Upon approaching General Mitchell International Airport, one may assume that it is just a collection of buildings that serve the purpose of connecting travelers and cargo to their flights. In a rush to check in with the airline, go through security, find their gate and get onto their flight many will not second guess their surroundings.
When people come to Mitchell International, they do not realize that they are are entering what essentially is a micro city. The airport stores and restaurants provided the necessary amenities to make travelers feel comfortable while waiting for flights. Besides being able to provide to costumers, there is a sense of community among the various shops similar to the feelings found an average community. |
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Named after General William Mitchell, a Milwaukee native who played a major role in the creation of the Army Air Core in the first world war and a major advocate for the development of aircraft, the airport continues the tradition of advocation of the importance of aircraft and public service. Mitchell International Airport is not only the busiest civilian airport in Wisconsin, but also home of the 128th Air Refueling Wing of the Wisconsin Air National Guard.
While General Mitchell mainly advocated for military development of aircraft, his efforts along with the efforts of others subsequently helped the development and popularization of the civilian air industry and the creation of the airport which assisted in the growth of the city throughout the 20th century. Acting as a gateway, ushering visitors to a city which to get to in the past meant traveling via railroads. To this day the airport continues to welcome and usher visitors into the city. |
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Project 1
To get to the airport is a trip to the end of Milwaukee.
The General Mitchell International Airport located at Milwaukee’s southernmost edge, in Wisconsin the hubs of population are few and far between. So it only makes sense that an interstate makes direct connections to Wisconsin’s biggest airport. At first glance it looks like a very industrialized area intertwining roads are all that one sees upon approach save for the air control tower and the distant billowing of smoke from a factory. Hardly a soul to see on foot, you cannot walk away from the airport as we experienced trying to explore the area. The endeavor to stray from the airport was quickly abandoned having little spare cash for the oh so willing taxi man, are our only option. So we turn back to face the coldness of this place before entering. We swallowed our nicotine tainted saliva and walked through the nondescript entry way from the parking garage. As we entered the main junction we were immersed in a warm clear atmosphere. The place smelled nice. The place looked tranquil and welcoming people appeared to be friendly. Here we were exasperated, cold, disappointed and discombobulated from our journey here. Now we see a welllit and a plastic environment, ordered, connected, artifi cial yes, but quite pleasant. This space full of people from all kinds of life filled the main junction with movement and vigor. This central space within the airport was a gathering space for people yet functioned as a funnel of people going their separate ways... The organization throughout the complex is straightforward, people come and go but through the oasis in the heart of itpeople come and go but through the oasis in the heart of it bringing people together. The airport is the beginning, the middle, and the end of the journey for these people. The ceiling was structured with a repetitive hierarchy of ball jointed rod trusses supporting a layered ceiling of linear clerestory openings letting in a crisscrossed indirect natural light. The ceiling created AN ATMOSHPERE, elevated over the expansive space of the main atrium that served as the control point to the different terminals The transition of our mood- we kind of felt out of place, not so in a disconcerting fashion, more like a traveler experiencing a new destination with an agenda set on exploration. This may have been the intention of this space as it is an airport but even the traveler’s here had to navigate and fi nd their destination. Our experience was destined to be different as our goal is to find the story of this place, this airport. |
The site of assignment 1 is Mitchell International Airport which
is a little bit far aways from downtown and only a few residents lives there. The neighborhoods of our site are basiclly including a lots of hotels, health centers, factories and fastfood restaurant s. When we visted the site, there is a restaurant Jalapeno loco. Jalapeno loco is a traditional mexican restaurant and bar located in the south edge of Mitchell west. Recognized by many people and local food critics, This restaurant is one of the best mexican restaurant running by Hugo Saynes and his wife since 1995. He also is the chef and create the menus with his wife. Mr.Saynes come from Oaxaca, Mexico and aiming to bring excellent traditional mexican cuisines to America. He and his wife keep refining and developing the menus in the last 18 years. They also came up with a lot unique dishes.Jalapeno Loco serve various traditional and creative mexican cuisines along with the mexican music as background. There are live Mariachi music at 6pm to 9 pm each wednesdays. It is a great place for those people who like or want to try mexican food. Jalapeno Loco used to opened in a very small place in cudahy until 2000. The restaurant get very success and need more space to develop.Mr.Saynes move the restaurant to the current location.it is a single-storey east facing building, situated a large lot. An 5 ft open brick fence at the southeastern corner of the building create a nice outdoor dining space. The building size is 7702 sq ft while the lot area is 24000 sq ft. This structure was built in 1952 without any major change. The material of exterior wall is brick. But there is no brick pattern in street facing facade because very thick red painting was used in that facade and brick fence. The building consisted of two section, the dining lounge in the front with a sloping roof, and kitchen with flat roof. Only one thick roof beams and many rafters support the sloping roof and expose from interior , so customers can see those very thick beam and rafters. A very thick decorative wall with a fireplace at one third of the dining lounge separate the bar area and dining area. Moreover there is a banquet room in the basement that can be reserved to hold private parties and events. |
Project 2
Again just descriptions no summary
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For assignment 2, our group used the website that our instructor recommended to make some maps with a lot of information.
