Alex Fortney's Architecture Projects - Architecture 420

Architecture 420 Project 1 - City of Milwaukee Boathouse

Improving access and usage

Description

Architecture 420 is the second Junior-Level studio required at SARUP. The project entailed creating a boat house to hold various sized canoes, kayaks and rowboats to be used on the river immediately in front of Cesar Park. The site had to be accessible for people with handicaps and had to serve as a catalyst to bring people to the site. I placed the building at a corner on the existing site and dug into the wall to create an area where the boats could pull under and be lifted up. Also, there was a ramp that went to the edge of the water. To make the site handicapped accessible from all angles, I created a ramp down the hill from the houses. As a result to keep the slope less than 1:12 and appropriate flat areas, the ramp was over a half-mile in length. I also improved the access to the site by extending the riverwalk from the south through the site and connected it to an additional path north of the site. To keep the boat and bike traffic from colliding, the path wraps around the back side of the building.

Ideas that I took away from this project was designing with the pedestrian in mind and how to ramp for people in wheelchairs to descend almost 40 feet with manipulating the least amount of topography. The ramp I created is code-compliant and requires little excavation and filling; it could be easily built!

The Site

The site is along the Milwaukee River where it makes a bend almost at a right angle. Upstream from the site is a former dam, which was cut out in the middle but much still remains. Over it, a contemporary bridge was built a few years ago. The buildable location was along the river, but not far back because the steep embankment left only about a 75 foot wide swath of land. The site was a former swimming pool, and also has the outlet for the river flushing system (not a sewer).

Aerial

Site Analysis

In preparation for the project we went though a process of site analysis. Two tasks I was assigned was to find historical and wild-life evidence. I observed and took photos on an early site visit and created these small display boards.

Renderings

The renderings that I chose to create were from the pedestrian perspective both on land, approaching the building on foot and from the water, approaching the building from a boat. I also included a bird's eye and elevation perspective (though they wouldn't actually be seen in this manner) for clarity of construction and materials.

Diagrams

To clarify the different accessible options for my site, I created some color-coded diagrams. The Red Diagram indicates the areas accessible by bicycle and roller-blader. The Green Diagram represents the areas accessible by someone with a disability in a wheelchair. This area also, obviously, contains most of the area accessible by bike, the exception being the north and south entrances which are too steep for a wheelchair. The Blue Diagram indicates all the area that people can access on foot, which is practically the entire site.

Thumbnail Series

A presentation component that was to make a series of 'thumbnail sketches' to create a mini movie of the views a person might see on our site. The first column (read downwards) Is entering from the north and exiting the south along the main path. The second is starting across the bridge and approaching the top of the hill (west to east). The third is the view someone in a boat would see approaching the boathouse, disembarking from the water and arriving on land.