FORECLOSED: REHOUSING
THE AMERICAN DREAM

SIMULTANEOUS CITY

Michael Bell and Eunjeong Seong, Visible Weather

Temple Terrace was founded in the 1920s with the transformation of a ranch into a hybrid city and corporate orange grove. Today the suburb is pursuing the development of a downtown—something it has never had—through a public/private partnership, with plans to redevelop 225 acres at the intersection of two major roads adjacent to its southwestern border with the fast-growing city of Tampa. The team, led by Michael Bell and Eunjeong Seong of Visible Weather, proposes instead to develop a site (also 225 acres) extending two miles north along Temple Terrace's existing commercial strip, weaving together the under-utilized setbacks around buildings, rights-of-way, parking lots, and sidewalks that are ubiquitous in suburban zoning. More

In their proposal, the public/private partnership is replaced by a real estate investment trust (REIT): publicly owned local land remains a public asset, and the income derived from development is shared with citizens. Central to the project is a mixed-use development, integrating a new city hall, municipally owned "incubator" offices for business start-ups, and three different forms of housing. The usual lines between public and private, renting and owning, and residential and commercial are productively blurred, and the whole is designed to enable a rich mixing of uses and spatial experiences.

Structural and environmental design are fused to combine access to outdoor space, privacy, and expansive spaces—valued aspects of suburban living—in new, more energy-efficient ways. Architectural solutions are specifically adapted to Florida's climate. The upper level of the main structure hosts a network of courtyard houses, each entered by way of a garden from an open-air series of corridors and public plazas.

Each house is divided into vertical zones; general living spaces are designed to harvest the dehumidifying prevailing winds, while bedrooms are situated a half-level down, shielded from heat. Glazed surfaces with open views are north-facing only, protected from strong southern and western sunlight.

The entire complex is linked by a series of interwoven walking paths. Paralleling the existing geographic infrastructure of Temple Terrace while proposing a new layer of financial, structural, and environmental engineering, Simultaneous City offers an efficient new magnet community on 225 acres, with benefits for the larger 4,500-acre city.

Visible Weather: Phillip Crupi, design associate. Eunkyoung Kim, design associate. Nicholas Chelko, Da Yeon Kim, Eugene Lee, Stefana Simic, Jovanna Suarez.
Transsolar Team: Shrikar Bhave, Matthias Rudolph. Buro Happold teaM: Joe Mulligan, Ana Serra. conSultantS: Peter Hance, City of Bridgeport Housing Authority. Jesse M. Keenan, Columbia University. Brian Loughlin, Jersey City Housing Authority. Nadine Maleh, Community Solutions. Steve Carlucci, Jamie Masyln larson, and Marc Ryan, West 8.
Thank you: Chaos Group (V-Ray). RenderCore, Highperformance Render Farm. Noa Younse.

Rosanne Haggerty, supportive housing specialist
Community Solutions

Zachary Kostura, structural engineer
Arup

Mark Malekshahi, mechanical engineer
Buro Happold

Erik Olsen, climate engineer
Transsolar Climate Engineering