First of all, we found the district map that shows which district our building located. It is at 316 of the alermaic district 13 which is in green on the map. Then, we found some information about the househoder income on the Milwaukee county website of statistic and then we have this property information map. The triangles show the buidling which is on bank forclosures pending and the rectangles shows the empty building that owned by the city or privately. From the map we can see that there are only a little empty and pending bank forclosures building in our neighborhood. Further more, we have the population map which is found on the cencus map website. The population showed on the map is defined by different colors that the color gets more red as the population of that area increase. Our building located in a zone in a very faint yellow that means the population is between 0 to 2400. The actual population of our neighborhood is around 2100. And then the race map we are looking for the amount percentage of white people and other who live in our neighborhood. The red part on the map shows that 90% population of this zone is white people. We can see that there are a lot of white people lives here. And as we can compare with the racial map of Milwaukee, the blue points show white people and the green points show african american. Our neighbor is located in the blank zone with a little blue points because there are only a few people there. In conclusion, our neighborhood is a very quite and peace place with not that much people lives in. And there are a lot restaurant and factories. The building we chose is a Mexico restaurant Jalapeño Loco. It opened in 1995 in a small location in Cudahy, WI as the dream of Hugo Saynes, along with his wife Janet, to open a Mexican Restaurant came to be. Hugo is from Oaxaca, Mexico where he grew up second oldest in a family of 12 and began by helping his mom cook for their family. Janet is from Bay View Milwaukee and began by cooking “tacos” on Sundays for her family. The restaurant that we interested in is a red Mexico style building with a longrange wall around it to creat a space for the guest to sit outside. The Mexico culture and food is really good and interesting that a lot of people come to this restaurant including locals and people who is going to take flight. For the green infrustructure map we located all the food dealer including restaurants, food retails and factories that shows that there are a lot of food dealer in our neighborhood. |
Project 3
We saw the airport as a city within a city. We thought that to be considered a city the airport would need to be self-sufficient in the ameni-ties that are provided for the customers and the employees. There also would need to be a sense of community or at least some neighbor-ly interaction among the businesses as there
would be in any other town. In an attempt to see if the airport met these criteria we inter-viewed an employee of “Royal Shine II”, the en-thusiastic Mr. Roman Williams, told us about his work and experiences working in the airport. When we asked, “Do you feel like when you get here you’ve got everything you need?” Mr. Williams said, “Yeah… as far as food I don’t need to go up the street or even go out, it’s all right here.” This confirmed what we suspected about there being everything one would need while there. We then posed the question, “Do you get to know some of the other people that work here?” to which Mr. Williams quickly re- plied, “Oh yeah, every one of us, it’s like a com-munity, actually we’re more like a family.” Which he felt lent to the air of comfort that ev-eryone seemed to be under in what might oth-erwise be a rather frantic or stressful place. After we talked to Roman Williams we met Nate and Brook, a pair of business travelers, at the Miller Brewhouse Bar where we talked to them about their Milwaukee experience in general. They mentioned visiting the lakefront and enjoying the beer and cheese that Wiscon-sin is so well known for. As the conversation progressed we learned that their flight wasn’t for another few hours which made us question why they decided to spend that much time in an airport to which they responded by saying that they remembered from their arrival that the airport had a very pleasant atmosphere and figured that it had everything they needed to comfortably waste a few hours while they waited to go home. |
Our interview was conducted on April 10th, 2016 with Janet Saynes, the owner, and chef at the Jalapeno loco
