Meatpacking District Center, New York City.
University of Miami School of Architecture - 2016 - Spring semester
Professor: Roberto Behar.
Work with Antoine Laduron.
The project site is quite particular, a huge city block of 130,490 ft² (12,123 m²) between some important elements of the New York City’s landscape: the Highline, the Hudson River, the Standard Hotel, the Whitney museum and the speedway. The site is in the heart of the Meatpacking district at the limit of the old NYC, an historic market neighborhood with a lot of meetings, people exchanges and movements.
We wanted to be inspired by this site and his architectural landscape (old & contemporary) to pay tribute to the city of New York and some of its iconic buildings like the Seagram building, the Flat Iron, the New Museum or the Rockefeller center.
The big scale of the project site give us the idea to subdivide it in multiples blocks, to create a city within the city, with its own skyline.
After the subdivision, we decided to unify it with a same-high base of two levels. And then extrude three high-rises buildings, placed in inconjunction in favor of views and sun lighting.
The program of our project contains a public library (with a private space for the Academy), an auditorium, the Academy of architecture (with 19 studios, 34 bedrooms, a restaurant and art galleries) then a private hotel with a lobby, shops and a bar in its base, 180 bedrooms, a restaurant, a gym and a swimming pool at its top. To enclose the public place, we designed an outside stage and an art gallery. In the continuity we have some shops, an athletic center (with a gym, a basketball court with stand). And finally a 10 floors-office building facing the Standard hotel.
Every streets created in our project is pedestrian, the existing road become an access to hotel and Whitney services and to an underground car park. To make a slow transition between the project and the speedway, we decided to put a green public space inspired by the highline.
In sections, the project shows some plays with the levels & double-high spaces to create a dynamism & an impression of huge spaces at a pedestrian scale.
The materials is related with our wish to pay tribute to New York City with a base in glass and thin rusted steel blades. The hotel shows four façades in ‘Danpalon’, an isolate translucent material that is opaque, to unify the building. And its top façades are in light grey brushed steel blades to make reference to the base. The academy’s façades are in rusted steel and show some set-backs to create an architectural movement. The south façade of the auditorium part can be open to make a link with the outside stage and the public place.
In conclusion the Meatpacking District Center was made to become the heart of the neighborhood and revive its soul of a meetings and exchange place. Also the MDC is organized to be in link with the rest of Manhattan with the highline and to continue the walker way with all-pedestrian streets.
