URBAN DESIGN STUDIO I: SUMMER-1996

1. SITE CONSTRUCTION The site is conceived as an isolated piece of city, without energy and connections with the rest of the city. The city presents a clear distribution of two kinds of spaces, on one hand black spaces and on the other yellow, blue and red spaces. By this I mean:
BLACK SPACES negative activities, holes within the city
YELLOW,BLUE,RED SPACES local functions creating focal points of activity a succesion of directional bounds of spaces an ambiguous situation of mix and mess

2. URBAN STRATEGY In order to give electricity to this area, my proposal is to switch on urban high tension lines, the subway lines. constructing a derivation through the site. The wire that will transmit this energy is the actual abandoned elevated train rail located in this area. The idea is to make the site luminous, dynamic, urban at all the scales:
1. At the regional and metropolitan scales, connecting it to the airports of the New York region and to the different surrounding boroughs through the subway.
2. At the local scale, overlapping activities and areas,creating colours, shapes and rhythms of life, through the interaction of programmatic relationships. In this way, human minds can find the way to establish a new kind of balance.

3.PROBES
The first probe looks at global and regional scale PHYSICAL LAYERS. LAYERS OF SPACE. Connections between Javits Center and Penn Station. This involves bringing energy from the subway, the train and further, from the airport to the site through a path of public transportation and public spaces. My project consists of exploring the underground depth of existing holes in the site, the black spaces mentioned above. The goal is to connect the existing concourse and train levels of Penn Station and Javits Center, giving new complexity to this section of the city.
The second probe looks at the local scale. VIRTUAL LAYERS LAYERS OF ACTIVITY This probe follows the general idea of importing electricity from the subway to the waterfront, through 14th Street. Here I try to develop virtual connections between activities. Both probes are conected to each other through the elevated train.

4. EFFECTS OF URBAN STRATEGY The goal of this intervention is to achieve BOOGIE-WOOGIE LEVEL effects in mixing activities. In other words, to answer the question MIX or MESS? by asserting the positive urban quality of MIX and MESS. Positive areas of activities conceived as human understanding of FORM, SPACE and CONSTRUCTION, where the whole never overwhelms the parts and never stifles the individual. The site will be understood as a new way of relating activities, based on mental relationships, psychological boundaries, movement, and coexistence.