Adding Value to our Physical Urban Spaces

Author: Brice M Schiano Additional Author: Agostina Portabales Honors Thesis – Spring 2020

Abstract: Our physical spaces should add value to us as individuals and as a society. They should create connections, foster community and challenge us to encounter new people and ideas. This paper is meant to analyze and question the ideas behind the public spaces we design in our urban environments. It will use the new Mega-Development Hudson Yards as a comparison to a One Penn Plaza project proposal Agostina and I proposed for our final D7 studio project to examine the ways we think about our public urban spaces.

As we move to further develop and densify our urban environments, the quality of our public spaces within the city becomes increasingly important. In cities like New York there is a noticeable increase in the number of Mega-Developments being proposed and built that have the most impact on our public spaces and how they are shaped. The most notable of recent, being the Hudson Yards development on New York’s West Side. These large developments drastically alter the character of the spaces in the city and cause lasting effects on the public areas that surround them as well as well as within. The question then becomes, how can our urban environments promote dynamic experiences to engage the public while also encouraging healthy and inclusive spaces for all? How does our public space add value to our shared city spaces as well as the community itself? This evaluation and comparison will begin to initiate a dialogue on how two different Mega-Developments in approach designing public space. The first being the Hudson Yards and the other a theoretical proposal done for my Design 7 Studio project (Fall 2019), partnered with Agostina Portabales, that attempts to take the area around One Penn Plaza and create are more intriguing and energetic public space.

Hudson Yards Hudson Yards is now known to be the largest mixed-use private real estate venture in the history of the United States. It is located within a much larger Hudson Yards District, a zone on the West side of Midtown which is destined to be a part of the redevelopment of the district expanding towards the Hudson River. There is no arguing that Hudson Yards has and will continue to impact the New York Skyline, as it’s astonishing size and scale leaves it difficult to go unnoticed. It is a mega-development that's transforming New York's west side and causing much controversy in the thinking of developments of its size. Hudson Yards has a price tag of $25 billion, plus $5.6 billion in taxpayer subsidies, and brings restaurants, shopping, offices, apartments, green spaces and art spaces to a formerly unusable portion of land occupied by the west side rail yards. With its integration of living, working, dining and retail, some have proclaimed Hudson Yards as the future of urban living. Others have considered that this hyper-integrated model could save the shopping mall. Still others have noted that the entire development feels out of place. Where Hudson Yards succeeds is in creating plenty of space for offices, areas of revenue and provides the city with more housing; it begins to considerably fail in creating an environment that enhances the New York experience and culture. Instead it tries to create its own ethos and sense of community and the causes the public to feel alienated from the development.

Image Source: New York Times

A place for few. At a time when wealth inequality is increasingly acute and apparent, however, the most notable criticism of Hudson Yards is that it’s essentially a community for the ultra-wealthy, quoted on being an island refuge for the 0.1 percent. In the face of such skepticism, Stephen Ross, the billionaire real estate developer maintains that Hudson Yards is not only for the rich, always reminding us out that the retail and dining options include Shake Shack and H&M. Still, much of the development is occupied by more haughty tenants, such as Neiman Marcus, Cartier, Dior, Rolex, and restaurants from Michelin-starred chefs. Pricey condos that range from a few million to tens of millions of dollars. On balance, Hudson Yards may in fact be open to all, but it is certainly not for all. The physical spaces we live in, work in and play in have a profound impact on our culture and social fiber. Architecture can sometimes create spaces that separate or isolate to reinforce division and disunity. This is where Hudson Yards begins to fail in the public’s opinion. Spaces that welcome everyone but aren’t for all only mask this conflict. It was in 2010 when the MTA leased the air rights over the yard to the Related Companies and Oxford Properties for 99 years. This means Hudson Yards really is a private development and all its land is private property. This ensures the public space will be well taken care of but severely limits the publics input on how the space is designed, used, and regulated.1 Having a culture Shed is the first stab at trying to create space for participation for everyone. Designed by the firm of Diller Scofidio + Renfro in collaboration with David Rockwell, the Shed is a low-rise structure enclosed in a retractable shell that slides back and forth on enormous wheels, allowing for the expansion of theatrical space. This movement acts a metaphor as it is a rare sense of mobility and accommodation in an expansive development otherwise characterized by the stagnancy and self-isolation of elites. Ginia Bellafante, a writer for begins to touch on this subject with her article posted in April 2019: In a Playground for the 1 Percent, an Arts Center for the Rest of Us. The development as a whole feels isolated to a degree to the rest of the public except for a few amenities like the Shed, and exterior plaza and public space.2 “they create the illusion that we’re all equal because we inhabit the same space. Simply being in a space doesn’t mean you can afford to enjoy it—and what’s the point of shared spaces if not everyone can participate?”3 Related has also promised that the not yet developed Western Yard will showcase desirable green space, in sync with the High Line and gesturing to the public. But lately Related seems to be reconsidering the layout of the yard, considering a giant wall that would overshadow the High Line, accommodate a parking garage and in doing so cause the site to feel more like a quasi-gated community. This is where, at the start of the Bloomberg administration, city officials envisioned building a stadium. When that plan did not go through and Related joined in partnership with Oxford Properties, neighborhood and city officials settled to rezone the yard for mixed-use development on the condition that the developers include substantial public lawns. Now after the first phase is coming to completion, the public is coming to find that the design of the second phase is still in the works and the idea of a large wall dividing it from the city is causing the public to fear how the rest of the public space will be handled. The physical space in Hudson Yards created is bit over the top in being ostentatious and energizing, but the social space it has created feels misleading and inauthentic. Maybe it is just the fact that the landscaping requires a special water system to

