All posts by Christopher A Scalzo

The Joan Mitchell Center- New Orleans’ Revival and Resilience through the Arts

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The location of the Joan Mitchell Center relative to the French Quarter and Central Business District.

The streetcar clunks and thonks while you ride it down Canal Street. Theaters dazzling in lights, an avenue lined in palm trees, the smooth sound of Jazz to one side, and the immense shrieks of nightlife to the other, it’s easy to become enamored by the legacy that is New Orleans. However, it is certainly legacy. Upon the tourist’s attempt to define for himself, the New Orleans of today, he struggles.

A city weakened by population decline, economic struggle and unimaginably worsened by natural disaster, the New Orleans of today remains a mission to define.

Barely emerging from a dark history of segregation, the once cultural center of the South began to face an array of social complications from economic disparity, to socially stratified neighborhoods, to natural disaster, and neighborhoods stripped of its people and life, many of which have not returned.

Determined to fill the cultural void left by economic and post-Katrina decay, and give way to a new era in the city’s history, the Joan Mitchell Foundation is an inspirational charity that supports emerging local artists with housing, studio space and other resources.

Poetry reading at the Joan Mitchell Center.
Poetry reading at the Joan Mitchell Center.

Located in the quiet and elegant Faubourg-Tremé neighborhood of New Orleans’ 7th ward, the Joan Mitchell Center is a campus for artists’ chosen by the foundation to receive housing and studio space. It is essentially a commune of local artists, sharing space together and collaborating.

Funded almost entirely by the artistic and certainly financial legacy of late 20th-century abstract expressionist, Joan Mitchell, the campus is comprised of studio spaces, residential spaces, and a head house for administration and event hosting, including the elegant wine and cocktail party we attended for the National Organization of Minority Architects.

At the height of the event, interrupting the jazz performances and wine sipping by the attendees, Gia Hamilton, director of the Joan Mitchell Center, introduced herself and spoke briefly about the mission and legacy she and the foundation serve. She also invited, at the end of her speech, a few interested individuals who would care to tour the campus that Joan Mitchell had so benevolently sponsored.

I, two others from our Penn State representation as well as a peer from Carnegie Mellon were among the few, if not the only, to tour.

The head house and its plaza against the main street were gated off from the more private, residential and work spaces of the artists’ community. Pavers guided us along a small pond and around the central lawn, giving view to a series of elegant, blue-vinyl houses, typical of the neighborhood, to the architectural outlier, the studio spaces.

A performance by musician Monica McIntyre.
A performance by musician Monica McIntyre, held in the head house.

An 8,000 square foot L-plan of 8 studio spaces and storage, the building housed the workspaces for painters, sculptors, woodworkers, musicians and even audio technicians. Studio spaces slightly varied to anticipate different arts and accommodate them properly. Studios were open, white-walled spaces of double-height ceilings with clerestories to receive the northern light. The central corridor aligning the ‘L’ was covered with light, wooden members, spaced out to open the air to the HVAC systems above it.

One studio space was small, seemingly the size of a typical bedroom, alone with a desk, some materials on it, and a record player. “He’s an audio technician,” explained Gia. There wasn’t much else in the room, just enough to let us know that whatever mix-tapes he produced were probably fire.

We walked into another, more typical studio space, open to an at-least 15-foot ceiling, triangular in form, with clerestory windows angled downward, channeling northern light into the open space. The walls were full of hung art work, sketches, paintings, drawings, many of which seemed like studies by the resident artist. At the entrance of the studio, just to the left, was the artists’ signature and some paint marking on the wall itself.

“We had a fear when we first invited artists to this space,” it had just opened as of 2014, “that because of how nice it is, that they might be afraid to dirty it.” It was a totally rational concern. “So, when they first arrived, we had them all sign their name and mark their space on the wall, so that it would already be dirty from the start, and they would fear no mess.”

Returning toward the head house, the end of the property enforced by a massive concrete back-wall to a residence on the adjacent lot. Empty, gray, and so obviously wanting some attention, Gia had informed us that thoughts were already being developed as to what do with the imposing, canvas-like of a structure. The artists had contemplated between using it as a projection surface, or covering it in mural, or even constructing a vertical garden. The options seemed to be limitless.

