The Oakland Museum of California set out to see physical pieces of the Bay Area’s past incorporated into its future. They launched a competition to creatively repurpose steel trusses from the old eastern span of the Bay Bridge, which has been gradually dismantled following completion of the new span in 2013. Fifteen different design proposals were selected for implementation.

One of them comes from Hogan Edelberg, an East Bay native and designer with the San Francisco landscape architecture studio of ArchTam. The studio is leading the design for two pieces of waterfront in the Treasure Island redevelopment. Providing 8,000 housing units, a quarter of them below market rate, Treasure Island is a big part of San Francisco’s effort to address its housing shortfalls and affordability issues. The plan includes measures to prioritize and facilitate public transit along with ample open space.

Hogan Edelberg, ArchTam landscape designer (right), and Blake Sanborn, ArchTam landscape architecture principal (left).

Hogan incorporated the re-claimed steel into the design for Clipper Cove Promenade, where it will serve as sculptural public seating. Part of the Bay Trail, the half-mile promenade faces the marina and is designed for pedestrian and cycle traffic. Bioretention cells along its length will collect and treat stormwater before it reaches the bay. The landscape is designed to cope with rising sea levels and seismic events.

“This design transforms the steel from distant objects to tangible pieces of the landscape,” said Hogan. “I want them to be used functionally, and to reinforce the connection between Treasure Island and the original Bay Bridge. People using this piece of the Bay Trail will be able to experience these pieces of history in a new way.”

In Hogan’s design, the trusses are arranged to recall the movement of cars on the bridge while reinforcing the movement of pedestrians along the promenade. Some of the trusses will “float” above the ground to recall their original position high above the water and allow shadows to play on the ground as well as underneath lighting at night.

Wood cladding creates the seating surfaces while leaving parts of the truss exposed, enhancing the structural pattern of the trusses and creating varied seating opportunities.

Hogan’s other work in the Bay Area includes the Upper Yosemite Creek Daylighting, part of the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission’s Sewer System Improvement Plan, which uses green infrastructure to improve water quality and urban public space, and the Ocean Beach Master Plan, which re-envisions the future of San Francisco’s coastline in the face of rising sea levels.

Thoughtful design can offer us a moment of connection with the past that makes us feel more at home in our future city.

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As Earth Day 2016 celebrates “Trees for the Earth,” we look at some of the ways trees help us deliver a better world.

Trees are hard at work from New York City, to London, to Manila, to Sacramento, and they’re doing more than you might think. View this SlideShare presentation to see how trees slow climate change, protect coastlines, activate urban centers, and even help people heal. Join our conversation on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.

Happy Earth Day 2016! Let’s all keep working with trees to deliver a better world.

The post Earth Day 2016: “Trees for the Earth” appeared first on Blog.

Student finalist teams will present their answers to these questions on Thursday, October 15 at the A + D Museum in Los Angeles in response to the sixth Urban SOS competition. This year’s competition – co-hosted by ArchTam, the Van Alen Institute, and the Rockefeller Foundation’s 100 Resilient Cities initiative – sought proposals for more resilient urban food, water, and energy systems in one of the 100 Resilient Cities’ identified metros.

The contest is open annually to undergraduate and graduate students at all levels of higher education around the world. Teams are comprised of individuals pursuing degrees across the spectrum of design, engineering, planning, environmental science and social science. Urban SOS challenges students to work across disciplines to address the toughest challenges facing cities.

Canal SOS

Michel Liang (Civil Engineering, Berkeley City College), Sunantana Nuanla-or (Masters of Landscape Architecture, Louisiana State University), Pin Udomcharoenchaikit (Masters of Environmental Science, University of Aegean), and Jacky Wah (Bachelors of Landscape Architecture, Louisiana State University) identified Bangkok’s canals as an existing infrastructure asset that can be adapted to simultaneously check floods, clean water, and provide greater boat transportation.

A Third Reserve

Daniel Lau (Masters of Architecture, University of Pennsylvania), Joseph Rosenberg (Masters of Landscape Architecture, University of Pennsylvania), and Lindsay Rule (Masters of Landscape Architecture / Architecture, University of Pennsylvania) examined how Singapore’s limited land resources can be cultivated to offset its current overdependence on imported food – and create unique urban experiences.

Water Power

Bennett Lambert (PhD Civil and Environmental Engineering, MIT) and Elizabeth Reed Yarina (Masters of Architecture / City Planning, MIT) explored how public spaces can convert Quito’s stormwater problem into a drinking water and energy generation opportunity.

