brandtheLAND

 The idea of cohousing is incredibly peculiar to me, and I find it truly fascinating that they even work. Making the conscientious decision to work collectively to build a community seems great, but with the diversity of people and personalities and lifestyles and preferences and diets and ways of living, it is phenomenal to think people can find enough in common to work together anymore - let alone live together and share amenities. In all honesty, cohousing sounds significantly like a cult to me where people have created what I assume is a very closed exclusive community of shared living, all inwardly focused. Furthermore, the introduction of the community from the early design process phase rather than after construction is incredibly unique and different. As a designer, I find enough difficulty accommodating one client's wishes, let alone an entire group of people.      One point that was mentioned in the videos we watched was the large diversity in ages, and tha...

 New Urbanism is a movement that I have heard different debates and opinions about, for it seems that some people are huge fans and some recognize the significant faults. I am more curious, however, about the urban fabric and form created under the guise of New Urbanism as the ideas, techniques, and approaches reference all sorts of best practices, but there's no mention of how these hubs should actually look. To me, new urbanism has a very traditional neighborhood form with a greater density and a few shifts in organization, but I question why the principles established would not work for very contemporary neighborhoods or even applied to co-housing projects at a large enough scale. From my perspective, new urbanism is not enough. Thinking about it as a sort of spectrum, on one end is rural life and suburbanization and on the complete opposite is high density urbanization, and new urbanism seems to fall somewhere in the middle. However, if we think about it in environmental terms ...

  This is a preliminary conceptual masterplan for a development block I designed over the summer for a small town in the southeast region of Mississippi. The project was on the border of the downtown area, but what made the town fascinating was the sense of desperation and necessity they exuded for intervention. While they refrained from admitting it, the town is slowly shrinking away both in development and population, and they hired my team to design a masterplan for this block to ideally bring people back to their community. During the 2020 census, the town even decided to start including convicted felons in their census population, assumedly for financial reasons to make the town appear larger than it actually is. To the northwest was one of the largest prisons in Mississippi, so the town took advantage and the huge spike is clearly visible on their census data.  The town claimed a population of around 3,800, but the actual residential population of free citizens was close...

     Why did Co-op City work when other low income housing developments failed so poorly? Perhaps it was the resilience characteristic of every New Yorker - gotta be tough to win the turf war against the rats. However, I don't believe there was much difference between the residents of Co-op City and those of Pruitt-Igoe, both faced similar circumstances and turmoils. Therefore, the culprit has to be the management and development itself. The ability to own property, to work toward a common goal, to open the doors to multiple types of people all chasing their common ground united the residents to care for and take pride in the place they lived. "I want this place to be nice because one day, it will be all mine" as opposed to "I'm only a renter, it's not my responsibility to maintain this place." The development, like much of New York, was experimental but open-minded and did not restrict the residents or attempt to control them.      Even more amazing was...

       Who is to blame for the failure of Pruitt Igoe? The truth, maybe we are all to blame. If human history, war, terror, climate change, and the "otherness" are to be believed, wherever humans go, destruction, greed, corruption, and selfishness will inevitably follow - the only difference is how well we hide it. As white residents fled the Pruitt Igoe project to the suburbs, they thought it was for a better life. Then suburban sprawl has catalyzed an entirely different collection of environmental and social problems. We are beings without content.      The architect simply designed the buildings - he has no say in how it is used. Is he to blame? The project was a vast collection of identical buildings without a tree, park, or moment of respite in sight. No individuality. No creativity. No adaptability. From my perception of the design characteristics of Pruitt Igoe, it appears almost communistic - those modernists and their universality. The archite...

 When it comes to Modernism, people love to hate it - perhaps rightfully so. The entire goal of the movement was a form of universalization and mass production, experimentation and questioning. Particularly in the article about Scandinavian Suburbs where modernism made all sorts of claims and essentially fed segregation and racism...but did it? The article poses the questions "Prevailing ideas about appropriate cures for the disease of modernist urbanism have taken the form of biopsies, amputations, or why not just euthanasia?" (659) However, I have a very hard time believing the modernist designers sat down and designed neighborhoods, houses, and environments with the intent of causing a separation in society. It is always very easy to look at failed experiments and blame the designer for the side effects. I believe the modernists should be given a bit of forgiveness and leeway in their work. Yes, it had horrible consequences, but the intentions were pure. How can we expec...