Emily Parish Gordon 2012 Work Sample

EMILY PARISH GORDON 2012 WORK SAMPLE

Academic work 2010–2012Harvard Graduate School of Design


CONTENTS

2. Curriculum Vitae

4. Neo-Mining: Reconstituting the Foothills of Beijing for Peri-Urban Growth

10. Flux City: Willet’s Point

16. RiverCity Gothenburg: Dive In!

22. Forage Conservation: Sowey Naval Air Field

Emily Gordon . 2012 Work Sample

Curriculum Vitae

EDUCATION

2009-2012Harvard University. Cambridge, MassachusettsGraduate School of DesignMaster of Landscape Architecture I

2003-2007Vassar College. Poughkeepsie, New YorkConcentrations in Religion and Art HistoryBachelor of Arts, with Honors

PROFESSIONAL

2012Studio Instructor in Landscape Architecture. Career Discovery ProgramHarvard University. Cambridge, Massachusetts

2012Project development & graphic consultant. Green Roof Technologies, LLCBel Air, Maryland

2009-2012Teaching & research assistant. Graduate School of DesignHarvard University. Cambridge, Massachusetts

2007-2011Design intern. Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates, Inc.Brooklyn, New York

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AWARDS

ASLA Merit Prize, May 2012ASLA Student Awards, General Design nominee, 2012ASLA Student Awards, Analysis and Planning nominee, 2012GSD Platform 5 selection, Spring 2012 and Fall 2011International Architecture Biennale Rotterdam, nominee, 2011Penny White Award, Spring 2011GSD Platform 3 selection, Spring 2010 and Fall 2009

PUBLICATIONS

2012 Instigations: GSD 075, ed. Mohsen Mostafavi and Peter Christensen (forthcoming)Qinglonghu Foothill Strategy: Peri-Urban Development Alternatives for Southwest Beijing, ed. Kongjian YuAdaptive Terrain: Infrastructural Strategies in the Hills of Medelin, ed. Christian Werthmann (forthcoming)Third Coast Atlas, ed. Clare Lyster, Charles Waldheim, and Mason White (forthcoming)Platform 5, Harvard Graduate School of Design, publication and exhibition inclusion (forthcoming)

2011 A View on Harvard GSD, vol. 3, Harvard Graduate School of Design

2010 Platform 3, Harvard Graduate School of Design, publication and exhibition inclusion

[email protected] t. 845.206.8921315 Eckford Street, Apt. 3R, Brooklyn, New York 11222

3Curriculum Vitae


NEO-MINING Reconstituting the Foothills of Beijing for Peri-Urban Growth

GSD Spring 2012; critics Adrian Blackwell, Steven Ervin & Kongjian YuCollaboration with Carmen Martinez

Responding to the challenges of explosive growth in Beijing, and a peri-urban site scarred by limestone mines, Neo-Mining proposes alternative processes for urban expansion in Qinglonhu—a primarily agricultural township lying just outside the 6th ring road at the base of the foothills southwest of Beijing. Accounting for the extraction and reconstitution of raw material as necessities of growth, Neo-Mining leverages these as drivers of urban form. An ecologic life-cycle approach to the reuse of mining sites and materials generates and informs a new model for foothill urbanization.

Collapsing sites of extraction with sites of construction, Neo-Mining proposes continued mining phased with the construction of a new city directly on the Qinglonghu mines. As a result, land disturbance in minimized and the agricultural plane is preserved. Mining techniques and technologies are altered to efficiently provide both the material source of the city and its constructed foundations as well. Methods that previously degraded the environment are altered to become the backbones of new urban ecologies. Developing beyond a master plan that details phasing, connectivity, urban program, and density distribution, three specific experiments in urbanization ensue. Factors explored include material re-use, water management, landscape strategies, urban program, built form, and ultimately, unique urban identities carved from phenomenal sites.

Geologic Tourism & Research in the Beijing region (opposite)

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China University of GeosciencesBeijing Research Institute of Geology

Institute of Geology and Geophysics

Chinese Academcy of Geological Sciences

Peking Man of Zhoukoudon

Geological Museum of China

QINLONGHU MINES

regional rail

regional rail

Fengshan Geoparks Tourism District

Beijing General Research Institue of Mining & Metallurgy

Academic Work . Neo-Mining 5


2003 2006

2009 2012

Current mining practices exacerbate erosion and air pollution (below);

dispersed expansion of existing mines (above); strategic branching and phased

urbanization of future mines (right).

