Urban Arboriculture

Urban Arboriculture functions as a hybrid set of spaces bridging the performance of productive landscapes with parkland program.  The resultant parks aim to assist the city by cultivating nursery and wetland stock for greening projects, while serving as learning and recreation centers for adjacent neighborhoods.

Over the past several years, the city of Philadelphia has worked to institute a series of "greening" programs. As a result of these plans, Fairmont Parks Authority has been granted $2.5 million to increase the canopy cover of the city to 30 percent by the year 2015. The Spring 2010 studio focused on the creation of supplemental urban nurseries to enable Fairmont Park's goal.

Urban Arboriculture surfaces as a response to the demand for green goods and place-making within the urban environment. Divided into two parts, charrette and intensive studio, the design focuses on tree production while retaining useful open space. The charrette space is designed as a terminus of the intensive production of the studio, as well as a laboratory for storm water remediation. The focus site utilizes a variety of contemporary design programs. All material from this site is contained in parametrically designed planting trays able to accommodate any specimen. In addition to tree growth, the core of the focus site is a constructed wetland, treating point source runoff from site context, as well as providing a growing medium for riparian species to be used throughout city "green" projects.