Mexican restaurant & bar, which is one of the best Mexican restaurants in Milwaukee. She shared with us the story of opened this restaurant with her husband Hugo Saynes. Which explained why it is a very special and attractive place. Janet is from Bayview Milwaukee. Hugo is from Oaxaca Mexican. Both of them have the dream to open a Mexican restaurant in America to share Mexican cultures and dishes with more people. At that time many American only knew a few Mexican cuisines like tacos etc., Hugo want to share other good and diverse Mexican cuisine to them. So in 1995, they opened a family restaurant in a very small place with only ten tables in Cudahy Milwaukee. In few years, They got very good reviews by people and Milwaukee critics, so a lot of people came to their restaurant and the room is too small for so many people. They decided to move to a larger place. In 2000, they moved into current place in Mitchell west, just across the Mitchell International Airport. Jalapeno loco provided delicious and various traditional Mexican dishes. Even though Hugo and Janet only do traditional dishes, they still keep developing and improving their menus for 18 years. And they also change special list every two weeks. Janet said that Hugo and she would refine and design new traditional cuisines by using traditional cook methods they knew or they saw when they back to Oaxaca. Besides the food, the dining environment is also very wonderful. The restaurant always play Mexican music and there are three very passionate gentleman play Mariachi music at 6pm to 9 pm each Wednesday. The interior decoration consisting many elements of Mexican culture along with warm lighting create a very comfortable lounge for dining. Janet told us that they redecorated interior 4 years ago. They used many pictures they took in Oaxaca, traditional Mexican paintings and decorations decorate the whole lounge. Moreover, the building itself is also very interesting. A very thick wall, decorated with the stone pattern, with a fireplace at one-third of the dining lounge separate the bar area and dining area. A 5 ft. height brick fence at the southeastern corner of the building create a nice outdoor dining space. Janet said that they add this fence after they move to here for patio dining, and it also prevents the noise from the street. Another interesting feature is the outlook of this building. The material of the exterior wall is brick. However very thick red painting was used in east-facing facade and brick fence, the brick pattern cannot be saw if looking from some distance which changes the style of this building. The red painting then makes whole building more obvious. Janet also told us that it is very excited to have this restaurant located nearby airport because they can meet a lot of travelers living around the airport, especially when many festivals are operating in summer. |
Project 4
We saw the airport as a city within a city. We thought that to be considered a city the airport would need to be self-sufficient in the ameni-ties that are provided for the customers and the employees. There also would need to be a sense of community or at least some neighbor-ly interaction among the businesses as there
would be in any other town. In an attempt to see if the airport met these criteria we inter-viewed an employee of “Royal Shine II”, the en-thusiastic Mr. Roman Williams, told us about his work and experiences working in the airport. When we asked, “Do you feel like when you get here you’ve got everything you need?” Mr. Williams said, “Yeah… as far as food I don’t need to go up the street or even go out, it’s all right here.” This confirmed what we suspected about there being everything one would need while there. We then posed the question, “Do you get to know some of the other people that work here?” to which Mr. Williams quickly re- plied, “Oh yeah, every one of us, it’s like a com-munity, actually we’re more like a family.” Which he felt lent to the air of comfort that ev-eryone seemed to be under in what might oth-erwise be a rather frantic or stressful place. After we talked to Roman Williams we met Nate and Brook, a pair of business travelers, at the Miller Brewhouse Bar where we talked to them about their Milwaukee experience in general. They mentioned visiting the lakefront and enjoying the beer and cheese that Wiscon-sin is so well known for. As the conversation progressed we learned that their flight wasn’t for another few hours which made us question why they decided to spend that much time in an airport to which they responded by saying that they remembered from their arrival that the airport had a very pleasant atmosphere and figured that it had everything