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2015 2020

2025 2030

Inactive existing mineActive mineResidentialResearch/institutionalTourism



SITE 2: 2025Research Campus

Population: 6,000 people Houses/Ha: 40 houses/Ha

Total surface: 38.51 Haopen space: 55%

roads: 4% residential: 10.3% institutional: 16% commercial: 6%

parking: 15%

SITE 3: 2030Tourist Destination

Population: 3000 people Houses/Ha: 55 houses/ Ha

Total surface: 13.83 Ha open space: 65%

roads: 1% residential: 18%

tourist: 7% commercial: 4%

facilities: 0 parking: 10%

SITE 1: 2020Residential Development

Population: 32,500 people Houses/Ha: 85 houses/ha

Total surface: 125.46 ha % surface roads. 6.5%

open space: 27.5% residential: 42% industrial: 20 % commercial: 3%

other facilities: 3% parking: 7%

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Emily Gordon . 2012 Work Sample10

FLUX CITY: Willet’s Point

GSD Spring 2011; critics Gary Hilderbrand & Chris ReedIndividual work

Traditional Western cities are typically founded on principles of stability and permanence. Change and uncertainty—in the form of rich and complex landscape systems—are typically erased, filled, leveled, denuded, marginalized, or stabilized. Experimenting within an alternative methodology that searches for a more responsive framework, the Flux City studio focuses on the development of urban form as driven by ecology and environmental dynamics—a landscape-based urbanism —aspiring to resiliency with regard to long-term environmental, social, political, and economic shifts.

Flux City explores and challenges the perceived juxtapositions between fixed urban infrastructures and the environmental dynamism that characterizes coming climate change and sea level rise in Willet’s Point, Queens—a marginalized Flushing Bay neighborhood whose position is highly problematic for urban growth and land investment. The encompassing 100-year flood zone continues to hinder development in the area. Not only is the site unprotected from rising sea levels and storm surge on its coastal edge, but it currently forms a bottle-neck pinch-point for a larger inland flood basin that drains increasing levels of precipitated storm water into Flushing Bay. These conditions further stress complex networks of aging and insufficient infrastructures surrounding the site. Automotive disassembly businesses have successfully colonized the marginal land of Willet’s Point, but operate largely without environmental or economic regulation, resulting in high levels of contamination that are further mobilized during hydrologic events.

Natural ecologies, such as those of the typical Atlantic coast barrier islands, are well adapted to absorb and mitigate these dynamic forces of coastal extremes associated with climate change—while cleansing water and providing diverse habitats. However, their ability to do so relies on cycles of generation and deformation that contradict the stability associated with safety and reliability in our built urban environment. The Flux City strategy embraces the challenge inherent in adapting such a system to the urban context.

The strategic deployment of targeted coastal piers initially catalyzes symbiotic function between new infrastructure and natural processes of sedimentation and hydrology. The staged formation of protective barrier islands thus offers coastal protection and replaces expensive and destructive dredging practices. Later, the pier foundations—filled with accumulated sediment—gain land value, becoming the foundation for a new pattern of urban expansion that connects the disparate neighborhoods currently separated by the flood-zone void. By 2080, when sea levels are predicted to be1.5 meters above today’s average, this new archipelago will protect the bay’s older development while providing outer reef marine habitat and a new expanse of sheltered back-water tidal marsh, sited to filter and mitigate the basin’s contaminated storm water.

Academic Work . Flux City 11

Emily Gordon . 2012 SAMPLE12



sea to marsh : island profile 1:750

along the road : open island 1:750

along the road : island string 1:750

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sea to marsh : island profile 1:750

along the road : open island 1:750

along the road : island string 1:750



*

The return of aquasity:15,000 years of post-glacial

land rise gradually drained the ocean from the Gothenburg

region. Waterways and archipelagos in constant

transition defined the character of the landscape

and the cities and economies derived thereof. Recently,

global climate change has reversed the process,

causing water levels to rise with increased fluctuation.

Flooding is exacerbated by a local history of urban fill and coastal alteration (above left).

A postcard for Gothenburg:Dive In! (opposite).

