Cyclopedia of Trees
Studio 704 Spring 2021
Instructor: Marion Weiss
University of Pennsylvania
Type: Dawson Jail Renovation, Team Project
Site: Dallas, Texas
Partners: Jane Chenyang Yu, Huayu Jin
Dallas has one of the largest urban forest within the country, but most of the citizens are unaware of its existence due to the uneven distribution of trees that clustered to the southeast end of the city, far from downtown Dallas. This lack of knowledge on trees led to the mismanagement and lack of budget on the trees in the city for a long time in the past until recent. The uneven distribution has also resulted in serious heat island effect around Dallas, particularly those areas around the site.
This Cyclopedia of Trees takes the existing but neglected catalogue of plants on the site into the building, and extracts the horizontal nature vertically to form a vertical catalogue of forest, arranged by species. The rest of the building include an archive, reading rooms, outlook spaces, galleries, a rooftop green house and other activity spaces for visitors to further study the plants systematically through books and images, after being absorbed in the vertical forest. The horizontal catalogue of plants on sites by the Trinity river, the vertical catalogue of trees ascending the building, along with the specimen galleries and written catalogue of trees in the library space, together form a Cyclopedia of Trees.
The two intertwining green paths, one pedestrian and one for bicycle, connecting the other side of the river on the west, while reaching the Union Station and extending deep into the city on the east, construct a green emerald in Dallas for pedestrian walkability and civic activities.
Site Analysis Animation
Build-Up Diagram Animation
