Project 05: Site Threshold Images

Project 05: Site Barrier

Project 05: Site Different Zone

Project 05: Site

Project 05: Site Selection Narrative

My site functions as a threshold between the City of Providence and the Narragansett Bay. The hurricane barrier and the new I-way overpass mark the gateway to the Providence River, which moves through the heart of the city. Bald Point Park, directly across from my site, features a public boat ramp that serves as a launch point for people travelling to the lower bay via the Port of Providence.

In past decades, my site was a destination. It flaunted waterfront venues and amenities that attracted visitors from land and sea. Today, however, my site is desolate and deteriorated due to the manipulation of boundaries. The old highway system, diagrammed in red, used to serve as a threshold between the waterfront and the dense East Side of Providence giving both areas distinct identities. Waterfront bars, social venues, parks, and a community sailing center drew people through the threshold of infrastructure to my site.

Today, my site is a departure point. The new I-way project, diagrammed in blue, bisects the waterfront serving as an extension of the hurricane barrier with mechanical flood doors that guard all pass through streets. The I-way breaks up the waterfront into two incomplete entities blurring the threshold between the East side and the waterfront and actually serves as a physical and visual boundary to water access. Through eminent domain, the state acquired and cleared nearly all of the highlighted land in the diagram above, creating a vacuum.

My thesis project aims to transform the identity of this site through the exploitation and calculated manipulation of thresholds and boundaries restoring its’ status as a gateway and destination. It will combine different programs and building typologies into a unified whole that will engage different audiences of people coming to the site by land or sea in their pursuit of various amenities.

I intend for my project to work in conjunction with proposed plans for the new maritime museum being constructed in the old power plant building and the new waterfront park. I intend for my intervention to serve as a starting point for the redevelopment of the remaining parcels of reclaimed land (approximately 20 lots). This would be an inside out way of working that is contrary to the typical master planning process. If my intervention encouraged future development then, in effect, it would validate my thesis ideas.

Project 04: Program Adjacencies

Project 04: Program (Activities and Circulation)

This diagram attempts to show how people would move through the city to the waterfront and vice vera through my project. The layered images have transparency to evoke the idea of a sequence of thresholds between programs and places. The silhouettes are placed at various points along this path showing locations that these type of people might use. The shadows register their movements and interactions.

Project 04: Program

Narrative

I am a boater launching at Bold Point Park for the first time this season. It is late June. I’ve been busy so I haven’t been able to enjoy the water as much as usual but better late than never. I cast off my line and head out to the channel. As with any other day I can’t wait to throttle up, plane out and cruise to the lower bay. I get to the first channel marker and look to my right. I realize that something is different. The old abandoned waterfront structures have been demolished to make way for this new structure that engages the waterfront. This structure seems to pass through the impenetrable sea wall and over the highway and it frames images of the Providence skyline. There are rows and rows of boats at these new public docks. A dozen sailboats pass by loaded with children guided by a sailing instructor. I thought the sailing school went out of business years ago. Five boats followed by the harbormaster pass through the hurricane barrier. I’ve never seen that before. I really have to head closer because this is truly amazing. I enter a no wake zone as I approach the docks and a stranger yells, “Throw me that line. I’ll help you tie up.” I am astonished. I’ve always had to battle the current and tie up myself. There is usually never another person around the area. I tie up and look at the city stamped on the transom of the gentleman’s boat. This guy came all the way from Narragansett. Narragansett is the best place for boating in the entire state, but this guy travelled all the way here, over an hour and a half’s ride. He says to me, “Isn’t this place great. It’s nice to escape the touristy areas of the state once in a while to come to a place like this. This is what this state is all about, “Great people, great entertainment, great waterfront, and a great capital city.”

