december 2015
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constituents 1-future visions for NYC-MANHATTAN 2-understanding lincoln square and surrounding / 59th street-72th street 2.1. 59th street and surround constituents -westside elevated highway -hudson river park -west 59th street maine transfer station -IRT powerhouse
3-where do we go now? / publicity debates & science at the streets
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future visions
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lincoln square and surrounding
about Lincoln square and 59th st.
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59th street constituents
constituent 1: westside elevated highway
“they are often viewed as places to be avoided bypassed and taken the long way around.” “the city plans to use the data push for small public parks, pedestrian plazas,skateparks,marketplaces etc.”
constituent 2: hudson river park
constituent 3: maine transfer station
constituent 4: IRT powerhouse
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publicity debate & science at the streets
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“..architecture as a “machine for living.” The description of buildings as machines for living is attributed to the the Franco-Swiss modernist, Le Corbusier. He was writing about high-rise developments and attempting to justify tower-blocks as exemplars of rationalism, where economy and functionality combine to provide convenient living-spaces. In relation to the time-and-motion of everyday life, this idea is commonplace in the kitchen; but less obviously evident elsewhere. In fact, using the vocabulary of time-and-motion to describe activities beyond the workplace is generally unhelpful. The whole point of everyday life is to step back from the world of work, and into a different kind of performance. The source-code of modernist architecture comes from the panoptic. This was a form of building, conceptualised at the end of the 18C, so as to provide for a kind of reforming standardisation of behaviour - like “house rules” expressed as structure. In the first instance, the panoptic was applied to prison environments; but it was quickly extended to the factory and academy. Nowadays, the panoptic dominates our public spaces. Normative standards are a crucial part in providing for a stable politics and sustainable social organisation. Le Corbusier’s idea simply recast the normative panoptic in terms of domestic convenience. It was no less brutal for being softly furnished. It’s important that we don’t become stuck… It’s tempting to think of Rogers buildings, with their obvious debts to Meccano, as enormous engineering structures. The visibility of moving parts associated with the circulation of air and people makes these seem like big machines. This idea is re-inforced by the Dyson-style pipe-work that is often visible on the outside of the classic Rogers building. Nowadays, there are lifts and escalators too. Owen Hatherley described it, in Saturday’s Guardian, as the “technological sublime." But, I don’t think of these buildings as machines. At least, not in the same way as, say, Norman Fosters "Gherkin” tower. The Rogers buildings provide the stage upon which people can perform. Some of that is about work and money, but a lot of it is also casual and recreational. Rogers seems to re-cast the street and to bring the outside-in, as much as putting the inside-out. In relation to this aspect of his buildings the debt to Situationism, Debord and “spectacle” is more important than, say, the straightforwardly architectural precedents of Le Corbusier. The idea of spectacle was conceptualised by Guy Debord at the end of the 1950s as a means of describing the capitalist reality of consumption. The spectacle shines; like money. Nowaday’s, the saturated colours of digitally enhanced fragrance ads and the back-lighting of our web-based experiences provide for further elaborations of Debord’s (literally) eye-catching idea. In terms of British architecture, some of these ideas were incorporated into the blue-skies projects of Archigram and Cedric Price. There, the potential of technology to liberate people the provision of increased leisure were given formal expression through new types of structure. These structures were big (without becoming monoliths), multi-functional, spaces in which standards of behaviour and user-experience were looser and less-prescribed and more varied than in traditional forms of architecture. The normative power of technology, structures and systems is huge. So, for Rogers and his colleagues; new ways of living always required new kinds of architecture. This would be buildings and spaces by which the traditional arrangements of society could be gently redrawn - and experienced as pleasure and fun; not as fear. Marshall McLuhan observed, “first we make our tools; and then our tools form us.” So, it's really important that we design the machine correctly. Otherwise, it’s just a pain.Literally.” http://paulrennie.rennart.co.uk/post/56146645201/machines-for-living Paul Rennie
cedric price /fun palace
