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Building Cities
in Balance
with Nature
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339 15th Street, Suite 208
Oakland, CA 94612
Phone/Fax 510 444-4508
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Site design by Studio L’Image
Site contents ©2009 by Ecocity Builders. Please contact Ecocity Builders about reproducing, reprinting or distributing site content. Thank you.
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Strawberry Creek at Center Street
In the summer of 2007 Ecocity Builders hired Walter Hood to stir up the imagination of the world in downtown Berkeley. The results – to date because this is a beginning – are the drawings you see here and the most recent set of presentation materials which can be downloaded below as a pdf.
Cities, we believe, should respect, honor and even celebrate their connection with nature. We selected Walter Hood because of his genius to engage people’s imagination and assess design parameters at their very essence. He is famous for spaces people love and wants to reveal the larger connections between people and the world we are part of. In this location, relating to Strawberry Creek because it links Hills with Bay, the whole watershed within one city and therefore what an opportunity it is to learn about whole living systems. Most cities just have the end of a river or some place along it or maybe the mouth. Here we can celebrate the whole thing, and Walter Hood is stimulating our imagination as to how that might be done.
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Most Recent Center Street Presentation Material - February 2010 pdf (5.3 MB)
Information packet on the project history and policy appendix pdf (2.8 MG)
Center Street Plan
THREE HYBRIDIZED STRATEGIES - the strategies illustrated below show how the present proposal was arrived at through an examination of the many possibilities and approaches available
1. OPEN HYBRID is designed as a low-flow channel that daylights water through big openings along the entire corridor. Water from the creek is channeled through Center Street, and returned back to its original flow path to the Bay. The water and planting areas are maximized, while still allowing spaces for pedestrians as well as emergency vehicular and commercial delivery access.
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2. RAMBLAS HYBRID is a series of fountains and rain gardens. The fountain re-circulates water, while the rain garden collects surface run-off and successively cleans it as it travels westward. The creek is emulated rather than physically channeled and daylighted through the site, celebrating the water.
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3. TERRACED HYBRID functions as a series of alternating pools marching westward towards the bay. Like the Open hybrid, water is channeled from Strawberry Creek and daylighted at specific locations through the site. Once the water reaches Shattuck, it rejoins its original path towards the Bay.
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