Thursday, December 27, 2012

David Rubin | LAND COLLECTIVE Vol #5


Bridges


"We Build Too Many Walls, and Not Enough Bridges." Isaac Newton

A bridge is a connector, not simply a structure that carries a pathway over a depression or obstacle. Bridges eliminate barriers and offer opportunities, not only to the possibilities of the other side, but to a vantage point from which to see where one has been and where one is going. They are iconic, powerful structures that symbolize a community’s willingness to reach beyond their own borders. Bridges link two opposite sides and in doing so join people together, creating possibilities for gathering collectively. As infrastructure that promotes human connection, a bridge is paramount in the creation of a socially-sustainable environment, and it is landscape from which bridges spring and upon which they alight. Our common ground that unifies people, landscape is the most democratic environment and does not discriminate between people, their occupation or position in life.

Three years ago, Davood Liaghat of Buro Happold invited Yves Pages & Benoit Le Thierry d'Ennequin of Explorations Architecture and David A. Rubin, then partner at OLIN, to enter the Northern Virginia Regional Commission’s design competition for the Four Mile Run Pedestrian/Cyclist Bridge between Arlington County and the City of Alexandria. The team’s entry envisions a structure that not only crosses the tributary, but is also a place – an occupiable structure from which to see and be seen. The bridge focuses on the park’s interior water edge with amphitheater seating that steps down from the central pedestrian and cycling path, so that those seated float just above the water’s elevation. And on the opposite side, a high-backed bench along the upper edge of the bridge focuses on the parade of those passing by. Four Mile Run Bridge recently completed the first quarter of its public review process.


Four Mile Run Bridge
The team assembled once more in 2010 for the ARC: International Wildlife Crossing Infrastructure Design Competition and became one of six international finalists in this prestigious ideas-generating effort. The entry, entitled “Wild X-ing”, is an iconic, adaptable and modular structure capable of being deployed in a variety of circumstances. It is comprised of landscape components that allow the bridge to adapt to its surroundings, even in the face of changing habitat and wildlife migration patterns due to global warming, so that a feeling of “normalcy” supports the mega-fauna that will use the bridge to cross challenging vehicular traffic conditions, like the I-70 competition site. The inventive solution has been presented and displayed at several conferences and museums over 2012, including: “Yellowstone to Yukon: The Journey of Wildlife and Art,” at the Whyte Museum of Banff, Alberta, Canada; the Infra Eco Network Europe (IENE) Conference in Berlin, Germany; the TranOvation Conference in Leesburg, VA; and America’s Summit on National Parks, Washington, D.C.

David Rubin | LAND COLLECTIVE wishes you and yours joy and success as we bridge the New Year to 2013. 

David A. Rubin is honored to be included on the Dell #Inspire 100 list acknowledging "100 influencers in entrepreneurship, philanthropy, education and media who use technology to empower and inspire others." To learn more, click here and look under "The Creatives”.

Wednesday, December 19, 2012

Images of UC Berkeley's Cal Memorial Stadium Project

Memorial Plaza over top of the Student Athlete High Performance Stadium


Memorial Plaza over the Student Athlete High Performance Center - San Francisco Bay in the Distance

The Oak Grove at UC Berkeley's Memorial Stadium




Monday, December 17, 2012

UC Berkeley's Student Athlete High Performance Center



UC Berkeley’s Student Athlete High Performance Center Project Brief

UC Berkeley was investigating several project initiatives in the Southeast District of the campus, an area that had grown organically, with little comprehensive vision, along Piedmont Avenue, one of the original Olmsted-defined avenues that described the extent of the campus. These projects included a collaborative undertaking between the Haas School of Business and Berkeley’s School of Law known as the Law and Business Connection Building – to be located between both schools – as well as the Student Athlete High Performance Center (SAHPC), a much-needed athletic facility dedicated to both Cal Bears football and high-level sports training, including Olympic training. In an effort to give vision to these projects in the context of the extended campus, Berkeley hired landscape architect David Rubin, former partner at OLIN, now of David Rubin | LAND COLLECTIVE, to define the connective elements that would unify these projects into a Southeast Campus Master Plan, fostering connectivity across Piedmont and unifying the extended area with the rest of campus. Simultaneously developing the vision plan, Rubin collaborated with architectural teams on the Stadium effort (HNTB Los Angeles and STUDIOS Architecture SF) and the Law and Business project (Moore Ruble Yudell Architects) to ensure that the ideals of the bigger vision were also included in these projects. 

Although the Law and Business collaboration did not come to fruition, the SAHPC building and ancillary projects associated with the upgrade of the historic stadium moved forward. Working with HNTB Los Angeles and Studios Architecture SF, Rubin redefined the proposed facility not as a four-sided construct that would compete with the historic structure, but as a complementary structure that could harmoniously fit within the significant topography of the site (Berkeley’s stadium is set on a steep slope such that the western façade is fully expressed while the eastern façade is non-existent – the eastern edge is flush with grade) and preserve and embellish the historic vista to the stadium (in a majority of the stadium’s life, the façade acted as a wayfinding device and identifier for this area of campus).  By pushing the SAHPC down into the ground and taking advantage of the slope of the land, the resultant built form would be expressed as a “smile” on the western face, while the roof of the building could become a viable civic landscape for the University, supporting the campus when 65,000 people are in attendance at a game, or on non-game days, when students, faculty and administration are seeking a new, sacred space within the campus.

In collaboration with the building architects, Rubin used landscape principles to inform the character of the new structure. With consideration to the potential composition as a whole, somehow, the materiality of the project had to unify the articulated, board-formed concrete Beaux Arts stadium with the rhyolite wall running along Piedmont’s northern eastern sidewalk and everything in between. Informed by John Dixon Hunt’s writings on “The Three Natures,” where proximity to culture is defined in the landscape through increasing refinement and decreasing rustication, Rubin created a palette of stone and concrete that changes as one approaches the stadium from Piedmont.  This Renaissance principle defines landscape in three parts – the cultured landscape (manicured gardens), the agricultural landscape (productive fields), and the Realm of the Gods (that area of nature described as “wild”). Olmsted understood these principles, whether explicit or inferred, and deployed them in his work, including the Biltmore estate and Central Park. Applied at Berkeley, the coarse nature of the Rhyolite wall became the most rusticated threshold, the SAHPC walls and façade were generated in degrees of refinement in stone and concrete from more coarse to less coarse, and the historic stadium walls represent the most refined surface – an articulated Beaux Arts façade.

What used to be parking and drive lanes encircling the stadium is now a civic plaza which serves the campus as a gathering space, where the landscape of the Oak Grove climbs up on top of the new structure, creating an ecotone of greater diversity that will, eventually, link the Oak Grove with the Berkeley Hills to the northeast. Previous to this project, the Oak Grove was isolated – an island of landscape surrounded by Piedmont and parking.  One of the greatest challenges of the project was convincing the administration of the viability of landscape over structure. Using built examples and Rubin’s twenty years of experience designing landscapes over structure, the administration was guardedly convinced of the importance of landscape elements in creating a new civic space that would become a gathering point for the University on game- and non-game days throughout the year.

Wednesday, December 5, 2012

Canal Park in ASLA's DIRT


Canal Park, designed by David A. Rubin while partner at OLIN, is featured in the American Society of Landscape Architects' website magazine, DIRT. The feature is entitled "A New Park Where There Was Once A Canal."