Tag Archives: sustainability

Phoenix Revitalization via Central City South

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Could Central City South be Phoenix’s version of Chicago’s Humboldt Park?

Learn more about CCS through the PRC web site

Learn more about CCS through the PRC web site

 

Central City South’s Phoenix Revitalization Corporation is one of a handful of Valley neighborhoods helping to reinvent PHX. It’s in the process of cleaning up some of its blight and polishing some respect for the culturally diverse and historical community. At least this is what I gleaned from going on two tours there. The neighborhood, between 16th Street and 19th Avenue, lies immediately below downtown Phoenix and extends south to the Maricopa Freeway (The 10). The PRC, earnest in its seeking economic development desires– and hoping not to get swallowed by high-rise developers when the economy regains energy– seems at a loss for a simple, cost-effective, overarching strategy.

By the Numbers

AEC industry participants such as city planner Joshua Bednarek and Leslie Lindo and Ben Montclair of Ikoloji Sustainability Collaborative were in attendance as the PRC gave them the numbers. Central City South has

  • 12,000 residents, most of whom have lived there for generations
  • Unemployment of 12%
  • Car ownership of 20%
  • 66% of Phoenix’s public housing
  • average education levels no higher than the ninth-grade and income levels of $21,000.

Despite the lack of common amenities such as cafes, pharmacies, and even ice cream shops, many of CCS’s residents have lived there for generations. PRC is giving them good reason: it’s provided several manicured public parks– nine of which exemplify urban agriculture practices; a public swimming pool; and the Maricopa Skill Center, a successful vocational school. Here’s an abbreviated list of places discussed on the PRC’s biannual tour for the public:

  • American Legion Post #41 (for Hispanic WWII veterans not allowed to participate in traditional Legion posts)
  • Silvestre Herrera Elementary School (named after the Mexican-American military hero)
  • Chicanos por La Causa
  • Carver Museum within a lovely new Phoenix Public Library branch
  • the Darrell Duppa House.

Englishman Phillip “Lord” Darrell Duppa, built the house in 1870 and supposedly gave Phoenix and Tempe their names. The first house in the area, it has been partially restored, though driving past it, even with darkly tinted windows, raises the question of what was restored. This was not one of the aesthetic highlights of the trip. It did, however, bring to light some of the historical value of this community of 13 barrios.

Exploring

Revitalization can’t be a city mandate. That’s called eminent domain (which comes up in discussions about Mesa). It must include input from the citizens. In the case of CCS, that was clearly shown as we toured the community by van. We saw neighbors outside working on their lawns. Very little litter. New solar panels blanketing sunshades over an elementary school’s playground. Then came the wrap on the bus before Our Lady of Fatima Catholic Church offering free pregnancy tests. (I’ll skip further comment on that.)

There were vacant lots, sure, but several new two-story single-family residences also grew on streets with some rather neglected houses. In fact, there are currently 298 low-income housing units (of which 187 are occupied). Residences strictly kept “affordable” number in the thousands. Combined with newly constructed senior housing and community centers visible through the neighborhood, we can see HUD’s Hope VI, a national program to “eradicate severely distressed public housing”, at work.

Meanwhile, the PRC will continue to work on the golden threads for the community’s revitalization: beauty, fostering neighborly connections, safety, pride, recreation, health, community services, individual development, economic development, and better housing.

So What?

The light rail may wind its way down to CCS by 2018. Now that makes me think:

Will that somehow entice downtown workers who currently visit the community for lunch at Lolo’s or Pete’s Fish & Chips to return after work? Would it help to place banners or other signage at the community’s entrances, fostering awareness of its cultural diversity and history? That simple measure might beckon people there if there’s something to do, something like enjoy cultural holiday celebrations and festivals, vendors or actual stores selling crafts, foods, clothing, etc.

On the other hand, perhaps the citizens feel their efforts are wasted. Take those vibrant, artful highway overpasses on the 10. Neighborhoods wanted to sparkle them up after decades of traffic and pedestrian dirt. The state government declined to do so. The denizens then offered to do it themselves. Again the government refused. Catch 22 anyone?

I’m hoping the vacant lots don’t become an impetus for gentrification and that CCS residents and the PRC can help prevent a likely tide of forthcoming downtown developer encroachment. Perhaps the city will include CCS’s cultural diversity into its Reinvent PHX, or #Phoeinvention, as I call it. As Jeff Speck said in his presentation to the AIA in April: “You can’t fake a Little Italy or Chinatown. If you have these legitimate cultural areas, embrace them.”

 

HS

London House Steps into Dimension

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I have a confession: I’m a city girl who loathes steps. I’ve always had one-story apartments wherever I’ve lived (with one slight exception): in Chicago, Florida, China, Peru. But that’s a personal issue. It contradicts my love of urban density and my understanding that larger, more luxurious abodes that fit on a simple one-story plan in a major metropolitan area. Therefore while I would dream of living in a residence with so many stories, I can certainly appreciate the design of London-based Belsize Architects Sheldon House.

