Frank Lloyd Wright said that one should take a long time preparing to be an architect. This is a difficult thing for a young person to understand - or accept. One thing is sure, there is a different character to the experience of design and building when you are older and more settled. Many threads - each with their different history - now come together to weave their magic. Separate ideas become one. This happened in November (2001) when three projects “popped” at the same time, two stimulated by a train trip across the US and the other a challenge, from a real estate industry leader, to think about an appropriate response to September 11.

Three projects tie together 46 years of experiment into a PRACTICE with a CONTEXT (Master Plan - Work #37), a FOCUS (the Red Thread - Work #107), a personal home (Edwards-Taylor #111) a place to work with a TEAM of Cathedral Builders (The Crystal Cave - Work #108), a CATALYST (Ground Zero - Work # 109), and, A concept of the Bay Area that creates a diversified, distributed living and work environment across a region (Distributed Living/Work Complex # 112). Three client projects: Vanderbilt (Work #115), Joseki (Work #114) and SDC (Work #113) add to this context and offer a wide mix of application types. For the first time since the late 60s, a PRACTICE is beginning to take form.

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Project
Design, Build, Use
Matt Taylor
Palo Alto - Site: USA
Program development
From pages 57, 60 and 61 Oct.31 Moleskine Notebook #1: “It should be possible to build a system that averages 100 miles an hour. This would make rail travel competitive in terms of time... On the regional scale, the train right-of-ways and industrial belts (largely abandoned in the east) offer a great horizontal opportunity. These are long contiguous strips under relatively simple ownership. How can these bands be developed? How can they work with with animal and plant migration bands? How can they work with and support elements designed to survive catastrophic events (natural and human-made)?... Now, and more so in the East, these corridors are the most trashed-out aspects of our built landscape - yet they are the most organic. This is the great hidden real estate opportunity... if we think of of the potential of the high speed flow of people and goods using hybrid devises running on hydrogen systems through animal/plant migration zones... Something might come of this... it would take so little to make this system work - really work. I think the idea is to see it as a real estate/transport deal with the right kind of embedded technology. An energy strategy is the key... Design context: GAIA to Master Planning Process to plant/animal/human goods (Agents) corridors to mixed use development (including new light industries) to connection to other transportation modes (air, water, land) AND downtown areas of core-city-regions (which is already done!). Is AMTRAK the key?... Do a McHarg Map with the following layers: US and North and South America land mass (1); Bio regions (2); Political boundaries (3); Corridors, Plant (4a), Animal (4b), Human (4c), Goods (4d); Wilderness (5); Residential (6); Commercial (7); Mixed-Use (8); Artifacts (9); Ideal Model - Ideal State (10). Potential Partners: AMTRAK; Nature Conservancy; Alternative fuel company; Real estate trust; so on... Think of these corridors as infrastructure lines - even point-to-point wireless. Make the red Thread a high tech haven... This corridor can become, ecologically, the healthy exemplar; economically the ROAD of the new economy; A strategic, distributed, replacement city... Chicago, of course, is the HUB of this layout - for historical reasons. Chicago to Washington DC = 764 miles. Chicago to Seattle = 2210 miles. Chicago to San Francisco = 2438 miles. Chicago to Los Angeles = 2258 miles. Chicago to Boston = 1017 miles. Chicago to to NY City = 959 miles. Chicago to Detroit = 234, Chicago to Miami = 1163...”

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Matt Taylor - Renascense III
Design, Build, Use
Matt Taylor
Palo Alto - Site: Glenwood Springs, Colorado
Program development
This concept came to me as I was riding the train back from Washington DC. (See: Work #107 and pages 67, 68 Nov. 1 & page 85 Nov. 9 Moleskine Notebook #1). Glenwood Springs is about 24 hours by train from Chicago and a little more than that to San Francisco. “The subtle blending between nature-made and human-made can be very fine. Merlin’s cave - a place of engineering and magic. A KEEP. The mature expression of the first Renascense idea... Could this be the 1958 vision? Was that the top of the hill? The center of the cave hollow is the point from which the explosion radiates. An energy from within - going out into the world... Solar Hydrogen. Completely self-contained... This can be the hub of the red Thread Corridor. It can also finish the Renascense cycle. A fitting termination. It can house the Master Plan and the Gaia Project - another fit.”

