Paul Gruber Project Design in Collaboration with Molly Bennett
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Paul Gruber Project Design in Collaboration with Molly Bennett Faculty Advisor – Peter Sprowls Honors Thesis – Spring 2019 Tradition Versus Progress: Designing Residency in TriBeCa, New York City Gruber 1 ABSTRACT As New York City continues to grow, residential towers are drastically changing the urban fabric in the past several decades. With housing more exclusive than ever, these architectural feats are only serving a certain demographic with no consideration for the past history of the area it plans to inhabit. “Tradition Versus Progress: Designing Residency in TriBeCa, New York City” investigates this design issue. Through the elaboration of a Design Seven studio course project, done in collaboration with Molly Bennett, an urban residential tower was created for the TriBeCa district. TriBeCa is now the district with the highest average housing costs in all of Manhattan, and these new elite structures have changed the unique history of the area. Ultimately, the investigation of the tower project led to a question of how to design for an evolving community, while still adhering to cultural traditions and demographic diversity of an area. Gruber 2 INTRODUCTION Known for its prominent film festival and its reputation as one of New York City’s most expensive districts, TriBeCa is a sought-after suburb for many. TriBeCa is a nickname for the phrase “Triangle Below Canal Street”1 with its boundaries defined as the Hudson River, Vessey Street, Broadway and Canal Street (Figure 1). Formerly known as “Washington Market,” the district originated as a heavy industrial area and housed a famous produce market.2 After the commercial industry of TriBeCa was relocated elsewhere, the abandoned infrastructure of the area was eventually inhabited by local artists. TriBeCa developed into a huge hub for the arts, promoting creativity and the sharing of artist culture in New York City. After the September 11 attacks, the district suffered a huge depression due to its proximity to the World Trade Center. Through efforts, such as the TriBeCa Film Festival, which started in 2002, the area has since been revived. However, a new problem has emerged; TriBeCa has become too exclusive. With the construction of large-scale residential project and rents rising to twice the average of New York City (the median sale price for residences is $3.85 million)3, the demographics of TriBeCa have shifted drastically creating a loss of its once unique artist culture and a surplus of upscale retail and residencies. Although TriBeCa has become more unapproachable than ever before, there is an exciting opportunity to reintroduce a Figure 1 – Map depicting general boundaries of diversity to the area that was once so prevalent. TriBeCa’s unique district shape. Win, Nieminn. 2015. Tribeca Map. New York. https://www.behance.net/gallery/29963839/Neig hborhood-Map-of-Tribeca-New-York-City 1 Feirstein, Sanna. Naming New York: Manhattan Places & How They Got Their Names. New York: NYU Press, 2001. 2 Yarrow, Andrew L. "Tribeca, A Guide to its Old Styles and its New Life." The New York Times. October 18, 1985. Accessed March 16, 2019. https://www.nytimes.com/1985/10/18/arts/tribeca-a-guide-to-its-old-styles-and-its-new-life.html. 3 Walker, Ameena. "These Were NYC's Most Expensive Neighborhoods in 2018." Curbed NY. December 13, 2018. Accessed March 16, 2019. https://ny.curbed.com/2018/12/13/18139332/nyc-most-expensive-neighborhood-2018-tribeca. Gruber 3 THESIS With New York City’s ever-growing population and need for large scale constructions, how can designers create projects that inspire growth and development, while maintaining a tradition of its place? This design problem was addressed, in collaboration with Molly Bennett, for the Design Studio 7 Course Tower project. The project proposes a design for a new residential tower in TriBeCa that reintroduces the artist culture that had previously permeated the district. Through contemporary design, the tower aims to inspire new creativity for the area, while still respecting the architectural traditions of the district. In addition, the aim of the tower is to bring a diverse economical demographic back into the area. The concept of the live-work studio has been taken to the extreme providing a shifting vertical volume featuring programmatic blocks for artists to express their creativity through a variation of social interaction. The tower allows for inspiration of the artists of New York City using intimate, human scale spaces for inward reflection. However, the tower does not only impose an individualistic spatial experience as it also utilizes constructive collaboration within the community spaces, fostering a connection to the expansive views of Lower Manhattan. The slenderness of the design aims to work with the site and not distract from the already congested skyline of the city. Ultimately, the goal is to create spaces, where internal creativity can be expressed and projected into the community