Come join us if you can - for an hour or a few minutes. Work on display will be for the System Restart project, for which I previously posted the briefs. 

​Cities are systems, systems within systems. Government, infrastructure, food, healthcare, education, taxes, ecosystems - these are just a few examples. We live in a time characterized by dysfunction and lack of investment (#neglect) in many of these systems. Some of these are spectacular – levee failure – to mundane - a crack in the sidewalk. As we’ve seen in #Flintwatercrisis, catastrophes happen when multiple system failures align in the same space.
Understanding the systems operating within cities lets us understand cities and how to accomplish tasks (change, built work, permit approval) within them far better. In this project the systems of the city become more visible to us through the places where they break down. We reframe these places as opportunities for design.
 
How can design utilize dysfunctional urban systems to create more just, healthy, and sustainable environments?
 
Project site: Chosen by individual student for his/her Part II design. Choose a site that:

• Is within the city of Syracuse.
• Includes one or more points of failure in your selected system from Part I
• Is 0.25-1.0 acre in size (that’s about ¼ of Shaw Quad)
• Demonstrates a clear rationale for your site choice (eg: the most influential, the most visible, the most typical…)
• I approve.

What to do:

• Choose any system from among those presented on 2.11.16 as part of System Restart Part I. You *do not have to use the same system for Part II that you used for Part I!*
• Use the information from Part I as the foundation for your Part II design, and to inform your design process. Sharing of information and graphics from Part I between students is strongly encouraged! But all work you turn in must be your own (eg: do your own drawings).

Site functions (program): Part II designs must:

• Include a clear connection to an existing urban system within Syracuse, as explored in Part I.
• Include a clear rationale for site choice based on existing conditions.
• Mitigate (lessen the impact of) the system’s dysfunction.
• Improve the system’s function, at least in a minor way.
• Improve the city or a part of it (even if small) as a place for all residents.
• Be primarily sitework (not buildings). Designs may include one or more structures as well.
• Provide a single cohesive design that includes sitework and any included structures (ie not a design solely for a structure or building).

 
 
Project schedule:
Th 2.11            Part I in-class presentation, posts to social media/your online portfolio, tagged with @samedelstein and @Andrew_Maxwell, #iteams (+other hashtags at your discretion)
Part II project brief posted via @susandieterlen and on City Wild (blog)
Tu 2.16 &        No formal class meeting-
Th 2.18            no studio deadlines week. Email me with questions or to meet by appointment.
Tu 2.23            80% complete; Regular studio meeting
Th 2.25            Poster Session with Syracuse I-Team (location and details TBA)
M 2.29            5:00 p.m.: Parts I and II due in pdf to class Google drive folder. Please submit your Part I work as completed for 2.11.16, even if you used a different system for Part II.
                        Post final boards to social media/your online portfolio, tagged with @samedelstein and @Andrew_Maxwell, #iteams.
 
Deliverables:
Pdf of final boards uploaded to course website, AND
For poster session: 2 – 24”x 36” boards in hardcopy, unmounted, oriented horizontally (eg: 36” wide). Also include a separate paragraph explaining your design intent (300 words or less) – details about how to submit this paragraph will be forthcoming.
Boards should include:
 

• Plan/perspective/section(s) presenting your design for your selected (and approved) site. Include at least one drawing showing *all* of your design, such as a plan or a bird’s eye perspective.
• More detailed drawings (sections/perspectives/enlargement plans – your choice) to aid in communicating your design to a non-design audience.
• Supporting infographics to communicate connection to existing conditions of your chosen system within Syracuse, and rationale for your choice of site within system.
• Context map, aerial photo or other graphic locating your chosen site within your chosen urban system, and that system within the city of Syracuse.

 
Designs should be realistic in terms of scale and relationships of site elements, with materials specified for key elements.
 
Evaluation Criteria:

• All elements listed above under “Deliverables” present.
• Design provides elements listed under “Site Functions,” above.
• Design safeguards public health, safety, and welfare.
• Deliverables communicate well and at an appropriate level of detail to a professional but non-design audience (eg: the I-team).
• Deliverables demonstrate good graphic representation and craft.
• Online posts made as directed above and final pdfs uploaded to course folder.

 
 
Copyright © 2016  Susan Dieterlen

If you've been following the news about the drinking water crisis in Flint, Michigan, or if you haven't, but you care about cities, their most vulnerable residents, public policy, politics, power, and the dismal state of public infrastructure, check this out. A simple guest lecture for my current class, Studio|Next, has grown into what promises to be an excellent session with a congressional rep from Flint and two local faculty members. Those of you in the Syracuse area around lunchtime on Tuesday are welcome to bring your lunch and come by the Center of Excellence. Those of you in other places can join us via the web. Either way, link is below for the free registration site. If you're missing City Wild Seminar or the first version of Studio|Next, this will remind you of old times in the postindustrial wild! Take a look-

-S

 
Flint: 
Water + Lead + Infrastructure
 
Tuesday, February 9, 2016,  Noon to 1:00pm
 
REGISTER HERE TO JOIN IN PERSON
REGISTER HERE TO JOIN VIA WEBINAR

Flint, a city of about 100,000 in southeastern Michigan, is known as the birthplace of General Motors and for subsequent Rustbelt decline. Two new words define the city nationally: lead poisoning. Contamination of the municipal water supply and a shocking list of resulting health problems are a product of uniquely toxic chemistry, politics, and power within the region and the state. However, aging infrastructure and social inequality, problems shared by many other American cities, were also key ingredients in this disaster, prompting the question of whether this could happen elsewhere, and how to prevent it.
 
