Community Spaces with Mark Lakeman

Last Friday, Ecosa was honored to host Mark Lakeman, co-founder of City Repair Project, for an inspiring lecture and workshop in our studio.

Mark Lakeman is a national leader in the development of sustainable public places. In the last decade he has directed or facilitated designs for more than three hundred new community-generated public places in Portland, Oregon alone. He is a co-founder of the City Repair Project in Portland, Oregon and served as the Co-Director of Creative Vision from 1995 to 2008. He is presently active as a project coordinator in the annual Village Building Convergence. Mark is also the founder and principal of Communitecture, Inc, a cutting edge design firm with sustainable building and planning projects at many scales.

At Ecosa, Mark began the day with a lecture on placemaking. Mark believes firmly that “streets are for birthday parties,” meaning that in our current grid-planned neighborhoods our streets actually isolate and restrict us from valuable connection making. He believes that we must work together to take back our streets as public places which will in turn increase community, safety, education, nutrition, connectivity, and many other of our societal goals. The best part of his message is that all of this can be done with hardly any money, and it is fun at the same time!

That afternoon Mark pulled out some toys and the students got to try their hand at Placemaking. He had a prototype neighborhood for Eugene, OR, with buildings set up in a very traditional grid format.

The students took the model out in the sunlight to gather solar information about the site at certain times of the year. They then used the solar analysis to determine locations for the buildings that will maximize passive solar features. Mark was able to tell the students details about the neighborhood’s residents to make sure each home is connected to the rest of the community and what unique contribution they can bring.

This was a great exercise for the students, and all of these concepts will be an integral part of their ongoing Habitat for Humanity multi-family housing project.

For more information on Placemaking, check out the City Repair’s Placemaking Guidebook for a donation of $15. (Also available in the Ecosa library for our local readers).

Prescott Rodeo Grounds

The Prescott Rodeo Grounds is a 39 acre site owned by the City of Prescott. This historic site is vital in defining city identity, though it is considered by many to be “under-utilized” or not highly visible.


The Ecosa students tackled this large project in an attempt to bring regenerative ecological designs to the heart of Prescott. Their proposal addresses:

Watershed Management

  • Passive Water Management
  • Rainwater Harvesting
  • Vegetation water filtration

Power Needs

  • Photo voltaic cells
  • Conservation
  • Day Lighting
  • Efficiency

Waste

  • Animal Waste Composting
  • Upcycling on-site waste

Connectivity

  • Allow for various modes of travel
  • Trail connects Rodeo with Greenway at the top of scenic rock outcropping

Experiential Quality

  • Vital spaces foster human interaction
  • emotional connection
  • cultural significance


The first Prescott rodeo formed in 1888. In 1913 the “Prescott Frontier Days” came into being and moved to its present location, The Prescott Rodeo Grounds….

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Ruth’s Sunshine School

Last night the students presented their final plan for a school for children with severe disabilities in Ghana.

Their site is a 4-acre plot of land about 40 miles from the capital of Ghana.

Their design proposes to power all facilities with renewable energy (primarily solar), to recycle waste using biogas sanitation digesters, to collect and use all rainwater for consumption and irrigation, and to implement an integrated permaculture plan.

Since their site is relatively near the equator, the students made sure to account for the constant heat and humidity for most of the year. All buildings incorporate passive ventilation to channel wind and cool air.

Overhangs on the buildings are used for shading and increase rainwater catchment. The site also includes a full permaculture plan that will provide fresh produce to the dining hall, and will be irrigated entirely from rainwater.



The presentation was great and all of the designs have come a long way since the beginning. No rest yet though! True to typical Ecosa style, the students only have one more day to prepare for their next final presentation, a redevelopment proposal for the Prescott Rodeo grounds. Please come by the Ecosa studio at 6pm tomorrow to watch the next presentation!

Ecosa design tour of Central Arizona

Ecosans at Taliesin West/Frank Lloyd Wright School of Architecture:

Frank Lloyd Wright literally created Taliesin West “out of the desert.” He and his apprentices gathered rocks from the desert floor and sand from the washes to build this great desert masterpiece. From the beginning, this remarkable set of buildings built astounded architectural critics with its beauty and unusual form. Situated on 600 acres of rugged Sonora desert in the foothills of the McDowell Mountains in Scottsdale, Arizona, Taliesin West is now a National Historic Landmark.

Visitors to Taliesin West will not see a museum, but rather a remarkably vital and active community of students and architects working together to maintain Wright’s vision. Below is one of the apprentices shelters on the grounds of Taliesin West. In the first year with the Frank Lloyd Wright School of Architecture, each student is required to sleep in a 10’x10’ canvas tent. As the student gains experience in the apprenticeship, they are able to build their own shelter that functions as their living space during the program. Each student is allowed only $1000 for the construction of their shelter.

The Ecosa students were invited to have dinner at Taliesin West their first night in town. They had a great time meeting the current architecture apprentices, and it is not every day one gets to play games in Frank Lloyd Wright’s living room. They also brought their sleeping bags and had a memorable night sleeping in the guest quarters of Frank Lloyd Wright’s home.

The next morning the students went with Ecosa instructor and architect Tom Hahn on a day-long tour of several buildings in the Phoenix area which are picked because of their unique designs and/or their material usage. Tom lead the discussion on the merits of each project and whether or not they contribute to sustainability. This tour is an opportunity to discuss the experiential aspects of sustainable architecture and what role the design element plays in attaining the goal of sustainable design.

Optima Camel View Mixed-use Village in downtown Scottsdale consists of 700 residential units in eleven interconnected terraced buildings with 24,000 sq. ft. of ground level retail space on a 13 acre site. On these 13 acres, there are actually 17 acres of garden terrace.

The group also took a stop at Desert Marigold Waldorf School. Tom designed and lead the construction of this building that is created with strawbale, earth plaster, and passive solar design.


The last stop was Maya’s farm at South Mountain, an urban organic agriculture site in Phoenix. Maya Dailey provides food for local restaurants, farmers markets, and a her CSA members, and believes in earth-friendly (therefore human-friendly) food production, in which no pesticides, herbicides, or commercial fertilizers are used.

Now after a week-long break for Thanksgiving, the students are back to the studio to finish up their Sixth Street Redevelopment project before their last day, December 17th.

All photos courtesy of our favorite photographer, Ecosa student Ken Long