Interesting articles and posts you may have missed last week:
9 Urban Fails (yUrbanism)
(these are hilarious)
Roundup of some great alcove beds (Remodelista)
Thomas Jefferson understood the appeal of alcove beds (see his iconic alcove bed at Monticello here); here's a roundup of some modern favorites.
Tall or sprawl, Metro Vancouver has it all (Vancouver Sun)
Metro Vancouver is losing nine square feet of land per second to urban sprawl. Author David Owen, however, still puts Vancouver among a short list of "green" places to live, due to their high density and lack of carbon footprint per capita. Here are six places Owen considers green - and six that, by his definition, are "brown," or not representing sustainable living.
Great studio retrofit of an aging printing press in downtown Barcelona (Inhabitat)
The allure of the old infused with the new could not be more pronounced in this studio retrofit of an aging printing press in downtown Barcelona.
Check out this kitchen island that disappears into the floor (Design Milk)
Tim Thaler wanted to maximize the floor space in his kitchen, but also needed a solution for an island. How could he have both? By hiding the island in the floor. Tim’s island comes up and down with the touch of a button on his iPhone — there’s an app for that.
Taking a green roof to the extreme (Sustainable Cities Collective)
Art Vandelay of Golden Colorado has taken the concept a little too far for the local building inspector. Called simply The Tree House, he says his vision is now complete after a ten year grow-in period and numerous structural improvements.
Tearing down freeways to make room for a new bicycling economy (Grist)
Here's one way to fund bicycle infrastructure: Stop building freeways in cities. Better yet, tear down the ones we already have.
New media makes transit more attractive (Sustainable Cities Collective)
Last week, we released the results for our "Tech for Transit: Designing a Future System" study, a collaboration between Latitude Research and Next American City. The study asked regular drivers in Boston and San Francisco to go car-free for one whole week, sharing their experiences and recommendations along the way.
As Americans get larger, FTA raises standard for average transit passenger weight (Good)
Last month, we heard that Americans are now fat enough to need larger ambulances. Earlier this month, the Federal Transit Administration bowed to the inevitable and submitted a proposal to change its bus testing regulations "to more accurately reflect average passenger weights and actual transit vehicle loads."
What emerging generations want: a piazza (Sustainable Cities Collective)
As the 1600+ entries in this blog provide evidence for, emerging generations are moving into downtowns, driving less, walking more, living in smaller homes they can actually afford, preferring local businesses and slower food, prioritizing health,going green and valuing community and social networking like never before. It keeps coming up again and again, that the one amenity that does a remarkable job of fulfilling these values is the timeless piazza.
New idea: Food Halls (Sustainable Cities Collective)
When you hear the term “food court”, most of us automatically think, “fast food in a mall”. What if the experience was more about slow food efficiently prepared, with a multitude of sit-down dining choices in environments designed for you to enjoy your food, sprinkled with specialty food shopping choices? Enter the “food hall“.
The link between thriving towns and a sustainable rural landscape (Switchboard at NRDC)
Yesterday, the Eastern Shore (MD) Land Conservancy announced the launching of a new Center for Towns to support “models of sustainable, walkable, diverse, well-defined and vibrant communities within our beautiful rural landscape.” The Center was announced at a press event attended by yours truly in the beautiful town of Easton, where the Conservancy is also holding a conference.
Interactive urban agriculture map (Grown in the City)
Grown in the City has launched an “Interactive Urban Agriculture Zoning Map” to track urban agriculture zoning across the United States.
The future of urban agriculture (Sustainable Cities Collective)
Dr. Cohen’s current research focuses on urban food policy, particularly innovative planning strategies to support food production in the urban and peri-urban landscape, public policies to engage citizens in sustainable food production, urban planning and food access, and civic agriculture in cities and suburbs.
How to Create an Attractive Site Plan Using Hand Drawing and Photoshop – PART 1
by Brian O'Reilly, Super Designer for VIA Architecture
In this series of tutorials I’ll be going through a few techniques you can use to enhance both hand and digital drawings. In this case, I was given hand drawn site plans for a local farm from our Director of Community Sustainability, and asked to take them from a sketch to a full color plan:
To begin, I used trace paper to redraw certain portions of the original drawing to simplify the overlays that will be used in the Photoshop portion of the exercise. It seemed to make sense to draw the trees and vegetation (Figure 3), the rock walls (Figure 4), the paths and buildings (Figure 5), and the shadows (Figure 6) each separately. This is a pretty flexible part of the process – you need to consider what elements you want to have individual control over in terms of brightness, contrast, color, etc. Also, one of the most important considerations is selection, that is, what portions of your drawing you’ll want to be able to easily select in Photoshop with, for instance, the magic wand tool (more on that later…)
Another important thing to remember when combining a number of drawings into one is to establish reference points. You’ll notice that in each of the separate layers I drew, I’ve included four crosshairs (see Figure 7) – one at each corner of the property line. This will make it much easier to align the drawings when combining them in Photoshop.
