak to porosity and variability. The base material’s
density ensures a certain degree of protection and
insulation, while varying levels of dissolution control
the amount of air, light, and noise that can pass
through, thereby creating a system that is both buffer
and permeable membrane. The variable texture and
porous density begins to suggest metrics by which
the system can be deployed. Interior and exterior is
implied by the shift in texture from one side to the
other.
earth
Any site contains elemental characteristics. In the
case of the Alemany Maze, interactions with earth,
fog and water, and light define its location south of
San Francisco. The panels interaction with earth was
explored at the micro-tectonic level. Pores are filled
with soft material, creating a dynamic juxtaposition
of hard and soft scape that mediates the weight of the
highway flyovers, allowing for a new way of being at or
below ground level.
fog
Fog is one of the defining characteristics of the
peninsula, and the dissolving read of the panels
accentuates this. Layers of panels both aligned and
perpendicular with the primary direction of travel
create spaces that blur distance, collapsing everything
into each other in a soft collision.
water
Water registers its presence as it dissolves and
reshapes. As material systems age they invariably
show their variation. This allows raw systems to carry
their age as a testament to activity and interaction that
has gone before.
light
The permeability of a wall is intrinsically linked to its
visual permeability. Connection can be established
without physical linkage, and a constellation of activity
and movement can remain connected and physically
distinct. Barriers to sound and speed do not need to
be solid; they do not need to block out the light.
:: tectonic integration
The material investigations gave
rise to a tectonic of a layered,
panelized system. The layering
allows the walls to become massive
enough to be inhabitable, which
also allows for sound buffering
to occurr without creating solid
barriers. The porous surface helps
to break apart the soundwaves, the
armature allows for the absorption
of low-frequency energy, and the
encapsulated program buffers
more sensitive areas.
:: the hub
The tectonic system was applied
to the Alemany Maze. What
follows is a series of vignettes that
explore the spatial opportunities
of the interaction between the
delaminated surface and highway.
The spaces explore ideas of
perforation, adjacency, orientation,
and enclosure, as well as speculate
on layering of program, circulation,
and cross linkages.
:: Concrete Panels
In keeping with ideas of inversion
of the expected prevalent in the
exploration of both the soundwall
and the requisite material system,
the final representation of the thesis
is the series of vignettes ecthed into
concrete. The hardline is softened
and obscured through this process,
allowing for the potential of new
readings of the proposed spaces.
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