OFF-RAMP: A r c h i t e c t u r a l o p p o r t u n i t y i n t h e m o b i l e l a n d s c a p e . OFF-RAMP: ARCHITECTURAL OPPORTUNITY IN THE MOBILE LANDSCAPE by Blake Anthony Preszler A thesis submitted in partial fulfi llment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Architecture in Architecture MONTANA STATE UNIVERSITY Bozeman, Montana April 2009 ©COPYRIGHT by Blake Anthony Preszler 2009 All Rights Reserved ii. APPROVAL of a thesis submitted by Blake Anthony Preszler This thesis has been read by each member of the thesis committee and has been found to be satisfactory regarding content, English usage, format, citation, bibliographic style, and consistency, and is ready for submission to the Division of Graduate Education. Ralph Johnson Approved for the Department of Arts and Architecture John Brittingham Approved for the Division of Graduate Education Dr. Carl A. Fox iii. STATEMENT OF PERMISSION TO USE In presenting this thesis in partial fulfi llment of the requirements for a master’s degree at Montana State University, I agree that the Library shall make it available to borrowers under rules of the Library. If I have indicated my intention to copyright this thesis by including a copyright notice page, copying is allowable only for scholarly purposes, consistent with “fair use” as prescribed in the U.S. Copyright Law. Requests for permission for extended quotation from or reproduction of this thesis in whole or in parts may be granted only by the copyright holder. Blake Anthony Preszler April, 2009 iv. TABLE OF CONTENTS 1.MOBILE INFRASTRUCTURE. . . . . . 02 2.MOBILE LANDSCAPES . . . . . . . 06 3.CORBU ON CARS . . . . . . . . 10 4.CARCHITECTURE . . . . . . . 16 5.PRECEDENTS . . . . . . . . 18 6.PACKING MACHINE. . . . . . . . 20 7.INTERSTATE 90 . . . . . . . . 22 8.AMERICAN HIGHWAY LANDSCAPE . . . . . 24 9.RE-LEARNING FROM LAS VEGAS . . . . . 28 10.PROPOSAL . . . . . . . . 30 11.SITE ANALYSIS . . . . . . . . 36 REFERENCES 38 REFLECTION 40 Abstract. Thesis. The ubiquitous character of automobiles and mobile infrastruc- ture has formed a series of un-exploited relationships with our built environment. The automobile and architecture continue to operate as unsynchronized functions. While the automobile is constantly evolving as a means of technology and space, ar- chitecture is trapped in a vacuous state, slow to adapt, un- evolved, submitting to the will of the car. Since its inven- tion, the automobile and the infrastructures it travels, has remained a challenge to architecture. The relationship between automobile and architecture has reached a tipping point, and therefore needs to be re-questioned. The intent of this thesis is to create an environment where a reciprocal re- lationship between the automobile and architecture emerges. Therefore, this project proposes infrastructural and programmatic opportunities where auto- mobile and architecture operate syn- chronically. 1 ‘Made evident during the 20th century, massive transformation of the urban landscape occurred as a result of mass industrialization and mass mobility.’1 John H. Daniels Mobile Infrastructure. ‘Democratization of mobility: The Interstate Highway System has facilitated an unprecedented expansion of mobility and in a democratic manner—no nation on earth can equal the mobility that is available to the over- whelming majority of American. More than 90% of the nation’s households have access to automobiles.’2 The Interstate Highway Act of 1956 marked a zealous movement of expanding America’s mobile infrastructure. Conceived by President Eisenhower, the 42,000 miles of Interstate signaled an era of the pro-road urge to spread the fabric of America. These new infrastruc- tures manifested prosperity within the heart of Ameri- ca, symbolizing freedom, democracy, most importantly, mobility. The fervor to expand America’s road system irreversibly imposed a system of infrastructural organization upon America’s cities that generated a continental mode of unilateral expansion premised on mass mobility. These mobile infrastructures: Highways, roads, parking lots, have become the dominant effi gies of the contemporary city. 2 The modern city is sustained by its infrastructure. High- ways, off-ramps, and roads form the fundamental groundwork for mobilizing the contemporary urban environment. Image: www.fhwa.dot.gov 3 Image: Los Angeles. Google Earth 