Manhattan: The Intentionally Unbuilt
Michelangelo LaTona Spring 2015
Cover: Map of Manhattan Island with highlights of the curated unbuilt projects from roughly the past one hundred years.
Manhattan: An Incomplete List of The Intentionally Unbuilt Projects to Remember
1908 A Grand Hotel 3 1926 Zoning Tower 7 1930 Housing Bridges 11 1960 Fallout Dome 15 1966 Rolls Royce Grill 19 1976 New Welfare Island 23 1977 Gymnasium Bridge 27 1980 Chemistry Building 31 2002 Ground Zero 35
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1908 A Grand Hotel Antoni Gaudi Antoni Gaudi’s 1908 proposal for a hotel in downtown New York City is typical of Gaudi’s work in Spain. Catenary structures characterize much of Gaudi’s work as do organic, flowing forms. Art Nouveau melds with Gaudi’s own Catalonian background. Victor Horta was a major influence on Gaudi. His proposal for this Grand Hotel would have been extraordinarily ostentatious, especially for a city undergoing changes that Modernism brought. Efficiency and building codes characterized the major developments of the time and Gaudi’s hotel would have flown in the face of these developments. For this thesis the project represents movements or beliefs of a specific time that represent oppositions to the major movements. Art Nouveau with its gaudy, organic forms runs entirely contary to the efficiency that New York City required.
1: Proposed site of the Grand Hotel 2: An imagined postcard of the skyline 3: The hotel next to other skyscrapers of Manhattan 4: Section through the proposal
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1926 Zoning Tower Hugh Ferriss The New York Zoning Law of 1916 changed building practices and forms in the city. Setbacks to newly developed skyscrapers were written into code to maintain natural light to the streets. As buildings got taller and taller less and less light made it to the street below. Hugh Ferriss designed a series of towers for NewYork in 1926 that all dealt with how to approach the setback problem. The Modern movement created issues of pollution and light in the densifying urban environment. Ferriss proceeded to work on ways that the solutions to those problems might inspire novel designs. If the NewYork Zoning Law of 1916 put in place several new constraints on architects; Ferriss attempted to capitalize on those constraints. This thesis uses this idea of turning constraint into opportunities for design.
5: Proposed site of the Zoning Tower 6: Perspective from near ground level 7: Cross section through the tower
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1930 Housing Bridges Raymond Hood In this project Raymond Hood was taking on several problems that the 20th Century brought to the densification of New York City and specifically Manhattan Island. This is a relatively unique proposal for the island. Hood proposed a novel method for dealing with the increasing population problem on the island. Inhabitable bridges were not a new typology; they had been seen in Europe for centuries. At the scale of the skyscraper, though, each bridge would become its own neighborhood or borough. It proposed an alternative architectural typology for the city. Rather than New York being of the tower, it would be characterized by the bridge. For this thesis, Hood’s project for housing bridges presents the opportunity to present the city with its alternative typology as a way for the monument to read as it needs: unique.
8: Possible sites for the Housing Bridges 9: Aerial view of the proposal 10: View from water level 11: Section along a bridge
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1960 Fallout Dome Buckminster Fuller Buckminster Fuller was a technophile of the Modernist movement. This project came about during the nuclear tensions of the Cold War. It was propsed as a nuclear fallout shield and resembles much of what Fuller worked on during his career. Fuller is famous for having developed the geodesic dome, which has been constructed in many places, Montreal is an example. This dome over Manhattan would have been the largest ever by many times over, but Fuller maintained that the higher pressure created by the heat within the dome would help stabilize and support the structural requirements. This thesis takes Fuller’s proposal at face value. It is a symbol of technophilia as well as iconic in its formal and material qualities. It represents an effort to make an entirely autonomous environment and community. The monument need take on autonomy.
