[Vision2020] Bridging the divide through design

[Moscow Cares]

Courtesy of today’s (February 26, 2018) Moscow-Pullman Daily News.

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Bridging the divide through design
Professor helps community brainstorm aesthetic ideas for Moscow's Third Street project

As Moscow's contentious Third Street bridge moves toward construction, local design students and community members volunteered their time Saturday to brainstorm design ideas for the project.

Ayad Rahmani, a professor of architecture with Washington State University who led the workshop of about 35 people, said the city project has been under fire since its inception. He said concerns he has heard include worries over a dangerous increase in traffic near a school and possible damages to local wildlife.

"We're here to essentially conduct a workshop to generate images - visuals - that can give the community some options to work with," Rahmani said. "Right now, it doesn't seem like there have been images generated to create the debate as to what we can have."

Rahmani said there has been a great deal of debate over whether it should be a pedestrian or vehicular bridge - or indeed if there should be a bridge at all over Paradise Creek a block west of Mountain View Road. He said the purpose of the workshop was not to take sides, but to generate ideas.

The workshop, Rahmani said, "is to capture the community's feelings and a sense of need and ambition or aspiration for this intersection."

Rahmani said the groups involved should assume that the city is moving forward with a vehicular bridge.

Councilwoman Brandy Sullivan said the city isn't seriously considering a pedestrian bridge at all.

She said to the group, "The only way that could change is if the majority sentiment on the council changes."

Rahmani said the preliminary plans he's seen are good works of engineering, but lack design.

Former Moscow Mayor Nancy Chaney, also in attendance, said if there are any aesthetic elements being considered for the project, they will be secondary to utility.

"This would be a preformed concrete structure designed from the engineering standards for function," Chaney said

Rahmani said the challenge with this space will be to build the bridge in such a way that it considers the surrounding community.

"(The bridge) is involved in a very wonderfully textured neighborhood," Rahmani said. "By texture, I mean the scale of the houses and their relationships; something that we do not want to neglect."

Architecture students from both the University of Idaho and WSU mingled with groups of community members to help guide the discussion and eventual sketching of ideas. Many of the ideas presented traffic calming measures, including ways to psychologically prepare drivers for when they enter and exit the residential space.

Rahmani used trees as an example of a feature that can subliminally encourage motorists to behave differently in a space. Trees, Rahmani said, bring shade, nature, and color to the space, but they also create order.

"We can use them as a way to arrive to the site and perhaps look at ways of transitioning from residential, which is obviously very domestic and very private, to something that is much more - or a little bit more - high-speed," Rahmani said.

Rahmani said the sketches are still rough, but the intention was always to take them home and refine them. He said if all goes well, the students themselves may find an opportunity to present their design concepts to the Moscow City Council.

"The mayor has been talking a lot about collaborating - how beneficial it is to collaborate with the university and students," Sullivan said. "That's what we're doing, and hopefully that will make him a little open to at least listening."

Sullivan said the workshop was encouraging, but any design that would represent an increase in cost could be a tough sell.

"There would be interest in looking at ideas to make the bridge more attractive," Sullivan said. "If that means opening the budget and devoting more money to the project, I can't predict how open the council would react to that."

Based on what she called a tentative timeline, Sullivan said the projected start of construction on the Third Street bridge would fall in the middle of June.

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This plan was proposed at the September 10th, 2005 City Repair workshop, sponsored by the Paradise Path Task Force and developed in direct consultation with the surrounding neighbors.

http://www.moscowcares.com/Third_Street_Bridge/Third_Street_Pocket_Parket.htm

Seeya 'round town, Moscow, because . . .

"Moscow Cares" (the most fun you can have with your pants on)
http://www.MoscowCares.com
  
Tom Hansen
Moscow, Idaho

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