1 Carter B. Horsley, Skyline Wars: What’s Rising in Hudson Yards, the Nation’s Largest Construction Site, ( NY Post, February 2016) 2 Ginia Bellafante, A playground for the 1 Percent, an Arts Center for the Rest of Us, ( New York Times, April 2019) 3 Talton and Tonar, Open To All But Not For All, (Forbes Mag., March 2019). run underneath it to cool and keep it from dying from the heat of the trains below the platform that causes such inauthenticity.4 Or maybe Hudson Yards just feels too clean and lacks in the character that the rest of New York possesses. Hudson Yards was claiming to be a” Neighborhood of the Future”, but I would hope it not to be. The Neighborhoods of the future should not foster such social inequality and further put divides in the classes of people and the types of spaces they deserve to inhabit and use. A truly equitable space, one that honors the values of diversity and imperfection that have made New York great, would be less concerned about matching the grandeur of Dubai or Singapore and more focused on matching the dynamism of New York City culture. This can certainly be done on a lavish and spectacular scale, but “the architectural approach needs to be social not just structural.” 5 Hudson Yards has several expansive public spaces, but most of those spaces are on the west side of the development: the side that faces away from the city. They turned their back on what makes New York City great.

One Penn Plaza Proposal We set to investigate the opportunity of creating more dynamic and engaging public spaces and environments on the ground, in the towers themselves, and in the hinge of how they expand into and out of the ground plane. After focusing exclusively on the ground we later shifted the exploration into how we can move the public realm up off the street and into more elevated positions helped mold the spaces we created in the towers to give even more space back to the public and create moments of elevation that are not normally accessible to all in a city. In an urban environment when the density is directed in a vertical orientation why then are almost all the public spaces limited to the ground?

The project proposal was charged with the task of redesigning the One Penn Plaza block located between 7th & 8th Ave (Figure -1). While closing 33rd street to vehicular traffic between both Avenues the attention of how the ground plane connects the block at One Penn to the block at Two Penn and becomes a curtail point to explore. Also considering the spaces in and around the existing 57 story tower at One Penn Plaza and search for alternate strategies, positions and speculations to transform this existing structure as informed by its proximity to Penn Station and Madison Square Garden along with the opportunity to introduce two new edifices to the site. We raze and replace the existing structures housing Modell’s Sporting Goods to the east and Duane Reade Pharmacy to the West. The proposal will in total add an additional 2,000,000 GSF to the current site with new private and public amenities including a Conference Center, two theaters, restaurants, shopping, art display spaces, gyms, hotel, and additional office space

4 Thomas Woltz, Everything Outside the Building, (Vimeo, https://vimeo.com/68878969, June 2013) 5 Talton and Tonar, Open To All But Not For All, (Forbes Mag., March 2019).

Figure 1: Project proposal site

The initial prompt of engaging in this proposal was looking solely at the horizontal ground plane. This becomes the most important aspect of evaluating the public space as it is the most easily accessible to everyone. We gave consideration to a range of spaces and functions, as well as concern for the informal gathering and interaction between programmatic elements. With the road closure of 33rd Street along the block, the proposal has a substantial amount of space to create more appealing and vibrant pedestrian experience for all who need to cross the site. The main idea when diagraming and iterating on the possibilities of how we want to organize the ground plane was to ensure various paths to guarantee an inviting pedestrian gateway. With such a highly charged site with pedestrian use, Agostina and I wanted to ensure we address the needs and desires of each of the ‘characters’ that potentially use the plaza on a daily or frequent occurrence. These characters came down to the work commuter, tourist, and the resident. Each having their own distinct itinerary and interaction with the site but all having the same opportunity to participate in the space. The ground plane becomes organized and divided into a more understandable scale, that in return creates a series of thresholds and points of interest across the site that builds a relationship and dialogue between the people who interact within it. The space is meant to have its own energy, always changing, driven by the various influxes of people who cross or use the space. The participants are the ones who drive the use and shape of the space.