I walk up the docks and cross a beautiful lawn with people picnicking, flying kites, laying in the sun, and just plain having a good time. I get to the threshold of the building, a ramp/stair that brings you up to the first terraced level. I am level with the roof of the tugboat shed. I walk to the edge and I can look over the rail into the high up cabin of the tugboats. I can see the guys working furiously below fueling and readying the tug. They must be preparing to head out to meet a tanker ship entering the Port of Providence. I walk back to the center of this terrace and cross another threshold into an enclosed realm, which slowly ramps to another level. This sets the stage for another unique view perfectly aligned with the roadway. I can look out the window of the structure and through the passenger’s side glass of the cars driving by. There is light coming from my far right and left through narrow inlets, which must frame some other views to the Providence River, the hurricane barrier and India Point Park. I see above me that a part of the structure literally crosses the highway bridging to the other side and that a part below me penetrates the highway sea wall. There are large crowds of people moving about on the other side of the threshold and through the threshold, which used to be an impenetrable barrier. I go up one level into another space, which frames a beautiful panorama of the vertical Providence skyline and I turn around 180 degrees to witness a breath-taking panorama of the horizontal landscape that is the Narragansett Bay. I can see to Warwick from here. I decide to cross this bridge, truss, structure that acts as a threshold to the otherside of the sea wall and begin my descent to the ground level passing through all sorts of spaces full of different people. I touch the ground and feel instantly connected with the city and turn around realizing I am at the exact point where the structure penetrates the hurricane barrier. From here there are framed views of all the different programmatic elements of the waterfront and I can see each amenity offered to the visitor as if it were a brochure, but most importantly I can feel the relationship between Providence and its’ waterfront. 

Revised Thesis Statement

I am trying to learn how boundaries and thresholds choreograph human movement because I want to find ways to encourage specific human reactions by manipulating boundaries and thresholds. In order to help my reader understand this potential I will take a barrier and exploit its potential as a threshold in order to foster new paths of movement that will unite a city with its waterfront.

OR

I am trying to learn how certain boundaries and thresholds correlate with specific human reactions. I want to find ways to exploit these architectural elements in order to create choreography of movement. I will intercede with the monumental boundary in my site, exploiting its’ potential as a threshold in order to create this choreography of movement for the purpose of uniting a city with its waterfront.

Site Proposal Diagram

Thesis Status Document

This is a link to the first draft of my thesis status document.

This document includes my thesis idea, ideas on program, and my annotated bibliography with research introduction.

http://justinsarchitectureblog.blogspot.com/p/thesis-status-document.html

Program Ideas:

It would work well to situate my building or buildings on a site where there is a significant boundary dividing two communities, two groups of people, or many groups for that matter. To test my theories it would work best to have this boundary be large in scale, unsightly, or cumbersome. It would help for this boundary to be located in an urban setting because this implies wider demographics. This would afford me the opportunity to create a series of intervening boundaries and thresholds that act together to bridge the gaps, be them physical, cultural, etc. These boundaries and threshold moments would create a transition zone, which would “encourage the choreography of dynamic relationships among persons moving within their domains.” It will link together people which otherwise would remain separate.

This transition zone could have any number of residential, retail, educational, or infrastructural components that will undoubtedly combine and interact in perhaps uncommon ways. This will allow for the creation of additional boundaries and thresholds between the users of the specific programmatic elements. In effect the entire intervention will function, through boundaries and thresholds, as a connector as will each individual component.

It may work to have a “kit of parts” consisting of various types of boundary and threshold elements that can be employed in various situations with some form of underlying logic. This way type a) can be used in a situation such as blank and type b) in a situation such as blank so that the user can read the composition. 

Thesis Topic

Boundaries + Thresholds = Relationships

Boundaries and Thresholds as a Dynamic Binding Force

I am trying to learn about boundaries and thresholds in the built environment because I want to see how they are manifested, how they distinguish between this and that, how they communicate and conceal information, and how they interact and create a dialogue in order to help my reader understand how architectural boundaries and thresholds can "encourage the choreography of dynamic relationships among persons moving within their domains."

Quote from Body, Movement, and Architecture - Kent C. Bloomer and Charles W. Moor

Pinup Comment Sheet

New Idea Map

New Visual Abstract

Thesis Ideas

I am interested in the idea of collaboration between architecture and other disciplines and the work that results from crossing these boundaries. I wonder if it would be possible to design a setting, which manifests this boundary, being both architecture and non-architecture, which fosters this collaboration. I envision this as kind of like a media lab, but I don’t want the architecture to be neutral in allowing this collaboration. I want it to be active.

Can you make a place where different groups can come to collaborate to push the boundaries of their disciplines and make/do things together?

Visual Abstract

Topic Map