4 Since the advent of 20th century mobile society, infrastructural systems of mobility have re-shaped the urban form of our cities. Image: Phoenix subdivision. Google Earth 5 Mobile Landscapes. ‘The motor car has killed the city; the motor car must save the great city.’3 Le Corbusier The infrastructural forms of motorway inter- sections, highways, off-ramps and car parks, foreground the reciprocity between the mobile landscape and architecture. Early Modernist ar- chitects like Le Corubusier saw the automobile as a device for architectural opportunity. His car-centric schemes such as Plan Voisin (1925) and Plan for Algiers (1932) were early attempts to create auto utopias where the highly mobilized society and architectural planning synergized. According to Corb, the automobile and was only useful to the city if it facilitated a mutual re- lationship, both aesthetically and functionally with its environment. Despite the early Modernist attempts of creating synergy between the mobile environment and the built environment “the mass- produced automobile has remained aesthetically and stylistically detached from the surroundings it travels through.”4 6 Image: Parking lot in Detroit. Google Earth 7 ‘In newer North American cit- ies, the patterns of development, land-use, and land coverage were all determined by the require- ments and presumptions of car- dominated transportation from the beginning of their major growth. Each new act of city building re- quired appropriate parking to be included at the outset, and wide urban streets were laid out and constructed with the specifi c goal of assuring car access. Build- ings, the distance between them, and the sequences of entering and exiting them all deferred to the demands of the car. The result was an unprecedented scale and pattern: large amount of paved open space devoted primarily to roadways and parking, with struc- ture interspersed at distances.’5 Moshie Safdie Image: Las Vegas. Google Earth 8 The result of our contract to mobilize has rendered the built envrion- ment in which we live a fl attened panorama of highway and parking lot. Image: Shopping Center in Phoenix. Google Earth 9 Corbu on Cars ‘Lets us display, then, the Parthenon and the motor-car so that it may be clear that it is a question of two products of selection in diff erent fi elds, one of which has reached its climax and the other evolving. Th at ennobles the automobile. And what then? Well, then it remains to use the motor-car as a chal- lenge to our houses and our great buildings. It is here that we come to a dead stop. “Rien ne va plus.” Here we have no Parthenons.’7 Parthenon ‘Th e motor-car marks the style of our epoch!’ 6 Image: Delage. Toward An Architecture Image: Parthenon. Toward An Architecture 10 Strip Mall. In Toward an Architecture, Corbusier vehemently argued that the automobile must be a challenge for architectural technology and standardization. At the turn of the century, mass-industrialization sparked new waves of automotive technology, estab- lishing the automobile as symbol of the industrial age. Today, the ever-changing continuity of car design shadows the sloth like progress of archi- tectural innovation and technology. “While little may have changed in the building industry, today’s automotive technology has been revolutionized.”9 It is as though architecture cannot embrace the future of technology while the automobile wears it on its sleeve. Since the insertion of the automo- bile on our landscape, the built environment has evolved by the totemic power of the automobile. At the center of the struggle between auto and archi- tecture is that latter of the two is fundamentally slow to adapt in terms of how it assembled. While new automotive technologies are rapidly evolving to facilitate the desires of the consumer, archi- tecture has reached an impasse, still construct- ed of traditional materials and archaic methods. ‘Today, technology transference—the information and technology exchange between the car industry and ar- chitects—reveals not only the deep-seated cultur- al differences between the two industries, but also the need to overcome contradictory political messages about the value of cars—and cities—within our society.’8 The contrast between contemporary architecture and the modern automobile is impeccable. 