Schoonmaker Bus Shelter

<body topmargin=0 leftmargin=0 marginheight=0 marginwidth=0> <table cellpadding=0 cellspacing=0 border=0 height="100%"><tr> <td valign="top" width=185 BGCOLOR="#333333" TEXT="#F7F7FF" bgproperties="fixed" background="2b28ec00ddualp.jpg"> <bR> </td> <td valign="top" BGCOLOR="#333333" TEXT="#F7F7FF"> <div> <FONT SIZE="6" COLOR="#99FF99" FACE="Tw Cen MT Condensed" >Studio 300A Art+ Architecture</FONT><FONT SIZE="1" COLOR="#0000BF" FACE="Tw Cen MT Condensed" >    </FONT><FONT SIZE="1" COLOR="#0000FF" FACE="Tw Cen MT Condensed" > </FONT><B>|   </B><A HREF="index.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Deliberate Design Architecture"><U><B>home</B></U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="norton_ave__oakland_ca_.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="RogersEnright Addition"><U><B>Rogers-Enright Addition</B></U></A><B>   |   </B><B>Schoonmaker Bus Shelter</B></div> <div> <IMG SRC="05c58020.png" border=0 width="600" height="2" ALIGN="BOTTOM" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0"></div> <div> <B>Schoonmaker Bus Shelter</B></div> <div> <B><U>[Building Permit Issued]</U></B></div> <bR> <div> <A HREF="http://www.lionsclubs.org/EN/content/resources_club.shtml" TARGET="_top" TITLE="http://www.lionsclubs.org/EN/content/res"><U><B>[for the Lions Club of Sausalito]</B></U></A></div> <div> <B>12 April 06</B></div> <div> The following is a proposal for an extremely small bus shelter for the City of Sausalito, CA on its main boulevard called Bridgeway.  The need for this shelter began when the new bike lane went in a few years back, making it necessary to move the Golden Gate Transit stop a few hundred feet to the north.  The Lions Club is behind the project, and this design is still under their scrutiny.  We are putting it on the web site so that all the Lions may get a bit of background on the design solution for their own considerations.  What we are posting here is the second refinement of the structure as was presented at a dinner held on the 11th of April at the Alta Mira Hotel in Sausalito.</div> <div> The solution calls for extreme economy, since there is virtually no real budget.  Most all of the work will have to come from contributions of materials, skills and artistry.  Yet it is our intent to really make this small structure be quite the antithesis of the standard, pre-fab Plexiglas container (or as we like to refer to as "Habitrails for humans").  More and more our cities are filled with the visual noise of transit infrastructure, signage, benches, phone wires, traffic lights, advertising, etc., that tend to drown out all that makes a particular place in the world.....a particular place in the world.  One could open his eyes in any town in the US and have absolutely no idea where he is in the country.  We would like to painstakingly work our way back to living in towns that have a very particular "somewhereness" about them.  And since all this civic infrastructural amenity stuff we seem to need so much of now days makes up the majority of the visual and tactile culture of our cities, it is exactly there that we must begin this rather Sisyphusian task.</div> <div> Oddly enough, having no real budget on this project is just the key to making this all work--because it will have to involve effort and contributions from the community of Sausalito, not from the Transit Authority, Home Depot nor from Hasbro for that matter.</div> <div> The site is an annoyingly narrow and steep slot of leftover land between roads at different elevations.  This used to be the shoreline and the old railroad berm along Richardson Bay.  Kaiser and Bechtel, during WWII, were given charge of creating a whole new shipyard district for the making of Liberty Ships (supply ships), and it was to be called Marinship.  Thus, the narrow road that drops down below this site was the southern access to this newly reclaimed land--reclaimed by filling in the tidal zone with soil blasted from the north end of town.  Some <FONT SIZE="3" COLOR="#AAAAAA" FACE="Trebuchet MS" >838,763 </FONT>cubic yards of earth were taken from Pine and Waldo Point and placed here for the war effort<FONT SIZE="3" COLOR="#AAAAAA" FACE="Trebuchet MS" >.  </FONT></div> <bR> <div> Our own Studio 300A resides  in one of the largest structures built by Kaiser for ship building; the ICB.  [The ICB was used to lay out full-sized drawings of the ship hulls as templates for the form work for constructing the hulls].   And much like the ICB, the Schoonmaker Building (and its surrounding enclave) just to the south of the ICB, houses many artists and designers of various sorts, and a preponderance of marine-related industry such as sail makers.  Lots of sail makers, actually.  Boat builders as well.  It is the Schoonmaker Building and its surrounding enclave that are the  backdrop to our little and annoyingly thin site.   For these buildings are all accessed by this southern road.</div> <div> <IMG SRC="2cfb05a0.jpg" border=0 width="432" height="346" ALIGN="BOTTOM" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0">  </div> <div> <I>Annoyingly narrow site.