Link-fest II: Electric Link-a-loo

Since I'm going to have to wait for information to come in, I thought I would spend some time today trolling the web for interesting architecture sites. I find that the blogosphere is a very useful place to find inspiration not just for design strategies, but also for representational techniques. How are architects showing what is important? What kind of people do they use? What is happening between rendering/handrawing/illustrating/photshopping? The way projects are shown is inextriably linked to what they are about so it is extremely useful to look at how architects represent their projects, and what kind of art is happening and can be co-opted for my purposes.

The best way for me to do this is to look around on the web. The information here may not be completely up to date, but it is often more recent than anything printed. So here is a list of websites that I found today and thought could be interesting. I'm going to see how often they have new content and if I still like them in a few weeks, will add them to the links sidebar.

Eikongraphia
anArchitecture
BLDBLG
A Daily Dose
Tropolism
The Wooster Collective
Gravestmor
Mark Magazine
ArchRecord2

In touch/out of touch

My meeting with Thesis Advisor M generated a fair amount of momentum. Last night I e-mailed a bunch of people and read a bunch of different stuff. Now I'm waiting to hear back.

Richard Drdul has agreed to join my thesis committee: Hooray! It will be great to have a transportation engineer on the project. I'm so pleased I found his weblog. I think maybe I'll ask him to come in before the first meeting to stress that the project will never be built and therefore cost is not an issue. He also put me in touch with a fellow from UBC Properties Trust who I'm meeting on Monday to discuss the current plans for the transit exchange.

Apart from this there isn't really very much going on. Maybe I'll go home and make trouble there for a while as I wait for information to start coming in

Loopy Figures

While I'm waiting to hear back from some of the people I emailed for information today, I'm also looking into user statistics for the bus loop. Richard Drdul includes a Transportation Status Report with most of these numbers on his blog and the rest are from the Comprehensive Community Plan and Campus Transit Plan.

• Ridership increase since 1997: 140%
• Total weekday transit trips to and from UBC: 45,600
• Percentage of trips made to and from UBC on transit: 42%
• Weekday transit trips per prson: 0.86
• Peak transit time: 9:00-15:00 (18,270 trips or 40%)
• Student population at UBC in 2005: 43,550
• Staff population at UBC in 2005: 7,650
• Faculty population at UBC in 2005: 2,100
• Total UBC population in 2005: 53,300
• Estimated transit ridership for 2011: 56,300
• Estimated number of incoming buses (morning) in 2011: 141
• Estimated number of incoming buses (morning) in 2022: 165
• Estimated time elapsed between arriving buses (morning, 8-9 am, 2003): 50 seconds
• Optimum capacity for bus loop until 2028: 40 buses
• Increase in trips per person between 1997 and 2005: 91%

The UBC Campus Transit Plan also identified several concerns regarding a below-grade transit station:

• Fear that the station and bus tunnel would be ugly
• Location of bus entrance to station may avoid traffic better south of University Boulevard
• It may be difficult to ventilated the station and there may be impact on the surrounding air quality
• It may be difficult to make station secure

It lists the following as advantages of a below-grade station:

• Faster transit service/fewer delays because station would be fare-paid zone
• avoidance of traffic congestion and delays at pedestrian crosswalks
• Could be designed to allow for the implementation of rapid transit at a future date (the Comprehensive Community Plan says that one of the principles for transit is to
  provide flexibility for changing transit configurations over time such as planning the transportation system to accommodate a potential future LRT route and stations.)

The CCP has "Placemaking Principles " for both open space and urban form, and lists Planning objectives for the University Commercial and UBC Academic Core.

New Bus Loop Approved!

I had my second meeting with Thesis Advisor M today. She's approved the bus loop concept, and we made a list of people I should contact to be on my committee and a list of things that I should get/find out for my first meeting. Apparently another professor might have access to some plans and things for the site which could cut down on a lot of work.

The bus loop is part of a larger University Boulevard Competition that was held in 2005. Moore Rubel Yudell of Santa Monica teamed with Hughes Condon Marler and won the conceptual design competition (announced April 28, 2005). In 2006 Moore Rubel Yudell pulled out of the project and were replaced by Kuwabara Payne McKenna Blumberg Architects out of Toronto. (from the Ubyssey)

The University Boulevard Competition excluded the design of the underground bus loop, which was designed by engineers. This design can be seen online and seems to focus on weaving. I'm not crazy about the design because I think the residential blocks completely mask the War Memorial Gym and will cast unpleasant shadows. The project includes:

• construction of realigned University Blvd including revised intersections at Webrook Mall and East Mall
• Transit station and ramp with the trolley station at grade including associated reconfiguration of underground utilities
• Two buildings adjacent to the student union building and Aquatic Centre
• Extensive Landscaping renovation
• Vehicle access and parking adjacent to Bookstore

Construction is slated to commence in June 2007, be completed in April 2009 and be occupied in September 2009.

