Project
Design, Build, Use - Master Planning
Matt Taylor
None
USA
Program Development
From pages 57, 60, 61 - October 31, 2001 - Notebook of Matt Taylor, #1 Post 9/11 series:

Planetary Architecture Master Plan Program
Design, Build, Use
Matt Taylor
None
Glenwood Strings, Colorado
Program Development
This concept came to me as I was riding the train back from Washington DC - see Work # 107 and pages 67, 68, 85 - November 1, 2001 - Notebook of Matt Taylor, #1 Post 9/11 series:

Glenwood Springs is about 24 hours by train from Chicago and a little more than that to San Francisco.

The “building” itself is a cave made up of existing and new excavations enclosed by glass pyramids set in various orientations. These are made in three sections the center of which rotates to open. The interior “atrium” is a landscaped hill for growing food and recreation purposes. A series of private living and work areas are connected by tubes to commons areas of formal offices, NavCenter facilities, work shops, kitchens, baths, libraries, guest facilities and gathering places.

The function of the Crystal Cave is to be an intentional community built around specific work related to the Red Thread, Gaia and Master Planning projects. It is a work/living place for extended periods of time and is unlikely to be the permanent residence of any except for a few core members of the community who will make this their total focus. It is deliberately “isolated” due to the nature of the work, at the same time,“connected” via modern infrastructure. Guest facilities are critical. The Crystal Cave is a conscious retreat in order to think about and design for the Planet as a whole.

It is a piece of architecture whose job it is to facilitate the work of co-evolving the earth as a piece of architecture.

This is related, of course, to The Renascence III design (Work # 90) not only in function but in the grammar of the forms employed.

Sandy Gookin - ULI
Design, System Integration
Matt Taylor with Scott Arenz
None
New York City
Project Concept
On Friday, November 9th., Sandy Goodkin asked me how I would approach a concept for Ground Zero in New York. The statement, below, is an edited version of my immediate response. The concept was further developed in pages 92, 93, 96 and 102 of my post 9/11 Notebook #1. Further Notes were created on pages 115 and 116, December 6, 2001. Scott Arenz developed design sketches. By November 18, a first design cycle of the concept was completed. On December 7th., a new design cycle was initiated taking the concept far enough for a very rough schematic level presentation. The ULI declined to present the work so energy went out of the project. I have stood on the sidelines and watched as its antithesis had slowly rolled out over the years, amid great controversy, to make a grandiose and very public statement that the US learned nothing from the experience.

ground_zero_statement

STATEMENT:

1. Good and evil - right and wrong [link: the nation state] aside, what happened on September 11th? A monument and operating artifact of a centrally focused 20th Century industrial society was destroyed by a distributed network organization that used our strength on ourselves. A flexible WEB of resources and people with no center or obvious assets acted with intent and malice. "Mechanical" structure was rendered vulnerable by the wrong use of the "organic."

2. For healing to occur, people from all over the world must be able to access the site and participate in it’s history and recreation.

3. A proper monument to September 11th, will rebuild the future, not the past. The site's function recreated as a 21st Century expression that serves a global, networked knowledge economy is the appropriate response.

4. The essence of this response is a gift to the world of the next generation of our spirit, our capacity, our technology and enterprise.

5. A garden space open to the world. A place where people can rest, meditate, mourn, and celebrate. A small transparent building suspended over the site - a transaction node in a newly emerging, sustainable, equable, distributed global economy making an engine of enterprise far more productive than what was before.

6. The site is reborn from a collaborative process, initiated on site, both monument and functional capacity evolving over time through iterations of design, building and use. In this way, the artifact itself facilitates it’s conception and development.

PROGRAM DESCRIPTION:

The PLAZA is a keep within a ring of refurbished and new skyscrapers. It is a park - a place of rest contemplation, quiet and celebration. In it are levels, fountains, landscaping, benches and arbors, amphitheaters and two major objects: One, the recreated RUINS of September 11; the other, a crystal-shaped, glass, all faiths and philosophies Cathedral to the human spirit.

Suspended OVER the park is a 26 story geodesic sphere of light suspended within a tensegrity structure. From deep in the earth a thin vertical shaft of light reaches up and pierces the globe.

The globe is covered inside and out with millions of computer-controlled pin-point lights giving the resolution of a fine photograph. Outside - to the park and buildings around it - the turning world - night and day, season by season - is displayed with the real-time movement of human and animal populations, good and services - all the resources of an emerging geopolitical economy and it's history.

Inside is displayed the WORLD GAME (Fuller et. al.). A simulation with people all over the world participating and playing “what if” with their data, ideas, projects and political economic intentions. Consequences are modeled before uninformed action is taken. There is a viewing platform and support facilities for 2,000 people.