Once I have all my linework drawn and scanned (all with the same resolution and file type), I’ll begin combining them into a Photoshop file, again using the crosshairs to align them. With each layer, I use ‘Free Transform’ (ctrl-t) to move and rotate the layer into the correct alignment. However, DO NOT rescale the drawing. Because each drawing was scanned at the same resolution, they should all be at a consistent scale, and therefore no resizing is necessary.
Also, when these drawings are brought into PS, they are opaque, and you can’t see one through the other. The method for dealing with this will be, most typically, to go into the ‘Layers’ window to the ‘Blending Mode’ drop down menu, and select ‘Multiply’ for each of your layers (see Figure 8).
‘Multiply’ causes anything in the layer that is white to have 0% opacity (completely transparent), and anything that is black to have 100% opacity (completely opaque). Anything in between (gray tones or color) will have an opacity somewhere between – e.g. a gray tone with a K value of 50% will have 50% opacity. It is extremely useful when overlaying linework on a drawing. Once all my layers have their Blending Mode set to Multiply, this is what it looks like (Figure 9).
Now, you may have noticed that we have some artifacts from the scanning, not to mention that it’s looking a little of kilter. To eliminate unwanted pencil lines and shading from scanning you’ll need to go to each layer in remove them, either with the eraser tool, a white brush, or my preferred method, the clipping mask.
The clipping mask is an excellent, and most importantly, non-destructive tool for modifying a layer in Photoshop. Here’s how it works:
I’ll start by turning off all of the layers but the one I’m working on, in this case the Trees layer. With the Trees layer selected, I click on the ‘Clipping Mask’ button at the bottom of the Layers window (see Figure 10), creating a clipping mask for that layer (see Figure 11).
The clipping mask does what you might expect – it creates a mask that hides parts of the layer and reveals others. Parts of a clipping mask painted black will hide that portion of the layer, those painted white will reveal that portion of the layer (gray tones will have an opacity equal to their K-value). Unless you have something selected, the clipping mask will start out white, so we’ll want to select a brush and set our foreground color to black so we can start eliminating parts of the drawing. As we paint over these parts of our drawing, it will disappear. However, what is convenient about the clipping mask is that it does not directly affect the original (hence the ‘non-destructive’). If we make a mistake, simply switch the foreground color to white and you can reveal parts of your drawing you may have accidentally hidden. (more on clipping masks later…)
Figure 12 shows our drawing with the clipping done to all the layers, as well as a background layer with a white fill that covers up any holes we might end up with. I’ve also moved the drawing into the center of the artboard.
Now, it looks to me like the drawing is a little off kilter, and I’d like to straighten it out. Select the ‘Ruler’ tool by clicking and holding the ‘Eyedropper’ on the toolbar (Figure 13). Then use the ruler tool to delineate a horizontal or vertical line on your drawing (Figure 14). Then, on the Menu bar click Image -> Image Rotation ->Arbitrary (Figure 15). This will bring up a dialogue box that is already filled in with the necessary value of rotation to make your ruler line perfectly orthogonal.
So that’s all for this week. Next time we’ll get into adding color, Photoshop brushes, more on clipping masks, and more!
In this series of tutorials I’ll be going through a few techniques you can use to enhance both hand and digital drawings. In this case, I was given hand drawn site plans for a local farm from our Director of Community Sustainability, and asked to take them from a sketch to a full color plan:
(click image to view larger)
To begin, I used trace paper to redraw certain portions of the original drawing to simplify the overlays that will be used in the Photoshop portion of the exercise. It seemed to make sense to draw the trees and vegetation (Figure 3), the rock walls (Figure 4), the paths and buildings (Figure 5), and the shadows (Figure 6) each separately. This is a pretty flexible part of the process – you need to consider what elements you want to have individual control over in terms of brightness, contrast, color, etc. Also, one of the most important considerations is selection, that is, what portions of your drawing you’ll want to be able to easily select in Photoshop with, for instance, the magic wand tool (more on that later…)
Another important thing to remember when combining a number of drawings into one is to establish reference points. You’ll notice that in each of the separate layers I drew, I’ve included four crosshairs (see Figure 7) – one at each corner of the property line. This will make it much easier to align the drawings when combining them in Photoshop.