they needed to comfortably waste a few hours while they waited to go home. We saw the airport as a city within a city. We thought that to be considered a city the airport would need to be self-sufficient in the ameni-ties that are provided for the customers and the employees. There also would need to be a sense of community or at least some neighbor-ly interaction among the businesses as there would be in any other town. In an attempt to see if the airport met these criteria we inter-viewed an employee of “Royal Shine II”, the en-thusiastic Mr. Roman Williams, told us about his work and experiences working in the airport. When we asked, “Do you feel like when you get here you’ve got everything you need?” Mr. Williams said, “Yeah… as far as food I don’t need to go up the street or even go out, it’s all right here.” This confirmed what we suspected about there being everything one would need while there. We then posed the question, “Do you get to know some of the other people that work here?” to which Mr. Williams quickly re- plied, “Oh yeah, every one of us, it’s like a com-munity, actually we’re more like a family.” Which he felt lent to the air of comfort that ev-eryone seemed to be under in what might oth-erwise be a rather frantic or stressful place. After we talked to Roman Williams we met Nate and Brook, a pair of business travelers, at the Miller Brewhouse Bar where we talked to them about their Milwaukee experience in general. They mentioned visiting the lakefront and enjoying the beer and cheese that Wiscon-sin is so well known for. As the conversation progressed we learned that their flight wasn’t for another few hours which made us question why they decided to spend that much time in an airport to which they responded by saying that they remembered from their arrival that the airport had a very pleasant atmosphere and figured that it had everything they needed to comfortably waste a few hours while they waited to go home. We saw the airport as a city within a city. We thought that to be considered a city the airport would need to be self-sufficient in the ameni-ties that are provided for the customers and the employees. There also would need to be a sense of community or at least some neighbor-ly interaction among the businesses as there would be in any other town. In an attempt to see if the airport met these criteria we inter-viewed an employee of “Royal Shine II”, the en-thusiastic Mr. Roman Williams, told us about his work and experiences working in the airport. When we asked, “Do you feel like when you get here you’ve got everything you need?” Mr. Williams said, “Yeah… as far as food I don’t need to go up the street or even go out, it’s all right here.” This confirmed what we suspected about there being everything one would need while there. We then posed the question, “Do you get to know some of the other people that work here?” to which Mr. Williams quickly re- plied, “Oh yeah, every one of us, it’s like a com-munity, actually we’re more like a family.” Which he felt lent to the air of comfort that ev-eryone seemed to be under in what might oth-erwise be a rather frantic or stressful place. After we talked to Roman Williams we met Nate and Brook, a pair of business travelers, at the Miller Brewhouse Bar where we talked to them about their Milwaukee experience in general. They mentioned visiting the lakefront and enjoying the beer and cheese that Wiscon-sin is so well known for. As the conversation progressed we learned that their flight wasn’t for another few hours which made us question why they decided to spend that much time in an airport to which they responded by saying that they remembered from their arrival that the airport had a very pleasant atmosphere and figured that it had everything they needed to comfortably waste a few hours while they waited to go home. |
Mitchell west neighborhood locates at far south side of Milwaukee and next to Milwaukee international airport.it is the last stop of green line before airport and far away from downtown. Like most neighborhood nearby airport. Mitchell west is not the most exciting neighborhood in Milwaukee. Most people only go that area to take planes. Hotels, factories and some residents constitute most of this relatively plain and quiet community and there is few convenience and commercial store in there. According to the information we collected. It is a safe and peace neighborhood with a very high percentages of house owner. Most people live in this community is white people and there is few entertainment and mere nightlife here. The street is not very friendly for walking.