Beneath the plaza, is a large dome structure housing research facilities and simulation rooms - the emerging PRIME RADIANT (Asimov) of Planet Earth’s future. This multi-level, skylight-fed space has facilities for permanent staff, visiting scholars, government and industry groups and private citizens. It is connected to all the universities, industrial research centers, governments and creative individuals of the world. A non-political, free, open-source facility. It is the BRAIN of the new economy.

In addition, under the park is an experiential museum of September 11, book store, shops and other infrastructure facilities. A “Taylor” Navigation center provides facilitation and design services to social, political, business, philanthropic and government groups seeking to create a better world through collaboration and cooperation.

Project
Design, Present-Display, Publish
Matt Taylor
None
Anywhere on Earth
Project Concept - Ecotopia as example
This project draws on the organizing principles developed in my 1975 Organic City concept (See Work #56) and applies them to the scale of intersecting bio-regions It is closely tied to the Kansas City Master Plan (See Work # 37) and the Red Thread (Work #107) projects. All of these are aspects of the Master Planning Method which focuses on facilitating the process of Earth as a human artifact AND the Gaia Project which approaches the same issue from the perspective of Earth as a Living System. A large building, a neighborhood, a mega city and a region all have the same organizational requirements - they express themselves at different scales. There are some kinds of activities that best organize themselves into relatively single-function clusters and others that inherently require migration, thus corridors. ALL of these cross one another creating dense mixed-use interactions. Within all of these different ZONES, a variety of building types are employed: single family, manufacturing, recreational, business, retailing and so on. These TYPES are employed at various densities: rural, suburban and urban. The corridors that connect the HUBS of greater density usually follow natural waterways as this was one of the major organizing principles of human development. Now, rivers, railroad, highways and flight patterns can be seen all in parallel and close proximity - the approach to Regan International Airport along the Potomac River and barge canal is one example. There are four major problems associated with how this continues to happen: the scale of the hubs is “out of scale;” plant and animal corridors are ignored and blocked; the mix of the building types and their densities do not work well; and, the entire system is not seen as a system in relation to the planet as a whole. None of the design strategies now employed by humans are totally wrong. None will solve all of the problems we have and a continuance of what we are doing will lead to disaster. The key focal point of this approach is the task of finding the appropriate scales for each of these design strategies is the bio-region For here, the various levels of recursion can be studied and density principles developed. That it the task of this project. Ian McHarg started this work in the 60s. He created a mapping system by which key values could be discerned in the development process. He became an advocate for the planet. One of the uses of Speranova (Work # 109) will be to do dynamically, at high resolution and large scale what Mchard did with plastic overlays [now, in 2006, Goggle has given us a beginners tool: Goggle earth with SketchUp]. Even plotting the major bio-regions and seeing how they interact is a start. However, until we can get a set of design algorithms developed that enable us to better develop appropriate hub densities and corridors with better use of scale, the sum of our individual efforts will add up to unintended consequences and ultimate tragic sub-optimization of our planetary heritage. This is no way to run a planet. The Crystal Cave (Work # 108) is proposed as a place to do this work. SDC [see: project #113] will house the East Baltimore Master Plan one of the first NavCenters to take on the Master Planning Process [see: project #37].

Matt and Gail Taylor
Design, Build, Use
Matt Taylor
Scott Arenz
Gualala, California
Not built
This project involves some minor fixing up and remodeling to a small house built in the late 70s and the addition of a work area for Gail and a Guest/Studio addition on an adjacent lot. The property is in Mendocino County in Northern California and will be Gail’s and my “retreat” house for rest, renewal and quite work. It also will be a place to have friends and colleagues for dialog. Eloquent simplicity of lifestyle and environmental artifact is the goal of this project along with the maximum economy possible consistent with comfort and being adequately equipped. In fact, upon the completion of this project our personal/professional overhead will be significantly reduced. Although this is mostly a personal environment, it does have several professional implications. This will be one of the first tests of mature Design-Build- Use processes and ValueWeb structures for low scale, one-off, middle class affordable housing. Can this entire complex work for a KnowledgeWorker couple and occasional guests at an affordable price with minimal ecological consequence? As such, then, this becomes my architectural “calling card” for this class of living-work space. In addition, the basic strategy of the Guest/Studio addition is a small scale example of the approach I am taking with the SETI Visitor Center - a distributed array of purpose-focused units connected by a “site-experience.” It is unlikely the SETI investors will understand this concept without a living “model” of it. The concept, itself, has several echoes in my past work. Works which seriously challenged the traditional uses of space and organization of floor plans. Although some of these ideas have been implemented in our commercial Management and NavCenters, they have never been accepted in any residential work that I have been a pert of. And, there are few examples of this approach that have been executed by other architects.