On the 15th a jury will select a winner from among these finalist teams. The winner will receive a cash prize and up to US$25,000 of cash and in-kind staff time from ArchTam to begin implementing their strategy.

“We’re excited to continue Urban SOS, and this year partner with the Van Alen Institute and 100 Resilient Cities,” said Bill Hanway, ArchTam’s global head of Architecture and the competition’s executive sponsor. “The program stresses the need for interdisciplinary thinking in urban problem solving, engages ArchTam staff around the world as they review hundreds of entries to select the finalists, and can make a direct impact in a city as we look to implement the winning scheme.”

The post Urban SOS: All Systems Go appeared first on Blog.

Mayor Johnson spoke about his vision during a recent visit to ArchTam’s Sacramento office. The firm is invovled with many of the projects currently reshaping the city. Johnson said he wants residents, visitors, business, and government to view the city as a ‘can do’ town. He wants to make Sacramento a more business-friendly city through business infrastructure investment, as well as streamlining business and government processes. He spoke about the need for Sacramento to move towards a position in which public safety, culture, multi-modal transit, and technology are the pillars of a new vitality for the city. Lastly the mayor expressed his desire to enhance the Sacramento riverfront to include mixed residential, recreational, retail, and commercial uses.

The development of the Entertainment and Sports Complex (ESC), which broke ground last week, is the cornerstone for reshaping the urban core. The city convinced the NBA to deny an imminent deal to move the Sacramento Kings to Seattle and embrace plans for a new venue that would convert a dilapidated shopping mall into a city icon and year-round zone of activity. ArchTam is designing the arena with a focus not only on setting the next benchmark within the NBA (as it did for the Indiana Pacers’ Bankers Life Fieldhouse and the Brooklyn Nets’ Barclays Center), but also on creating a building, public spaces, and 1.5 million square feet of mixed-use development that inject life into their surroundings. The building will invite the city to view the game from the outside and offer views of the city from the inside. It will open what an SI.com article calls “the world’s largest patio doors” to welcome visitors, create an indoor-outdoor environment, and allow unique summer Delta breezes to cool it, reducing energy demands. For the fans it will offer the next level of technological interactivity. The public spaces have been designed as a productive landscape, with pistachio and walnut trees producing nuts, green walls producing herbs, rain gardens managing stormwater, and other trees providing shade.

Two blocks from the ESC, the Sacramento Commons project would add over 1,300 new housing units, a hotel, and new retail on four city blocks. The Sacramento Housing & Redevelopment Agency also has plans to redevelop an old public housing project in the River District into a new mixed-income neighborhood. ArchTam has been integrally involved in both of these projects.

Now the nearby Sacramento Railyards is joining the downtown transformation under the leadership of LDK Ventures. On their behalf, ArchTam is creating a new masterplan for most of this 240-acre redevelopment area, one of the largest urban regeneration projects in the U.S. today. Sports and employment center facilities are proposed to anchor the project, including a possible Major League Soccer stadium that could draw a resident team. With the adjacent Amtrak station and planned California High-Speed Rail (HSR) terminus, the Railyards could become an iconic example of transportation-oriented development nationally and globally.

The Sacramento Railyards depot is the seventh busiest train station in the country and will only get busier with planned transportation developments. A 13-mile rail extension, the “Green Line,” will link downtown with South and North Natomas and the Sacramento International Airport, reducing congestion and emissions along I-5. ArchTam is working with the Sacramento Regional Transit District to deliver it. The proposed HSR system would connect Sacramento, San Francisco, and San Jose via two lines that converge in Fresno, and then travel south through Bakersfield to Los Angeles and San Diego. With California’s Central Valley in greatest need of economic development, the Merced to Fresno section will be the first segment delivered in a project that could spur a high-speed rail revolution across the United States. ArchTam has had primary responsibility for the planning and environmental analysis of the HSR Central Valley corridor since its initial phases in the late 1990s. The Merced to Fresno section is the only segment to date that has received its environmental clearances and permits.

Sacramento International Airport has already completed a new 19-gate, $288-million concourse and $408-million, 400,000-square-foot terminal building. ArchTam led one of the two construction management teams that delivered the project four months ahead of schedule and $60 million under budget.

