WSU – Junction 270 – 2

With the raw materials for our design collaboration in hand (see WSU – Junction 270 – 1), we set out to see if we could make sense of the project. Since the scope was large and the elements complex, I suggested we look at what the situation in general might tell us.

Junction 270 Site in context between downtown Pullman and the WSU Campus

The site (red rectangle) straddles a number of major elements. The WSU campus and City of Pullman each sit on hills that define several circulation elements: the oldest is the Palouse River, followed closely by two railroad lines (one of which was about to be converted to the Palouse Path) and State Route 270, connecting Pullman to Moscow, ID, eight miles away. The site also lies directly across route 270 from Stadium Way, the main entrance to the campus; so it is automatically a focal point. The two hills that bracket the site represent the traditional “town and gown” pairing that define many college towns; and led us to make a concerted effort to engage both with the WSU Administration and the City of Pullman.

In preparation for thinking about such a complex set of circumstances, I gave the students some materials developed by other planners and designers who have tackled similar situations in an analytical manner. One of those was William Rees Moorish, who had studied ways in which very large sites could be approached with cultural relevance.

William Rees Moorish analysis of Phoenix, AZ and its surroundings.

This very large scale overview lays out the elements that have traditionally influenced settlements in the area and which are significant enough to influence contemporary design going forward. In another study, he looked at ways that development and site context might interact as growth and change takes place.

William Rees Moorish – Land form influences

The point of this exercise was not to use any particular study, but to get used to the idea that very large movements in the site could have relevance to the design. In addition, I felt it was important to understand that the landscape was not something “over there” but that it and the site were one and the same thing. Here are a couple of examples of the idea-diagrams that were sketched out. The first one exaggerates the sense of the hills to indicate how that might structure the site plan.

In reverse of that, this one suggests that the Palouse River valley and its tributaries connect all the small surrounding towns to Pullman, adjacent to the site.

Pullman receiving the Palouse River and its tributaries.

By this time the students were impatient to begin the real design process so we jumped into a conceptual look at the whole package, beginning with the site.

Junction 270 – Initial Site Investigation

Here’s a study with a number of notes that show we were thinking in a number of directions at the same time.

Junction 270 – Site Analysis Sketch

For a number of studies we pursued the idea that a major space could be defined at the point that the Stadium Way entrance to the campus joined route 270. This would involve using four taller buildings set across from each other, perhaps an entrance round-about, and pulling lower buildings away from the road. This idea did not eventually survive our process; but other elements in the sketch did. These include stepping layers of housing going down the hill, some sort of a “zipper” hillclimb holding the center of the project together, and the incorporation of the existing retail into the design.

On one study, up in the corner of the drawing, a small doodle introduced an idea that also survived, a long sinuous residential building that wrapped around an open plaza space.

A variation of this idea also helped consolidate our thinking.

Junction 270 – Housing and Plaza

In this case the housing would step rather than flow around the open space. As we went along, we periodically sat around the table and identified our individual conclusions about the work being developed. That way, in contrast to the students’ typical design studio work, the ideas were all shared – and often merged with each other. Here are some of them:

Use basalt to make edge definition. Identify community needs that we might incorporate. Use a pedestrian bridge over the highway to mark the campus gateway. Find a way to pull the fractured landscape back together. Housing should be affordable. Soften the land form where the willow wetland meets the site. Use the housing to define a plaza entry space.

From all of this analysis we finally constructed our community.

Check out WSU – Junction 270 – 3 for the design results.

WSU – Junction 270 – 3

At the mid-point of our collaboration we were ready to begin the serious design process. We had done research, met with both WSU and City of Pullman administrators, and developed a series of analyses to guide us. During this process a fellow professor had asked how the project was going and suggested that if we wanted to reach out into the general community, he knew just the person to talk to. A few days later I sat down with Loretta Anawalt.

Harley Cowan, Kurtis Roberts, and Loretta Anawalt review a site concept.

Loretta Anawalt (above) almost single-handedly enlarged the focus of our work to take in the citizens of Pullman who lived with the Town and Gown issues that we were designing around. It turned out that she was the head of the Pullman Civic Trust, a local non-profit focused on improving Pullman’s parks and developing a bicycle/walking trail from Pullman to Moscow, Idaho. She had been an engaged leader; and she had built an army of citizen supporters interested in public sector improvements. A significant portion of the riverfront park work had been completed.

