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P.O. Box 697
Oakland, CA 94604
Phone/Fax 510-444-4508
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Site contents ©2008 by Ecocity Builders. Please contact Ecocity Builders about reproducing, reprinting or distributing site content. Thank you. |
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CENTER STREET PLAZA PROJECT, BERKELEY, CA
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.
People arriving by transit and to the entrance to the University of California Berkeley campus, the premier public university in the United States, walk down Center Street between Shattuck Avenue and Oxford Street. Some of us see this as the future Strawberry Creek Plaza. Further into the future, as oil becomes scarce relative to its shrinking resource base and growing world demand, and with supply and demand market economics kicking in, fuel prices will relegate cars to the ever shrinking rich minority and the ever expanding majority of the rest of us will be enjoying a somewhat slower pace of life arriving by BART and AC Transit, or just biking around town or walking from mixed -uses in the central area of Berkeley.
Cities, we believe, should respect, honor and even celebrate their connection with nature. The growing climate change disaster that we are waking up to, now in the early years, is a testament to the fact that cities have been oblivious or effectively oblivious in any case, to 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.
- Richard Register
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THREE HYBRIDIZED STRATEGIES
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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INTRODUCTION TO THE DRAWINGS, by Walter Hood:
The models drawings displayed here represent a conceptual attitude for how the Strawberry Creek Watershed can be a revelatory environment for us to live, work, and play. Cities and the natural world are made up of patterns. At various scales some are discernable and others are not. But they all bear a spatial relationship to one another which is what we experience…these are “enmeshed” experiences. We have attempted to create an “enmeshed” experience along Center Street within the Strawberry Creek’s riparian corridor.
Watershed: An examination of the larger watershed suggests that the riparian corridor for Strawberry Creek encompasses the area between Addison Street and Allston way. Even though buried – the creek fell at 2 percent grade – stream morphology shows that water meanders at this slope percentage. Moving out at the neighborhood and city scale – we can understand another pattern…..for Strawberry Creek’s riparian area’s cross section. This “wide” cross section suggests that hydrologically we can triangulate to illuminate the grade change on the North South axis.
Enlarge and Multiply: Strawberry Creek’s existing cross section through UC Berkeley campus is consistent in size to extend the Creek into the city. We employed
the following strategies to elucidate the spatial significance of the cross section.
1. Enlarging: Increasing the existing size to connect and expand within the city’s spatial realm.
2. Multiplying: Copying the existing size within the street Right of Way to make new spatial relationships.
These two physical and natural attributes of Strawberry Creek provide the context to explore an “enmeshed” experience of both city and environment.
Typologies: Seven spatial typologies were designed with the intent of allowing vehicular access for emergency and commercial transport, and therefore accommodate planning and dimensional codes.
1. Open: The street is viewed as one open plaza with water feature and using flora and fauna as a way of bringing nature to the site.
2. Ramblas: The middle of the street is emphasized along its east and west axis.
3. Divided: The street is divided. One half of the street functions differently than the other.
4. North Plaza: North side of the street is emphasized spatially.
5. South Plaza: South side of the street is emphasized spatially.
6. Multi Placitas: The street has bulbouts and or wide sidewalks, placed strategically along the block.
7. Terraced: A 3% grade change is emphasized along the east-west axis.
Based off seven spatial typologies for the city and street described above, both watershed patterns and creek scales are transposed within the Center Street context.
First, they are imagined separately, and then they are mixed together. As a result we have 3 possible hybridized strategies where each strategy uses water in a revelatory way as listed below:
1. Open Hybrid is designed as a low-flow channel that daylights water through big openings along the entire corridor. Water is pumped from the creek, 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.
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.
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.
We welcome your input on the design process. Please mail your comments to:
HOODDESIGN
3016 Filbert Street Studio 2
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