11 Image: Strip Mall. Bozeman Assembly of an automobile Image: Ford assembly line. motortrend.com 12 Assembly of a home Image: Suburban home. fl ickr.com 13 Car = Living Room Image: Interior of a Dodge Caravan. dodge.com 14 ‘Motor’home Image: Interior of an RV. fl eetwodrv.com 15 Carchitecture. 16 ger, lower buildings: off-ramps that barely curve as they link colliding freeways; retail parks and service centers that expand exponentially the closer they are to a road: these are the products of the new era of carchitecture. As speeds increased, our world has stretched; ramps length- en curves become shallower, archi- tecture longer, lower and leaner.’15 Simultaneously, the auto- mobile has been friend and foe to architecture. The pessimist might consider the relationship between automobile and architecture an envi- ronment of auto dystopia. But perhaps there is a cause for optimism; maybe carchitecture is the way of the fu- ture? Carchitecture’s defi nition may be positive or negative depending on how one embraces or denies the infl u- ence of the automobile. Consequent- ly, by our unwillingness to chal- lenge the automobile we have created landscapes of stasis, sprawl, a land of car supremacy. If we are to over- come our own automotive inadequacies we must challenge our dependency on vehicular activity and acknowledge that the automobile is an integral component of our architecture, cit- ies, and our society. Bell states: ‘Yet to deny the car in the city is to deny our lived experience of urbanism. The automobile and ar- chitecture have always interacted, playing off one another in complex and inter-related ways. Today it is fashionable to decry the destructive intrusion of the car, claiming it has swept away traditional urbanism, leaving blockaded, decaying inner cities surrounded by sprawling sub- urbs. However, the future-the imme- diate future-will almost certainly be as focused on four wheels as the past 100 years. It is how the four wheels will look, and the ways in which we will use them, that will determine the carchitecture of tomorrow.’16 In sum, the automobile is a mechanism for decoding a city−physically, architecturally, socially, spatially.17 If you want to make unity of city’s urban fab- ric, you must get in your car, using the windshield as if it were a lens, amassing context—linking time, ex- perience, and environment. We must not deny our auto-centric society, nor treat the car and architecture as isolated factors. There needs to be an environment where automo- bile and city become integral fac- tors of design, one that transforms the technological and social aspects of the automobile into architectur- al invention. Perhaps there is a way forward, where architecture the automobile can have reciprocating functions within our cities. “At the heart of the relationship between architecture and cars is the capac- ity to adapt, a two-way process that confounds the demand for swift and certain change.”18 A new formula- tion of carchitecture must be estab- lished—an off-ramp where the dilemmas between car and architecture exit, and where a symbiotic relationship between car and architecture enter. In this environment the automobile becomes an integral device of ar- ticulation and experience, where the parking lot becomes shopping cen- ter, where road becomes residence, where highway becomes main street. ‘The carchitecture of the fu- ture will be the environments in which we drive, not the en- vironments we drive through.’19 17 Le Corbusier’s Obus Plan for Algiers (1931) Conceived as a highway city, the system of implementation included linking the whole of the city via a highway. The highway connected two major suburbs. Although never realized, the plan provided fast circulation in-and-out of the city and included residential and com- merical structures. The main idea of Corbusier’s plan was to involve the speed and effi ciency of the auto- mobile into a livable highway that could be connected with national and multinational highway cit- ies. The highway would act as the main artery, linking residential, commerical, and civic functions. Marina City Chicago parking commerical residential Designed to be a city within a city, Archi- tect Bertrand Gold- berg sought to inte- grate the autombile with residential and commerical programs. Ultimately, it was the automobile that dictated scale and circulation. ‘Park- ing at Marina City is intergral to this vision; no park- ing