Palouse River and riverfront park

The park combined green space, walking and biking trails, existing and new bridges, and flood management structures like the one in the photo above. Building consensus and shepherding the project through a long public process had been a labor of love for Loretta. Luckily for us, she saw our project as a related and worthwhile venture that would also support her bicycle path project as well.

Between the two of us, we called on local citizens, City officials, WSU faculty and a few consultants already working on campus; and we asked them to participate in a one day workshop to review our work to date and comment on our goals and aspirations. We had a terrific response; so I arranged with Rafi Samizay to use one of the large studios for a Saturday. I also set up the workshop format so that the 8 students would prepare display boards and actively manage the small-group discussions.

Junction 270 Public Workshop – Small Group Discussions

I introduced the overall project and noted the various areas we were studying.

Junction 270 Areas of Analysis

Each area included comments generated by our team outlining our issues.

Junction 270 – Retail Analysis

The students then walked people through our conclusions, asking about agreement with or challenges to the ideas, and both talking about the work and taking notes.

John Riordan and Angie Hastings lead a discussion.

Curtis Bigelow and Monique Danielson take in a point being made by a community member.

A couple of WSU staff tackle a tricky issue with the site plan

David Drake and Mary Eickoff take in a citizen point of view.

At the end of the day, the students presented the ideas and conclusions that each of the groups had developed to the whole audience.

For the community, this workshop challenged many of their ideas about how the University and the City could come together to understand and resolve significant planning concerns about which they were often at loggerheads. For the students, it was an eye-opening introduction to the real world of disagreement and consensus-building, all focused on work for which they were responsible.

As we packaged up our materials and started thinking about how we were actually going to turn all these ideas into a design, Loretta Anawalt said she had one more suggestion.

By this time, I had learned that when Loretta had an idea, it was worth listening to it.

She wanted to come into the studio where we worked and talk to the students about how they could engage in a holistic understanding of the project as they finalized it. At this point the project had started to come together as a series of generic forms but hadn’t yet developed its personality.

Junction 270 Study Model – View of main plaza

I had had the engineering shop cut up some scale blocks for us to use. Each block, for both the buildings and the site, was one story high; so they were easy to stack in sensible ways and still be able to represent a sloping site. In the view above, a major triangular plaza opens towards the campus and highway, framed by retail shops at grade with housing units above. Other housing sits behind.

Junction 270 Study Model – View of Housing facing the valley.

From the downhill, or valley side, the housing clusters along pedestrian streets that flow with the linear contours of the site.

Junction 270 Study Model – View of Housing and Willow garden.

This view shows more clearly the central hillclimb that connects the apex of the triangular plaza down through the housing to the Palouse Path. The open site platforms at the right hand end show where the existing Willow wetland space would be developed into a garden and quiet space adjacent to the housing.

So what did Loretta say to the students?

She said that each of the students should pretend that the project had been built before they arrived on campus, that they were each living in one of the housing units, and that they were expecting their parents to show up for a football week-end. She said, “visualize living here and how you would take people through it and explain to them why the design is the way it is”.

And that’s what they did. Check the next blog post to see how it all turned out.

WSU – Junction 270 – 4

Junction 270 Design set in Context

As set in its context, the Junction 270 project makes a deliberate effort to weave together all of the disparate strands of a complex site. Wedged on to a narrow site, bracketed by ordinary apartment buildings, along a busy highway, and directly across the road from the main entrance to Washington State University, the design does not shy away from its situation but instead celebrates it.

Junction 270 Site Plan

To better understand the layout I’ve focused in on and realigned it to fit this blog format. The first view shows the roof tops which outline the basic elements of the design. The V-shaped entry plaza stands out clearly as do a couple of towers bracketing the hillclimb that runs centrally through the scheme. Also obvious in this view are two major landscape initiatives: a display garden of Northwest plant materials on the campus side (upper left) and the large willow green space / wetland (lower right)

Below, I’ve spliced together the various plan elements at street level, so they can be seen more appropriately in relation to each other. As is obvious at the top of the drawing, the revised main WSU Gateway has grown substantially in size, as has state route 270 (Main Street) that passes between that entrance and the Junction 270 project. Also seen at the top is a strong diagonal, crossing the intersection. This is a pedestrian bridge that carries people from the native plant bluff in the upper left hand corner to an upper level of the project, and then by sloping ramp through the Willow green space to a view point and then back to grade at the main Entry Plaza. At-grade crossings are also provided at street level; but the team felt that the widened highway would provide enough of a safety challenge that a bridge also made sense.