Sacramento sits within the 53,000-acre Natomas Basin floodplain, which contains 83,000 residents and $8.2 billion in damageable property, protected by 40 miles of levees. Since 2006, ArchTam has been working with the Sacramento Area Flood Control Agency and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers on the Natomas Levee Improvement Program, which will protect the metropolitan area for the next 200 years. This work has included multiple, phased and overlapping environmental impact statements, reports, regulatory permitting, as well as ecological restoration, cultural resources conservation, public outreach and construction monitoring. Current work includes ongoing environmental monitoring in the Natomas Basin and engineering design and EIR preparation for additional flood risk reduction as part of the North Sacramento Streams, Sacramento River East Levee, Lower American River, and Related Flood Improvements Project.

Mayor Johnson’s city certainly looks like a can-do town, and it will be exciting to see how far Sacramento has come just a few years from now.

Jake Herson (jacob.herson@archtam.com) is managing editor for ArchTam’s Connected Cities blog.

The post Sacramento’s transformation is underway appeared first on Blog.

Quake-proofing the city is a near-impossible challenge, but it’s critical that “lifeline structures” – those needed to sustain life and support recovery operations – be as resilient as possible. We created this info-graphic to examine the key points of seismic vulnerability in a city and the strategies that can be taken to strengthen them. Also, explore an existing essential services facility that was engineered to withstand a magnitude 7.5 earthquake.

October 16 is the International ShakeOut Day of Action, when nearly 20 million people worldwide will participate in earthquake drills and disaster preparedness activities.

Jake Herson (jacob.herson@archtam.com) is managing editor for the Connected Cities blog.

The post How can cities increase seismic resilience? appeared first on Blog.

It seems that many of the architectural trends of the last decade have finally run their course. Ross Wimer, who leads ArchTam’s architecture practice for the Americas, discusses new directions with Mike Consol, editor of the Institutional Real Estate Letter for the Americas, in this podcast.

These icons will be familiar to anyone who has paid attention to design in the last 10 years: the skyscraper shaped like some kind of kitchen utensil jutting out of the Asian or Middle Eastern cityscape (or London for that matter); the branded downtown high rise that puts a company on the economic map of the American or European city; and the ever-present word…sustainability.

Ross discusses with Mike how program, performance, technology, and people are changing the shape of buildings. City and company iconography are still part of the brief, but Ross says that things are moving away from the “willful form making.” Is it as simple as form following function? Not exactly.

As for sustainability, Ross says, “The dialogue is moving beyond the buzzwords, and people are looking at the long-term performance and how you measure it and how that makes for a more positive space to be in.” So quantitative data is critical, but it’s not just about defining a building by its energy meter.

Mike asks about intelligent buildings. Ross notes that “Buildings are always becoming more sophisticated, and the technology is becoming more economically accessible.” But he is more interested in changing building forms in response to their environments than in layering new technologies onto standard forms. Conversely, technology is aiding this process. Ross explains.

Meanwhile for the Tech giants, instead of wowing the city with a skyscraper while everyone works (or does whatever) from home, it’s about the campus that offers employees all the amenities they could want or need, as well as the flexible and creative workplace to keep innovating.

Listen to Ross’s and Mike’s full conversation here.

Ross Wimer (ross.wimer@archtam.com) leads ArchTam’s architecture practice for the Americas.

Jake Herson (jacob.herson@archtam.com) is a senior writer/editor with ArchTam and managing editor of the Connected Cities blog.

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In post-industrial cities, many sites that were once centers of production are now dead zones in the urban fabric. In its fifth year, the Urban SOS competition invited students worldwide to imagine these spaces reinvigorated by new forms of industry appropriate to their modern contexts. The competition calls for cross-disciplinary design responses.

In 30 offices around the world, ArchTam teams have sifted through hundreds of entries representing 123 colleges and universities and selected four finalist teams:

The Echoes of a Lost Landscape, Dudley, UK: Skye Sun, MA Architecture, Royal College of Art, UK

Limburg Dross, Geleen, Netherlands: Erica Chladová, MA Landscape Architecture, TU Delft, Netherlands

Restart Tirupur, India: Michelle Zucker, BA Landscape Architecture, Penn State, USA; Emily Saunders, BA Architecture, Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, USA

Teskstiler Kvartal, Copenhagen, Denmark: Chris Dove, PGDip Architecture, Glasgow School of Art, UK

The finalists will present at the Center for Architecture in New York on Thursday, September 4 in a public charrette. A jury of design leaders from ArchTam, Etsy, and Hines will select a winner. Doors open at 5pm and the charrette begins at 6. To attend, please RSVP here.