The bus loop itself was designed by VIA Architects, who were also the urban design consulting firm for the 2010 Olympic Village. They have done a ton of transit work, including three of the new Millenium Line stations, the furniture design for the Millenium Line stations and the Burrard and Granville Stations for the Expo Line. I've sent them an e-mail, so hopefully they will get back to me with some interesting information.

Loopy precedents

I'm still waiting for the thumbs up from Thesis Advisor M, but I've got fingers and toes crossed. Until I get approval, I'm going to scout around for useful stuff (I'm sure this is clear from my previous posts)

Right now, I'm interested in precedents. What kind of architecture exists for transit hubs? For underground transportation? What's out there in Vancouver and otherwise?

• Calatrava's WTC transit hub. The scale of this is quite different from what would be need at UBC. There is a Power point video online.

I'm going to find some more, but I've spent a few hours drinking thesis committee wine and chatting with some other students, so I'll get it tomorrow.

Further loopiness

John Maeda at Simplicity says that statistically speaking, most of the time you try something, you will mess up. You don't know how things work, you aren't sure what to do, you make mistakes. The secret is that if you try a lot of different things, you will end up with a few ideas that work: if 1 out of every 100 tries produces something useful, it's obvious that the more tries you have under your belt, the more useful stuff you will produce.

This is one of the reasons I post so many times a day. It can't hurt, I figure, to keep adding ideas and links to this blog, and there is an off chance it will produce something useful.

This is a link to a map of the new UBC bus loop that shows where each bus picks up and drops off. The B-line buses are to the south-west and north-east of the loop because they need to straighten out so people can board.

The community shuttles are not shown as part of the bus loop. These buses board to the north of the Student Recreation centre, and their route is shown here. They currently only cover the North end of campus, but we can expect services to expand to the South campus with increasing construction. In fact, residential construction all over campus increases the importance of the campus shuttles.

This map shows the proposed location of the new bus loop.

I'm not sure if I've linked to the Strategic Transportation Plan yet. It gives some user statistics concerning students and others making bus trips onto campus. It also talks about how there are noise issues with diesel buses, and mentions that Translink has plans for a rapid transit connection to UBC. This must be the Skytrain station. I found the link to the Strategic Transportation plan through the campus plan access and movement blog. This blog talks about all the different ways people get around campus: one suggestion is that UBC have attended bicycle parking. (Post is here). Even more interesting is the post that says funding is the biggest reason we don't have rail to UBC and that it's slated to be completed some time after 2021 unless money comes from an unexpected source. If thesis advisor M does agree that the bus loop is a good project, I think I'll send Mr. Richard Drdul a note...

The campus plan blogs are pretty interesting: I see that a lot of students seem intersested in a dry space to meet friends and study. It would be interesting to see if this could be blended with a new bus loop.

In the loop

The UBC bus loop has recently moved. When I started studying architecture at UBC it was south-west of the student union building. This was a very convenient place because it sat between the arts and science sides of the campus and was adjacent to the Student Union Building.

The loop functioned moderately well, but the introduction of B-Line buses caused problems with both the waiting areas and available space. It was not designed for the articulated buses or the line-ups of 100+ students waiting to get on the buses. When the 44 B-Line was introduced the stop was on the street across from the loop (if you look carefully you can see it on the map).

After 2003, the bus loop moved to just east of McInnis field, in a space that used to be tennis courts. They decided not to repave, and around Christmas the road turned into oreo cookie crumbs because it couldn't handle the weight of the buses.

The map shows a couple of useful things. The turning radius for the articulated buses and the trolley buses are significantly different. As well, much of the plaza adjoining the Student Union Building could be co-opted for a new bus loop. It may be possible to preserve some of the grassy knoll or to recreate part of it's utility. The grassy knoll serves as a social condensor in the same way as the microarchitectural articulations: because it has no set use it can be used as seating in the summer, a ski/snowboard hill in the winter and serves many other functions.

Because UBC has B-lines, trolley buses, gas-powered buses and community shuttles, I think it would be a good idea to separate the community shuttles from the rest of the buses and put them above ground. This would mean that the only buses using the loop would be from off campus which could then affect how the loop is laid out.

Most of the vehicles that leave campus go down University Boulevard to 10th Avenue, but the 25 and some other buses travel past the hospital. Any bus loop would have to take into consideration the different directions of buses leaving and organise the loop to minimize confusion on the part of drivers and users.