The strong roof forms are not so obvious at the plaza level; though we felt that when you stood in the space, the upper levels of the buildings would be clearly defined. This plan (above) reflects the idea of tucking the retail spaces that line the plaza back under the buildings to create gallerias for protected pedestrian circulation. Each of the three major parts of the complex is worth a closer look.

Junction 270 – Retail and Housing Area

In this larger plan view, several elements become apparent. The scale and articulation differences between the retail and housing buildings show an awareness of how these functions often work. I had the students model the retail elements on ones they were familiar with in Pullman and on campus. Some of them became personalized, such as Mama Angie’s Pasta; and many featured food and drink. Mixed into the retail areas are a series of 3×3 grid blocks. These represent stair access points to the apartments above the retail, emphasizing the close relationship between the two, something not often found in student housing situations.

The darker brown path through the buildings represents an ADA slope that enables easy walking (and biking) from the top to the bottom of the hill, a true challenge on such a steeply sloping site. Here’s how that looked in section.

For the housing units, I had the students draw scale plans of the housing they were currently living in, present them to each other, talk about the pros and cons, and develop standards they felt would provide good accommodations. As can be seen in both the plans and sections, the students felt strongly that having a variety of open spaces adjacent to apartments and retail functions made for a much more congenial living experience.

As the design developed and the Entry Plaza form became a more dominant element in the center of the project, it became clear that some form of direct connection from it to Latah Street, the river, parks and community would benefit people moving up the hill from downtown to the campus. We introduced a retail hillclimb, similar to the one we had researched at the Pike Market in Seattle to define the space. Food was a major theme.

A section view shows how this element worked, with circulation from the plaza framed by housing above the circulation arcades (right), between the towers (acting as beacons for the project when seen from a distance), and then between the smaller housing rows near the bottom of the project.

Finally, at the southern end of the complex, we had to figure out a way to both preserve and take advantage of the existing Willow green wetland bowl.

This occurred at several levels. Environmentally, we daylighted a portion of the stream where it emerged from the hill below the highway (top) and let it flow through the bowl to a new wetland (from which it go again by pipe to the Palouse river). The ADA path winds around the perimeter of the bowl, sloping up from Latah Street to meet up with the pedestrian street through the housing. And in a circulation tour de force, we launched a bridge from the one crossing the highway out through the trees to a viewpoint and then back to the main plaza.

ADA Bridge from WSU campus over highway to Junction 270 design

The viewpoint was our way of connecting the design (at least visually) to the larger Palouse landscape beyond.

A few broader views help to pull all this together.

Looking from Stadium Way on campus to the Entry Plaza (bridge across highway not shown)

The view from the highway shows the three main elements: Willow bowl and overlook ramp on the left, main entry plaza and towers framing the hillclimb in the center, and housing over retail and walkway arcades on the right.

Conversely, the view from the valley below reveals the total height involved, the complexity in the mix of housing types and building forms, the formality of the towers marking the plaza and the environmental contrast of the Willow Wetland Bowl.

So how did all of this end up?

There had been a lot of curiosity about the mysterious project going on in the grad student studio, so we decided to show off the results.

At the end of the semester, we reconvened the group of faculty and citizens, and any students interested in the project, for a presentation. I had set up all the drawing formats to match the proportions of 35mm slides (the good old days); so that using a pair of projectors we could show all the drawings you see above.

Then, following Loretta Anawalt’s suggestion one more time, the eight students explained the design as if they were living there and those in the audience were visiting and wanted to know what this place was all about. It was a community success.

The Junction 270 team also got some publicity from the WSU Week campus magazine.

It would be nice to think, of course, that the ‘next team’ had picked up the project and moved from design to construction; but the reality is that the site is still there waiting . . .