Envisioning Hudson Square
New York, NY, 2007
New York, NY, 2007
The Commissioner’s Plan of 1811 established the grid as the principal ordering mechanism for the speculative territory of Manhattan. Where this system breaks down, pathologies develop in the local urban tissue, and the social vigor that typifies New York street life is subject to retardation and stagnation.
This proposal for the Hudson Square district contends with precisely such a disruption in the Manhattan grid. While the site is relatively porous along its northern and eastern edges, the grid in Hudson Square is interrupted by two multiblock structures: the UPS facility and St. John’s Center. Together the two buildings produce a massive obstacle to east-west movement and sever any meaningful connection to the river and the park. Recognizing that these two monoliths are likely to remain for economic and logistical reasons, this project reimagines and exploits these apparent impediments to the vitality of an emerging neighborhood in order to produce a new form of metropolitan sectional density. A series of stacked and interconnected layers combine housing, park space, and commercial and retail activity in a dynamic mix. The proposal asks: can the very idiosyncrasies of these anomalous structures sponsor an unprecedented urbanism that reconciles the logic of the grid with the expansive territory of the superblocks?
This proposal for the Hudson Square district contends with precisely such a disruption in the Manhattan grid. While the site is relatively porous along its northern and eastern edges, the grid in Hudson Square is interrupted by two multiblock structures: the UPS facility and St. John’s Center. Together the two buildings produce a massive obstacle to east-west movement and sever any meaningful connection to the river and the park. Recognizing that these two monoliths are likely to remain for economic and logistical reasons, this project reimagines and exploits these apparent impediments to the vitality of an emerging neighborhood in order to produce a new form of metropolitan sectional density. A series of stacked and interconnected layers combine housing, park space, and commercial and retail activity in a dynamic mix. The proposal asks: can the very idiosyncrasies of these anomalous structures sponsor an unprecedented urbanism that reconciles the logic of the grid with the expansive territory of the superblocks?
Project Credits
Envisioning Hudson Square, 2007, New York, NY
Client: Friends of the Highline
Project team: Paul Lewis, Marc Tsurumaki, David J. Lewis; Clark Manning, Jason Dannenbring, Diana Martinez, Laura Cheung, Mia Lorenzetti
Curators: Michael Kramer, Stella Kramer
Envisioning Hudson Square, 2007, New York, NY
Client: Friends of the Highline
Project team: Paul Lewis, Marc Tsurumaki, David J. Lewis; Clark Manning, Jason Dannenbring, Diana Martinez, Laura Cheung, Mia Lorenzetti
Curators: Michael Kramer, Stella Kramer