Unit 2
Collective Habitat Christoph Hadrys, Uwe Schmidt-Hess and Tony Fretton
MArch Unit 2 addresses urban and architectural conditions in locations undergoing critical change and over the years, has worked in North Africa, East London and other places in Europe. Through a combination of research and creative practice, we propose complex buildings, which respond to urban challenges. The Unit explores extremes of interrelated scales, from urban geographies through to building and detail qualities. In this process, strategies formulate responses to critical contexts, site conditions, architectural sensibilities, as well as structural and material conditions. We aim to create social, spatial and time-based habitats and environments. This academic year, our design projects focused on rapidly changing neighbourhoods in Manhattan, New York. Within this location, Unit 2 explored the guiding theme Collective Habitat. The research area is part of the Manhattan street grid and is located in and around Midtown West, between the Hudson River and the skyscrapers of Midtown. It is a diverse and fragmented urban environment of former harbour structures, industrial buildings, warehouses, residential neighbourhoods and office buildings. The area fell into dereliction in the 1960s and 70s, after the decommissioning of most of the West Piers along the Hudson River. In the last 20 years, it has undergone substantial urban transformations with new constructions and an influx of people. The utilitarian street grid is here facilitator for new housing and offices, but leaves little room for unusual public
spaces and buildings. Unfortunately most of the new developments are private enclosures that offer little support and urban life for local communities. In our work, we explored how buildings, open spaces and small pocket parks can be Collective Habitats that combine local community initiatives and enterprises. We explored ways in which sharing and living together can be part of a synergetic urban life. Each student had a choice to work on one of eight given sites that have capacity to invigorate local neighbourhoods and waterfronts.
“Perhaps more than ever before, we are becoming consciously aware of ourselves as intrinsically spatial beings, continuously engaged in the collective activity of producing spaces and places, territories and regions, environments and habitats. This process of producing spatiality or “making geographies“ begins with the body, with the construction and performance of the self, the human subject, as distinctively spatial entity involved in a complex relation with our surroundings.“ Edward Soja, 2000
NEW YORK, USA