“Primal, visceral, simple, basic,sophisticated; open and self-contained. A community of artists engineers. The work? Gaia Central - home of the Master Planning process... This is the system integrator HUB of a vast information system and design process. It has major satellites such as Ground Zero. It has total integrity. It is a dedicated society with strict rules-of-engagement and high fiduciary duty.”

The “building” itself is a cave made up of existing and new excavations enclosed by glass pyramids set in various orientations. These are made in three sections the center of which rotates to open. The interior “atrium” is a landscaped hill for growing food and recreation purposes. A series of private living and work areas are connected by tubes to commons areas of formal offices, NavCenter facilities, work shops, kitchens, baths, libraries, guest facilities and gathering places.

The function of the Crystal Cave is to be an intentional community built around specific work related to the Red Thread, Gaia and Master Planning projects. It is a work/living place for extended periods of time and is unlikely to be the permanent residence of any except for a few core members of the community who will make this their total focus. It is deliberately “isolated” due to the nature of the work, at the same time,“connected” via modern infrastructure. Guest facilities are critical. The Crystal Cave is a conscious retreat in order to think about and design for the Planet as a whole.

It is a piece of architecture whose job it is to facilitate the work of co-evolving the earth as a piece of architecture.

This is related, of course, to The Renascence III design (Work # 90) not only in function but in the grammar of the forms employed.

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Sandy Goodkin - ULI
Design, System Integration
Matt Taylor and Scott Arenz
Palo Alto - Site: New York City
Project Concept
On Friday, November 9th., Sandy Goodkin asked me how I would approach a concept for Ground Zero in New York. The statement, below, is an edited version of my immediate response. The concept was further developed in pages 92, 93, 96 and 102 of my Moleskine Notebook #1. Further Notes were created on pages 115 and 116, December 6, 2001. Scott Arenz developed design sketches. By November 18, a first design cycle of the concept was completed. On December 7th., a new design cycle was initiated taking the concept far enough for a schematic level presentation as shown above.

STATEMENT:

1. Good and evil - right and wrong aside, what happened on September 11th? A monument and operating artifact of a centrally focused 20th Century industrial society was destroyed by a distributed network organization that used our strength on ourselves. A flexible WEB of resources and people with no center or obvious assets acted with intent and malice. "Mechanical" structure was rendered vulnerable by the wrong use of the "organic."

2. For healing to occur, people from all over the world must be able to access the site and participate in it’s history and recreation.

3. A proper monument to September 11th, will rebuild the future, not the past. The site's function recreated as a 21st Century expression that serves a global, networked knowledge economy is the appropriate response.

4. The essence of this response is a gift to the world of the next generation of our spirit, our capacity, our technology and enterprise.

5. A garden space open to the world. A place where people can rest, meditate, mourn, and celebrate. A small transparent building suspended over the site - a transaction node in a newly emerging, sustainable, equable, distributed global economy making an engine of enterprise far more productive than what was before.

6. The site is reborn from a collaborative process, initiated on site, both monument and functional capacity evolving over time through iterations of design, building and use. In this way, the artifact itself facilitates it’s conception and development.

PROGRAM DESCRIPTION:

The PLAZA is a keep within a ring of refurbished and new skyscrapers. It is a park - a place of rest contemplation, quiet and celebration. In it are levels, fountains, landscaping, benches and arbors, amphitheaters and two major objects: One, the recreated RUINS of September 11; the other, a crystal-shaped, glass, all faiths and philosophies Cathedral to the human spirit.

Suspended OVER the park is a 26 story geodesic sphere of light suspended within a tensegrity structure. From deep in the earth a thin vertical shaft of light reaches up and pierces the globe.

The globe is covered inside and out with millions of computer-controlled pin-point lights giving the resolution of a fine photograph. Outside - to the park and buildings around it - the turning world - night and day, season by season - is displayed with the real-time movement of human and animal populations, good and services - all the resources of an emerging geopolitical economy and it's history.

Inside is displayed the WORLD GAME (Fuller et. al.). A simulation with people all over the world participating and playing “what if” with their data, ideas, projects and political economic intentions. Consequences are modeled before uninformed action is taken. There is a viewing platform and support facilities for 2,000 people.

