Line for Blue Bottle Coffee at their Linden Alley Kiosk

Linden St is undergoing a welcoming transformation of what the designers are calling the birth of an outdoor living room, otherwise known as Linden Living Alley. The Blue Bottle coffee shop has drawn a crowd of people over the last few years that have had to assemble and enjoy their coffee along a narrow sidewalk. During peak coffee hours, especially on the weekend, these people spill over into Linden St in order to find refuge from the tight sidewalk conditions and to escape the long line. Sherwood Design Engineers have teamed up with Winslow Architecture to design a pedestrian oriented street that encapsulates the multi functionality of what a city street is about. This design integrates an isolated driving alley dedicated to one lane of traffic, including traffic calming and safety measures and transforming the remainder of the street corridor to landscaping and urban pedestrian space.

This project is scheduled for completion around October 1^st 2010 so go and enjoy a latte in a space dedicate to the people.

Architecture in the City hosted by AIA-SF will be sponsoring a tour led by David Winslow covering the various pedestrian alleys, including Linden Lane, throughout the city.

The conversion of city streets and alleys to pedestrian friendly zones has garnered some support and opposition. Check out the Socketsite discussion forum that has developed some popularity recently surrounding this topic and specially Linden Lane.

Davis Street between Jackson and Washington streets in downtown San Francisco is currently undergoing a renovation. This urban space which is privately owned has traditionally been used as a corridor for pedestrians traveling to and from Market St and the downtown area to the waterfront properties. This space is also the entrance to the parking structure for the Gateway living complex as well as a drop off for a restaurant. This combination of private and public use has created an opportunity to transform this site from a difficult and hazardous experience to a new open urban plaza. The design team of RHAA landscape architects and planners, Endres Ware structural engineers, Ned Kahn artist, CMS fountain specialist, Pankow Construction and Sherwood Design Engineers were challenged by the property owner to develop a space that invites pedestrians, allows for integrated vehicular traffic and creates a space for the public and private.

The site improvements will include a relatively flat seamless pedestrian friendly plaza space, a unique stormwater collection, conveyance, treatment and groundwater infiltration system integrated into the tree planting zones and an art feature to highlight the uniqueness of the space. The stormwater system was designed to meet LEED credit 6.1 as dictated by the new San Francisco Stormwater Guidelines for Combined Sewer Areas recently adopted by the city. The runoff from the site will be separated into four microsheds, with the two larger sheds discharged into sequential hydraulically connected planter beds that will receive the stormwater, treat through plantings and amended structural soil and then infiltrate into the favorable sandy soil below the site. This system was designed to handle at least a 2 year 24 hour storm event.

We plan to upload daily photos of the progress of this project. At completion we hope to have a flip-book of the construction of this project! We hope you will follow along, and if you pass by the site,  email us your pictures! (press@sherwoodengineers.com)

July 30th 2010

July 28th 2010

July 27th 2010

July 22nd, 2010

July 21st 2010

July 20th 2010

July 16th 2010

July 13th 2010

Stanford’s Center for Sustainable Development & Global Competitiveness invites you to a special forum:

Providing Environmental Services in China

Wednesday July 14, 2010; 6 to 8:00PM
James H. Clark Center Auditorium, James H. Clark Center
Campus Drive West, Stanford University

Speakers:
* Margaret Wong, President and CEO, McWong Environmental and Energy Group. Environmental & Energy Project Opportunities in China.
* Bry Sarte, Principal/Founder Sherwood Design Engineers. Regenerative Urbanism: City-Scale Sustainable Water and Energy Strategies in China.
* Peter Haase, Principal Engineer, Fall Creek Engineering. Rural Wastewater Management in China: Program Development and Sustainability Strategies.

As China rapidly develops the country is devoting increasing resources and efforts to mitigating and preventing environmental damages, and improving environmental quality. Our speakers will discuss their China experiences, and the opportunities and challenges in bringing and adapting Western technology and expertise to China. There will be a brief reception after the forum.

Directions/maps
Questions?—contact Duc Wong, 650-725-2390

Sherwood has been asked to present two panels at the ASLA Annual Meeting and EXPO in Washington, D.C., September 10–13. More than 6,000 landscape architecture professionals from across the U.S. and around the world will be gathered together to earn up to 21 professional development hours, enjoy the fellowship of our profession, and reconnect with the fundamental elements of design.

For the panel “Global Exchange: The Best Sustainable Codes, Standards and Policies” Bry Sarte will present alongside Jim Heid of Urban Green, Mary Muzynski of the Trust for Public Land, and Mark Spalding from The Ocean Foundation. For the presentation “Redefining Water Management: Landscapes and Buildings Under Water” John Leys will be joining Joan Krevlin from BKSK, Judith Hientz of WRT and dlandstudio’s Susannah Drake.

