Phoebe Crisman Research

Sustainable Redevelopment Guidelines for Degraded Urban Watersheds

2007-2008
Phoebe Crisman with Crisman+Petrus Architects
In collaboration with The Elizabeth River Project, the EPA Region III and several federal, state and local agencies, C+PA is designing two demonstration projects for industrial developers along the Elizabeth River. These urban designs will minimize environmental impacts to the River and encourage stewardship above and beyond that required for regulatory compliance. The case studies will be used to develop model practices for sustainable industrial redevelopment in highly urbanized watersheds across the country. C+PA collaborated on a publication that integrates the case studies and guidelines and will be distributed nationally by the EPA and ERP.

From Industry to Culture: leftovers, time and material transformation in four contemporary museums

2007
Derelict places of industrial production have often been converted into cultural venues, but little has been written about the underlying attitudes towards accumulations of dirt and leftover materials which often feature in such projects. Dirtiness here is not literal dirt found underfoot, but architectural palimpsest, imperfection, and the stigma of former economic or social disenfranchisement and neglect associated with particular buildings. Design approaches to time and material transformation are investigated by comparing Dia:Beacon, Tate Modern, MASS MoCA and the Design Zentrum Nordrhein Westfalen, four manufacturing buildings recently recycled into art museums where industrial ‘dirt’ is either purposefully removed or enhanced. The analysis is structured by several intertwined concepts: the shift from industrial to cultural production, and from anonymous sites to branded sights; weathering and the cultural construction of materials; and the importance of history and memory, interpretive openness and sensory pleasure. In the case of leftover and reconfigured industrial architecture, openness to material change, patina and even dirtiness is an effective means of allowing the past to remain visible and provocative, while positioning the present museum as part of an ongoing process of imagination, interpretation and accretion in time.

Working on the Elizabeth River

2007
A fragile and contaminated ecosystem, intense industrial activity and human inhabitation struggle to co-exist along the Elizabeth River. In three intertwined projects Crisman+Petrus Architects have developed translatable urban and architectural strategies interdependent with ecological regeneration, while demonstrating the didactic value of design in public environmental education. This design research model operates at multiple scales, reaches out to diverse communities, plans for varying, overlapping periods of time, and makes positive change in the world.
www.blackwell-synergy.com/toc/joae/61/1

The Learning Barge Project

2006 - 2009
The Learning Barge initiative is a unique example of integrating community partners and professionals into the academy in order to create an environmentally conscientious, built project with positive, wide-reaching social and educational implications. This multi-semester, interdisciplinary project to design and build the Learning Barge, a floating, self-sustaining field station, would be impossible to achieve without an innovative structure that unites teaching and practice. Several professionals, including architects, engineers, naval architects, ecologists, teachers and others have contributed their expertise and efforts throughout the process, working closely with students to help them understand the innovations and complexities in professional practice. Located on the most polluted tributary of the Chesapeake Bay, the Learning Barge will provide interactive K-12 and adult education about how the river ecology and human activities are inextricably linked. Unlike environmental education centers located in pristine “nature,” the Barge will traverse an important urban river and major world port. Moving to a different river restoration site every few months, the Learning Barge will teach participants about the tidal estuary ecosystem, wetland and oyster restoration and remediation efforts, as well as sustainable power generation, rainwater harvesting and other green building technologies. The project is been designed to teach through example by harnessing energy from sun and wind, filtering rainwater and gray water in a contained bed wetland, and utilizing recycled materials and “green” technologies. The University has partnered with The Elizabeth River Project, Chesapeake Bay Foundation, NOAA and three school districts for project and curriculum development and operations. The Use Plan estimates that this semi-nomadic field station will touch the lives of more than 19,000 people each year via school field trips, university research, teacher training, and public workshops and events. By actively engaging students in the Elizabeth’s cultural and environmental ecologies, the Learning Barge will encourage environmental stewardship and create a significant national model for education about urban habitat restoration and sustainable architecture. Funded by the Environmental Protection Agency, Virginia Environmental Endowment, and Public Service Fellowship Program, the Learning Barge was awarded the 2006 National Student Collaborative Design Award from the American Institute of Landscape Architects. The Learning Barge initiative represents the future of architecture towards greater synthesis with environment and ecology—achieved through intertwined phases of research and design, and an integrated way of working across scales: from watershed, to district, to detailed architecture. While demonstrating the didactic value of architecture for public environmental education, the project establishes a proactive model of both service-learning and professional engagement in the academy.
www.arch.virginia.edu/learningbarge

Money Point Sustainable Revitalization Study

2005 - 2006
Phoebe Crisman with The Elizabeth River Project; Michael Petrus, Crisman+Petrus Architects; Dr. Frank Dukes, UVA Institute for Environmental Negotiation
Professor Crisman designed an environmentally sustaining architectural and urban model for the co-existence of thriving waterfront industry + ecological regeneration at Money Point, a 330-acre neglected site along Norfolk’s Elizabeth River. Supported by a Virginia Environmental Endowment grant, the design work was a critical component of a public process organized by the non-profit, Elizabeth River Project and the UVA Institute for Environmental Negotiation. A number of green strategies are configured into a restored biological network that will be integrated with the existing infrastructural network. The plan was puplished in October 2006 and several components of the plan are funded and planned for construction.
www.elizabethriver.org/Non_pub%20PDFs/MP_layout_061011final.pdf