Urban Design Challenges



CITY FOR WALKING

Get pedestrian territory back from car-occupied space. Organize vehicular circulation and parking lot into building structure, extrude safe architectural topography and produce dynamic pedestrian movements. Civic functions such as visitor center, bus stop with waiting lobby, bike station and car rental service should be incorporated to enhance the downtown Fargo tourism.

CITY OF ACTIVITIES

Generate vivid urban activities by continuous open spaces, SQUARE, TERRACED LAWN, CONCOURESE PLAZA and GALLERIA. SQUARE, inherited from existing open space at the southwest intersection of Broadway and 2nd Avenue N., delimited by US Bank and new building, composes small urban forest, lawn, fountain and mosaic of stone pavements and benches. TERRACED LAWN, sunny seating slope which views panorama of SQUARE, bridges between elevated open space and ground level. CONCOURSE PLAZA, active pedestrian platform, covers vehicular road, traverses from East to West side or Broadway to 5th street N. This strip forms sequential shop front and entries to retails, offices and skyways. GALLERIA, glass-roofed open space with grand steps, provides smooth access to retails at mezzanine and concourse levels and concludes the broad path between SQUARE and 3rd Avenue N.

CITY AS VILLAGE

Create robust urban community nested various urban programs of residential, commercial, recreational and cultural uses in limited place. Tolerate social and cultural heterogeneity and happenings in actual urban needs. Therefore retail and office spaces flexibly correspond to miscellaneous situations from private to public requests. Articulate colorful and vivid wall facade, honest expression of fundamental building elements like pillars, windows, balconies and rooms based on human scale and varieties of programs of inside.

Fargo, North Dakota, USA

LEVEL 1, Street Level

LEVEL 2, Concourse Level

LEVEL 3, Bridge Level

LEVEL 4

LEVEL 5, Roof Garden, Swimming Pool

Axonometric, LEVEL 1

Axonometric, LEVEL 2

Time Management Strategy,
Rythm of Dairy, Weekly, Monthly, Seasonal, Yealy and Life-long

CITY AS A LIVING ORGANISM
Develop continuous cycles of urban programs and maintenance strategies from Daily, Weekly, Monthly, Seasonally, Yearly and to Life-long rhythms. Such time-conscious urban management generates continuous flows or “open self-organizing systems” so as the living things shall sustain themselves autonomically. The final design goal is not the urban form but the way people to use city continuously.

CITY AS MARKET, RESTAURANT & THEATER
Make fancy architectural gesture of welcoming and inviting such as grand canopy, gate of glass galleria, soft ground for seating or sleeping. Schedule open-air events or performances such as market, concert, dance, food mobile and street dining. Define theatrical atmosphere or sense of enclosure surrounded by walls, windows, balconies, terraces, steps, slopes, streets and trees.

Dairy to Life-long Design Strategy for Urban Programs

Atrium, Great Steps, Amphirgeater

Facade, Streetscape

Open Great Lawn, Slope

Urban Plaza

CITY OF GREEN

Provide plenty of green surfaces and shade trees to reduce the temperature and to increase the humidity of artificial terrain filled with asphalt and concrete. Cultivate island of small plants and animals, contributed to biological diversity in the city. Apply passive and energy saving building system such as solar generation, geothermal air-conditioning, natural lighting, natural ventilation, green roof and green wall.

Google VR / 360°Media