Welcome Cat Marshall | October 27, 2017

Basic RGBJoin us in welcoming the new Master of Landscape Architecture Coordinator, Cat Marshall. A reception will be held at the Cleveland Urban Design Collaborative from 4:30-6:00 PM.Professor Marshall joins us from Louisiana State University’s, Robert Reich School of Landscape Architecture, the country’s top ranked undergraduate Landscape Architecture program, where she taught since 2003 at the rank of Associate Professor with tenure since 2009. Professor Marshall holds a Master in Landscape Architecture from Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design, where she began her teaching career, and a Bachelor of Arts in Architectural History from Ithaca College. As a Landscape Architect, she maintains her own practice, CSM Design, LA.We hope to see you there!Friday, October 27, 20174:30-6:00 PMCleveland Urban Design Collaborative1309 Euclid Avenue, Suite 200Cleveland, OH 44115

Habitat for Hard Places and the Ecologically Inclusive City

City residents live in the midst of many other creatures, even if we sometimes don’t notice them. Birds, bugs, bats, and squirrels are all around us. We share our communities with bigger animals too, like deer, coyote, foxes, and groundhogs.h4hp_fox(Source: BBC.com)Life can be difficult for creatures in the city. Near my office in Playhouse Square, I often see birds on the sidewalk, killed in collisions with downtown buildings.H4HP_birdsIf we took the needs of birds in mind when designing tall buildings, our cities might be less fatal to our feathered friends. Likewise, city parks could include plants that support bee populations and landscapes that help small mammals survive. It’s not about handing over the city to wild creatures, but finding ways for peaceful coexistence. My dog was recently sprayed by a skunk in our (relatively urban) Cleveland Heights neighborhood. So I do understand that sharing space with wildlife can have some unpleasant consequences. But consider the fact that a bat can eat its body weight in insects in a given night. Our bat neighbors play a big role in keeping mosquitoes and bug-borne illnesses at bay.An ecologically healthy city creates a sense of symbiosis between people and wildlife. You don’t have to invite a raccoon to breakfast. Although you might find one in the self-service buffet known as your garbage can on trash day. But we should look for ways to help other species feel at home in the city, for their benefit and our own.In Cleveland, a key habitat area is the Cuyahoga River. The Cuyahoga has suffered a lot of abuse over the years, most notoriously catching fire several times due to industrial pollution. The last river fire was in 1969. The spectacle of a burning river helped lead to the enactment of the Federal Clean Water Act in 1972.Today, the river no longer burns and a diverse range of fish live there. To support these growing populations of fish, Cuyahoga River Restoration launched Habitat for Hard Places, an initiative to provide habitat opportunities within the ship channel. It’s important to note that fish habitat will  not displace existing businesses or disrupt land uses in the Flats. Places for fish can be tucked in around existing and proposed human development.Cuyahoga River Restoration and the CUDC recently invited 65 people for an afternoon trip through the ship channel aboard the Holiday Cleveland. Participants included developers, property owners, ecologists, fish and water scientists, landscape architects and students, and staff from the Ohio and US EPA.H4HP_23(Source: Katie Slusher)Jane Goodman, Executive DIrector of Cuyahoga River Restoration, narrated the tour. Where most people see vacant sites and development potential, Jane sees habitat. In fact, opportunities for restoring habitat are prevalent in the ship channel.h4hp_water_3Elaine Price at the Cuyahoga County Planning Commission and Doug Paige at the Cleveland Institute of Art have been conducting fish habitat experiments in the Cuyahoga for several years, including small habitat islands designed to float in the river and vegetation baskets installed within the metal bulkheads. These installations offer food and places to rest, both of which are essential to the survival of young fish.At the CUDC’s invitation, a group of Landscape Architecture students from Ohio State are looking at behind-the-bulkhead design ideas to integrate fish habitat into Cuyahoga ship channel. Under the guidance of OSU faculty members Halina Steiner and Karla Trott, students in a Spring 2017 design studio looked at the specific needs of a diverse group of fish stakeholders. Gar-oup_Plan(From: The GAR-OUP PLAN, Christian Moore and Alexandra Lemke, The Ohio State University Knowlton School of Architecture, 2017)The students developed a range of innovative design proposals for riverfront public spaces that would benefit both fish and people. A new group of Ohio State students will be working on habitat designs for the ship channel this spring, beginning in January.fishfollies(From: fish follies, Ross Rogers and Marty Koelsch, The Ohio State University Knowlton School of Architecture, 2017) The CUDC was fortunate to receive a grant from the Ohio EPA’s Environmental Education Fund, which we’ll use to share the students work through a folio of postcards from the river’s edge. We hope this project will inspire fish- and people-friendly development along the river. For more information, please contact Terry Schwarz, Director of the Cleveland Urban Design Collaborative at tschwarz@kent.edu or 216.357.3426

