HAKAN YORUK
New York: A Documentary Film is an eight-part, 17.5 hour, American documentary film on the history of New York City. It was directed by Ric Burns and originally aired in the U.S. on PBS. Notable figures, who appeared in the series, include Rudolph Giuliani (then the mayor of New York City), former mayor Ed Koch, former New York governor Mario Cuomo, former U.S. Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, poet Allen Ginsberg, novelists Alfred Kazin and Brendan Gill, director Martin Scorsese, journalist Pete Hamill, former Congresswoman Bella Abzug, historian Niall Ferguson, philosopher Marshall Berman, writer Fran Lebowitz, engineer Leslie E. Robertson, architect Robert A.M. Stern, high wire artist Philippe Petit, billionaire Donald Trump, and author David McCullough.
S C R A M B L E R
n e w
y o r k
a d o c u m e n ta ry f i l m
Here thirty two quotes are taken from these notable figures in order to reflect the essence of the city. It’s thought that these quotes, which try to emphasize several important points about New York including its dynamism, ambitions, history, mood etc. can help significantly to understand both the city and its people.
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#2
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#8
“It’s the laboratory of modern life.”
“It’s the safest harbour.”
“There is an opportunity to seize and celebrate differences.”
“They’ve got a chance to escape individuality and rediscover common humanity.”
“The only way out is up.”
“Come here! Everything is possible.”
“It’s the city of exchange in terms of not only materials, but also people, ideas, thoughts.”
“Mass media resulted the new American culture. Sell them what they long for!”
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#16
“They used Worlds Fair material, that were representing the future, in producing war instruments for World War 2.”
“If you look at photos of the opening day, you can see the joy in visitor’s faces. They welcomed it.”
“NY is apart form us. They are a bunch of aliens with all their odd fashion, music, gangsters and corruptions. NY is one of us. Because we share the same idea of representing modernity and possibility.”
“It’s the sense of there is no limit.”
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#18
“If you want your business in international stage, come to New York.”
“Superblocks were not only betrayal to New York tradition, but also to the community.”
“How can they build the highest building, while people are sleeping in the streets?”
“It’s the city of immigrants. It’s the architecture of newcomers.”
“City must change or it will perish.”
“It’s the architecture of human masses, not man.”
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#24
“Is the new always better than the old?”
“Each building was in that time. Each building was out of time.”
“There has been always tendency of romanticizing the height.”
“I know that we don’t have any space for containers. However, if the port doesn’t work, the city doesn’t work.”
“One entered the city like a god. One scuttles in now like a rat.”
“The car is the whole story.”
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“Petit was the first person who humanized these things.”
“Extreme things happen so quickly and so irreversible, it’s like the death of someone you love. It’s the nature of both city and human.”
“New York doesn’t have a novel about itself. It’s so dynamic that you can describe the city with only newspapers.”
“All the people of the world could live together in a single place.”
“Whatever happens in New York City happens ten years later at the other part of the country.”
“They tried to provoke people by saying that twin towers would block TV signals. And actually it worked.”
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ARCHITECTURE OF N E W C O M E RS In a city, where all the people of the world live how much can differences and freshness reflect to physical environment
New York has always been a city of immigration due to its own characteristics. It’s been nourished by newcomers and their variable attitude. These newcomers, who left their countries for the purpose of beginning a new life here, had significant impacts over the city on an individual basis. Some of them came here longing for their hometowns. Some of them came here as hating their country. Some of them hoped to find something similar with their former cities. Some of them didn’t want to meet anything, that would remind them their past. Anyway, all of them came here with their own perspectives on both the city and the life. It could be expected that newcomers would form this quite new city, New York, by the help of these different aspects and anyone could sense diversity and miscallenousness just by walking in the street. However, they unified for one purpose and accepted a newcomer like themselves: modernity. It’s still a mystery how much the idea of newcomers’ architecture can be push forward and differences and freshness can be reflected to physical environment.
After looking at visuals of New York in terms of not only two dimensions such as plans or sections, but also three dimensions, it can be seen that the city has a great enthusiasm of reaching at limits. Romanticizing the height and the size has a significant impact on today’s appearance of the city. All skyscrapers, bridges, tunnels, ports in the city seem to stretching out both the sky and the ocean curiously. At this point, it can be said that New York seeks for the beyond of the limit in three axes: x, y and z. New York, a place which has forgotten about being an island, settles at very center of these axes as the origin. Axes of x, y and z are in such a harmony that it is quite easy to observe spatial organization of the city works and a tiny deviation in that harmony can result a tremendous disaster like it was happened after the demolition of Penn Station. If a change in these three axes has the power of turning Gods into rats, it can be claimed that exact opposite situation is also quite possible.
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CITY AS A LABORATORY Can guinea pig become the observor of its own experiment
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origin of three axes Is it possible to change definitons of three axes: x, y and z and the origin
It is always being said that whatever happens in the New York city happens ten years later at the other part of the country. Hence, New York has always been a pioneer of the modern life. However, the cost of being a pioneer was bitter. The city turned into a giant laboratory, where some people with higher status was performing quite unusual tests and experiments on it. Governors, mayors, urban planners and architects used the city as an experiment field and most of these tests were surprisingly welcomed by residents. Because the city used to have no sense of limit, the idea of modernism was preventing the idea of preservation while promoting the the idea of the new. At the center of inevitable change and dynamism of the city, New Yorkers have existed like a guinea pig of this experiment. Involved but inefficient... Somehow at certain point, it is evocatory to think what would happen if the people of New York would involve more into this type of tests, which the city was passing through, and become the observor of their own experiment.
One of the most fascinating thing about New York is the dynamism. The change in the city is so quick that most people shows it as the reason why there is no novel of the city. Because it is not easy to describe it with a novel, it’s only possible by the help of a daily publishing: a newspaper. Common thought is that the destruction happens after the construction or it is inverse. On the other hand, these two concepts occurs at the same time, for instance of the fact that the life and the death exist together and at the same time. So, it is also valid for both destruction and construction. It is probable that the city may seek for an unusual architectural method to create a structure, which constructs itself while deconstructing in order to become both new and old.
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regeneraTION OF SELF-DESTRUCTION Is the survival impossible unless the construction and the destruction happen at the same time
#31 “Having a car derives the most elemental urban question for New Yorkers to ask what a city is, what makes the city work and why there should be cities at all.”
#32 “We’ve spent too much time staring at ourselves and thinking that the world begin to The Hudson River and ends at The East River and there isn’t anything else.”