Urban Acupuncture
Oakland, CA
Fall 2019 Urban Studio
Critic: René Davids

Viewing International Boulevard and its environs on the macro-scale, one may not notice the relationship between the creek and the street. However, as the viewer investigates specific intersections between the creek and the boulevard, they will notice subtle deviations of the grid on either side of the creek. Certain blocks might converge, or the creek might wane and be redirected into a culvert. At times larger pieces of the urban fabric appear to shift, often until an adjacent stream meets the boulevard. An injection of new development into this “deviated” condition, the design proposal posits an architectural re-presence of the culverted Sausal Creek. Water has the ability both to challenge and adapt to the site conditions it creates— through its free-formedness and flow, water inspires “deviated spaces” which serve as housing courtyards. These spaces are designed to respond seasonally to the rain, as water is allowed to flood a sunken area.

A canopy surrounding the northeast courtyard serves to collect irrigation water for community gardens within the space. Surrounding the central public spaces, housing adheres to contextual grids and site lines, and respects the building scale of the adjacent community. The facades of these structures, imagined as a flat vertical grid, are deviated via the use of angled entrances, and further broken orthogonally through a regulating curve which is a reflection of the undulating courtyard canopy. Sitting along this spatial edge are terraced greenhouses which feed water into the courtyard through small channels on the ground surface. The public spaces activated through this flow of water between the converging urban grids serve residents of the housing developments as well as pedestrians along the boulevard. Not only is space provided for people to play, garden, or repose, but a narrative of nostalgia is suggested through the creek’s reemergence..