Home Brew: Pruitt-Igoe Design Competition (update 2)

Yesterday was the phase 3 submission for the Pruitt-Igoe project, and I have been without sleep for 2 nights in a row, so there could be no better time to write a post then right now!

I last left you with a quick design rationale: the idea of artists gentrifying less dersirable neighbourhoods. To kickstart the gentrification and development process, the large empty site in St. Louis, MO will see the construction of an arts focused college to be called the Pruitt-Igoe College of Art and Design. Artists will flock to the currently deserted neighbourhood and bring waves of new life and creativity. Furthermore, the creation of quality public spaces including parks, squares, streets, and public buildings will bring value to the site.

The above plan was from the previous update, and the planned layout remains very much the same. What I am now doing is taking a much more focused approach by only designing the very southern end of the site - where PICAD is located, as well as a pedestrian mall (large linear path + public spaces) and the main square.

(left) Art installation in the pedestrian mall, (right) open lawn 

After presenting phase 2 I have entered the final stretch of the project - the next couple of weeks are going to be really hectic! Once the project is all  done, I'll be sure to upload plenty of renderings, diagrams, cad drawings, and presentation slides to one large post. Sit tight!

Home Brew: Pruitt-Igoe Design Competition (update)

For the fourth year studio project, we are to come up with an idea for the revitalization of the Pruitt-Igoe site in St. Louis, MO. This is a design competition open to anybody, and we are to submit our ideas at the end of the term.

The real challenge of the site is that it is enormous and completely empty and surrounding it is a dying neighbourhood littered with abandoned lots. Furthermore, the site was previously home to a massive social housing project which had many complex political, social and economic issues to name a few.

(left) Old social housing buildings being torn down. (right) Pruit Igoe site as it sits today.

My idea so far is simple. Artists are the juggernauts of change - they move into derelict inner city neighbourhoods taking advantage of cheap rent and proximity to downtown districts. Over time, the artists find creative ways to bring interest into the area - and other artists follow. Eventually, the area becomes hip and popular with cafes, boutiques and shops opening up. Artists then pack up and leave because it becomes an expensive neighbourhood and continue with their gentrifying ways elsewhere. It's really quite a fantastic thing for a city to have this happen, so it is my hope that this will be the case with St. Louis.

However I cant just expect artists to suddenly appear. My plan is to conceptualize the development of a new college devoted to arts, design, fashion, film, architecture, and all mediums in between. For now we shall call this the Pruitt-Igoe College of Art and Design (PICAD). The development of this institution over time will bring artists from all across the area into the site and its surroundings, essentially kick starting the gentrification process I previously described.

The Design Process
The development of the enormous site will be phased - beginning with the first college buildings, residences, and eventually seeing the college's expansion, the creation of public spaces, and finally mixed used private and public developments. For this project I will be creating a master plan that envisions the area in the distant future of what I imagine it to look like when complete.

Site Plan showing the introduction of a street grid, public spaces and buildings

The site is broken up into small lots similar to those throughout the area. Buildings will be predominantly low rise town-houses on the quiet streets (Dutch style woonerfs - which I'll explain in detail in a later post), and mid rise mixed use buildings on the more busy streets. The mixed use buildings will see retail on the ground floor, and above that will be either office, subsidized housing, market rate housing, or a mix. The PICAD buildings will follow a similar programming strategy: Classrooms, studios, offices and such on the lower floors, with student housing on the upper floors. There will also be buildings that are entirely student residences, and those that are entirely for classes.


I realised that designing the entire site in detail is a ridiculous amount of work, so I need to downsize. What I'm thinking is designing the southernmost part of the site which has the most interesting features. To the west end is a major public square with a preforming arts theatre at its end. Perpendicular to the square is a linear park that has the PICAD buildings along its edges. The central north-south corridor that cuts through the middle of the site is a market street. I call it that because it will be pedestrian only on certain days when street vendors can bring out their displays to the sidewalk. It will be similar to Kensington Market's pedestrian sundays here in Toronto.

Since this project is in the very early stages, I'll just plop a few work in progress images here. Much more to come later!