The building attract our eye is a restaurant named Jalapeno Loco at the intersection of Howell and Edgerton. Jalapeno loco is a traditional Mexican restaurant and bar located in the south edge of Mitchell west. Recognized by many people and local food critics, this restaurant is one of the best Mexican restaurant running by Hugo Saynes and his wife Janet Saynes since 1995.Janet is from Bayview Milwaukee and Hugo is from Oaxaca Mexican. Both of them have the dream to open a Mexican restaurant in America to share Mexican cultures and dishes with more people. At that time many American only knew a few Mexican cuisines like tacos etc. Hugo want to share other good and diverse Mexican cuisine to them. So in 1995, they opened a family restaurant in a very small place with only ten tables in Cudahy Milwaukee. In few years, They got very good reviews by people and Milwaukee critics, so a lot of people came to their restaurant and the room is too small for so many people. They decided to move to a larger place. In 2000, they moved into current place in Mitchell west, just across the Mitchell International Airport. it is a single-story east facing building, situated a large lot. A 5 ft. open brick fence at the southeastern corner of the building create a nice outdoor dining space. The building size is 7702 sq. ft. while the lot area is 24000 sq. ft. This structure was built in 1952 without any major change. The material of exterior wall is brick. But there is no brick pattern in street facing facade because red painting was used in that facade and brick fence. The building consisted of two section, the dining lounge in the front with a sloping roof, and kitchen with flat roof. Only one thick roof beams and many rafters support the sloping roof and expose from interior, so customers can see those very thick beam and rafters. A very thick decorative wall with a fireplace at one third of the dining lounge separate the bar area and dining area. Moreover there is a banquet room in the basement that can be reserved to hold private parties and events. Same as this community, except the color, Jalapeno Loco also doesn’t looks very attractive especially most people only see this building when they are driving. However Jalapeno Loco actually is a very unique place which provide high quality dining and can surprise new customers when they walk into this restaurant.it is a very good place to experience Mexican food and culture. Moreover we are very glad that we interviewed the owner, and chef at the Jalapeno loco Janet Saynes. She shared with us the story of opened this restaurant with her husband Hugo Saynes. Which explained why it is a very special and attractive place. Food always is the most important feature of a restaurant. Jalapeno loco provided delicious traditional Mexican dishes. Even though Hugo and Janet only do traditional dishes, the menus is various because they keep developing and improving their menus for 18 years. And they also change special list every two weeks. Janet said that Hugo and she would refine and design new traditional cuisines by using traditional cook methods they knew or they saw when they back to Oaxaca. Besides the food, the dining environment is also outstanding. The restaurant always play Mexican music and there are three very passionate gentleman play Mariachi music at 6pm to 9 pm each Wednesday. The interior decoration consisting many elements of Mexican culture along with warm lighting create a very comfortable lounge for dining. Janet said that they redecorated interior 4 years ago. They used many pictures they took in Oaxaca, traditional Mexican paintings and decorations decorate the whole lounge. Moreover, the building itself is also very interesting. The exterior of this building doesn’t looks like a very high quality restaurant however the interior environment will change people’s impression in one second. After enter the restaurant there is a very thick wall, decorated with the stone pattern, with a fireplace at one-third of the dining lounge separate the bar area and dining area. A 5 ft. height brick fence at the southeastern corner of the building create a nice outdoor dining space. Janet said that they add this fence after they move to here for patio dining, and it also prevents the noise from the street. Another interesting feature is the outlook of this building. The material of the exterior wall is brick. However very thick red painting was used in east-facing facade and brick fence, the brick pattern cannot be saw if looking from some distance which changes the style of this building. The red painting then makes whole building more obvious. Janet said that it is very excited to have this restaurant located nearby airport because they can meet a lot of travelers living around the airport, especially when many festivals are operating in summer. Hugo Saynes and Janet Saynes had already opened Jalapeno Loco for 20 years and still keep stick in their favorite traditional Mexican food and culture which produce outstanding and diverse food and experience in this unique building. It is a very special place worth to come though far away from the center of Milwaukee. |