externally. Gruber 4 THE SITE The chosen site for the investigation of this design issue is 102 Chambers Street, New York City, New York (Figure 2). The site’s narrowness and access from three distinct street edges, the longest being Church Street, pose a challenge for the tower. The treatment for each façade and position at the end of a block establish the need for a strong presence at the street level. The site is zoned for Mixed Residential and Commercial buildings, which would enforce the need for intersection programs with the housing component of the building. In addition, issues of setbacks from the street edges and gross floor area were restricted due to its zoning regulations and informed the height of the project.4 As previously mentioned, the district of TriBeCa has undergone immense transformation in the last several decades. The rising rents and elite reputation of the area have made residence there impossible for most, especially the people who brought the district to the peak of its creative prominence. In “Delirious New York: A Retroactive Manifesto,” Architect Rem Koolhaas states: “Not only are large parts of [New York’s] surface occupied by architectural mutations, utopian fragments and irrational phenomena, but in addition each block is covered with several layers of phantom architecture in the form of past occupancies, aborted projects and popular fantasies that provide alternative images to the New York that exists.” (10).5 Koolhaas discusses the palimpsest of New York City. Each construct built on the urban fabric of New York City seems unnatural and an attempt to impose an architectural idea where it may not fit. Architecture must acknowledge its precedents; there is a need to explore what existed before. This “phantom architecture” hints at the past lives of New York City. There is a 4 "NYC's Zoning & Land Use Map." ZoLa. Accessed March 16, 2019. https://zola.planning.nyc.gov. 5 Koolhaas, Rem. Delirious New York: A Retroactive Manifesto. New York: Monacelli, 1994, 10. Gruber 5 history with the idea of a city. There are fictional lives that have been ignored or waiting to be realized. A designer must acknowledge these traditions and provide analysis of how a block has achieved its present form. There is a need to synthesize these architectural moments at various points in time and then decide to what extent to utilize the precedents. This analysis allows the architect to understand the culture and provided an intent for how to approach the design on this particular site. He or she can choose to design with tradition in mind, or completely ignore the context and create something drastically new and exciting. In 2017, Swiss architects Herzog & de Meuron completed 56 Leonard Street, a residential tower project in TriBeCa. The building has been nicknamed the “Jenga Building” for its design of stacked volumes and is the tallest building in TriBeCa at 821 feet (Figure 3). While many found the project exciting, and quite modest for new projects that had been proposed in the city, it seemed those familiar with the district found concern. Julie Menin, now a Commissioner of the New York City Mayor's Office of Media and Entertainment argued, "I don't really see how asymmetrical stacked glass boxes reflect the architecture you tend to see in Tribeca…This building is absolutely non-contextual with the rest of Tribeca."6 This project is an example of architecture that wants to progress an area through its contemporary design. The reverse argument champions for traditional architecture and sees the imposition of these massive towers as an attack on the extensive history of an area. With these opposing concepts, how can architects begin to mediate the needs of a community through design? Architecture should not be required to mimic the past, as if the city were merely a static museum. Yet, the architecture cannot ignore its context. The design proposal for the tower at 102 Chambers Street provides the opportunity to create a multifaceted structure. The goals were to bring back cultural activity of the area, creating a design that works with its context, but also a design that inspire new exploration in architecture. 6 Arak, Joey. "A Bad 56 Leonard Review." Curbed NY. September 19, 2008. Accessed March 16, 2019. https://ny.curbed.com/2008/9/19/10559356/a-bad-56-leonard-review. Gruber 6 Figure 2 – Satellite Image showing the site footprint at 102 Chambers Street, New York, NY. Accessed from Google Earth. 2018. “102 Chambers Street” 56 Leonard Project Herzog and de Meuron Figure 3 – Image of 56 Leonard in the context of TriBeCa. It dominates the landscape and does not seem to fit with its surroundings. Accessed from https://www.cityrealty.com/nyc/market-insight/features/future-nyc/as-56-leonard-awaits-its-anish-kapoor- sculpture-look-inside-its-most-incredible-listings/20444 Gruber 7 PROGRAM The program of the tower’s design is inspired by diagrammatic concepts from the Downtown Athletic Club, which was a recreational building built in the 1930’s for Wall Street Executives to participate in various sports and activities.