We proceeded toward a residence where two of the artists chatted over a game of cards, seated at a table on the back porch. They were happy to greet us and tell us how much they loved their space.  We didn’t go in the residence, and could only see through the glass sliding doors that opened onto the porch. Walls of an olive color, decorated by only one or two frames of what appeared to be prints. Some interior lighting, and the ambience, even from the view outside, seemed to be that of a cozy, tight residential space, with a couch and television able to produce a space of total domestic comfort. “I love to paint, I really just love to paint,” laughed one of the artists.

A local artists fair at the Joan Mitchell Center. An opportunity for local artists, even non-residents, to sell their work and engage with the community.
A local artists’ fair at the Joan Mitchell Center. An opportunity for local artists, even non-residents, to sell their work and engage with the community.

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North Facade of studio spaces at the Joan Mitchell Center.
North Facade of studio spaces at the Joan Mitchell Center.
Exterior of the entrance house facing Bayou Road, exemplary of the residential architecture within the campus.
Exterior of the entrance house facing Bayou Road, exemplary of the residential architecture within the campus.
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A studio’s interior.

Photos taken directly from joanmitchellfoundation.org.

The Tulane City Center- A Heartbeat for an Aching City

New Orleans Picture One
The location of the Tulane City Center relative to the French Quarter and the Central Business District.

The streetcar clunks and thonks while you ride it down Canal Street. Theaters dazzling in lights, an avenue lined in palm trees, the smooth sound of Jazz to one side, and the immense shrieks of nightlife to the other, it’s easy to become enamored by the legacy that is New Orleans. However, it is certainly legacy. Upon the tourist’s attempt to define for himself, the New Orleans of today, he struggles.

A city weakened by population decline, economic struggle and unimaginably worsened by natural disaster, the New Orleans of today requires a mission to define.

Just barely emerging from a dark history of segregation, the once cultural center of the South began to face an array of social complications from economic disparity, to socially stratified neighborhoods, to natural disaster, and neighborhoods stripped of its people and life, many of which have not returned.

Dedicated to healing and new life in New Orleans, a program of the university’s school of Architecture, the Tulane City Center serves to revitalize the city, using good design as its remedy.

Housed in a modest structure in the developing neighborhood along Oretha Castle Haley Boulevard, the designers at the Tulane City Center have been using their design authority to revive the spirit of New Orleanians, one project at a time.

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Categorizing their design efforts into Architecture, Planning, Graphics, Design-Build and Capacity Building, the Tulane City Center has dotted through the wards of Jazz City with their projects and their mission. From re-examining the city’s transit system and its relationship to architectural spaces, to constructing innovative and sustainable houses in neighborhoods devastated by Katrina, the people behind the Tulane City Center have become design miracle-workers for a city so in need of all the help it can get.

Project Home Again Houses, Gentilly Neighborhood (7th, 8th and 9th Wards)

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Partnering with Project Home Again, a post-Katrina non-profit dedicated to the restoration of housing for the over 130,000 displaced residents by the hurricane, the Tulane City Center has designs for a series of energy efficient, quality homes, affordable for the low-to-moderate income communities that align the Lake Pontchartrain shore.

Efficient, quality, yet simple, the joint-force organizations hope to instill community members with elementary design and construction skills, hoping to empower them with capacity, knowledge, and self-sufficiency.

Interview Space for the Neighborhood Story Project, 7th Ward

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Produced as a design-build project by the students of the Tulane School of Architecture in 2009, a series of pre-fabricated shelf modules were assembled into a larger construction, becoming an interior partition to allow for intimate conversations and interviews, while showcasing the work of the client organization, the Neighborhood Story Project.

The Neighborhood Story Project is a documentary non-profit whose writers, through a series of interviews and photographs document the narrative of a community, and then open their work to the editing of real community members so that the narrative becomes the most honest. The shelves designed exhibit the books and publications produced by the effort.