NOTE: After discussion and trying another schema [see # 141], a third approach has been developed [see # 154]. Gail and I have decided that the Guest House - Studio has to be built before her “Nest” [see # 116]. It seems that designing for yourself requires as many iterations as for a client. The “distributed” house layout will have to wait another time and place.

Matt Taylor and Taylor ValueWeb
Design, Build, Use
Matt Taylor
None
San francisco Bay Area
Program Development
This concept caught me by surprise although in retrospect it should not have. I was thinking about how all my various interests, organizations and work venues can be integrated into one coherent experience. It is not possible, nor would it be a good idea, to attempt locating all the facilities required to support me and this work at one location. It was then that the idea of an entire region being treated as if it was a single building struck me - the various places being like rooms in this “building.” Within a couple of years there will be a variety of environments in the “Bay Area” that I either own or use that are associated with my work or that of my closest associates. This thinking requires that the reality of transportation - and physical distance over landscape - be conceived of architecturally not only in the physical aspects of transportation units but in the experience of location, distance and movement. This was an issue that I raised in the Bay Area Studio project [see: Work #95]. This raises the question of continuity - how far apart can these “rooms” be and still “held” as an aspect of a whole? The Crystal Cave, for example, is part of this schema yet it is to be located in Colorado. It is possible to think of Crystal Cave in terms of a 24 hour train ride through a special landscape. The modality of transportation and the timing of it’s use becomes an aspect of design. In addition to the facilities that I may design, build and own and that my associates will build and operate, the Bay Area is likely to see several client projects executed over the next couple of decades. All this, together, creates a BODY of small works which make a statement in themselves.

Sojourner-Douglass College
Design - Project Management
Matt Taylor, Jerry Headly, Scott Arenz
Jerry Headly, Bill Blackburn, Robert Darling
Baltimore, Maryland
Design Development and Construction

This project is easily the largest and most complex of all client work presently underway. It presents many challenges and opportunities. The project scope is to transform a 1869 Girls school, a1923 Middle School, that was remodeled and added to in 1969, into a green state-of-the-art Private College in an urban setting. This project will go through several phases of development over a 4 or 5 year period. The building was occupied in the Fall of 2002 with improvements on going.

The three acres of the core campus will house classrooms, administration offices, Library, visiting scholar’s Residency and seminar rooms, a fine arts center with indoor stage and our door pavilion, Book and Gift Store, Restaurant, students CyberCafe, Gymnasium, a conference center, NavCenter and facilities for the East Baltimore Master Plan.

The Campus which is now totally covered with buildings and asphalt will be transformed by extensive landscaping, green roofs and walls, gardens and covered walks. Over time, other parcels of land will be added and developed extending the functional scope of the campus [see: projects #145 and #155].

There are four significant architectural features of this project. The first is that, when completed, nearly 150 years of buildings will be integrated - as a single unified architecture - in one modest sized setting. The second is that a wide range of functions - profit and non-profit - will be incorporated into a unified educational, personal life planning and community development experience. Third, an urban setting will be made sustainable and green. And fourth, starting with several building in placed and designed in traditional single-function mode, the entire Campus will have the flexibility and adaptability of a Taylor NavCenter throughout the entire campus. The spaces can be reconfigured to change the space usage allocated to specific functions. This adds utility without adding building square footage and it will keep the Campus financially viable under a variety of future circumstances.

This project is my personal gift to Gail. It is an addition to our home in California. It will be built as soon as my personal cash flow allows it which remains dependent on the financial success of MG Taylor. This is a private work station and garden with a view of the ocean through a mile of redwood trees.

This is a playful work and is an unusual approach for me. I have enjoyed the process of designing it a great deal. It encompasses the Arts and Crafts movement as well as Bay Area Style idioms and mergers these with 21st Century materials and forms.

The work combines an interesting mix of hand crafted elements with automobile-like manufactured pieces. It addresses my concerns regarding the loss, in modern architecture, of authentic materials and their sensual use.

It employs extensive prefabrication requiring only a short time to build with little disruption to the site.

The use of vertical forms, in a small scale residential design, has captured my imagination since the early 60s. Because of the immediate ground slope, around the Nest, and the height of the setting in relation to the sea a mile away, the Nest and its deck will feel like a perch on the edge of the world bounded only by the large redwoods nearby. These circumstances combine to make a unique mix of prospect and refuge, a great sense of space with intimacy, a remoteness while being part of a larger whole. An entirely appropriate sensibility for the function of the work.