structure is so tall of slender, or assumes so complete and embodiment of the spiral.’v Precedents. Images: planum.net Images: planum.net Image: wikipedia.com 18 NL Architects Parkhouse/Carstadt, Amsterdam NL architects combined car park and mixed-use archi- tectural program into this project. The automobile was the catalyst for program activity. By fusing ar- chitecture with infrastructure, though un-built, this project embodies the principles of a carchitecture of the future integrating parking with program. Freeway Interchange Tower The Freeway Interchange Tower was a proposal to utilize the freeway and the “throw-away” space it creates. By using transportation nodes, the proj- ect links car and California’s freeway context. Images: The Architecture of Parking 19 Packaging Machine. l “Packaging machines are products that are designed, by means of deliberate allusions, to elicit experiences beyond the products themselves.”21 from SNOOZE:IMMERSING MASS ARCHITECTURE IS MASS CULTURE Cars act as packaging machines. When you buy a car, you are essentially buying an expe- rience beyond what the car is. The car al- lows a myriad of experiences behind the wind- shield. Driving is a sensory experience. A journey across a city offers a plethora of view frames—windshield, driver side, passen- ger side, rearview mirror, side mirror— allow- ing you to decode the environment. When you buy a car, you are buying the experience of driving which allows you to engage the envi- ronment: spatially, physically, socially, and architecturally. The experience of driving elicits perception. 20    Visual perception is determined by frame of view Visual analysis is variable by speed a u d i t o r y p h y s i c a l v i s u a l Driving elicits a multitude of sensory experiences 3 m.p.h. 70 m.p.h Pedestrian Region Z CityZ Z Visual Frame the view frame from which we see determines interpretation what we experience is qualifi ed by view frame Visual Environment Windshield 21 Interstate 90. Boston Albany Chicago Billings Cleveland Sioux Falls ? Seattle Bozeman 3,020mi B o s t o n S e a t t l e A l b a n y S i o u x F a l l s C h i c a g o C l e v e l a n d B i l l i n g s B o z e m a n Interstate 90  Images: Webcam images along Interstate 90. weatherbonk.com 23 American Highway Landscape. ‘…the entire highway system is Junk- space, a vast potential utopia clogged by its users, as you notice when they’ve fi nally disappeared on vacation.’22 Rem Koolhaas The American highway landscape, like a Potemkin village, is a coagulation of engineered land, fabricated boxes, signs, glacis, and industrial build- ings determined by short-term plan- ning and economic effi ciency. “Ever more scientifi c in means and pragmat- ic in its ends, development seeks no other gradient but the one of least resistance: whether the continuous predatory stop-gap activity of “ef- fi cient market theory” or the “fast, cheap and out of control” breeder logic of self-regulating capital.”23 This state of contemporary Ameri- can cities is on a continuum of ex- ploiting urban identity for capital gains and economic profi ts. The high- way sets to isolate itself from the city. It is devoid of social sub- stance, culture, tradition, place, time, and context.24 The highway is a vortex of emptiness, a black and white boundary where the city ceas- es to exist. Moshie Safdie explains in The City After the Automobile: ‘Highways separate offi ce parks from shopping centers, which are separated from hotels and housing. Schools are isolated in residential suburbs, distant form cultural and recreation facilities that remain in the traditional centers. The dis- tinguishing pattern of dispersed land uses is not a composition, but an isolation of different activities.’25 Highways and its counterparts cut through our cities with razor sharp fi tness- a pursuit to extract capital from the territory underneath it. “Modern development no longer fi xes on single buildings, but rather on ex- tended production unit that typically number into the hundreds, cutting- and within months, fi lling-swathes through the landscape at scales that, until, recently corresponded to centuries of development in time and entire cities in scope.”26 Moreover, rampant modern development along highways begins to create a new kind of urban artery, isolating the city into a fragmentation of insulat- ed residential and corporate