"Smart Streets" Harlem 125th Street
This project was a design studio class coordinated with the UDL and conducted by Columbia’s schools of architecture and engineering working in collaboration with the 125th Street Business Improvement District (BID). The studio explored the Street Section as a tool for greater urban sustainability. The street was re-conceptualized to address water, energy and waste.
Using the area of West 125th Street between Morningside and Fifth Avenues as a laboratory, the researchers sought to bring sustainable strategies to the urban grid. They questioned how the concept of “smart building” could lend itself to “smart streets” and also questioned what it means to be “smart.”
The Urban Ecology Studio is a research and training collaboration between the Senior Civil and Environmental Engineering Design Seminar at the Fu Foundation School of Engineering and Applied Science (SEAS), and the Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation (GSAPP). The Urban Ecology Studio trains students of different disciplines to investigate deeply environmental design solutions for cities in the twenty first century.
Image by Huey-Jye Kahn, GSAPP, MSAAD ‘06
Faculty: Richard Plunz, Patricia Culligan