DRAFT SITE

Surrounded by numerous manhole covers with the word "STEAM" stamped on them is the Willow Street Steam Generation Plant. This great hulking structure was built in 1927 by the Philadelphia Electric Company as part of Center City Philadelphia's elaborate steam delivery system, which still operates. Rail cars used to bring fuel via tracks along Willow Street. The smokestacks are 163 feet high. It's been abandoned for over 25 years. The large interior spaces that held the boilers preclude easy alteration for reuse, as there are no floors inside the building. There have been proposals to convert the structure into a trash-to-steam plant and also to cover it with huge wrap-around advertising. It may be decades before anything happens with it. The asbestos-filled building has been sealed by the fire department, because it is so dangerous.

The roots of Philadelphia's district steam system dates back to 1889, when the Edison Electric Light Company of Philadelphia—which eventually became part of the Philadelphia Electric Company—began to generate and sell electricity from its central station at 908 Sansom Street. Later that year, exhaust steam from the plant's engines was used to warm a nearby house at 917 Walnut Street, creating an additional source of revenue. The Philadelphia Electric Company later built other steam generating plants, including the Willow Street Plant, and constructed a vast underground steam network to serve various buildings and institutions. The system became the third largest district steam heating system in the United States. Steam pipes in Philadelphia run under sidewalks rather than under streets, as in other places. The steam is sent under pressure at a constant temperature of about 450 degrees, summer and winter, enabling the pipes to last for decades with little wear.

http://www.workshopoftheworld.com/center_city/willow_steam.html

THE WORD 'SURGERY'

the type of surgery i would be talking about in my thesis would be factial implant surgery. Facial contours can be enhanced with the aid of facial implants. These implants may be used to help strengthen a jawline or to bring the chin or cheekbones into balance with the rest of the face. Plastic surgeons will frequently use such implants to bring better balance to the features of a younger patient, or a more mature patient may choose to have an implant placed in conjunction with another cosmetic procedure.

so when you would look at the site, think of it as the pre opp. this is where i am checking the vital signs, blood pressure and IV. the structures from other buildings and the site will become the bone structure - and to go back what pron said about materials and fabric, this would determine those things after the site specific scereos are put out there (pre opp).

i dont know if i am going away from anything or adding too much into it by saying that?

PATH PERCEPTION DIAGRAM

In this diagram I showed the different types (car - bottom, walking - middle, walking - top) of proceeding through a site/context/envirnment. This wasnt any specific sit chosen for this diagram, but to show the possibilities they have of proceeding through the site. Perception is used going throuhg a site and it is based on the space and time you use it. the car goes fast on an advised path - it follows the guidelines of the road. While running your perception is closed in to knowing where you are because its your advised path - you run around other people but things arent as noticable. walking is the key element throuhg a site becasue there is large amount of possobilities. the holes in the site are seen and the different - holes meaning crossing the street, inbetween cars, in between buildings etc. it uses the context to its fullest.

i think i get a little to demanding when i say these statements about the different types. i cant say that when walking everyone does this is - its mor eof an overview of what i think towards these things. please let me know if i need to clear anything up.

SKIN AS FABRIC

Constraints and variables define themselves relative to each other. A case in point is sheering layers, a concept mentioned by Stuart Brand in How Buildings Learn (Brand). Sheering layers are essentially components of an urban center that evolve in different timescales. In order of longevity, the layers: site, structure, and skin; show how the framework of a city constructs into the fabric. When we think our face, fabric of our face is only a tissue covering bone structure (Brand). One’s appearance is already decided in the level of bone figure. Then, if urban fabric makes a character or impression of a city, don’t we have to focus on its structure, energy flow or inner layer than fabric to scrutinize its route of transform? The adaptability of a building, according to Brand, is determined by “the degree to which faster layers are not obstructed by slower layers.” Transforming urban fabric layers are injected from slower layers to adapt a new urban center

BILBAO GUGGENHEIM

example of a major civic institution placed within an existing urban context. Sited at the juncture of a dense, mid-rise downtown commercial district and an industrial riverfront zone, the museum employs a strategy of connection and contrast with the two existing contexts.
Two formal languages, combined within the same building, mediate between the orthogonal context of the city grid and its architecture and the irregular architecture along the river's edge. For example, the portion of the building along the consistent downtown edge employs a cubic normative geometry in heavy masonry, while irregular shapes and a reflective, lightly colored titanium skin occurs along the river (Guasch 151). This second language contrasts with the rectangular geometry and matte, dark red and brown color palette of the downtown commercial architecture, while relating to the metallic industrial context. Ultimately, this complex strategy signals the special significance of the museum, both in terms of its public program and role in announcing the new, post-industrial future of Bilbao (Guasch 151).

Santa Caterina Market

Old townscape of flexing form and fabric, accepting change from its medieval history. The density in Ciutat Vella is such that you almost feel contained within some kind of stone organism. Walking out of the clutter ness of the environment, you enter into open air. The Vella has modular design solutions that can be enabled by simply punching holes in blocks to enable sudden impromptu squares. Filling these gaps with people and structure, the skin would heal. The built fabric in this part of the city is more like a membrane, textured skin rather that streets, blocks or roads

WEB CONNECTIONS / IMPOSING STRUCTURE

Linear systems, like movement, should be woven into and around existing structures. Instead of conceiving of the urban fabric as a collection of building masses, it should become a web of connections. Systems are conceived and are able to grow and change incidentally without comprising the underlying order. It finds inherent order, finds similarities between social patterns for a new urban design.

Surgery Abstract

Perception creates experience. Time alters perception. Repetition and sequence of experience affects the way we perceive. An urban narrative of space is influenced by walking, running and driving. The street unfolds and comes alive at different speeds of encounter. But viewers want to visualize information simultaneously in a single display. This can be an urban narrative model.
A contextual condition is important to consider in any intervention for the urban context. In the contemporary urban condition this will alter the framework. ‘New’ will have to take into account the existing context. With this is mind, new development reacting to the older existing city fabric can have the affect of mediating separate individual actions, bringing them together too create a new whole.
Architecture has cultural and symbolic significance and is increasingly complex in the urban center. Architecture in the outskirts, you often have to make your own context, whereas in an urban center you have one to correspond to. Frequently modification of existing, historic buildings is called for. This is contextualism in the sense of an almost abstract response to the perceived character and proportions of surrounding buildings, coupled with the knowledge that the best contemporary architecture sits happily within its context if it is true to its own time (2).
Contextualism is an interesting way of approaching architecture work for its taking into account human act of inhabiting. That views demands from the interpreter to consider not only the incidentally and historic character of the architecture, but also its relationship to the environment in order to show how special this proposal employing visual and tactile typologies is (2)
Besides such vague general features, there are specific cultural conditions characteristic of each culture. However, certain cultural features are found back in the broader underlying general principles (2). The central question is: which visual stimuli lead to specific aesthetic preferences, and how do people motivate those preferences? There are formalistic and contextualistic visions of art and beauty: formalists see art as form in itself, while for the contextualists the meaning of art derives from the context in which it has a place and function (2).
"The best way to plan a urban context is to see how people use it today; to look for its strengths and to exploit and reinforce them. There is no logic that can be superimposed on the city; people make it, as it is to them, not buildings, that we must fit our plans (1)" Decision making tends to be incremental rather than set by a master plan. To such an extent as centralized planning is needed, its goal should be to "catalyze" and "nourish" rather than to direct: "The science of city planning and the art of city design, in real life for real cities, must become the science and art of catalyzing and nourishing close-grained working relationships (1)"