devel- opments that are detached from urban cores. Like a parasite sucking the blood of its host, highways draw the intrinsic characters out our cities— excreting the effl uence of sameness. The city of Bozeman, Montana is at major national intersection along Interstate 90 and it fails to estab- lish itself as a distinctive location on the map. It has fallen victim to mega-scale, mega-corporate industries proliferating in every other highway city. After the highway, the hotels, bulk food centers, strip malls, car dealerships, and the acres of parking lots we are left with an environment of stasis, blurring where you are and stripping the identity of place; it disengages you from where you are, where you were, and where you are going. Bozeman has lurched itself into the ecstasy of the generic—the “anywhere USA”— pixilated refl ection of an American highway city. As a result of apathetic city planning, A pixelation of Bozeman showing the pattern of dis- persed land uses as result of the highway. Image: Aerial of Bozeman. Google Earth 25 Image: Highway Gas Station. fl ickr.com 26 ‘From metalled roads to off-ramps, workshops to assmebly lines, motorways to car parks, service stations to motels, the car has shaped the ar- chitecture of the past century like no other object.’28 Jonathan Bell Image: Standard highway motel. scenicdakotas.com 27 Re-learning from Las Vegas ‘Th e vernacular road is a true vehicle for contemporary architecture,one that looks to advertising as a source for an architecture of iconography.’29 Robert Venturi Decorated Shed Image: Decorated Shed. Learning from Las Vegas Image: Learning from Las Vegas 28 The highway is a vessel in which symbols dominate space, designating speed, direction, and place. Signs make verbal and symbolic connections through space, commu- nicating a network of meanings and associations within seconds from far away.30 The highway is a habitat for symbol; the architecture of symbol indicates space; the symbol defi nes place. “This architecture of style and signs is antispatial; it is an architecture of communi- cation over space; communication dominates space as an element in the architecture and in the landscape.” Ar- chitecture in the highway landscape must communicate signifi cance—functionally and contextually symbolic at high speeds far away. The highway gives architecture an advantage for creating visibility, accessibility, and branding. Architecture in this environment is about es- tablishing a relationship between the highway and the design of a building. “Relationships between signs and buildings, between architecture and symbolism, between form and meaning, between driver and the roadside”31 are critical in this landscape. According to Venturi, a “decorated shed”, space and structure are denoted by its program. For instance, architecture on the high- way landscape should suggest a program relative to its context. Iconography, in this case, forms an association with context; it offers symbolism as a reference point. Without signs there is only place. Iconography is a result of sign and symbol. Image: View from I-90 in Bozeman29 Proposal. The aim of my proposal is to create a HYBRID SPACE where infrastructure and parking are integral to the buildings program. The intent of this project is to create an interface between the junction of North 19th St in Bozeman and Interstate 90 into a layered en- vironment of interaction consisting of a multitude of uses and programs that facilitate local, regional, and nation- al modes of mobility, thus forming a transportation nexus between city and region, region and nation. Interstate 90 Interstate 90 and n. 19th st. junction Existing off-ramps Interface diagram linking program with infrastructure 30 Hybrid Space. Instead of insular parking schemes where the process of parking is spatially detached from the buildings program, the building cultivates the experience of driving and parking by synchronizing the spatial re- lationships between parking and program into HYBRID SPACES, each dedicated to, and equipped for specifi c program functions. Synchronization occurs throughout the building, spatial requirements for automobiles connect and defi ne program, allowing fl exiblity of circulation and programmatic functions. typical parking program current= MORE PARKING LESS PROGRAM future= MORE PARKING MORE PROGRAM 31 PROGRAM CIRCULATION/PARKING Unfolded Hybrid Space Diagram. 