Once I have all my linework drawn and scanned (all with the same resolution and file type), I’ll begin combining them into a Photoshop file, again using the crosshairs to align them. With each layer, I use ‘Free Transform’ (ctrl-t) to move and rotate the layer into the correct alignment. However, DO NOT rescale the drawing. Because each drawing was scanned at the same resolution, they should all be at a consistent scale, and therefore no resizing is necessary.
Also, when these drawings are brought into PS, they are opaque, and you can’t see one through the other. The method for dealing with this will be, most typically, to go into the ‘Layers’ window to the ‘Blending Mode’ drop down menu, and select ‘Multiply’ for each of your layers (see Figure 8).
Figure 8
‘Multiply’ causes anything in the layer that is white to have 0% opacity (completely transparent), and anything that is black to have 100% opacity (completely opaque). Anything in between (gray tones or color) will have an opacity somewhere between – e.g. a gray tone with a K value of 50% will have 50% opacity. It is extremely useful when overlaying linework on a drawing. Once all my layers have their Blending Mode set to Multiply, this is what it looks like (Figure 9).
Figure 9
Now, you may have noticed that we have some artifacts from the scanning, not to mention that it’s looking a little of kilter. To eliminate unwanted pencil lines and shading from scanning you’ll need to go to each layer in remove them, either with the eraser tool, a white brush, or my preferred method, the clipping mask.
The clipping mask is an excellent, and most importantly, non-destructive tool for modifying a layer in Photoshop. Here’s how it works:
I’ll start by turning off all of the layers but the one I’m working on, in this case the Trees layer. With the Trees layer selected, I click on the ‘Clipping Mask’ button at the bottom of the Layers window (see Figure 10), creating a clipping mask for that layer (see Figure 11).
Figure 10
Figure 11
The clipping mask does what you might expect – it creates a mask that hides parts of the layer and reveals others. Parts of a clipping mask painted black will hide that portion of the layer, those painted white will reveal that portion of the layer (gray tones will have an opacity equal to their K-value). Unless you have something selected, the clipping mask will start out white, so we’ll want to select a brush and set our foreground color to black so we can start eliminating parts of the drawing. As we paint over these parts of our drawing, it will disappear. However, what is convenient about the clipping mask is that it does not directly affect the original (hence the ‘non-destructive’). If we make a mistake, simply switch the foreground color to white and you can reveal parts of your drawing you may have accidentally hidden. (more on clipping masks later…)
Figure 12 shows our drawing with the clipping done to all the layers, as well as a background layer with a white fill that covers up any holes we might end up with. I’ve also moved the drawing into the center of the artboard.
Figure 12
Now, it looks to me like the drawing is a little off kilter, and I’d like to straighten it out. Select the ‘Ruler’ tool by clicking and holding the ‘Eyedropper’ on the toolbar (Figure 13). Then use the ruler tool to delineate a horizontal or vertical line on your drawing (Figure 14). Then, on the Menu bar click Image -> Image Rotation ->Arbitrary (Figure 15). This will bring up a dialogue box that is already filled in with the necessary value of rotation to make your ruler line perfectly orthogonal.
Figure 13
Figure 14
Figure 15
So that’s all for this week. Next time we’ll get into adding color, Photoshop brushes, more on clipping masks, and more!
(Tuesday) News Roundup
Belltown Apartments Planned (DJC)
Our latest project, Joseph Arnold Lofts, featured in the DJC today.
Commuters rely on bicycles in aftermath of Japan’s earthquake (Sustainable Cities Collective)
In the outcome of Japan’s 8.9-magnitude earthquake and consequent tsunami, commuters relied on bicycles for quick and reliable transportation.
Check out this kitchen island that disappears into the floor (Design Milk)
Tim Thaler wanted to maximize the floor space in his kitchen, but also needed a solution for an island. How could he have both? By hiding the island in the floor. Tim’s island comes up and down with the touch of a button on his iPhone — there’s an app for that.
Abandonded Skyscraper in Venezuela is the World’s Tallest Shanty Town (Inhabitat)
In the middle of downtown Caracas in Venezuela is an abandoned 45 story tower that has been reclaimed by squatters who have turned it into a thriving vertical shanty town.
