Kai Chi – Environment-urban form-infrastructure

Having focused our previous analysis on the history of real estate development in the West End, we were able to form an understanding of a few key consequences of these events. As speculation and the ongoing housing crisis incentivizes building higher, human-level community spaces are either taken away or neglected, along with the urban canopy. Further, buildings of these heights more often require strong and mass-producible materials that can only be created through harsh, carbon intensive processes. Despite creating density, this model does not necessarily correlate to sustainable communities, and takes away from the experience at ground level.

A possible manner of addressing these concerns is through re-thinking the responsibilities of developers to maintain ground level community-oriented spaces adjacent to where they profit. Through this series of small-scale interventions, we hope to prioritize design for recycling, sourcing materials from buildings that are destroyed for redevelopment, and designing such that what is built can be easily unbuilt and rebuilt into something new. Focusing on two sites adjacent to future approved developments, we are proposing the following spaces: Play, Production, and Pavilion.

The play and production spaces, located on the same site, rethink the existing community garden site into a rain garden and playground, where the entire community can be given access to growing and preparing fresh food while remaining close to their children. Through new infrastructure, the site serves to further remediate ecological impacts of density, while producing healthy food for the community, which can be enjoyed at the pavilion space, providing seating and vibrancy a short distance away.