Begin with the existing grids on the site
1.Infrastructural grids.
2.Grids generated by movement.
EXISTING CONDITIONS:
Existing grids in the site form a well developed system of connections.
An area along the edge is identified by former trade and industrial activities, related to the metropolitan,regional and even global scales more than the local one.
All these existing conditions create a WALL OF INactive ACTIVITY dividing the functional system at the city's edge from the "city behind".
The edge is the end point of urban infrastructure.
URBAN STRATEGY: Identification,intensification and diversification of well scaled existing activities on site and in surrounding areas. Taking east-west main streets as the axes of activity prolongation, this project recombines activities in order to generate east-west movement (to the edge from the center) and north-south movement (along the waterfront). It redefines this edge condition as the starting point of inward and outward movement.
PROBE: AROUND 14TH STREET.
There is a directional breaking point in the grid which creates meeting points of movement. The probes are located along a line of study which comes from inside to outside the city becoming:
1.A void of activity into the solid of urban mass, MARKET:open space and activities meeting point.
2.A solid of activity in the void of the edge, TOWER:concentration of overlapped activities in one point.
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