Growing Local New Orleans, 2nd Ward

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Near the convention center downtown, Growing Local is a developing project by designers and the Tulane program of Landscape Architecture to provide a space for recirculation farming for research and education about sustainable food and agricultural practices.

 

All images taken directly from tulanecitycenter.org.

Peer Design Reviews: CHRIS reviewing JOMAR

A clear central axis, open for circulation and flanked by program on either side, Jomar intends to create an evident visual channel directing the eye of those who approach– from the industrially soggy streets of Greenpoint, to the skylit and magnificent cityscape of Manhattan.

The entire organization is organized by this central axis, which reaches people from the rough intersection of Franklin and Quay streets and draws them outward toward the emerging East River Esplanade, hosting a view of Manhattan, ‘New York’s jewel’, as Jomar’s architecture seems to give credit.

Drawings that are clear and effective, Jomar’s intentions are communicated very straight-forwardly, and thus so too are the fallacies in his thinking process and the moments missing from his design.

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The prevalence of such central axis led Jomar to easily imagine a simple symmetry that governs the organization of his project. Along this axis, the program is categorized and organizationally collected into three principle components: storage spaces, the apparatus bay, and recreation/public spaces.

Introducing entrants from the Greenpoint streetscape, storage spaces are located at the crux of Franklin and Quay, the streets confining the lot of the project. The slender and smaller area of this first program feeds into the larger, and noticeably dominant, as is in most of our projects, apparatus bay, which opens up to provide adequate space for the docking of five fire trucks and the space needed for workers to operate in and around them. Opening further, and becoming closest to Manhattan, are the firemen’s recreation spaces and public gathering spaces. Jomar idealizes an enlightening of these spaces by granting them optical access to the Manhattan skyline, which he philosophizes through his architecture to be the “end all-be all” of the project’s context.

The gradual increase in the sizes of his spaces, tightly fastened along this strict central axis, and compounded by certain specifics to the form along its perimeter, recalls a form that Jomar most likely does not intend to be recalled. Despite his genuine and evident intentions to produce a formally increasing visual channel, the jury and audience could not help but snippet to the floor plans evidently reminiscent of a stumpy phallus.

His silent ridicule due to a mistaken evocation of phallus exemplifies a central point that the reviewers continued to elaborate. As a fallacy in Jomar’s design logic, symmetry is the go-to strategy in the organization of space. The steadfast visual axis has been mistakenly overpowered to hold all program, in equal spatial proportion, on either side. Rather, as the reviewers went on to imply, a steadfast central axis could exist, but all other program should be thought of in a looser relationship, capable of diversion and deviance from what is otherwise the almighty urethra-esque architectural channel. Successful, and certainly modern, design makes essential the liberation from strict symmetry, the type that has dictatorially governed the design of structure from Athens all the way until early 20th century Paris and New York. It has been stressed in previous critique sessions that symmetry is responsive to aesthetic, and minimally responsive to the specific considerations and circumstances of the programs it intends to host. The interest of quality space is ultimately thwarted by the application of strict symmetry in any design. It is this concept that the reviewers sought to communicate, a new type of strategic thinking that might deliver Jomar a more eccentric and better-quality space, as well as security from teenage-like ridicule.

Furthermore, Jomar was criticized on the delivery of his central axis. Although it is evident that the axis would channel those from one end of the building to another, culminating in awesome view of the inspiring skyscape of Manhattan, the effect was thwarted by the fact that visitor parking and main entrance were located at the far end fo the building, effectively eliminating the promenade-like circulation that would breed the anticipation of the New York skyline view. Effectively, the move is null, on account of the inconsistent diagram of circulation. The axis is in effect symbolic and spiritual, but certainly being authoritative in the master organization of the building.

In addition, the orientation of discussed axis bears minimal design. Yes, the corridor certainly culminates toward Manhattan. But, where in Manhattan is this view? The angle of his axis points the visitors eye toward Union Square and Greenwhich Village. Is this focalizing intentional? Should the visual channel rather produce a landmark such as the Empire State Building or One World Trade? Should it even culminate in a landmark, or perhaps an area relevant to the philosophical intention of Jomar’s design? It is an opportunity yet to be seized.

