High Bridge Center for the Arts Exchanges and Contamination Year: 2009 Location: New York,New York Site: High Bridge Park Program: Art Instalation Spaces Art Studios Media Lab Library Gallery Carrer Center Performance Space Client:
-AIA NY Chapter -Bronx Museum -Artists Unite -TRESPA -Service Point
Project Type: Architecture Open Competition
M a n u e l ﾃ」 i l a Architecture + Urban Design manuelavilaprojects.com
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High Bridge Bronx Center for the Arts: Exchanges, Relationships and Contamination The High Bridge Bronx Center for the Arts positions itself in an area highly contested by different types of infrastructure. This infrastructural hub is formed by the Harlem River, the old Croton Aqueduct, and railways and highways converging at the High Bridge Park, creating a dramatic site for the High Bridge Bronx Center for the Arts. Situating the HBBXCA in this infrastructural hub is an attempt to engage in a series of exchanges, relationships and contaminations between infrastructural systems and the HBBXCA on a range of different scales.
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Urban scale exchanges: Wetland manufacture and a water remediation The HBBXCA is located in crucial site to begin a water remediation project which will manufacture new wetlands along the Harlem River. While the river cleans its water, the old aqueduct uses the newly produced wetlands to become a continuous landscape, from the X to Central Park. The HBBXCA will take advantage of the continuous landscape created by the aqueduct to connect in the urban and neighborhood scales by proposing a bike lane along the aqueducts’ continuous landscape.
Local scale relationships: Art exposure at the highways The project establishes a relationship with the surrounding highways and railways and the George Washington Bridge by taking the opportunity to display and promote local arts to the moving crowds. To achieve this, the HBBXAC has a 10,800 square foot façade intended for art displays.
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Architecture of contamination: Cross section The project for the HBBXAC was designed in a cross section that allows the “contamination” between the different programs of the building. The entrance hall becomes a forum, while the library transforms into a cantilevered gallery over the building’s entrance. The media room is directly connected in between the art studios and the library to allow flow between archived knowledge and the future art performances. The art studios located at the higher levels provide a vertical connection that will allow a “contamination” between different art disciplines.
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Facade as art installation space at the scale of the surrounding infrastructure
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Art studios sourranded by the installation space: Program Contamination
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