Applied design and use-inspired research are central to the mission of Phoenix Urban Research Lab. We are an interface between college and community, a locus where university-based urban designers and planners connect with city officials, community leaders, and project developers.
Some of our projects are generated in-house. A case in point, still in the early stages, is our studio sustainability retrofit, the goal of which is to use wind and solar power to light our studio space. PURL is fortunate to have a roof terrace—a gracious remnant of a 1950s penthouse addition to the downtown offices we now occupy—and we are currently investigating the feasibility of installing on this terrace wind turbines and photovoltaic panels, with the goal of demonstrating the potential of green retrofitting. In this we will contribute to ASU’s ambitious sustainability initiative, which calls for solarizing campus buildings and dramatically reducing the university’s carbon footprint.
Other projects are generated by public and private clients seeking progressive design thinking. We focus on projects with a significant public presence or impact, and our most productive involvement happens often in the early stages, when large questions remain unresolved or even unarticulated—questions of concept, feasibility, scale, scope, place. How can a project contribute to large social goals? What planning and landscape concepts will make it ecologically sustainable? How can green technologies and materials be incorporated? What are the most promising and meaningful precedents? How will a project affect its environs? Invigorate public life? As a university center, we embrace the responsibility of identifying the civic and social values that a project might embody and encourage.
Both the Capitol Mall Centennial Plan and the Maricopa County Downtown Office Building Study are ongoing efforts to revitalize important governmental campuses in downtown Phoenix. Each of these campuses could euphemistically be described as “under-optimized,” and thus each project is an effort not only to produce good design but also to revitalize the public realm.
|