Bygone Landscapes of Cleveland and New Orleans: the conduit of the everyday

MH headshotMaggie Hansen, Director, Albert and Tina Small Center for Collaborative Design, Tulane UniversityThis spring our Masters of Landscape Architecture students engaged in a studio with Maggie Hansen of Tulane University. Maggie worked with students at the Cleveland Urban Design Collaborative on a 5-week vertical studio titled “Bygone Landscapes of Cleveland and New Orleans: the conduit of the everyday”. This was a continuation of the Master of Landscape Architecture Traveling Workshop that took place in New Orleans over spring break.This collaborative studio kicked off with the KSU students visiting New Orleans. Over 3 days, they visited sites designed to support both hydrological function and community gathering. In addition to site visits, they discussed design and policy approaches to urban hydrology with designers, policymakers, and planners, including Aron Chang of Blue House, Colleen McHugh of the City of New Orleans Office of Resilience, and Austin Allen and Diane Jones of Design Jones. The exchange between Tulane’s Small Center for Collaborative Design and the Kent State Landscape program revealed many shared challenges for Cleveland and New Orleans.Pegah Nourifard IMG_5080The studio has been developed in conversation with the Northeast Ohio Regional Sewer District’s Project Clean Lake Program. In 2011, NEORD entered into a consent decree to address water quality issues in Lake Erie by capturing 98% of CSO – the highest level of capture nationally. This capture is primarily achieved through the construction of 7 deep storage tunnels, ranging from two to five miles long, up to 24 feet in diameter and located up to 300 feet underground – the tunnels hold water in a rain event and release it for treatment. As NEORSD has constructed these tunnels, they’ve acquired a series of parcels where tunnel access and construction staging has occurred. These sites will continue to be used for maintenance of the tunnels and the District recognizes the opportunity for the sites to serve as neighborhood amenities following construction. The studio is looking at the potential of these parcels to engage the layers of hydrology and neighborhood fabric more fully, in hopes to expand the range of possibilities for NEORD as the work continues. The students began the studio with visits to 3 sites in the Dugway watershed, and a tour of ‘restored’ sites with NEORSD, to see the sites under construction and some of the completed ‘parklets’ following construction. From these observations and an analysis of the site layers, the students developed ‘deep section’ models of the sites, as a means of understanding the complex, layered systems impacting each site, and as a starting point for design.Erin Laffay IMG_4360IMG_6967The studio will deliver a booklet of conceptual ideas to the District following the 5-week studio. We will publish the booklet on our Issuu site when completed.

