Space Scheme 1

Postcard

Front:
















Back:

Adjacency Diagram revised

This is the Final and revised Adjacency diagram for the transfer station/mini-hub, showing places where the public (first half) and staff (bottom half) interact with themselves and each other.

Trolly Addition

The most important form of transportation that will take part in this hub is the connection to the San Diego Trolley Line, expanding a line off from the Beyer Station, following the 5 freeway north to the 905 freeway east, making stops at Ocean View Hills Parkway, and another at Brown Field, before heading south to the proposed site, where the line would terminate. This would provide a much needed connection between airports and the trolley system, which is the 5th most traveled light rail system in the United States, as well as provide for future city expansion.

A new direction

The project for my thesis has changed due to a few factors, and is now going to be a transportation hub on a site just to the north of the existing Tijuana International Airport, with a pedestrian corridor to the TJ airport. I see this as a sort of in-between step towards a truly bi-national airport, one that does not have quite the heavy implications as a full-on bi-national airport.


The new site is a smaller piece of the old one from the previous project, taking up about a tenth of a square mile, the programming is similar, but pulled down to address a much smaller scale.

Adjacency Diagrams

Site and perimeter study

After overlaying a few airports of similar sizes over the proposed site for the new Tijuana/San Diego International airport, taking up 4.45 square miles of total land space, placing it somewhere between the Austin Airport and Portland Airport, which come in at 4.91 square miles and 3.5 square miles, and bigger than the smallest of the compared airports, seatac, with 2.88 square miles of space.

This space would include the Otay border crossing, as this would be improved and become the major feeder road in and out of the airport from the north side.

Typology Timeline

Critical/Thesis Statement

San Diego and Tijuana are two different sides of the same piece, a twin city separated by a political and social border. The construction of civic buildings, or other buildings that are used by the public would therefore be beneficial for both sides of a border. Beneficial in not only a monetary perspective, but from a social advancement and communication perspective. Such a project would increase the quality of communication between the two sides, and help to further progress the elements necessary in or to continue a healthy inter-border relationship.

The climate of the San Diego/Tijuana cosmopolitan area gives a unique opportunity in the use of outdoor or semi-covered space for a pedestrian concourse/waiting/commerce area, which is not available in other areas of the country which have more extreme weather conditions. A semi-outdoor pedestrian concourse and commerce area, when incorporated into an airport with favorable weather conditions, would vastly improve the experiences people perceive about airports.

programming

Urban

· Airport as City

o Sense of Place

o Mixed/Multi-use

o Foundation for service and served spaces

· Functions

o Commerce space

o Gathering Space

o Waiting Space

• Architecture
• 50% Green or unpaved space
• Creates a uncluttered, natural and non-stressful space for users to move between destinations.
• 20% Shopping/Commerce area
• 15% Restaurant/Cafe/Pub
• 10% Entertainment inc. playground space
• 5% Information areas, misc service spaces
• Restrooms
• Money Exchange
• Map services
• Flight Information
• Transportation Information
  

Green

· Energy Generation

o Photovoltaics

o Wind power generators

· Passive Heating/Cooling

o Solar Mass walls

o Shade created by landscaping

· Water Conservation

o Flush-less toilets

o Grey-water recycled for landscaping

o Living machine for black water and waste

FAA maps of airport spaces from comparative study

North is up in all examples


Austin-Bergstrom International Airport (ABIA)






















Portland International Airport (IATA: PDX, ICAO: KPDX, FAA LID: PDX)















San Diego International Airport (IATA: SAN, ICAO: KSAN, FAA LID: SAN)





















Seattle-Tacoma International Airport (IATA: SEA, ICAO: KSEA, FAA LID: SEA)

Compairing Airports

"Smart Border" border crossing

I found some boards and presentation materials for the "smart border" project that was due to begin mid 2009. These boards are just the border crossing part of the entire project, which also includes an expansion to the General Abelardo L. Rodríguez International Airport, located just east of the current San Ysidro border crossing. The construction of the new border crossing, outlined in these figures, will go over the current crossing, increasing the lanes of traffic to and from mexico with the goal of decreasing the average wait time between borders to less than 15 minutes.

Green Parking lots

http://www.re-burbia.com/2009/08/06/bumper-crop/

This link shows an excellent way to offset the wasted space in outdoor parking lots, of the sort airports have so many of.

Chapter 1: Problems and Issues

Map of San Diego/Tijuana area

Map of the area, shown in circles are all cities or designated areas above 25,000 people, the darker red areas being the cities of San Diego and Tijuana. All airports shown including military or privite, but only The Tijuana International airport (on the border) and the one just north of the San Diego bay proper, Lindberg field, are international airports. Also included are state county lines and city borders, shown in grey.

Problem

San Diego and Tijuana, when combined, make up one of the largest metropolitan areas in the Americas, with a total of just over 5 million residents reported in 2009, also being the largest bi-national metropolitan area shared between the United States and Mexico. As it currently stands, the border crossing between these sister cities is the most-trafficked in the world, in 2005 accounting for 17 million vehicles and 50 million people entered the United States at the San Ysidro port of entry in one year alone. Regions along the Mexico/United States are among the fastest growing urban and rural settings in the country, which precipitates into needing more services and infrastructure in these areas, including transportation hubs and airports, the former and latter of which is sorely needed on both sides of the San Diego/Tijuana border.

In a growing urban and sociological world, communication and cooperation are becoming ever more important in order to maintain a positive and civil level of interaction among neighboring cities, especially ones which are as closely tied together as the cities of San Diego and Tijuana. The current state of communication and interaction and perception between these two cities however, is not quite the positive-reinforcing, open communication and cooperation that one would expect from two cities which are so intertwined in culture, economy, and populace. The manner of communication and cooperation need to be increased in order to insure positive urban growth.

First Post

So here's the basic gist of the subject at hand (From my proposal):

San Diego and Tijuana are two different sides of the same piece, a twin city separated by a political and social border. The construction of civic buildings, or other buildings that are used by the public, would, therefore be beneficial for both sides of a border, not only from a monetary perspective due to the shared space, but from a social advancement and communication perspective. Such a project would increase the quality of communication between the two sides, and help to further progress the elements necessary in or to continue a healthy inter-border relationship.

All this said, the project's main focus is on a international airport to be placed on the border of Tijuana and Mexico, somewhere which would promote the importance of transportation connections, as well as be close enough to the urban centers to not become an island, cut off from everything else.

The San Diego side leaves plenty of room open for reclaiming for an airport, as the border is pretty much shunned from this side. The problem then comes from the other side; Tijuana is quite built up against the border with all manner of different structures through the whole valley until you hit the mountains as you move closer to Tecate, making reclaiming land for an airport quite difficult without demolition.

One of the options is to improve upon the current Tijuana airport, expanding it with land obtained from the other side of the border in order to create the site for the new airport, this would be a good choice to represent the direct-recycling mentality of Tijuana.

This is the current site I'm planning on, more updates as it progresses.