Challenge

Through my design courses at UCSD, I grew more interested in how people interact with their built environment. After taking an urban planning class, I discovered Berkeley’s Design and Innovation for Sustainable Cities (DISC) Program.

We learned about various solutions to urban growth and sustainability issues in cities through a lecture series, studio work, and site visits around the Bay Area.
‍
The theme for this summer was transit oriented development. We explored the question:

How do we design a growing city to encourage public transit and easy mobility?

My team was assigned the North Berkeley BART station and, over 5 weeks, we redesigned it through the lens of transit oriented development.

The North Berkeley BART Station- the site of our redesign.

Approach

My background in human centered design proved to be an asset to the team, because many of my group mates were environmental science or architecture majors. I brought in a much needed focus to human behavior.
‍
We listened to the program manager at BART speak, the design podcast producer Roman Mars, and an affordable housing representative, among other speakers.

We synthesized knowledge from these different sources into brainstorming sessions, such as the one pictured below.
‍
After our intensive research period, we decided to focus on three key aspects in our redesign: mixed use buildings, green space, and human scale design.

Brainstorming different features, such as walkability, housing, and green spaces.

We used mediums such as paper pieces to map features including green spaces, affordable housing, public spaces, and walking paths.

Results

We iterated using different mediums throughout our design process. We sketched drawings and made pieces out of cardboard to place on a board to visualize our ideas.
‍
Our final design was presented to a panel of judges and the rest of the class.

We focused on increasing affordable housing within Berkeley, because of the current housing crisis. These apartment complexes could divide the neighborhood, so we included lots of public green space to create areas where the community could gather.

We also included mixed use buildings, where the bottom floor of all the apartment buildings would have commercial and retail spaces.

The inclusion of buildings of different heights also work to bring the large scale of the block down to human scale.
‍
The next steps for this project is to propose this transit oriented development solution to BART.

As a human centered designer, I would also want to conduct user interviews and look at this neighborhood through an ethnographic lens to predict its feasibility.

In depth analysis for each feature we incorporated into our design.

The first iteration of our design

The final iteration of our redesign. This poster was used during our final presentation.

Our accompanying model with 3D printed pieces representing affordable housing, market priced housing, green space, retail buildings, and walking paths.