</I></div> <bR> <div> <IMG SRC="2d0b0290.jpg" border=0 width="432" height="297" ALIGN="BOTTOM" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0"></div> <div> <I>Here you can see the characteristic arches of the Marinship buildings down in the reclaimed flats.  Aren't the phone wires just exquisite?</I></div> <div> The proposed solution tries to play off the  Marinship vernacular a bit by using cut pieces of an 8'-0" dia corrugated metal pipe as the three curved back wall elements.  This is an easy, cheap way to provide walls.  Lion Bob has a plasma cutter which we could put to use.  Since we really want community involvement and since there is a large marina in the background (not shown) I thought sail fabric would be a good, light solution for the roof.  We will be talking to some of the sail makers in the Marinship District to see who wants to help make this roof, which may prove to be a good way of promoting their own nearby businesses.  The concrete work which will bind all this together will be provided by the City of Sausalito (they have no idea what they volunteered for).  Not much else to say, but we do believe it does seem to belong to this small place, in gesture and material.  As the design develops, we will find opportunities to get even more embedded in the community such as with the woodwork and especially the landscaping.</div> <bR> <div> The following is a note to the Lions's club that accompanied the April 11 design revisions:</div> <div> This revision attempts to address some of the issues brought up at the last meeting.</div> <bR> <div> The changes to the design allow for more sheltered space under the roof by using a new framing system to support the fabric.  I initially believed that the only way to broaden the roof was to make the supporting structure more complex, which was exactly what I was trying not to do because of costs.  But I figured out a way to do this with a relatively simple support structure.</div> <bR> <div> The site still remains very narrow and so there is very limited opportunity to really allow for any depth to the shelter.  Yet this new design does offer more depth and more shelter.  Some of this comes from a new bench arrangement as well.  The proposed bench would be cast in concrete with the foundation and slab, and will be capped with wood so it is not so cold and hard to sit on.</div> <bR> <div> The majority of the winter winds come from the northeast.  This shelter offers pretty good protection from this wind.  More protection could be provided if necessary, by further curving the eastern-most corrugated metal wall around to the south-east.  But this will also eclipse the view that riders would have of approaching buses and also what approaching buses have of riders.  This is a major complaint riders have on the Nevada Street shelter.  We can fine-tune this end of the shelter if necessary, but it should be done carefully.  I am also proposing some medium-height plantings be done around the shelter.  This may also help break winter winds a bit.</div> <bR> <div> The summer winds come from the southwest to this site.  The shelter is open widely to the south, and necessarily so.  But the new design lowers the roof profile and raises the back walls so as to prevent wind from just blowing through the shelter.  The curved walls should help maintain positive pressure under the roof so not too much wind should disturb the riders--though certainly it will still be windy on the worst of days.  </div> <bR> <div> The visual lightness of this solution, I think, is really what is called for on this particular site.  With the vaulted Schoonmaker Building as a backdrop and the marina and sail makers just below, the fabric roof solution seems appropriate.  We will be enlisting some help from some local sail makers on this project so the local tradesmen would have a stake in the little shelter, helping to make it a product of Sausalito.</div> <bR> <div> Because of the extremely limited budget of the project, I am trying to keep things as simple and basic as possible, while still trying to make something beautiful and very local.  It is a tough balance.  I hope you find it to your liking.</div> <bR> <bR> <div> <IMG SRC="2d188b50.jpg" border=0 width="648" height="437" ALIGN="BOTTOM" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0"></div> <div> <I>Site Plan  </I></div> <bR> <bR> <bR> <div> <IMG SRC="2d288f20.jpg" border=0 width="648" height="498" ALIGN="BOTTOM" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0"></div> <div> <I>Floor Plan</I></div> <bR> <bR> <bR> <div> <IMG SRC="2d3885e0.jpg" border=0 width="648" height="350" ALIGN="BOTTOM" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0"></div> <div> <I>South Elevation</I><I>  </I></div> <bR> <bR> <div> The actual structure will be much softer and less stark on the land than these CAD images would suggest.  The fabric will likely be "wheat" in color and the steel culvert pieces will weather grayish, and take on the color of the inevitable Sausalito fog.  </div> <bR> <div> Moving deeper into history, fabric structures have always been the shelter of those in transit--the various nomads of various times, following herds in Central Asia or in North America, traveling the deserts of the Arabian Peninsula.  </div> <bR> <div> Why not for a post-modern day bus shelter as well?</div> <bR> <div> <B>2 May 06</B></div> <div> We are officially now under review of the Sausalito Planning Department.  Drawings and photos have been submitted and <U>our hearing will be </U><U>o</U><U>n the 7th of June.</U>  We are actively looking for help on this project.  Especially with the roof portion.  </div> <bR> <div> The city of Sausalito will be going through some noticeable changes over the next several years.  We are hoping for the community to be actively involved in those changes, so the townscape and its towns people are more tightly bound.  Between the rest of the bus shelters that need work, the new police and fire facilities and the city's need to comply with affordable housing requirements, there are plenty of opportunities for us to shape our city in our own Sausalito kind of way.  The default is always going to be "off the rack", "pre-fab", "universal", "standard issue", "tried and true".  This is exactly what we are acting against.  </div> <bR> <div> It is not outrageousness that we are after, but rather, "engagement" as the antidote.</div> <bR> <bR> <div> <B>7 June 06</B></div> <bR> <div> Well, well.  We have full planning approval.  Imagine that.  Damn!</div> <bR> <bR> <div> <B>Fall 2006</B></div> <div> With the pipe now cut into 3, we should be well on our way.  But we are still a bit hung up on getting non-absurd proposals for the fabric portion of the structure.  The absurd ones have proven easy.  One way that may help us it to have the fabrics engineering completed by a local firm who is somewhat community oriented and is wanting to have some fabrics experience under their belts (and suspenders).  So we are now on a quest for an engineer.  </div> <div> All of this, and we still have not yet submitted drawings for a building permit.  For we need the engineering before submitting drawings.  That really means we are looking at construction some time in Spring.  One more wet winter at this bus stop.</div> <bR> <div> <B>Fall 2007</B></div> <div> After foundation and framing design by Framework Engineering of San Anselmo, and after several revisions and refinements by us at DD+A, we have finally received building permit approval from the City of Sausalito.  The city has offered to pay for the foundation and utility work and the Lion's Club will take on the rest.  Toward that end all the Lions are fundraising just now, as we await the city to begin its grading and foundation work. </div> <div> The Lion's Club has signed a contract and given a deposit to <A HREF="http://www.artech2000.com/gallery/architectural/commercial_products/index.html" TARGET="_top" TITLE="http://www.artech2000.com/gallery/archit"><U>AR Tech</U></A> to fabricate the fabric roof.  </div> <bR> <div> <B>Fall 2008</B></div> <div> The city of Sausalito has learned just how long a cost estimate lasts.  Obtaining bids for the concrete work proved that even conservative estimates become mere dreamy fantasy in two short years.  The lowest bid was a $20k over the estimate for the concrete work.  Why would it cost over $50K for the foundation for a  #%&%!! bus shelter?  </div> <div> Three possibilities; </div> <div> 1]  We have no real data about the soil the project is on.  It is perched on the edge of Bridgeway Blvd. which was once the shoreline, which was once the railroad     bed of the tracks that lead to the downtown pier.  We are likely clinging to the spoils from the grading of either or both roads.  Maybe not though.  The point is,  we don't know.  Engineer David Kallmeyer has to assume the worst in terms of soil stability and so our little foundation contains no less than (8) piers down to an assumed bedrock layer.  It is as though the soil does not even exist and our shelter is sitting on a concrete table with 8 legs. Were this shelter built on solid, flat terrain, we could use a slab-on-grade footing with two small central piers for the posts, which would cost (apparently) substantially less.  Never mind that the site is so easily accessible, you could pour the entire foundation and piers right from the concrete truck's chute as it moved along the road.</div> <div> 2]  Publicly funded projects must contract with prevailing wages, which adds an estimated $20K to the project cost.  </div> <div> 3]  Forgot what [3] was.  May have something to do with how much the bidders wanted the job--I don't recall.</div> <bR> <div> Anyway, now our efforts are bent toward finding a way that the city can fulfill its commitment to the Lion's Club (and all the bus riders).  The Lion's Club has already fabricated several of the steel components of the project and has commissioned AR Tech to initialize the design of the fabric roof.  Abandoning the project now would be a serious mistake for all concerned.  We are looking to close an approx. $25K gap.  But in two more years, that number will be a mere dreamy fantasy.</div> <bR> <bR> <bR> </td> </tr></table></body>