An exhibition designed by ArchTam’s Los Angeles and New York studios in collaboration with students from Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation, exploring the themes of this year’s competition will open following the charrette.

Return to Connected Cities in a few weeks for an update on the winner and exploration of the finalist teams’ proposals.

Learn more about Urban SOS here.

Jake Herson (jacob.herson@archtam.com) is a senior writer and managing editor for the Connected Cities blog.

The post Urban SOS: towards a new industry appeared first on Blog.

This central design feature is a response to the area’s climate and the city’s inclination to enjoy it. “Just like the popular French doors in local homes and restaurants, the Kings will slide open their patio doors pre-game, post-game, during concerts and maybe even halftime of the Kings’ games, [team president Chris] Granger says.”

Offering views of the city from inside the arena, views of the game from the outside, open space to the public, and an iconic sight for the city, the project is conceived as a revitalization catalyst for Sacramento’s downtown. The building and site will host activities year-round, not just on NBA game-days.

For those who look to design successful urban sports and entertainment venues, an experience and aesthetic that melds with the city is always the goal, but what that means is never the same.

See the latest design renderings here.

Jake Herson (jacob.herson@archtam.com) is managing editor of the Connected Cities blog.

The post Connection is King appeared first on Blog.

The questions of how we can find a sustainable balance between society and nature and how we design and manage our cities are of course very closely linked. As we at ArchTam thought about Earth Day for 2014, we decided that to achieve the most productive results, the former question could use some re-framing in the way that it often manifests in the popular dialogue.

We have seen the limits of the argument asserting that we need to act forcefully to protect nature. As one who personally feels a strong sense of connection to this argument, it was difficult to admit that this position lacks universal appeal and to accept the necessity of seeking a broader coalition to achieve the same ends. But the fact is that human society typically only mobilizes to effect change in its own economic, social and cultural interests. And we don’t need to see anything wrong with this. Because the other fact is that advancing those interests within the parameters of our planet will inherently involve finding a better balance with nature. It’s first a question of how we frame the objective, who our audience is, and what we are offering as the proposed benefits of action. It’s second a matter of understanding what progress looks like and the extent to which we can currently see it.

So on this Earth Day, despite our recognition of the magnitude of environmental challenges, we found reason for optimism, and despite our species’ propensity to accidentally destroy while we create, we found reason to celebrate human ingenuity. See what we mean in this presentation of Ideas and Innovations toward a Better Future.

Jake Herson (jacob.herson@archtam.com) is managing editor of the Connected Cities blog.

The post What should Earth Day mean? appeared first on Blog.

UK cities faced surging flood waters over the winter. The answer to future resilience lies largely with green infrastructure. That’s according to Matthew Jones, regional director, ArchTam, and Michael Henderson, associate director of sustainability, ArchTam, in recent articles for Water Briefing and Civil Service World, respectively.

“While the flooding has taken place over an unusually long duration this year, it is part of an apparently increasing trend of events oscillating between periods of inundation and periods of water shortage in some parts of the country,” said Jones. He pointed out that “While emergency response plans and flood defences are an important part of protecting life, infrastructure and farmland, it is clear that to manage flood risk effectively and to reduce water shortages in the summer, water needs to be treated less as a national annoyance and more as a precious resource. A more holistic approach is required where land practices contributing to flooding, such as deforestation, land drainage and urban creep, are gradually and proactively reversed.”

We need our natural spaces for practical reasons, in other words. It’s not just ecology; it’s ecological infrastructure, as critical to society as engineered infrastructure. Within developed areas, even small green interventions make a functional difference. When water passes through planted soil, some pollutants picked up from city streets are filtered out. This is the principle behind the practice variously called water sensitive urban design, sustainable urban drainage, and low-impact development.

Henderson said, “For a start, the cleaner the water is, the lower the energy cost of treating it for local reuse or discharge into our rivers. Moreover, if the UK can clean up its waterways, it will be liable for fewer fines under the EU Water Framework Directive, bringing another financial incentive to pursue this strategy. In addition, there is evidence to show that productivity increases when people look out over a green area, and other benefits like improved health and wellbeing are also detected. Finally, property prices tend to be stronger in more aesthetically pleasing surroundings, giving a helpful stimulus to the local economy.”

Jake Herson (jacob.herson@archtam.com) is managing editor of the Connected Cities blog.

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