Continuing, the reviewers questioned the existence of just one perspectival corridor. Guest critic Nathan Belcher recalled the works of renowned female architect Zaha Hadid and her interest in spaces offering unique perspective corridors. In her examples, not only does one visual channel exist, but as many as can adequately define space. “Visual perspective should be a part of every moment of your project,” emphasizes critic Christine Gorby. Jomar may not have to answer the question of what view is most important if he allows himself to create an architecture of man, intersecting, visual channels, and design-capitalizing on their moments of junction.

The current iteration of Jomar’s design for fire station 212 felt like a seed to a much greater, stronger piece of architecture in the eyes of the reviewers. It was continuously emphasized how much potential the project truly had, as long as the designer would relieve himself from certain fears and apprehensions that seemed to be holding him back– most notably, the attachment to symmetrical design.

Despite the raised flags regarding the strength of design, Jomar certainly demonstrated a capacity to visually communicate. With the exception of lineweights and the graphic design of fonts and layouts, Jomar displays an exceptional use of software-based design and produces exceptionally clear representations of his architecture. Walls are readable, spaces are pointed out, circulation was evident without the need for a supporting diagram, as well as the entirety of his architectural intent. Reviewers entirely based their criticisms off the clarity of his plans and sections.

LIFT- A Fire Station and Community Center for Brooklyn CB1.

Trees do grow here.
Downtown Brooklyn from the FG train between Smith-9th St. and 4th Ave. stations.  Instagram:  @thescalzinator

How can a fire station be efficiently designed so that it maximizes the throughway space of its fire trucks? The answer is lifting.

Lifting all program from the apparatus level into vertical space maximizes the logistical space of the firetrucks, providing them with double-opened lanes, as well as more space for maintenance equipment and temporary storage. In addition, the isolation of the apparatus bay as the sole footprint of the structure emphasizes its importance and relevance. Besides, New York certainly loves verticality.

The organization of the space above is orchestrated to best satisfy the overlap of two, and potentially three, principal programs: a fire station, a community center, and potentially a residential tower. The overlap of program responds to sociological needs of its context, Brooklyn, or more specifically, Community Board One.

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Like fire to a chemical reaction, the last fifteen years have seen the cultural expansion of New York City’s prominence. What originally was a tale of two cities, the relevance and prosperity of Brooklyn as New York’s rival was undermined through the 1898 great consolidation. Brooklyn, as ‘the second borough’ was a deposit for the city’s unwanted and destitute, and became socially neglected with the perpetration of a twentieth-century culture of Manhattan-centrism. Only in the recent fifteen years, a burst of gentrification in response to economic expansion of the 1990s, have socio-cultural equity swept into the boroughs and residual regions of the metropolitan area.

Red Hook, Caroll Gardens, Prospect Heights, Brooklyn Heights, Vinegar Hill, DUMBO, DoBro, Fort Greene, Bed-Stuy, Bushwick, Williamsburg, Greenpoint, nearly one-third of the geographic makeup of Brooklyn is now subject to the fiery rise of real estate prices and social consequences of gentrification– the neighborhoods that real estate developers and local New Yorkers now refer to as ‘Prime Brooklyn’. With an axis situated about Prospect Park, Brooklyn is now sociologically divided into two principal cultural zones, ‘Prime Brooklyn’ and ‘South Brooklyn’. Where Prime Brooklyn is now so incredibly ‘hot’ that some of its neighborhoods are EXCEEDING their Manhattan equivalents in real estate value, South Brooklyn, from Flatbush to Coney Island, remains urban residue for the working class.

One affordable-housing project after another, the city’s poor are becoming increasingly victimized by eviction and real estate capitalism that is seeking to brush them out of increasingly profitable neighborhoods. Irresponsible leadership on behalf of the city’s mayor and governor, who would rather spend a summer’s time fighting and quarreling than working to control the city’s gentrification process, is resulting in the massive overhaul of communities into what is not just beautiful and safe, but unfair and disadvantageous to those who had once lived there. Fort Green, Clinton Hill, Downtown, the projects that lined the commuter’s view along the B.Q.E. are now on the table for being sold to real estate developers at the expense of tens of thousands of New Yorkers living there, and little is being addressed in the interest of those residents.