Photo credit for all

There are three primary reasons to like it: the visual play of dimensions that create a sense of mystery, the cool tones and bridging of in/exterior realms done via not just one but two methods, and the designer’s use of context.

The Sheldon house, in London, is situated on a long, narrow plot that the designer was skillfully able to build a U-shaped form into. Meanwhile the designers insisted upon sustaining a sense of neighborly appreciation. They respected the house’s existing forms for context yet subtly introduced new architectural themes, yielding a classic Modernist feel that blends in rather than commands attention. Furthermore, the new design was implemented without expanding the volume of the house’s modest predecessor. 

A triple-height atrium softly descends like DuChamp’s Nude Descending the Staircase. It brings daylight into the house through a variety of window shapes and sizes, and it extends views from each floor to a nearby golf course and gardens. The circulation spaces are arranged around the edge of the atrium. The main gathering and eating areas are located like a warm embrace within the lower levels.

The atrium and inherently stepped arrangement articulates the overall form of the house. They work together to create a succession of tiered levels, according to the architects. Walk down the steps to the basement pool area, the composition of which offers safety like a harbor. Its vertical and horizontal emphases, its deep and reflective surfaces, and its multiple ability to blur the indoors and out and serve as a circulation method may make this the focal point of the house. The pool partially extends between a landscaped rear garden and a sunken courtyard.

Playful use of vertical and horizontal glass planes encourages visitors to pause upon introduction to the house. There I would run amongst staircases letting the mysteries of the home reveal themselves. 

RNL’s NREL Makes Green Sexy

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Los Angeles-based RNL Design’s National Renewable Energy Lab bears a certain sex appeal, if not because it demonstrates in its design its very purpose.

The LEED Platinum-certified building in Golden, Colorado, houses 800 NREL employees, who are part of the US Department of Energy, in a simple yet compelling 222,000-square-foot edifice. It is, therefore, be one of the country’s largest buildings to implement examples of what we might call Green Three: passivity, Net Zero Energy consumption, and living buildings.

Photos Courtesy of RNL Design

Its composition is of two narrow buildings interjected with a third wing, and all were oriented to capture sunlight for natural daylighting. It is a bit ludicrous to me in this new wave of green building that site orientation is considered so significant; it is, in fact, an ancient practice used the world over, yet one the West is just revisiting. Instead, the RNL design complements these proven sustainable building practices with what is indeed nouveau technology, e.g., transpired solar air collector technology.

While countries around the world still believe insulation is too high-tech to implement into residential or commercial construction, the NREL is incorporating its own methodology, which truly is high technology.

“The solar collector is… the way we get free pre-heated warmed air,” said Philip Macey, RSF project manager for Haselden Construction.

Solar energy hitting the large perforated metal plate on the south side of the building is transferred to the air flowing through it, pre-heating air entering the building, and thereby reducing the need for additional heating energy. A fan draws warmed ventilation air into the building through the plate.

“This process can efficiently preheat the air going into a building like the RSF by as much as 40 degrees F,” according to the NREL’s web site.

“These collectors can get 75 to 80 percent of the energy of the sunlight striking the collector absorbed into the ventilation air,” said Chuck Kutscher, principal engineer and group manager of NREL’s Thermal Systems Group. “We did a wide breadth of research, we covered a lot of different areas, and it was a much more comprehensive study of the technology than we would typically do. It was a totally new concept and we had to develop new equations to understand how it would work. Yet it is a simple and elegant technology that is inexpensive and highly efficient.”

Here are a few other design, building, and use practices that earned the building a 2011 AIA COTE Top Ten Green Projects award.

  • Smart lighting and heating: Sensors determine when the windows should be adjusted for optimum HVAC controls. They then send a message to employees in the respective part of the building to change the operable windows accordingly.
  • Daylighting: The totality of the workstations are daylit.
  • Triple glazed, sun-shaded operable windows: Window shading was designed in accordance to location around the building, as, obviously, light doesn’t hit the entire building uniformly. (The very existence of operable windows in this element particularly thrills me, if not for its retro aesthetics and delivery of autonomy to building users.)
  • Recycled materials: The building was constructed of reclaimed and recycled materials.
  • Thermal storage: A labyrinth of massive concrete structures in the crawl space stores thermal energy and provides additional capacity for passive heating. It captures and stores the heat from the sun and cool air from the night until it’s needed. Then the thermal energy is slowly released for heating or air conditioning. This labyrinth also stores heat collected from the building’s data center, using it to heat the building when necessary. “Pulling outside air through the labyrinth can warm it five to ten degrees before it is further heated to warm the building,” according to the NREL web site.

The firm worked with Centennial, Colorado-based Haselden Construction to incorporate precast concrete insulated panels, almost 42 miles of piping for radiant heating and cooling, underfloor ventilation, an energy-efficient data center and workstations, and an on-site solar energy system into the plan. The thorough consideration of sustainable and green methods from design to construction to use means the building uses only one third to one half the energy used in similarly-sized office buildings, the NREL estimates. The building generates as much power as it uses, hence establishing what Popular Science called a “green tech incubation lab.”

Read more about the project.