Please join this panel discussion as Hon. Dan Kildee, U.S. House of Representatives, of Flint, Michigan. speaks from Washington, D.C. about the current drinking water crisis and its connections with the city's infrastructure. Rep. Kildee is a lifelong Flint resident who founded the pioneering Genesee County Land Bank and co-founded the Center for Community Progress, a national organization promoting urban land reform and revitalization.

This session was created as part of:
ARC 407 Studio|Next: Building the Post-Carbon City #citybynext
 
Panelists:
 
Telisa M. Stewart, Assistant Professor, Upstate Medical University
Paula C. Johnson, Professor, Syracuse University College of Law
 
Session chair and organizer: 
 
Susan Dieterlen, Research Assistant Professor, Syracuse University School of Architecture, Faculty Research Fellow, SyracuseCoE
 
*There is no charge for participating in this event.

Cities are systems, systems within systems. Government, infrastructure, food, healthcare, education, taxes, ecosystems - these are just a few examples. We live in a time characterized by dysfunction and lack of investment (#neglect) in many of these systems. Some of these are spectacular - the levees failing in New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina - while others are mundane - a crack in the sidewalk.
​
Understanding the systems operating within cities lets us understand functioning cities and how to accomplish tasks (change, built work, permit approval) within them far better. In this project the systems of the city become more visible to us through the places where they break down.
 
What design opportunities are created by dysfunctional urban systems?
 
Project site: The city of Syracuse. Some systems may include areas beyond the city or even its suburbs (eg: watersheds).
What to do:

• Brainstorm as a class the systems of the city - social, economic, ecological, physical (infrastructure) - natural or constructed. Which of these are functioning and which are not?
• Choose a system or related group of systems to investigate from the list.
• Educate yourself about your chosen system in Syracuse: how it functions, what's involved in it, why it matters to a functioning city. How is it supposed to work? How do you know it's working well or measure success (#data)?
• Identify failure within the system. What does failure look like? How do you know it's occurred (the opposite of measuring success; #data)? What are examples? Real-life case studies or profiles of failures? These could include maps of local failures or depictions of examples from other places.
• Add space into the process: where are these failures located? How do they relate spatially to the rest of the system? What do you learn about the system and its failures by looking at it spatially?
• Learn/hypothesize about causes of dysfunction in the system. Failing urban systems typically have multiple causes, which makes them complicated to fix (#wickedproblem). One way to think about causes is as pre-existing conditions, which set the scene (#neglect), and as “last straw” events, which provide the last step needed for failure to appear.
• What other site analysis information is missing from your dossier? Track it down and find it.

 
 

 
Project schedule:
M 2.01             Project brief posted via @susandieterlen and on City Wild (blog)
Tu 2.02            Guest lecture by Syracuse I-Team’s Andy Maxwell and Sam Edelstein (CoE 508); go over project brief; begin Part I
Tu 2.09            Flint water crisis panel (Room 203, Syracuse Center of Excellence; noon-1:00)
Th 2.11            Part I finished; in-class presentation, posts to social media, tagged with @samedelstein and @Andrew_Maxwell, #iteams (+other hashtags at your discretion) Part II begins (see separate project brief)
Th 2.25            Poster Session with Syracuse I-Team (location TBA)
M 2.29            5:00 p.m.: Parts I and II due in pdf to class Google drive folder.
Tu 3.01            Post final boards to social media, tagged with @samedelstein and @Andrew_Maxwell, #iteams
 
Deliverables:
1 – 24”x36” board (digital) OR equivalent in Prezi including:

• Explanation and illustration of your chosen system
• Infographics (Venn diagrams, timelines, flow charts…) as appropriate
• Map of Syracuse and/or parts of the city as appropriate

 
Evaluation Criteria:

• Product clearly communicates chosen system, and locates it in space within Syracuse.
• System’s function or lack thereof is evaluated, with support for evaluation of success or failure.
• Product identifies at least 3 specific failures in the system, and locates them in space.
• Causes of system dysfunction are provided (OK if speculative, but provide evidence).
• Product enables a classmate to start on Part II (identifying opportunities and sites)
• Deliverables communicate well and at an appropriate level of detail (including how design resists and incorporates entropic process).
• Deliverables demonstrate good graphic representation and craft.

 
 
 
 
 
 
Copyright © 2016  Susan Dieterlen