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The neighborhoods to which our site belongs, Greenpoint and Williamsburg, that together comprise the first Community Board, are understood by many in the region to be the symbol, the epitome, the archetype of gentrification. What was a community of middle-to-low income Polish Americans has now been changed into a hub of artists, flea markets, biergartens, and food festivals, dramatically changing the experience of the preceding community.

What must begin with the successful design of a fire station and its facilities, must carry on to become a symbolic, culturally gestural center for the community’s  suture, the integration of different ethnic and socio-economic demographics into a peaceful coexistence. What should be seemingly easy for a city that is in actuality the most diverse in the world, is compounded by the difficulty of a social climate so determined by money, and by the controversy that surrounds the entirety of this process.

The Cuban Cities of Tomorrow

Their hooks lie expecting their day’s catch. The fishermen hold passively onto their rods, their plastic and their metal, quiet and content. Gazing up at the sky through the beat of their glasses, they’ll allow some moments to pass, moments only gauged by the motion of the sun. ‘Nuevas Versaches, Cabròn?’ asks a fisherman to another, curious as to what he is wearing. ‘No chico…’ he begins to explain, and gives, instead, this smooth sounding name, to which his friend isn’t familiar, a name as smooth sounding as the Spanish language itself.

Behind the fishermen pass a mother and daughter, seemingly late to something, fast-paced in their suits as if they were bound for some meeting in midtown Manhattan. The two fishermen turn around, seeing the two approach the line up ahead, almost wanting to say something odd, until the mother shot them an eye of warning. Before the fishermen could even think of something fairer to say in the rounds of the teenage girl, it became too late, everyone on the line had already boarded. La Guagua Especial would stop a little too close to where the fishermen worked. Every time it passed, some of the fishermen, especially the older ones, would become distracted by its length, by its sleekness, and the especially by that rubber pivot holding the two cars together. Every time the bus would pull away it’d blow a cloud of a gasoline toward the fishermen’s faces— and every time they became brushed by that scent of ethanol, some of them, especially the older, would struggle to stop their smiles.

The mother checks her phone and wallet, putting herself together while she could. The daughter, still faced, just stares out the window, tired, even though her day has barely begun. PLAZA VIEJA the bus ticker shouts. The mother stands up, seemingly having to drag her daughter with her. It’s been a while since they’ve ridden the bus together. In the daughter’s mind are the faint memories of the bus conductor once yelling all the stops. “As old as the city itself,” her mother says to her as they get off the bus, but only in Spanish. The daughter finally looks at her phone, ’11:30’, and starts to hope that the interview might have food. It doesn’t help that she’s passing a strip of restaurants on her way. She can smell the boliche, and the baking bread for sandwiches, the pastry shop, even the smell of the oil from the fast food place. She tries to distract herself, with the geezers playing checkers and dominos on the tables, some of the wives sharing pictures and laughing over at the bench, some teenagers complaining about something over their phones, and some other small children kicking around a soccer ball. It was only 11:30 and the sun was as strong as ever. “Está caliente,” she complains to her mother, who turns around and tell her to stop complaining about the heat and to try and put on a professional attitude. Seeing the building in front of her, the large glass and masonry, she hopes it might be the type of building to have awesome air conditioners, and food! She sees a small bulletin about food as she’s walking in, but it was plastered over by another about some candidate for next month’s elections. She sighs. “Stop it!” the mother stops in her tracks, telling her to get her act together.

