Growing Vine Street is an inspirational concept developed back in the ’90′s by a group of Belltown neighborhood residents in downtown Seattle that revolves around expanding the Belltown P-Patch and merging it with the idea of turning the 8 blocks of Vine Street into a green street that would provide public access to the waterfront. These blocks are intended to act as an example for urban greening, to provide a desireable setting for pedestrians within the streetscape while capturing and treating stormwater through biofiltration and enhancing natural habitat.
“Central to the Growing Vine Street concept is the runnel, an urban stream running the street’s entire eight-block length surrounded by native greenery. Storm runoff from the roofs of buildings bordering Vine will be collected in large cisterns in each block to supply the water for the stream. As the water flows through the plantings lining the watercourse, it will be treated through the process of biofiltration, which will remove many of its impurities so that it will be clean enough to be released directly into Elliott Bay-without passing through the City’s overworked water treatment facilities.”
“Between Fifth Avenue and First Avenue, Vine Street is relatively level. In this section, the public right-of-way will be reconfigured so that one side is narrow (with a sidewalk and narrow planting strip) and the other is wide. The runnel will meander through the wide side of the street, surrounded by as much greenery as developers and residents can manage. These wide segments will form a refreshing linear park, a setting for creative public art as well as nature.”
“At First Avenue, Vine Street slopes to Elliott Avenue, where it again levels out. Here the street right-of-way will be reconfigured in a switchback alignment to allow for more dramatic water features. One such project is the Cistern Steps adjacent to the Belltown P-Patch. The Cistern Steps is planned as a series of terraced planting areas stepping down the slope. Water from the runnel will flow into the top garden, overflow into the next, and continue to a small pool at Elliott Avenue.”
The entire length of Vine Street was not intended to be built all at once but rather incrementally as new development occurs with each segment connecting into the larger plan over time. So far, two of the planned projects have been completed, the first was the Beckoning Cistern in 2003 which went in as part of the development of The 81 Vine Building. This is the first of what is planned as at least one large cistern for every block to collect rooftop runoff. The next project to follow was the Cistern Steps in 2004, the cascading water feature that runs alongside a flowing set of stairs along the edge of the Belltown P-Patch. Eventhough the entire plan has not yet been completed, the project is seen as a success, has brought about a great deal of praise and is looked upon as one of the pioneer projects of the Seattle green streets.
Beckoning Cistern
The first project to emerge from the plan, the streetscape and artwork of the Beckoning Cistern were constructed along with work at The 81 Vine Building. Local designer Buster Simpson saw inspiration from Michelangelo’s painting on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. Like Adam reaching out to touch the hand of God, the 10-foot tall cistern is designed like a hand that reaches out over the sidewalk from a shirt sleeve and towards the downspout which leans out from the building.
The connection from the downspout to the index finger allows some of the rooftop runoff to run into the cistern with the rest cascading over and down into the water garden and series of stepped pools that run along the sidewalk along with native vegetation. A smaller vertical pipe garden also runs up the side of the building.
The Cistern Steps
The steps are an extension of the Beckoning Cistern that flow the two blocks from it’s base and alongside the Belltown P-Patch down towards the waterfront. Seattle-based firm SvR Design, an integrated group of civil engineers, landscape architects and planners provided the streetscape and stormwater design for this dramatic cascade of stormwater terraces and pedestrian steps.
“The Cistern Steps consists of a series of three terraced concrete planters tapering from a wide plaza at the alley to the narrow sidewalk right-of-way at the intersection of Vine Street and Elliott Avenue. The runnel will flow from planter to planter, ending in a pool formed from a large, rough-hewn piece of Northwest jade at the foot of the slope. In this segment of Vine Street, there is no adjacent building to feed the runnel, so water will be received from the newly constructed Vine Building across the street, which was designed with a special collection system for roof runoff just to supply the runnel.”