32 Program. Parkn’ Camp sf program = 135 sf parking > 100 90,000 sf progam = 121,500 sf parking Motel f program = 90 sf parking >100 s 80,000 sf progam = 64,000 sf parking Commercial program = 135 sf parking > 100 sf 62,500 sf program = 84,375 sf parking Bus Terminal > 20,000 sf ndard bus dim[based on sta ensions] Gas Station > 20,000 sf Program Total = 685,875 sf 33 Program Logic. remote access helical remote access stitched stitched scissor integral integral scissor Standard Parking Ramp Diagrams Dietrich Klose, classifi cation of ramped car parks, 1965 34 Standard Motorway Diagrams Code Analysis triangle windmill fork maltese cross lozenge cloverleaf Standard Ramp Design length length blend length 10’-0” 8% 16% 6% 12% 8’-0” blend slope ramp slope <65’-0” >65’-0” blend ramp blend 7 ’ - 0 ” m i n Standard Parking Space Allocations Retail Motel Offi ce 100 sq ft Retail 100 sq ft Motel 100 sq ft Offi ce 135 sq ft Parking 80 sq ft Parking 65 sq ft Parking This project will comply to all Assembly Group A Code Requirements 303.1 Assembly Group A. Assembly Group A occupancy includes, among others, the use of a building or structure, or a portion thereof, for the gathering together of per- sons for purposes such as civic, social or religious functions, recreation, food or drink consumption or awaiting transportation. A room or space used for assembly purposes by less than 50 persons and accessory to another occupancy shall be included as a part of that occupancy. Source: Materials, Structures, Standards Source: Neufert Architect’s Data 35 Site Analysis. North 19th and Interstate 90: a collision of city and highway. Today, this axis remains to be the most heavily traveled intersection in Bozeman. I am proposing to utilize the left-over space created by the crisscross- ing of Interstate 90 and North 19th and the oblique forms created by the off-ramps. The main site strategy is to link with exist- ing infrastructural conditions (I-90 and N. 19th) in order to create a transportation nexus where a dialogue between local and na- tional modes of mobility are synergized. SITE PATH primary 1-90 secondary movement railroad commercial off-ramp 100 ft. INFRASTRUCTURE Disrict NODE tertiary overpass building entry corridor intersection AIRPORT RURAL LAND & SUBDIVSIONS BELGRADE L IV IN G S T O N B O Z E M A N E N T R Y R U R A L L A N D & S U B D IV S IO N S BRIDGER MOUNTAINS VIEW CORRIDOR B O Z E M A N V I E W C O R R I D O R 36 site section 1 site section 2 site 1-90 off-ramp19th St/1-90city boundary hotelbig box store commercial district parking lot .5 mi suburbia site hotel business commercial district .4 mi frontage road parking lot city boundary1-90 off-ramp railroad off-ramp SOUTH ENTRY SOUTH JUNCTION NORTH OFF-RAMP NORTH JUNCTION Bozeman Montana City limits Primary Roads Site Interstate 90 Entry corridor Historic District Primary nodes of entry into Bozeman 7 t h S t . Main St. 1 9 t h S t . Entry Corridor: The vehicular entrance zone into Bozeman. Source: bozeman.net De Rijke, Alex, and Jonathan Bell, eds. Carchitecture : When the Car and the City Collide. New York: Birkhauser Verlag AG, 2001. Glancey, Jonathan. “Architecture and the car: as the automobile evolved in tandem with modern architecture, it created myths, legends and new building types.” 11 Nov. 2 . Towards a New Architecture. Minneapolis: Dover Publications, Incorporated, 2000. 22 Oct. 2008 . 22 Oct. 2008 . Venturi, Robert, Denise Scott Brown, and Steven Izenour. Learning from Las Vegas. New York: MIT P, 1972. Venturi, Robert. “Off Ramp.” Architecture May 1998: 228. Bibliography 38 Endnotes 1 Daniels, John H., Landscape Infrastructures. Brochure. Toronto, ON: Author, 2008. 2 De Rijke, Alex, and Jonathan Bell, eds. Carchitecture : When the Car and the City Collide. New York: Birkhauser Verlag AG, 2001. 34. 3 Ibid 55. 4 Ibid 31. 5 Safdie, Moshie. The City After the Automobile. New York, NY: Happer Collins Inc, 1997. 5. 6 Towards a New Architecture. Minneapolis: Dover Publications, Incorporated, 2000. 140 7 Ibid 140 8 De Rijke, Alex, and Jonathan Bell, eds. Carchitecture : When the Car and the City Collide. New York: Birkhauser Verlag AG, 2001. 16. 9 Ibid 55. 10 Glancey, Jonathan. “Architecture and the car: as the automobile evolved in tandem with modern architecture, it created myths, legends and new building types.” 11 Nov. 2