They’re up on what must be the 30th floor. Her mother talking to the professional about their future, tapping her shoulder to get her to pay attention, she just can’t. She can see almost all of Havana. She’s grabbed by the view and looks around at the plaza below, at the buildings and blocks around, and sees a closed shop with its sign dangling in front of it. It’s the only thing closed on the block. She gazes in for a moment. It wasn’t a shop, and she realizes that she’s familiar with it. It’s a been a while certainly, but she remembers it. She remembers that time on the line forever while her mother was sick in bed, hoping they wouldn’t run out of medicine. She remembers being there that time with her father, actually, she then tries to not. She then remembers how everything was so different back then, and how she only understands so much of it. She remembers the year when everything changed, how she had to come home early some nights, hearing the loud noises in the distance. She remembers seeing her mother cry on the kitchen floor one night, having to hide her little brother so he wouldn’t get scared. She remembers things changing after that, not really remembering how, just remembers things getting different, more exciting in a way. She understands a lot more now that she’s older, but maybe not as much as she would like. “Josefina!” her mother taps on her one last time, visibly annoyed. She finally pays attention.

Street Culture

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Faces of politics will change, and the course of history will continue to present new phases of cultural-economic shape and shadow. From its origin in Spanish colonialism to its current phase in socialist depression, Cuba’s streets and plaza’s have continued to be a point of cultural governance. Whereas in the Baroque, such spaces functioned as social centers due to the simplicity of technology and culture, such spaces function likewise today as moments of social collection, largely due to the perilous state of technology and economic welfare on the island. The lack of cars and sophisticated transportation technology, as was the case in the Baroque, up until the twentieth century, established the social parameter necessary for the common interaction of peoples within the community upon the streetscape. Passing individuals and bystanders, especially those who do so everyday, will clearly engage in more intimate communication than those separated by speed and machinery. Likewise, today, the economic deprivation of the Cuban people coerces them into a similar social parameter. While outdated cars and questionable mass transportation systems exist, their lack of economic integrity renders them near inefficient. However, our today example is only part explained by technological inaccessibility, and more so explained by the lack of recreation we experience in first world countries. The Cuban people, upon their return from their efforts making little over two dollars a day, are not returning to engage in social media, play computer consoles, and engage in similar, indoor, introverted activities, such luxuries, without needing explanation, do not exist. Rather the Cuban people must spend their time a bit more traditionally, engaging one another outside. But this simple logic, Cuba continues to boast one of the most thriving street cultures in the world. Cuban street culture is a testament to the resiliency of a people determined to define “having a good a time” in the few ways that they can.

It is without question that the Cuba’s future industrialization, whenever such a post-socialist society may arise, will undoubtedly challenge the social system that has been with the culture since its roots. It’s up to design to craft the future of Cuba’s urban systems, so that it embraces the fruits of industrialization, without erasing the cultural legacy inherent in its street culture. So, if it is understood that vibrant street life exists under the conditions of Cuba’s poverty, their lack material distractions, and more importantly, their lack of industrialized traffic to threaten its pedestrian domination, how is it that both industrialism and street-communalism can coexist? Well, it’s not impossible according to one late visionary traffic engineer, Hans Monderman. His innovative approach to urban traffic, called ‘shared space’, refutes common logic that industry and pedestrian should be forever segregated. Rather, their integration can have a number of positive cultural, and even positive economic consequences that urban traditionalists might fail to see (Gary). ‘Shared Space’ has the potential to preserve the social capacity of streets and plazas, keeping at bay the easily dominating industrial forces, while yet not completely forcing loss upon them. Hans Monderman’s, ‘Shared Space’ is an innovative urban approach that could provide the base fabric for the Cuban cities of tomorrow.

Recent thawing of relations between the United States and Cuba is a sign of hope for future cultural and economic reforms on the island.
Recent thawing of relations between the United States and Cuba is a sign of hope for future cultural and economic reforms on the island.

