The Interlace: Creating Suburban Connections

Many cities in the United States are designed based on suburban sprawl, which contributes to excessive automobile-dependency and unwelcoming streets for pedestrians, and metro Atlanta is no exception. Alpharetta, Georgia is a growing city with the potential to become a more walkable suburban city. Alpharetta can be invigorated along specific corridors at the human scale to increase both walkability and connectivity by focusing on pedestrian wellbeing. Research shows that Biophilia's various facets have the power to improve human wellbeing. Prospect, refuge, and presence of water were selected to guide the thesis design. Urban-scale precedents like the Beltline in Atlanta, Georgia and the Emerald Necklace in Boston, Massachusetts inspired The Interlace, a 17.5 mile pedestrian loop the expands upon the existing Greenway Trail and connects multiple nodes across the city. The Interlace is designed along specific corridors to significantly improve pedestrian access along roads that are currently car oriented. Research suggested that improved pedestrian access alone will not increase walkability; destinations must also be created to encourage walking. Inspired by the Parc de la Villette in Paris, France, twenty different proposed architectural installations, also called nodes, are strategically designed along The Interlace to create destinations. Different combinations of program are implemented in each node to support each surrounding community. The nodes are all designed with a similar materiality inspired by Alpharetta's history, tying the architecture together and facilitating in placemaking by creating a new identity. Five of the twenty nodes are more fully developed, featuring how prospect, refuge, and presence of water can be implemented at the architectural scale to improve pedestrian wellbeing and thus increase walkability and connectivity at the broader urban scale.