“Like the Beckoning Cistern, the Cistern Steps has been designed to delight pedestrians as well as to process and use roof runoff in an ecological manner. The water gardens of the planters will echo the lush greenery of the adjacent Belltown P-Patch. Even more color will be added with inlaid tile signage on the plaza walls at the alley and on the risers of the steps in the sidewalk passing between the P-Patch and the Cistern Steps. Even the stair railings will be works of art forged by Belltown’s own Black Dog Forge.”
SvR Design is also the firm responsible for the Thornton Creek Water Quality Channel previously posted about here and with an update after a rain event with pictures here.
Thursday February 18th 2010, 7:46 am
Filed under: Art,Food,Public
Growing up on a farm as a child, I was fairly well connected to the idea of food, place and time but of course didn’t think about it much back then. In 2008, while working in Germany and sitting next to a girl from Colombia, I made a comment one day about the fruit bowl she kept on her desk and the amazing amount of apples that she ate. Every single day she would be happily crunching away on an apple, a fruit of great abundance in the area of southern Germany where I lived which was surrounded by countless orchards. She told me that she grew up with the kinds of fruit I would consider exotic like mangos and papayas but the only apples they could grow were very small and not as flavorful. When she arrived in Germany she was in heaven being surrounded by all the delicious and fresh local apples. It sort of stopped me because I had moved from a place in the US that had a great abundance of apples so to me it was of little difference that I could buy apples at the market. I began thinking more and more about how fruit can define place, not just what is cultivated but what can grow naturally just out in the open. I thought back to my childhood again and realized that a lot of what defined that time and place in my mind had to do with fruit, like wild huckleberries. I remember strategically choosing a favorite sitting spot in a tree because it was within reach of the little red berries that I would sit and snack on.
Awhile ago I came across a great group that followed along this line of thinking, using the fruit as their lense to investigate the ecologicial, social and political issues surrounding food and land use as well as to inspire community building. They are called, Fallen Fruit, an art collaboration created by David Burns, Matias Viegener and Austin Young that began six years ago.
The trio first began in their own stomping grounds of the Silver Lake area of Los Angeles by mapping out “public fruit” which included the creation of street-by-street diagrams of fruit trees that grew on public land. They were especially interested in the use of this public fruit and expanding on the idea of a city planting with the goal of helping to support their populace through something of a planned urban orchard.
The groups website describes what they are about:
“Fallen Fruit investigates urban space, ideas of neighborhood and new forms of located citizenship and community. From protests to proposals for new urban green spaces, we aim to reconfigure the relation between those who have resources and those who do not, to examine the nature of & in the city, and to investigate new, shared forms of land use and property. Fallen Fruit is an art collaboration that began with creating maps of public fruit: the fruit trees growing on or over public property in Los Angeles.”
“Over time our interests have expanded from mapping public fruit to include Public Fruit Jams in which we invite the citizens to bring homegrown or public fruit and join in communal jam-making; Nocturnal Fruit Forages, nighttime neighborhood fruit tours; Community Fruit Tree Plantings on the margins of private property and in community gardens; Public Fruit Park proposals in Hollywood, Los Feliz and downtown LA; and Neighborhood Infusions, taking the fruit found on one street and infusing it in alcohol to capture the spirit of the place.”
The trio doesn’t just stop at Los Angeles, or even the United States but finds inspiration in whatever part of the world that calls to them. They have followed activites around the world that have interested them in regards to the social aspect of food from documenting the harvest of isolated, wild berries in Norway to following a boy in Copenhagen all the way to Colombia to research and study the activities surrounding the banana.