It’s hard to give a testimony as to when Cuba’s current political situation may finally turnover. Its socialist stalemate has certainly left the island in a state of deprivation and stagnation. Certain philosophies hold the Revolution’s efforts to be worthy by certain means, though certain objectivities within the system speak for itself. It’s hard to imagine a society where peaceful protest might put you in prison, if not killed. It’s hard to imagine a society where beef and milk are illegal for the public consumption (Alvarez). It’s hard to imagine a society where prostitution has become an acceptable second-job so that a mother can provide basic needs for her children. It’s hard to imagine a society where a waiter at a tourists’ resort can bring home more money in tips within one day, than the most established doctor can make it a month. Yet, it’s all okay, according to certain philosophies. Every child has access to an education—an education so empowering that the craft of any pen is manipulated by the state, to ensure ‘artistic unity’ of course. Yet it’s all okay. Everyone has access to free healthcare and medicine, healthcare and medicine that must becomes even more essential for a society collectively on a modest diet. It’s hard to imagine such a society being so valued that others would experience its replication, unless you’re Venezuelan—but that’s a digression.

 

It’s hard to give testimony as to when Cuba’s current political situation might end—but it’s easy to give testimony as to what economic events might proceed it. From the collapse of the Soviet Union, to the liberalization of Chinese economic policy under Deng Xiaoping, and similar liberalization in Vietnam, the release of socialist gridlock on a culture produces a massive cultural expansion. The phenomenon is the fundamental argument of capitalism, that a society unfettered by constrictions will produce, within itself, all the goods and service it will need to survive and thrive. Like these precedent societies, Cuba’s economy is dormant under a heavy blanket of totalitarianism, waiting to jump up upon its release. As seen in China and similar societies, Cuba will undergo intensive industrialization, compensating for the years of history for which it has been left in the dark, literally. Such massive industrialization will undoubtedly bring about massive cultural change. How do the daily lives of the Cuban people change in response to new economic opportunities, and how does the structure of its society, the structure of its cities, best respond to its new cultural rhythms?

The footprints of commercialism have taken their footing in the urban fabric of this town in suburban New Jersey.
The footprints of commercialism have taken their footing in the urban fabric of this town in suburban New Jersey.

Without design intervention, Cuba, is doomed a type of Americanization referred to as the ‘Paramus Effect’ (Goldberger, 52). The rise of suburban mall culture in response to the accessibility cars and means of extended travel, created an industrially efficient means of allocating commercial space from residential space, but was socially destructive as it eradicated the potency of the town plaza. No longer does the population care to convene at the the city center for all of their needs, instead, their shopping has been reallocated to all contained mini-city of its own, one completely dedicated to commercialism, and isolated from the neighborhood fabric. The social parameter to engage people on the streetscape no longer exists. Socialization has been exported to the shopping mall, whose overwhelming commercialism transforms the spaces’ social potential into something more modest. Mall’s can host passerby’s and their conversations, and annoying teenagers who hang out at the junction of corridor’s but no space is quite allocated for the purpose of community gathering the way the central plaza has always been. In the Paramus example, referring to the urban condition of a New York City suburb, there is no central gathering space, at all. The town is formed along the axis of two intersecting commercial highways with residential highways being pushed around, segregated by the barrier-effect of such highways. The town’s municipal building is centrally located, in an industrial warehouse neighborhood isolated from the residential street system, and apart of the commercial corridor system, completely surrendering all community intention to the dominance of such commercialism. Hans Monderman’s innovative traffic system is an ideal first approach toward reforming Cuba’s urban systems so that it embraces industrialization, without erasing the remnants of socialism and communalism from its urban fabric, its legendary street life.

The Dutch Hans Monderman's shared space initiative has restored the streetscape for pedestrians, and returned some of Europe's urbanism to it's older, plaza-based past.
The Dutch Hans Monderman’s shared space initiative has restored the streetscape for pedestrians, and returned some of Europe’s urbanism to it’s older, plaza-based past.

It might be first considered counter-intuitive to eliminate the pedestrian-vehicular traffic separation that has come to define our cities up until this point. It might seem against a certain simple logic for people and cars to share their space. However, the evidence from existing examples has vindicating Monderman’s vision, that shared spaces, instead, create a more responsive traffic, coercing both the pedestrian and vehicular elements to engage in dialogue in order to achieve their objectives (Gary). In our status-quo system, pedestrian and vehicle are blinded by the false security of segregated circulation space that they become less attentive to the objectives of the other party, contributing to accidents and fatalities. While fatalities are inevitable, and Modermann may not be suggesting a clean-all absent of its moments of failure, he is suggesting a system that will ultimately contribute a more attentive, alert, and in such way, communicative street culture. By sharing such space, the streets be reopened to the pedestrian, and socially engaging street cultures may presume.