‘Citysumers” define powerful new urban trend (Sustainable Cities Collective)
Citysumers - The hundreds of millions (and growing!) of experienced and sophisticated urbanites (with disposable income), from San Francisco to Shanghai to São Paulo, who are ever more demanding and more open-minded, but also more proud, more connected, more spontaneous and more try-out-prone, eagerly snapping up a whole host of new urban goods, services, experiences, campaigns and conversations.“
How Seattle transformed itself (NYTimes)
As the 2010 Census rolls out, much of the attention of news organizations is focused on the continuing growth of Texas and Florida, but there is much to be learned from the less extreme, but still significant, population growth in less sunny places, like Seattle.
First breath of food revolution reaches BC (Vancouver Sun)
While the world reels from global oil shock and rising food prices, the time is ripe to revolutionize the way we produce food and local food systems, according to evangelizing farmer Joel Salatin.
Stimulate your local economy and your wallet by getting rid of your car (GOOD)
The big numbers are impressive: a city can keep over $127 million in the local economy by reducing car ownership by just 15,000 cars.
Transit benches that can withstand the sits, leans and etchings of time (GOOD)
As any public transit rider will agree, the worst part of waiting for any train or bus has to be taking a seat on that grungy, funky public transit bench. So that's why fabricators at Veyko in Philadelphia decided to reinvent the typical molded-plastic afterthought into a sculptural, durable centerpiece of one of Philly's SEPTA stations.
How much could you save by riding transit instead of driving? (Grist)
According to the American Public Transportation Association, an average two-person American household can save $825 a month by giving up one car in favor of public transit (those figures include parking).
Bike lane bickering in NYC (Sustainable Cities Collective)
As a native of the neighborhood at the center of the bicycle lane controversy now tearing apart the New York intelligentsia, I have watched the drama unfold with conflicted bemusement.
Our latest project, Joseph Arnold Lofts, featured in the DJC today.
Commuters rely on bicycles in aftermath of Japan’s earthquake (Sustainable Cities Collective)
In the outcome of Japan’s 8.9-magnitude earthquake and consequent tsunami, commuters relied on bicycles for quick and reliable transportation.
Check out this kitchen island that disappears into the floor (Design Milk)
Tim Thaler wanted to maximize the floor space in his kitchen, but also needed a solution for an island. How could he have both? By hiding the island in the floor. Tim’s island comes up and down with the touch of a button on his iPhone — there’s an app for that.
Abandonded Skyscraper in Venezuela is the World’s Tallest Shanty Town (Inhabitat)
In the middle of downtown Caracas in Venezuela is an abandoned 45 story tower that has been reclaimed by squatters who have turned it into a thriving vertical shanty town.
‘Citysumers” define powerful new urban trend (Sustainable Cities Collective)
Citysumers - The hundreds of millions (and growing!) of experienced and sophisticated urbanites (with disposable income), from San Francisco to Shanghai to São Paulo, who are ever more demanding and more open-minded, but also more proud, more connected, more spontaneous and more try-out-prone, eagerly snapping up a whole host of new urban goods, services, experiences, campaigns and conversations.“
How Seattle transformed itself (NYTimes)
As the 2010 Census rolls out, much of the attention of news organizations is focused on the continuing growth of Texas and Florida, but there is much to be learned from the less extreme, but still significant, population growth in less sunny places, like Seattle.
First breath of food revolution reaches BC (Vancouver Sun)
While the world reels from global oil shock and rising food prices, the time is ripe to revolutionize the way we produce food and local food systems, according to evangelizing farmer Joel Salatin.
Stimulate your local economy and your wallet by getting rid of your car (GOOD)
The big numbers are impressive: a city can keep over $127 million in the local economy by reducing car ownership by just 15,000 cars.
Transit benches that can withstand the sits, leans and etchings of time (GOOD)
As any public transit rider will agree, the worst part of waiting for any train or bus has to be taking a seat on that grungy, funky public transit bench. So that's why fabricators at Veyko in Philadelphia decided to reinvent the typical molded-plastic afterthought into a sculptural, durable centerpiece of one of Philly's SEPTA stations.
How much could you save by riding transit instead of driving? (Grist)
According to the American Public Transportation Association, an average two-person American household can save $825 a month by giving up one car in favor of public transit (those figures include parking).
Bike lane bickering in NYC (Sustainable Cities Collective)
As a native of the neighborhood at the center of the bicycle lane controversy now tearing apart the New York intelligentsia, I have watched the drama unfold with conflicted bemusement.
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