Grahame Shane/ Brian Mc Grath/ Victoria Benatar
LOWER MANHATTAN/HARLEM
Our Urban Design Projects concentrated on the
island of Manhattan. We examined two different forms of urban
abandonment to the north and south of the Midtown Central Business
District. In both areas we explored the possibilities opened up by
the Federal, State and City programs involving Special District
Tax Abatements for Downtown and the Empowerment Zone, which will
also work as a Special District in Harlem. We believe that both
the Empowerment Zone and Downtown Incentive Plan offer
opportunities to challenge the structural imbalances of New York
City's "Dual City" economy.
In Harlem and Downtown we began the semester by looking at each area from a regional perspective in teams, developing Regional re-programming strategies which informed sketch District Designs. In the second phase developed these District Plans by investigating further individual Probes developed on "Magnet Sites" . In the last phase these Probes were brought to an architectural scale, while the group District and Regional Plans are revised for final presentation by the teams.
Click to view student probes