Beneath the plaza, is a large dome structure housing research facilities and simulation rooms - the emerging PRIME RADIANT (Asimov) of Planet Earth’s future. This multi-level, skylight-fed space has facilities for permanent staff, visiting scholars, government and industry groups and private citizens. It is connected to all the universities, industrial research centers, governments and creative individuals of the world. A non-political, free, open-source facility. It is the BRAIN of the new economy.

In addition, under the park is an experiential museum of September 11, book store, shops and other infrastructure facilities. A “Taylor” Navigation center provides facilitation and design services to social, political, business, philanthropic and government groups seeking to create a better world through collaboration and cooperation.

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Project
Design, Present/Display, Publish
Matt Taylor
Palo Alto - Site: Anywhere on Earth
Project Concept
This project draws on the organizing principles developed in my 1975 Organic City concept (See Work #56) and applies them to the scale of intersecting bio-regions It is closely tied to the Kansas City Master Plan (See Work #) and the Red Thread (Work #107) projects. All of these are aspects of the Master Planning Method which focuses on facilitating the process of Earth as a human artifact AND the Gaia Project which approaches the same issue from the perspective of Earth as a Living System. A large building, a neighborhood, a mega city and a region all have the same organizational requirements - they express themselves at different scales. There are some kinds of activities that best organize themselves into relatively single-function clusters and others that inherently require migration, thus corridors. ALL of these cross one another creating dense mixed-use interactions. Within all of these different ZONES, a variety of building types are employed: single family, manufacturing, recreational, business, retailing and so on. These TYPES are employed at various densities: rural, suburban and urban. The corridors that connect the HUBS of greater density usually follow natural waterways as this was one of the major organizing principles of human development. Now, rivers, railroad, highways and flight patterns can be seen all in parallel and close proximity - the approach to Regan International Airport along the Potomac River and barge canal is one example. There are four major problems associated with how this continues to happen: the scale of the hubs is all off; plant and animal corridors are ignored and blocked; the mix of the building types and their densities do not work well; and, the entire system is not seen as a system and in relation to the planet as a whole. None of the design strategies now employed by humans are totally wrong. None will solve all of the problems we have and a continuance of what we are doing will lead to disaster. The key focal point to approach the task of finding the appropriate scales for each of these design strategies is the bio-region For here, the various levels of recursion can be studied and density principles developed. That it the task of this project. Ian McHarg started this work in the 60s. He created a mapping system by which key values could be discerned in the development process. He became an advocate for the planet. One of the uses of Speranova (Work # 109) will be to do dynamically, at high resolution and large scale what Mchard did with plastic overlays. Even plotting the major bio-regions and seeing how they interact is a start. However, until we can get a set of design algorithms developed that enable us to better develop appropriate hub densities and corridors with better use of scale, the sum of our individual efforts will add up to unintended consequences and ultimate tragic sub-optimization of our planetary heritage. This is no way to run a planet.

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Matt and Gail Taylor
Design, Build, Use
Matt Taylor and Scott Arenz
Palo Alto - Site: Gualala, California
Design Development and Phase I remodeling.
This project involves some minor fixing up and remodeling to a small house built in the late 70s and the addition of a Guest/Studio addition on an adjacent lot. The property is in Mendocino County in northern California and will be Gail’s and my “retreat” house for rest, renewal and quite work. It also will be a place to have friends and colleagues for dialog. Eloquent simplicity of lifestyle and environmental artifact is the goal of this project along with the maximum economy possible consistent with comfort and being adequately equipped. In fact, upon the completion of this project our personal/professional overhead will be significantly reduced. Although this is mostly a personal environment, it does have several professional implications. This will be the first test of mature Design-Build- Use processes and ValueWeb structures for low scale, one-off, middle class affordable housing. Can this entire complex work for a KnowledgeWorker couple and occasional guests at an affordable price with minimal ecological consequence? As such, then, this becomes my architectural “calling card” for this class of living-work space. In addition, the basic strategy of the Guest/Studio addition is a small scale example of the approach I am taking with the SETI Visitor Center - a distributed array of purpose-focused units connected by a “site-experience.” It is unlikely the SETI investors will understand this concept without a living “model” of it. The concept, itself, has several echoes in my past work. Works which seriously challenged the traditional uses of space and organization of floor plans. Although some of these ideas have been implemented in our commercial Management and NavCenters, they have never been accepted in any residential work that I have been a pert of. And, there are few examples of this approach that have been executed by other architects.