 

Some might imagine that a shared space would lead to a slow down in travel times for vehicular travel. However, as spaces are shared, and the necessity for traffic lights becomes voided, such system also changes. Rather than having a series of vehicles wait for a minute stopped at a light, vehicles, in communication with the pedestrians around, will instead, continue to move, just at a pace responsive to their environments, a system which largely, given the precedent examples, has actually reduced overall traffic time.

 

The application of this system in Cuba, or in any other context as Monderman asserts himself, relies largely on supporting, industrial-priority, traffic infrastructures elsewhere in the city. Controlled-access highways and radiating avenues can continue to prioritize industrial traffic and their means in and out of urban cores. It is the urban cores themselves that are deserving of Monderman’s innovative treatment, and it is this very system that can become the urban basis for Cuba’s industrialized cities. Avenues and Boulevard should be zoned from one another, assigning shared spaces, if not pedestrian only spaces, to certain avenues, and industrial-priority to others. The manner in which this is approached is up for further study.

diagram plazas
Stars represent shared space plaza cores, while orange arteries represent industrial-priority avenues.

One approach would encourage the promotion of a city’s neighborhoods into zones each containing their own shared space systems and central plaza systems. They would be divided by the industrial-priority, large avenues that ribbon through the city. Such approach is certainly efficient and logical, yet divisive, separating the city into sub-cities while creating a difficulty for their cross-communication over the dividing avenues, an approach Jane Jacobs notably fought against in 1960’s New York (Flint).

Light green pathways represent boulevards zoned for pedestrian priority. Dark green pathways represent supporting, industrial-priority arteries.
Light green pathways represent boulevards zoned for pedestrian priority. Dark green pathways represent supporting, industrial-priority arteries.

Another, almost inverse of an approach, would be rather to allocate all major Haussmann-like boulevards as pedestrian-priority or shared spaces, and support them with industrial-priority streets along side them. Independent plazas, bearing the pedestrian or street-shared systems, could still exist apart from this network. All industrial traffic would face their own traffic lights, or moments of interruption upon their intersection with pedestrian-priority or shared spaces.

Diagram Networj

Both systems would anticipate the existence of a circumnavigating industrial-priority highway outside the city core, which connects in intersections with regional and national highway systems. Thus, industrial traffic is still free to roam wherever it may need through the city, but now becomes checked into a more balanced street system at the city’s core, in order to preserve the sociability of its spaces.

The future of Cuba, particularly in the short-run, in uncertain. What forces will exist to maintain Cuba’s cultural legacy against the pressures of mass-industrialization? Hans Monderman’s shared space can form a basis in the structure of Cuba’s cities so that pedestrianism is not exchanged for industrialism. The preservation of Cuba’s legacy requires active design to best conduct and orchestrate these spaces throughout its cities. Establishing this, as the foundation of Cuba’s urbanism, and provide the basis for the next conversation, how can a contemporary, free-market Cuba express itself in its architectural structures?

  1. Toth, Gary. “Where the Sidewalk Doesn’t End: What Shared Space Has to Share – Project for Public Spaces.” Project for Public Spaces. N.p., n.d. Web. 25 Oct. 2015.
  2. Alvarez, Jose. “Overview of Cuba’s Food Rationing System1.” EDIS New Publications RSS. University of Florida, n.d. Web. 13 Dec. 2015.
  3. Goldberger, Paul. “Bringing Back Havana.” Building up and Tearing Down: Reflections on the Age of Architecture. New York: Monacelli, 2009. N. pag. Print.
  4. Flint, Anthony. “Wrestling with Moses: How Jane Jacobs Took On New York’s Master Builder and Transformed the American City” (2009) Random House.

 

 

 

Photograph: Evening at El Malecón, from insightCuba.com