Blog 2: MDDABS Alliance – The Discovery District

Boundaries:

Landmarks:

https://www.linkedin.com/edu/columbus-college-of-art-%26-design-20032

http://educationreport.net/colleges/franklin-university-online-report/

http://www.cristoreycolumbus.org/local-news/historical-site-considered

Tweets by ThurberHouse

Paths:

Edges:

Districts:

Nodes:

The Motorists Skyscraper

For our project, we chose to analyze a district of Columbus known as the Discovery District, bordered by 670 on the north and 71 on the east. Within the Discovery District exists many of Columbus’ historic landmarks such as the Columbus Museum of Art, Topiary Park, Columbus School of Art and Design, Columbus State Community College, Franklin University, Cristo Rey High School, Columbus Public Library, Capital Law School, Kelton House, and Thurber House.  

The Discovery District is minimally legible. The layout of the district is not terribly obvious. The boundaries are not well defined and there are no entrance or exit points. However, the landmarks in this district are such a central part of the identity of downtown Columbus, that the district cannot just be passed over. Having four colleges within the district and several museums, the district has high levels of traffic, those people probably are just not even aware that they are within the district.

The Discovery District gets its name in part because of the high concentration of educationally based buildings within the district. The district is very arts and history focused. The majority of the buildings are listed on the National Historic Register and are some of the oldest buildings in Columbus. All of this leads to it having a clear sense of identity, but it’s unclear edges take away from its sense of place.

Topiary Park can be described as a node. It is a relatively small quadrant of grass, vegetation, and artwork in the form of statues. These statues add visual aesthetics to the park, that would not ordinarily be depicted in other parks and areas of recreation. The Topiary Park is best described as a hard area, as it has been developed for an explicit purpose and would cost a substantial amount to repurpose the land into other residential or business office space.

Topiary Park is accessible by a path known as East Towns Street, which is serviced by regular automobile traffic and the number 11 bus route.  Alongside the paths are residential and apartment complexes, some of which had been vacant houses, and were now re-developed into apartments, identifying this area as a soft area.  

The Motorist skyscraper serves as a node/landmark for its iconic height and placement near the discovery district, allowing motorists and pedestrians to navigate by cardinal directions as the building is north of the Topiary Park.  Additionally, the Columbus Art Museum serves as an additional node marking its unique feature as a city attraction for the fine arts and a culmination for many local art tourists.  

Nearby, is the Columbus State Community College, accessible by bus and automobile.  It is located very closely to the museum, allowing students ease of access to the museum resources and tourism.  

There appears to be very minimal conflicts of uses in this district. There is a balance of available space for both pedestrian and automobiles,it implements on-street parking so that parking space do not take away housing, green space, or business spaces.

The Discovery District is primarily a residential district, and although many of the structures were built well before the popularity of new urbanism it does exhibit many of the characteristics of the new urbanism neighborhood style. The area has wide well cared for sidewalks for high levels of walkability, contains a high school and four colleges within its borders, and the museum and library. Overall it exhibits a high amount of diversity of uses within a small space and any resources that aren’t present can be easily reached by its proximity to the expressway as well as High St.

We noticed that there was some land that was completely undeveloped behind some of the houses, or there were empty parking lots/barren plots of land.  As soft areas, these are potentially new areas for urban agriculture or further residential/office development.