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Matt Taylor and Habitat Makers ValueWeb members
Design, Build, Use
Matt Taylor
San Francisco Bay Area
Program development
This concept caught me by surprise although in retrospect it should not have. I was thinking about how all my various interests, organizations and work venues can be integrated into one coherent experience. It is not possible, nor would it be a good idea, to attempt locating all the facilities required to support me and this work at one location. It was then that the idea of an entire region being treated as if it was a single building struck me - the various places being like rooms in this “building.” Within a couple of years there will be a variety of environments in the “Bay Area” that I either own or use that are associated with my work or that of my closest associates. This thinking requires that the reality of transportation - and physical distance over landscape - be conceived of architecturally not only in the physical aspects of transportation units but in the experience of location, distance and movement. This raises the question of continuity - how far apart can these “rooms” be and still “held” as an aspect of a whole? The Crystal Cave, for example, is part of this schema yet it is to be located in Colorado. It is possible to think of Crystal Cave in terms of a 24 hour train ride through a special landscape. The modality of transportation and the timing of it’s use becomes an aspect of design. In addition to the facilities that I may design, build and own and that my associates will build and operate, the Bay Area is likely to see several client projects executed over the next couple of years. All this, together, creates a BODY of work that makes a statement in itself - sort of a distributed Oak Park.

Much of this infrastructure can be put in place within a four year period which also corresponds to my transfer work-time and exit from MG Taylor and acquiring my architectural license. A FACILITY for practicing architecture - a 50 year investment. A start.

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Sojourner-Douglass College
Design-Project management
Matt Taylor and Scott Arenz
Palo Alto - Site: Baltimore, Maryland
Design Development
This project is easily the largest and most complex of all client work presently underway. It presents many challenges and opportunities. The project scope is to transform a 1920s Middle School that was remodeled and added to in the 1960s into a state-of-the-art Private College in an urban setting. This project will go through several phases of development over a 4 or 5 year period. The building will be occupied in the Fall of 2002.

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Stan Leopard and the Joseki Group
Design-Build-Transfer
Matt Taylor and Scott Arenz
Palo Alto
In operation June 2002
This project is the most custom work built for a client in a long time. NavCenters, while custom designed and built to each situation serve a broad constituency. Rarely, is it possible an office project to to design to the level of personal “fitness” as one can, for example, with a home project. Because of my relationship with Stan and the way that he uses the environment this was appropriate and possible with this project. Another aspect of this work is that is was designed-built by a KreW of SFIA. This was a first exercise in putting together SFIA Architects, SFIA Architects-Master Builders and the HabitatMakers ValueWeb into a composite design-build capability. The objective is to re-create the “swimming pool method” in the Northern California region. This will make true affordable housing and “officing” possible. This big unknown is if the approach taken with this project will have any broad appeal. The economic idea is to develop a “turnkey” environment for $25 a square foot - the present threshold for small office leasehold improvement allowances in a typical rental office. If exciting environments that directly address individuals and small organization’s requirements can be created inside the budget, I think there may be a large market for this kind of work. It will be interesting to see.

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Vanderbilt University
Design-Build-Operate-Transfer
Matt Taylor and Bill Blackburn
Palo Alto - site: Nashville, Tennessee
In operation June 2002
This project prompted the development of the Armature elements and several new pieces of AI Work Furniture. It was also our best design/build exercise and demonstration of rapid-prototyping in several years - since Cambridge (Work #91). It is also the most “complete” environment (of any scale) that we have accomplished in a “box” that we left basically unaltered. This makes a perfect demonstration of what can be accomplished without extensive leasehold improvements.

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Gail Taylor
Design-Build
Matt Taylor and ValueWeb Team
Gulala, California
In Design Development
From p. 312 Matt Taylor Notebook October 3, 2002:

Matt Taylor
Palo Alto
November 15, 2001

revised: October 17, 2002
• 20011115.292871.mt • 20011117.298875.mt •
• 20011118.651120.mt • 20011124.341098.mt •
• 20011125.333390.mt • 20020106.340091.mt •
• 20020413.340977.mt • 20020629.444400.mt •
• 20021017.444409.mt •

(note: this document is about 75% finished)

Matt Taylor 650 814 1192

me@matttaylor.com

Copyright© Matt Taylor 2001, 2002