Islands and archipelagos of the Gota Alv (this page).

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1790 1860 1921 2000 2020 return of aquasity

RIVERCITY GOTHENBURG: Dive In!

GSD Fall 2011; critics Martha Schwartz & Emily WaughIndividual work

Dive In! embraces the ability of the designed public landscape to provide an identity, a public amenity, and an infrastructural solution for the growing city of Gothenburg, Sweden. Through the transformation of a defunct industrial port site, Dive In! restores agency to the Gota Alv river to determine the character and organization of future urban growth—returning the river to the city. Responding to an ambitious City of Gothenburg initiative to densify and re-connect the sprawling city-center with the river, Dive In! proposes a landscape-based solution that will connect the north and south banks, enhance estuarine health and habitat, and provide a public landscape that becomes an urban oasis, a ‘Gateway to Gothenburg’ and an icon for Western Sweden. The project demanded an understanding of the complexities of infrastructure, river ecologies, economic development, social dynamics, history, and climate change that impact and shape the trajectory of the city and the river.

Academic Work . RiverCity Gothenburg 17


Frihammen Islands key:1. Public Marina2. Amphitheater Hill3. Terraced Lawn4. Play Lawn5. Beach6. Promontories

river 1:500 (top) & 1:1000 (site)

Island 1. Island 2. Island 3.

Frihammen Islands:A variety of water’s edge conditions are sequenced for each island. A diversity of microclimates and habitats invite park users to explore and celebrate the Gota Alv.

7. Indoor Aquarium w/ Green Roof8. Indoor Saunas w/ Green Roof9. Aquarium Promenade10. Habitat Pools w/ Sunken Walk11. Infinity Pool12. Boulder Hill13. Marsh Walk

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river 1:500 (top) & 1:1000 (site)

Island 1

Island 2

Island 3

Ringon Waterfront

HistoricWaterfront

1

2

3

45

6

7

8

9

12

13

10

11

remainingactive

shipyard

Killibacken Stream

Gothenburg Bridge

Marsh Channel

Hisingen Waterfront

Lundbyvassen Waterfront

Hisingen Waterfront

100m



An aquarium promenade gradually ramps below the

water’s surface, revealing the aquatic world below.

Opposite, visitors can take a plunge and join the display.

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The trough—a dry walkway immersed in the water—offers eye-level looks at the reflective habitat pool on one side, and the open river on the other.



(Plan graphics by collaboration with A. Scottie McDaniel; harvest montage by Sara Newey)

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FORAGE CONSERVATION Sowey Naval Air Field

GSD Fall 2010; critics Pierre Belanger & Christian WerthmannCollaboration with A. Scottie McDaniel & Sara Newey

Sited on a decommissioned Naval air field in the suburban Boston metropolitan region, this studio demanded the revisualization of a complex1,500-acre brownfield site for a long-range strategy that prefigures biophysical systems as the denominator for re-envisioning public infrastructures and regional urban economies and ecologies.

Forage Conservation introduces a much-needed prototype for a new model of urban-suburban land conservation and wildlife management. By rejecting traditional, polarized conceptions of conservation and development, the collisions and juxtapositions between our built environment and the resilience of ecologic adaptation are revealed and addressed. Responsive habitat management systems regain balance for exploding populations of wildlife ‘nuisance speices’, while capitalizing on growing interests in local and wild food markets in the Boston region, and maximizing economic synergy between land management techniques, by-products and local economies.

To address unpredictable fluctuations in wildlife populations, the notion of the static masterplan is rejected in favor of designed dynamic disturbance and flexible potentials for habitat creation, land management, and public use. The resulting ‘site plan’ is iterative and layered—an accumulation of trace and change.

23Academic Work . Forage Conservation


Management practices address four major components: a reconnected hydrologic course, a successional shrub

meadow, runway breakdown, and regenerative silviculture.(Management sections & montage by collaboration)

Beginning with initial construciton, designed dynamic disturbance and land management alter habitats,

appearance, and experience.

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25Academic Work . RiverCity Gothenburg

EMILY PARISH GORDON 2012 WORK SAMPLE


[email protected] t. 845.206.8921315 Eckford Street, Apt. 3R, Brooklyn, NY 11222

Emily Parish Gordon 2012 Work Sample

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