GSD 1202 : Thick Park Urbanism / Midterm Review

Moving from the scale of the protoblock to the scale of the entire site, I developed a strategy for distributing massing and program that would respond to the specific urban context of Brooklyn, while managing environmental parameters and creating a new public space.

Thick Park Urbanism seeks to re-deploy the early Modernist dream of a city in a park. In place of the undefined and homogeneous parkscape of earlier dreams, a heterogeneous thickened landscape of interlocking public and private program is proposed.

Various community facilities are embedded below the park, and emerge occasionally to engage the park surface, adjacent residential /commercial program, and surrounding urban context. The top surface of the park doubles as an ecological corridor, supporting a mix of recreational program, extensive native green roof, and urban agriculture. The park also provides new pedestrian connections across the site.

Design and Science

On March 14th I participated in an interdisciplinary workshop at Harvard University for the Picturing to Learn project. In association with the National Science Foundation, Picturing to Learn seeks to improve scientific education in the United States by introducing drawing as a tool and basic skill for science students and educators.

Drawing is used by science students to distill their own understanding of specific concepts and communicate them effectively. By thinking through drawing, students and educators can move beyond standard scientific jargon and equations as educational tools, and begin to make scientific concepts engaging to a wider audience while retaining accuracy. Drawings have the potential to encode multiple layers of information while remaining legible and accessible.

Please read more about the event at the Picturing to Learn website, or through the Graduate School of Design News.