Ballard Community and Designers Meeting

Friday we had a quick meeting/review with the Ballard Community Council to give them an update on our progress and developing ideas. Here is part of what we showed them. We got some good feedback and direction/voiced concerns over the course of the day so that now we can address them over the next two weeks. Please Click the Picture for Higher Quality Images

I think from here we are moving to a more over-arching theme of Health in the project. Taking the health themes expressed on page 1 and pushing them and calling them out throughout the whole project. Thanks for checking it out!
Until next time!

LID Enhanced Greenways and Stops as Destinations

Hey guys, today we met with community members of Ballard and bounced some ideas off them on the future of Ballard around a series of Rapid Ride Stops. It was a good experience and it always helps to work with real people to get a sense of real world concerns. I have found myself concerned more and more with the financial side of projects. I was telling my partner today, I dont see a beautiful canopy spread across the intersection, all I see is a giant $ falling crushing the entire project from reality. What I am interested in is rooting out community support and community groups that are already established and working with them to make some of the project cheap, and thus more likely to happen. Because in the end what does it always come down to? Will power and money? Mostly money. Here is a couple photos I took while working in the studio on Sunday for the Monday meeting.
I should mention those green corridors being sketched out are planned to be Low Impact Developement (LID) enhanced greenways, meaning that they share the road with the little vehicular traffic that exists there.

Next we move into the digital stage and further look into funding and areas that we can possible do some rezoning....touchy.
Until next time! :D

Urban Agriculture

Hi Everyone!
This week in studio we presented our findings about our topics of interest. Mine was Urban Agriculture. The first page of the document I put together outlines words we associate with the two separate terms, "Urban" and "Agriculture". It then goes on to explore why we as a society grow in one place but not in others. Then breaking that down the document explores precedents that have broken out of the normal box of food production to try something "new" in the urban environment.

The examples on this page explore three different reasons why people decide to grow in an urban environment rather that the traditional rural. The first reason being that in Gaza they are effectively cut off from a rural food supply thus they must grow their own food on their roofs to survive. The second example is of a company intending to make money by eliminating the need for land, soil, and much water through the science of hydroponics land "vertical farming"> Green Green Earth company is based and Japan and serves companies like Subway, Disneyland, and the US Military according to their website.

The last page brings the issues closer to Ballard and shows that the Ballard neighborhood in Seattle has a real desire to move into the area of Urban Agriculture. We can see this in these examples which are very few in compared to the many out in the neighborhood that are currently active.

There are some URL's in the bottom right hand corner of the final page if you want to learn more!
Until Next Time!