12: Proposed site of the Dome 13: Top view of dome structure 14: Aerial view of the dome on the island 15: Section through the proposal
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1966 Rolls Royce Grill Hans Hollein This project by Hans Hollein is the first to bring a sense of humor into the monumental equation. This project could never be confused for anything but rhetorical and tongue-in-cheek. He proposed, through photomontage, the construction of a Rolls Royce grill scaled up to the size of a very large building. Tongue-in-cheek proposals like this one characterize the sense of humor that Hollein carried through his architectural career. The project trades on references that few if any could connect. It is believed that the grill was modelled after the facade of the Bank of England, a financial institution. Hollein proceeded to place this financially inspired design on the financial capital of the world, Wall Street. This thesis appreciates both the humor of the project as well as its references to the past of design, architectural and otherwise.
16: Proposed site of the Grill 17: An imagined postcard of the skyline 18: Section through the proposal
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1976 New Welfare Island Rem Koolhaas This project by Rem Koolhaas contains aims that resemble the goals of this thesis. Rem takes on Roosevelt Island, formerly known as Welfare Island, as his site for the design and collection of projects he finds emblematic of “Manhattanism”. The project consists of several architectural interventions on the island south of the Queensboro Bridge. The bridge passes through a new convention center, a monumental entrance to Manhattan. A tecton designed by Kasimir Malevich lies further south hovering above the Art Deco yacht designed by Norman Bel Gedders in 1932. The New Welfare Hotel lies on the southern-most tip of the island. It is a center for general urban pleasure. Koolhaas’ aim of interpretting some of the themes that made up Manhattanism is a major influence on this thesis. The site may prove fuitful also.
19: Proposed site of New Welfare Island 20: Axonometric of the island proposal 21: Plan of the island proposal
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1977 Gymnasium Bridge Steven Holl Steven Holl’s Gymnasium Bridge proposal is sited crossing the water from the Bronx to Randall’s Island following the corridor set up by Brook Avenue. It is exactly what the name suggests, a gymnasium in a bridge. The project exist as four bridges that interact in a way as to make one complete bridge for pedestrians. One bridge on both shores act as entrances to the third bridge, the main span. This main span is suspended by the fourth, which is a bridge in water rather than across water. The main span is able to pivot from is suspension point. The importance of this project to the thesis lies in its appearance as one thing, but existence as something slightly more. It is not just a bridge from A to B, but a bridge to self-improvement (according to Holl).
22: Proposed site of Gymnasium Bridge 23: East elevation of the bridge 24: View from water level 25: Plan at the steam room level
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1980 Chemisty Building James Stirling James Stirling’s proposal for an addition to Columbia University’s chemistry department was not initially intended to go unbuilt. It was a competition entry. When Stirling found out his proposal was not short-listed he decided to redraw the project as a ruin. This was not the first time architects had redrawn their designs as ruins. Sir John Soane had Joseph Michael Gandy redraw his Bank of England design in its ruined state. This tactic effectively takes the architectural drawing, normally prescriptive, and switches it to descriptive. The drawing, which is typically a means to an end, becomes the end in itself. This last fact is what this thesis latches on to. It is a recognition of the fact that the project will not be built and takes on the idea of the architectural drawing as the new architecture. It does not worry about prescription but about description.
26: Proposed site of the addition 27: Original perspective of facade 28: Ruined facade perspective 29: Plan of the ruined proposal
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2002 Ground Zero Raimund Abraham This was a proposal by Raimund Abraham for the World Trade Center at Ground Zero after 9/11/2001. It aims to remember and event and intentionally stands in opposition to what buildings are typically built for in Manhattan. He proposed three parallel slab structures on the site, all of which were uninhabitable. They were each split four times by a line that represented the angle of the sun at the specific times the planes hit the towers and the towers fell. This essentially made it an extremely large experiential sculpture. This thesis takes on Raimund Abraham’s use of index as a method of remembering and accumulation. He uses the sun’s light as a method to memorialize an event in time that happened on the specific site. Void on a specific site is often more powerful than the memorial built for the purpose of remembering.
30: Proposed site for Ground Zero 31: Elevation of the proposal in skyline 32: Perspectival top view of proposal 33: Oblique axonometric of proposal
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