Last week one of our Engineers performed the final punch list walk through for the first phase of the Presidio Sustainability Center in San Francisco, which you may remember reading about here. This facility will be the home of the Seedhouse and Nursery Center, which will ensure the survival of California’s native plants in the Presidio and the Golden Gate National Parks. The center will be used for collection, incubation, germination, and growing of California’s native plants. California has up to 5,800 native plants and most are in rapid decline due to pressures from urban sprawl, agriculture, overgrazing, recreation impacts, and invasive non-native species. A majority of these plants are endemic to California, meaning they can only survive in California’s climate. The Seedhouse and Nursery Center is the first phase of completed work which is part of a planned Sustainability and Stewardship Center. This facility should be in full operation within two weeks, after obtaining an occupancy permit. Below is a rendering that we developed of the future build-out conditions and pictures taken on-site. Hopefully you can see the resemblances between the build and planned design.

Presidio Nursery House

Rendering of Presidio Seedhouse and Nursery Center

Sherwood is currently supporting design and project management duties for a joint venture project between the Presidio Trust and the Golden Gate Park National Conservancy (GGNPC). This project is currently sprinting along in design, permitting and bidding. The scope entails the site improvements required for the implementation of a green prefab building donated by Zeta Buildings along with the fabrication of 2600 sf of greenhouses.

This facility’s purpose is for seed preparation, propagation and establishment for all native plant species used in the parks. Its timely completion is critical for the uninterrupted Native Nursery operations who provides all plantings for restoration work done in the GGNP and the Presidio. Any break in this operation or delay in the seed propagation and seedling establishment will affect the overall growth, advancement and health of the natural resources in these parks. There is a very tight window for deconstruction of the existing Habtarium and construction of this new facility.

This project is just the first step for the future Sustainability and Stewardship Center which will be a model for sustainable systems, especially through Water Resource conservation with a closed loop water reuse system relying on little to any municiple water.

West Coast Green is this week in San Francisco, and I am honored to be among the distinguished list of speakers at the event. I will be co-presenting a panel on Integrated Water Systems with Paul Kephart from Rana Creek and Andy Mannle this Friday, October 2, at 11am. The panel we did last year, “The Sexiest Large Scale Water Design Applications We Have Ever Seen”, was S.R.O. So they’re bringing us back for an update, which we’re calling (somewhat less racily) “The Whole Pitcher.”

Also at West Coast Green, Sherwood will be participating in the “Greening Fort Mason Design Slam.” The event was created to brainstorm design strategies and practical ideas for the continued evolution of Fort Mason Center as a leading environmentally sustainable destination. I will be facilitating this charette this Friday October 2 at 12:30pm along with a number of great minds from WRT, The Grove Consulting, Van Meter Williams Pollack, Solutions and PEC. You can read more about it here and register to attend the conference here.

As we mentioned previously, Sherwood’s John Leys was invited to speak in Ottawa last week on the topic of alternatives to the Lansdowne Live project. Here’s a nice writeup of the event in the Ottawa Citizen, including this mention of Sherwood:

John Leys, of Sherwood Engineering, an American firm with experience in developing brownfield sites said it wouldn’t take long to clean contaminated soil.

He pointed to the McGill University Health Centre in Montreal where it took 15 months to remove 700,000 tonnes of soil from a 43-acre site — three times as big as Bayview.

Controversy has been brewing in Ottawa over a proposal to turn a brownfield site into a stadium, to be called Lansdowne Live. John E. Martin, an Ottawa businessman, has invited Sherwood Engineers to join a group of politicians, government officials, architects, developers and community leaders to a private breakfast meeting this Thursday, Aug. 27, to discuss the situation. Sherwood will be presenting a case study based on our experience turning a brownfield site into a stadium in San Francisco. We will let keep you updated about the project as the dialogue continues.

Daylighting urban streams has long made sense aesthetically, but now the environmental, traffic calming, and air pollution benefits can be quantified based on new studies of the famous Cheonggyecheon running through downtown Seoul.

From the New York Times:

Cities from San Antonio to Singapore have been resuscitating rivers and turning storm drains into streams. In Los Angeles, residents’ groups and some elected officials are looking anew at buried or concrete-lined creeks as assets instead of inconveniences, inspired partly by Seoul’s example.

By building green corridors around the exposed waters, cities hope to attract affluent and educated workers and residents who appreciate the feel of a natural environment in an urban setting.

Environmentalists point out other benefits. Open watercourses handle flooding rains better than buried sewers do, a big consideration as global warming leads to heavier downpours. The streams also tend to cool areas overheated by sun-baked asphalt and to nourish greenery that lures wildlife as well as pedestrians.

But four years after the stream was uncovered, city officials say, the environmental benefits can now be quantified. Data show that the ecosystem along the Cheonggyecheon (pronounced chung-gye-chun) has been greatly enriched, with the number of fish species increasing to 25 from 4. Bird species have multiplied to 36 from 6, and insect species to 192 from 15.

The recovery project, which removed three miles of elevated highway as well, also substantially cut air pollution from cars along the corridor and reduced air temperatures. Small-particle air pollution along the corridor dropped to 48 micrograms per cubic meter from 74, and summer temperatures are now often five degrees cooler than those of nearby areas, according to data cited by city officials.

And even with the loss of some vehicle lanes, traffic speeds have picked up because of related transportation changes like expanded bus service, restrictions on cars and higher parking fees.

“We’ve basically gone from a car-oriented city to a human-oriented city,” said Lee In-keun, Seoul’s assistant mayor for infrastructure, who has been invited to places as distant as Los Angeles to describe the project to other urban planners.