While all of their projects are interesting in their own way, I was especially drawn to a project titled Public Fruit Jam that made its first appearance in 2006 and is ongoing. They say everyone has a fruit story and I have many but one thing that I always recall with great fondness, even from my very early childhood years, the days I’d spend making jam with my grandparents from the fruit we picked together on their farm. Making jam is so easy a child can participate and there is little concentration involved so during the time it is an incredible opportunity for socializing. This event is especially interestined because by attending and bringing fruit, each person from the community shows up with a story as well as an interest in the topic and together people can explore their connections through the fruit they gathered in their own neighborhood and walk away with something they made through shared resources and effort, adding layers to the story they began with. A description of the project from the site:
“Fallen Fruit invites the public to bring home-grown or street picked fruit and collaborate with us in making a collective fruit jams. Working without recipes, we ask people to sit with others they do not already know and negotiate what kind of jam to make: if I have lemons and you have figs, we’d make lemon fig jam (with lavender). Usually held in a gallery or museum, this event highlights the social and public nature of Fallen Fruit’s work, and we consider it a collaboration with the public as well as each other.”
Their latest project, called EATLACMA, will be held at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art beginning this month and will run through November. A video below provides a teaser of the project and the LACMA website describes the project:
“EATLACMA is a year-long investigation into food, art, culture and politics. Fusing the richness of LACMA’s permanent collection with the ephemerality of food and the natural growth cycle, EATLACMA’s projects consider food as a common ground that explores the social role of art and ritual in community and human relationships. EATLACMA unfolds seasonally, with artist’s gardens planted and harvested on the museum campus, hands-on public events, and a concurrent exhibition, Fallen Fruit Presents The Fruit of LACMA (June 27-November 7, 2010). It culminates in a day-long event (November 7, 2010) in which over fifty artists and collectives will activate, intervene, and re-imagine the entire museum’s campus and galleries.”
Chicago-based political artist Michael Rakowitz has been working on a project called paraSITE since 1998 that tackles the issue of homelessness that is an unfortunate reality of all urban areas. His inventive approach seeks to reuse warm air that leaves buildings through outtake vents for portable and personal temporary homeless shelters. He has built and disbursed over 30 different designs through different urban sites in New York City, Boston, Cambridge and Baltimore. All shelters were constructed using temporary materials that were readily available on the streets. The image above was constructed out of clear trash bags, ZipLoc bags and clear waterproof packing tape on a budget of $5.00.
The artist chose to name the project after the parasitic organism due to it’s place in the environment as something that exploits the energy of it’s host, like these temporary structures do by using the warm air that leaves a building from its heating, ventillation and HVAC systems for both inflation and heat.
The most interesting thing about this project is not just the general idea but the fact that it is not only site specific but person specific in that each shelter uses materials found on-site and are used to construct a shelter that responds to the specific needs and concerns of each individual like security, privacy, space and even laws.
The image below, which is from New York City, is especially interesting because it was specifically designed like a sleeping bag to get around the anti-tent law which states that any structure on city property that is 3 1/2 feet or taller would be considered an illegal encampment. The man was even confronted by police officers on several occassions but then left him alone after measuring the shelter and finding that it did indeed conform to the law.
Given that the situation of homelessness in our cities is on the rise, acts like this fuel the debate of what to do and what the future might be for our urban spaces as it relates to these people constantly seeking refuge amongst the buildings. From the project site,
“While these shelters were being used, they functioned not only as a temporary place of retreat, but also as a station of dissent and empowerment; many of the homeless users regarded their shelters as a protest device, and would even shout slogans like ‘We beat you Uncle Sam!’ The shelters communicated a refusal to surrender, and made more visible the unacceptable circumstances of homeless life within the city.”
“For the pedestrian, paraSITE functioned as an agitational device. The visibly parasitic relationship of these devices to the buildings, appropriating a readily available situation with readily available materials elicited immediate speculation as to the future of the city: would these things completely take over, given the enormous number of homeless in our society? Could we wake up one morning to find these encampments engulfing buildings like ivy?”
The artist doesn’t propose this as a solution for this very large and global problem but simply wishes to assist in furthering the discussion.
Its point of departure is to present a symbolic strategy of survival for homeless existence within the city, amplifying the problematic relationship between those who have homes and those who do not have homes.”