Figure 2: Final ground plane proposal with towers (left), initial process ground proposals (right). The ground system was conceived to help liven up the historically park-deprived midtown neighborhood, creating crosstown pedestrian-oriented routes, improving community health and welfare and guaranteeing New Yorkers open space in compensation for all the . The entry points to the block were still to accommodate for the entries to Penn Station below the ground while also creating soft edges that bring people further into the block. The relationship between the street edge and plaza entry play a vital role in the success of the space as studied by William H. Whyte. Our initial studies shown above in Figure 2, show initial play of the edges of site and working of ground further in attempts to address that vital seam between street and plaza. The extraordinary study entitled The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces in 1979, described the ideas put forth by William H. Whyte, a pioneer in the study of human behavior in urban settings. The film grew out of the Street Life Project and Whyte’s earlier work for the New York City Planning Commission, which sought to determine why some urban plazas were successful as public spaces while others were not. Narrated by Whyte with wry humor and a keen and observant eye, the film begins at the plaza of the iconic Seagram Building completed in 1958. The success of this plaza became the basis for the New York City zoning provisions that provided for greater density for office buildings in exchange for the building of “public” plazas. Although most of the plazas built under these 1961 zoning regulations failed as public spaces, the Seagram Plaza bucked the trend and Whyte and his team of researchers wanted to find out why. The Street Life Project observed and analyzed the interactions and behaviors of people at this and other plazas. Several key factors were identified for plazas that succeeded as popular gathering spots. First on this list was an abundance of inviting places to sit and relax. Benches, movable chairs, ledges and steps could all provide hospitable seating. Plazas that were devoid of life and activity did not provide such seating. In fact, some private owners of these plazas went out of their way to deter people from sitting altogether by placing spikes on surfaces, designing planters too high for sitting or simply providing no seating at all. At the end of the film, Whyte stated, “The street is the river of life of the city. They come to these places not to escape but to partake of it.” 6

6 William H. Whyte, The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces, (NYC 1979)

Figure 03: Generative atmospheric perspectives (top), Proposal public space rendering (bottom).

With Whyte’s research in mind, we focused on developing spaces and moments that were more people oriented. These pocket moments were inspired by Paley Park and Lincoln plaza, two places that both provide the types of spaces similar to what Whyte describes in his research. Places within the city that are not moments of pause away from the city but use the city around them to charge them. They are not overly worried about filling the space with trees and grass to make parks but just giving back space to the people to be able to use them how they need to. Flexible spaces not only become more spatially interesting but approachable for the public and allow for more use over time. We initially generated a series of atmospheric perspectives of places in the ground with no distinct program to drive them and let ideas of their qualities lead their design (See Figure 3). They were then reshaped and refined to be implemented into the public plaza. An example in our proposal, being an elevated public space in the tower that is a public lawn in the Summer but becomes a site for an ice-skating rink in the Winter, or even an open lawn theatre with removable seats at another time.

The proposal challenges Whyte’s research in trying to produce a larger version of this type of public space by taking the variables he addresses in the movie and applying them to a whole block, creating a much larger scale for this experiment. I feel strongly that the public spaces we design in our urban environments can be the drivers for the vertical spaces we occupy and create. Urban plazas and parks are an integral mechanism for stimulating our interaction with the city and as we focus our cities into more formal urban environments with higher densities, we should demand more of our public spaces and reconsider the principles of how we approach their design and importance. Our physical spaces should add value to us as individuals and as a society. They should create connections, foster community and challenge us to encounter new people and ideas. If the principal value you extract from a space is the spectacle, if your role within a common space is that of a spectator not a participant, then the space isn’t serving the common good. We should create public spaces that are far more intriguing than the static characteristics of the architectural landscape but are as dynamic as the human interactions that inhabit them.

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Haag, Matthew, Amazon’s Tax Breaks and Incentives Were Big. Hudson Yards’ Are Bigger, (New York Times, March 2019). Halle, David and Tiso, Elisabeth, New York's New Edge: Contemporary Art, the High Line, and Urban Megaprojects on the Far West Side, (University of Chicago Press, 2016) Ch. 6-7. Horsley, Carter B., Skyline Wars: What’s Rising in Hudson Yards, the Nation’s Largest Construction Site, (NY Post, February 2016). Kinnmeiman, Michael, Hudson Yards is Biggest, Newest, Slickest Gated Community, (New York Times, March 2019). Loos, Ted, A $150 Million Stairway to Nowhere on the Far West Side, (New York Times, September 2016). Related, New Report Details Substantial Economic Impact of Hudson Yards Development, (NY, May 2016).

Sheftell, Jason, Design(in) the New Heart of New York: Creating a 21st Century Neighborhood for future commercial growth, with Jay Cross, Daniel Doctoroff, Mictchell Moss, Mary Ann Tighe, (Vimeo, https://vimeo.com/65775707, May 2013). Talton, Ellis and Tonar, Remington, Hudson Yards: Open To All But Not For All, (Forbes Magazine, March 2019). UnSUBURBIA, How the Essex Crossing development is bringing a new way of living to Manhattan, (UnSUBURBIA, December 2018). Woltz, Thomas, Design(in) the New Heart of New York: Everything Outside the Building, (Vimeo, https://vimeo.com/68878969, June 2013). Whyte, William H., The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces, (NYC 1979)