The Development Front: One Bloor East

Project: One Bloor East
Location: 1 Bloor St East, Toronto
Developer: Great Gulf Homes
Architect: Hariri Pontarini Architects
Status: Under Construction (Excavation)

This is Canada's most important intersection. The corner of Yonge and Bloor streets in downtown Toronto is a bustling hub of activity for pedestrians, drivers, and commuters. It is the intersection of two subway lines, on the longest street in the world, and home to the cities second pedestrian scramble crossing. The corner is the northern bookend to downtown Toronto's skyline and probably the most appropriate site in the city for an iconic tower.

The Original Proposal

The large plot of land sitting at the south-east corner has a storied history. It had seen numerous proposals and redesigns that have fallen flat until Great Gulf's most recent proposal. The original proposal from the 1990s envisions a tower with an oval shaped plan that narrows towards the top. It's crown is a sort of shark fin shaped thing reminiscent of early condo designs in Vancouver.

Original 1990s Proposal for 1 Bloor.

The proposal rezoned the site for a large mixed use tower but nothing came of it. A few years ago in a lecture I recall a professor discussing how the proposal was only intended to drastically increase the value of land with the intent of selling for huge gains - the developer had not intended to build the building at all. 

Second & Third Designs

A development company from Kazakhstan called Bazis purchased the site and proposed a mixed use tower with large scale retail, residential and hotel space. The design was released in the early days of Toronto's massive building boom that continues to this day. Of course, the proposal sat stale for a while before Bazis released their third design.

Second and third designs for 1 Bloor by Bazis.

Fourth Design: It Hits the Market

In 2007 this development became the talk of the town when Bazis officially released their 3rd design (4th overall for the site) and the project hit the market. It became the biggest development in town and people lined up overnight for the opening of the sales office. Needless to say it seemed this was the most successful condo project in the city.

Fourth design for 1 Bloor

Fifth Design: Great Gulf Takes Over

Despite Bazis' great success with sales, the Lehman Brothers who financed the project went bankrupt and the project was no more. Great Gulf bought the site from Bazis and came up with the site's fifth design which is slightly scaled back, but features a much more elegant design by Hariri Pontarini Architects.

The architects use balconies to their advantage to create a sleek curvy façade along the tower, as well as a series of terraces on the podium. 

Fifth (and final) Design by Great Gulf + Hariri Pontarini Architects

Construction photo posted by Androiduk on urbantoronto.ca

Well Hello, I Didn't See You There

I've been obsessing over the world of architecture for years now. I'm not entirely sure when it began but for as long as I can remember I have been reading about development projects, urbanism, architecture, etc. in my spare time. Reading, researching, discovering, stumbling upon and realising has been such a significant part of my architectural development that it continually eats up my spare time. You wouldn't believe the reactions I get when I tell people that when I'm not working on an architectural project, I'm studying architecture. Do I need a life?

In any case, I decided this morning rather spontaneously to start a blog. I've been doing so much reading that maybe its time to do some writing instead. Why? One day I'll look back and wonder what on earth I was thinking. This blog will hopefully document that.

Now is a good time to introduce myself. My name is Michael, I am a fourth year architecture student at Ryerson University in Toronto. I love architecture in general, but I am  particularly interested in a buildings contextual relationship, its materiality, its streetscape, and the spaces it creates. I have been following the Toronto development scene since I started highschool, particularily on sites such as urbantoronto.ca, skyscrapercity.com and skyscraperpage.com. I am  no writer (you may have already figured this out) but I figured I'd give this a shot and provide my opinion on the doings of architecture in Toronto and Canada. Not only do I love architecture, but I am also very interested in the world of technology, especially computers and gadgets. Finally, I have had a love for music and have been writing and playing songs for years.

This is the way the blog will work. I will break posts into a bunch of different sections I find interesting and will probably end up writing alot about. 

The Development Front

The development section will take a look at new projects in Toronto that have just recently been conceived, are in the planning stages, or under construction. I'll post renderings, plans, elevations and critique the design.

Critique

The critique section will quite simply be a critique of an existing building, most likely in Toronto. I'll focus on recently completed projects and hopefully will be able to provide a quick tour. I'm going to try to streamline the critiques by introducing a rating system, so buildings can be easily compared.

Home Brew

This section will be a place for me to post and discuss my own designs from school projects, work, and my spare time projects.

From the Studio

On the lighter side of things, this is where I'll talk about anything and everything from the life of an architecture student.

And there we have it. I look forward to sharing with you my world and my ideas.