URBAN DESIGN STUDIO/ FALL - 95
PROBES
LOWER MANHATTAN
Reprogramming Downtown Manhattan
Chen-Sheng Tung
Regional scenario--Global Argument
Economics and politicals are changing dramatically because of the advantage of technology. Technology decrease distance and allow global contractors to work 24 hours a day with virtually no "downtime" .
On wall street , more opened markets provide additional opportunities, but also pose more dangers . Efficiancy is essential, and international operation, the norm. Faced with these new realities , large firms have to respond through reallocation of labors in both blue and white collar jobs.
After centripetal and centrifugal reallocation, in terms of finical activities , downtown area can become a hyper-activity area where people work around clock, trval from one financial district to another. People like to meet to acquire the newest information.
District Plan - A new city emerges , against the geographic idea, downtown is a fragment of a global finical community.
On Monday , October 19, 1987. the Dow Jones industrial index lost 508 points ,the deepest single fall in history. The world stock exchanges followed suit : Tokyo declined 14.9% the next day, while London fell 22% and
Frankfurt 12%. from the finical point of view , those finical market have more to do with each other than to do with their local communities.
My district plan is to redefine downtown into a piece of global puzzle in which more meeting space is need , service for the people who devote in financial activity, the need of different stock markets.
Probe
The stock market plays an important port of financial activities, I chose the area where it is reconfigured by fore vacant buildings , between AMSE and the NYSE.
Popularization of market - Outside space as an trading floor-everyone can participate the finical activities.
Thin layers plays the port of displaying information which is one of the important characters in financial activities.
Thin layers redefine this outside space , link the buildings and connect the site with adjacent city open space where events can happen.
Conceiving this site as a fragment of global finical community.
Final Jurors; Irena Latek, Christine Boyer, Marissa Oliver, Mark Robbins, Lauren Otis, Michael Webb, Michael Manfredi, James Sanders, Tony Schumman Joan Ockman, Andrea Kahn.
Jury notes on TUNG by Brian Mc Grath
Irena Latek:- New vertical and horizontal street system round churchyard.
Mike Webb:- Does the cranberry color indicate vacant office space? Why are
all these people in the walls trading stocks? Shouldn't they be at their
desks???! Surely they are not tourists? Slot machines in casino have
very different spatial configuration.
Joan Ockman:- Tourists go to view the trading floors now, a tourist attraction.
Mike Webb:- Yes but the trading floors are a remnant left for show purposes
only, real trading is electronic and on a massive scale, the floor is
only reallymaintained for the tourists.
Irena Latek:-interested in global dimension of the argument; how does it work
for the city and effect the area around it? It's not really clear from
project. The old church appears as a deus trapped in the machina!
for the city and effect the area around it? It's not really clear from
project. The old church appears as a deus trapped in the machina!
Mark Webb:- its still too diagramatic, need to cut the wall a bit and to put
more stuff behind it, could get much more out of it, show how it hits the
ground, how things go through it etc? Make it more porous, as it is
church is in a box.
Mike Manfredi:-The stuff behind the wall includes both stock exchanges and
raises a real sectional issue given topography and keying into the
subways as well. The foot print of the wall was too small to accomodate
heavy computer usage..more like a new building skin that grapples with
old buildings and contains complex electronics, like a thin veil over
buildings. Marissa Oliver; but the wall could disappear then?
Christine Boyer:- it's a one liner as it is now; based on the new religion of
gambling and the loss of value of everything solid, the empty buildings
around the church and stock exchanges have lost value, the electronic
gambling and the loss of value of everything solid, the empty buildings
around the church and stock exchanges have lost value, the electronic
trading has totally replaced the static gold standard, evaporating gold
and its value, the project needs to push these ideas further so that on
the one hand it too becomes immaterial on the one hand, and totally
material on the other.
Mike Webb:- scheme could have developed more on death of money and death of
single function skyscraper.
Joan Ockman:- church in middle doesn't work in this situation/interpretation.
The images were very seductive, especially the idea of the
wall as made of layers, but the reality would be very different if
everything electronic stuffed into narrow footprint of corridor and
unrelated to larger floorplate behind the veil.
In other words in an age of immateriality real
things take on rarity value again, may be a museum of gold bars where you
could touch them would attract tourists too?