The Student Perspective : CUBA

This year's Spring Studio, The International Design Exchange (INDEX) Studio is a graduate design studio established to build an understanding of global urban issues.The studio explores strategies for urban regeneration revealed through a comparative analysis of Cleveland, Ohio and Havana, Cuba. The studio functions as a timely conduit for the exchange of ideas between the two cities. As part of the studio, four graduate students traveled to Cuba, during spring break, to strengthen the research and relationships established with architects and architecture students and the University of Havana. Two of the students, Reuben Shaw II and Randy Hoover, shared their experience and work with us. Here is their perspective:Reuben Shaw II, Master of Landscape Architecturereuben_cubaCuba was never on my list of countries to visit. Stories about the taboos of the society and the government subconsciously blocked this island nation from my view. I’ve visited a few of the Caribbean Islands but still, Cuba was invisible. During my stay in Havana, I realized that Cuba was one of the most unique and beautiful places I have ever been, not only aesthetically, but culturally and socially. The proverb, “Better to see something once than hear about it a thousand times” became a reality.reuben_cuba_2Fanguito neighborhood in Havana, CubaWhile working on the Havana studio project in Cleveland, it was a challenge to really grasp our site with aerials; as landscape architecture students, most of our taught site-analysis techniques were void. Flying to Cuba and walking the streets of the Fanguito neighborhood really gave us a perspective that added to our repertoire. We discovered a sense of place that was generated by the people and an empirical expression of culture that you could only get by asking questions and adopting the lifestyle of the residents.This opportunity to travel to Cuba was truly inspiring and has fueled my desire to travel and experience other cultures. I believe when you travel you learn as much about yourself as you do about the place. Knowledge of self not only enriches your being but that of the people around you.Flamingo Final 2Proposed wetland preserve and aquatic bird habitat along the Almendares River in Havana, CubaRandy Hoover, Master of Architecturerandy_hoover_headshotFive days is a short time in which one can be expected to engage with the unique cultural and economic values in a city like Havana, but I believe this trip was successful in that regard. Stepping out onto Cuban soil was not, as some of my friends back home predicted, like stepping back in time to a land where technology and science ceased to progress. Once you look past the aesthetic value of colorful old cars on the road you begin to see Cuba’s development over the last decades as an alternate timeline, similar to our own, where resources are more scarce but vitality and variety of life are never sacrificed.(Now don’t get me wrong, riding from one side of Havana to the other in a candy-coated Pontiac is something that should be experienced by every visitor to the island.)Our studio design/research project for the semester focused on an intervention near the Almendares River in El Vedado district of Havana. This land is known as the less affluent part of town and in every way but its social structure can be considered a slum. In order to operate from thousands of miles away with little on-site experience, our group focused on projective interventions that could be built by accretion and overlay of infrastructural services. By developing a simple self-built housing prototype that connected its infrastructure to a central square, we could game out the look of our neighborhood intervention in abstraction without bulldozing over the existing social and economic complexities of the neighborhood.ISO PLAN smallCuadriculita 008: The central concrete pad provides infrastructural connections for surrounding residents.The realistic conditions of a site are, of course, more complex than what can be assumed from a satellite image or journal article. When we walked through the neighborhood of El Fanguito we were greeted by complete strangers with smiles and welcome conversation with our inquiring minds. Narrow alleyways and informal sidewalks contributed to a set of streetscapes that functioned almost identically to the winding paths we suggested in the Cuadriculita proposal, except of course that it was constructed with more care, personality, and efficiency. Once we walked out of the neighborhood and up the hill to a grand vista that overlooked all of the informal housing, my perspective of the project completely shifted.IMG_1435A small cluster of housing built against the peculiar topography separating El Fanguito from El Vedado.I expected this moment, of course, but maybe not in such an instantaneous fashion. The infrastructural connections were not perfect in every way but formed its own artistry out of the imperfections. Overlap of aesthetics and use-value with the homes were most apparent with bright blue water storage barrels and pigeon cages on some of the rooftops feeding PVC piping down into the invisible pathways and living spaces below. Our project’s assertion that an interior courtyard or open space was required in order to have a vibrant and connected lifestyle for each resident was dissolved after seeing this.This INDEX studio travel opportunity is something that I will remember for the rest of my life. I was able to meet Cuban architectural contemporaries, sample the passionate lifestyle of residents, and bond with my trip-mates in sharing this experience of infinite value. I’d like to thank David Jurca, the CUDC, and Kent State University for this amazing opportunity. The INDEX: CLExHAV Studio is part of the 2017 Creative Fusion program supported by The Cleveland Foundation. During the 2017 Spring Semester, the Cleveland Urban Design Collaborative (CUDC) will continue a partnership launched by Kent State University last year with Havana-based architects Sofía Márquez Aguiar and Ernesto Jiménez of Fábrica De Arte Cubano (Cuban Art Factory), a vibrant community arts space housed in a repurposed cooking oil plant in Havana. The architects will work with the KSU Urban Design and Landscape Architecture graduate studio and a Cleveland Institute of Art Interior Architecture studio on design proposals for two neighborhood projects: one in Havana’s Vedado neighborhood, where Fábrica De Arte Cubano is located, and another in Cleveland’s Glenville neighborhood. In early April, Márquez Aguiar and Jiménez arrived in Cleveland to review the students’ design proposals for Vedado and will remain in Cleveland for one month as they work with students to generate and fabricate the project to be built in Glenville. A public Pop Up Event is scheduled at the Glenville site (1470 E. 105th, Cleveland) on Friday, May 5th from 6-9pm. All are welcome. Learn more and RSVP on the Facebook event page here: https://www.facebook.com/events/532579883796334/ 

Conner Karakul | Mar 10

conner_k_headshotWe will be switching things up a little bit this week for our Spring Lecture Series. Conner Karakul will be presenting a short film, Where Land Meets Water-An exploration of Norwegian urban shorelines and Oslo Harbor's path from industry to access. Following the film will be a discussion on Cleveland's cultural and physical relationship with its waterways- current status and future goals.Industrial to AccessibleConner Karakul is a third year Master of Landscape Architecture candidate from Cleveland Heights, Ohio. He holds an undergraduate degree in Political Science with a minor in Environmental Studies from Kenyon College. As a member of KSU's College of Architecture and Environmental Design's inaugural MLA program cohort, Conner enjoys the opportunity to work on and understand the challenges and potential for creating healthy, strong communities in Legacy Cities. He believes landscape architecture can play a fundamental role. His work so far aims to embed ecological beauty and function into the complexities of urban areas through thoughtful design that celebrates the arts, culture, and ecology of a place.Please join us from 12 PM - 1PM, Friday, March 10th. This event is free and open to the public.Cleveland Urban Design Collaborative1309 Euclid Ave., Suite 200Cleveland, OH 44115