A Walk in Manhattan - NYC through Lincoln square and piers below What is poetic about NYC is that it is like you are walking in a lego city; with browns at the georgian-federal architectural movement impressed old towns and a with blue-greys with high technology and technologic-engineereing knowledge. It is an abstract city you are walking in, you may get confused to find your way at first but at the end a grid will lead you the way. You have lots of landmarks in this journey you are doing in the city. At Manhattan, you will probably want to reach Central park, the piers and the famous squares. Now you are walking through central park at the west side of the city, you have passed the most alive part of the city, Hell's Kitchen and Chelsea. You have left the undergroung life in here and you may want to settle down a bit. You may want to have a regular life, maybe some kids even. Will you afford a house in here? How about the education? We know about art, contemporary art, street music and stuff. scenario 1: in the present / You walk, you dream. You have passed the Columbus circle, looked high above all the tall buildings.You passed the lincoln square, vaccinate some art in your veins, when you passed central park and come closer to the piers, your vision gets blurred, you may want to reach the sea, in an island surrounded by the sea but you won't. sorry mario you couldn't save the princess. scenario 2:in the near future: in an alternate project / You walk, you dream. You have passed the Columbus circle, looked high above all the tall buildings.You passed the lincoln square, vaccinate some art in your veins, when you passed central park and come closer to the piers, your vision gets blurred, there is an obstacle in front of you an elevated highway but in an alternate project you won't need to, cause this is a gated community opened only for its users, hey don't get upset, there is a public mall you can use, you may travel among the streets of this new yard, but sorry you won't be part of it. You reached the sea anyway, with a few obstacles. This place is better than its before but a question in your mind? how new yorkers can live in a such a dirt? how does it make manhatteners feel watching the solid wastes carried away with the smell of the electrical central's gases. Can the transforming housing movement in NYC encounter the realities and post-industrial situations of Manhattan and grows up by following it? How does manhatten feed all these people when the production is almost at the zero point? Doesn't settling at the post industrial spaces poison the settlers? How those variables could act together in a more suitable way? scenario 3: in the near future / You walk, you dream. You have passed the Columbus circle, looked high above all the tall buildings.You passed the lincoln square, vaccinate some art in your veins, when you passed central park and come closer to the piers, your vision gets blurred, you have obstacles to reach the sea, but those obstacles are the main components of the public life, attractions, feeding points, resting spaces, observing towers etc. one of a sudden your interaction with the city increases to its double. you become aware of everything much more and you become a part of the environment, now the buildings are the extensions of the streets and the questions you've been asking for is now getting answers to itselves.you are now wandering around a scientific base where energy producing is being rethinked again and you are able to be a part of it, by observing it by following the paths around it.you are now leaded by the path in a vertical and horizontal sections in this researching base where different activities might be done. living,observing,wandering,be a part of it, watching it from above or below, leading, feeding, working, eating, listening, studying, researching, experimenting from outside and inside.
manifest: science at the streets the project area locates at the seaside looking through new jersey, the site was used to be used as railroad and train station - a train junkyardand used to be an industral area which is going to be the new residential landmarks of new york city with big investments . those invesments aims affordable housing but yet the place contunies it toxicity and for a growing residential center this toxicity affects negatively the human life. there is an old electric central and solid waste transfer pier.the public shoreline band is not being used by locals due to the cut between the city and the sea, public nodes are generally located at inner city such as lincoln center for performing arts. the aim is to change this urban flow through the project location, by proposing a semi public- transparent research center & science institute with the motto of " science at the streets". the strange thing about the new york ground that it might change its height and have the potential to be a travelling ground, open to the comment and this ground level relations are based on breaking the insideoutside space concept. the concept provides new transparent relations while deforming the city and adds a new scientific center with interactive educational spot points. as changing this new energy center, the design touches with a suprematist approach to the city with continuity, intersections and cuts.
A Praxis on reading the New York City at the age of machines with the abstract impacts of sprematist and plastic architecture the city changing movements / the city is built on the graves of a industrial era of modern world, this post industrial based city emerges its ghosts in every ground. The relation with the sea of Manhattan is something couln't be denied and maybe the most changing element of the island-city. The docks,the piers have been changing it location-function and existence by the times of the Dutch colonnials had arrives yet it consist its post industrial-post modernist essence. The craines and containers now a part of those life experience but not to be denied, the post modernist, georgian federal architecture contrasts with the new-rising real estate skyscraper movements of the city. the architecture can annex new behaviour patterns / the changing waterfront of the city is being taken away of the gear wheels of the machines and become humanized. the real robots are becoming replaced by the modern time androids with blood and heart, the mankind which has used to be the machines of the new era by its monotonous daily acts and life styles. the circle between home and work is a new questionable problem of the 2th century people. so breaking down this monotonous circle is becoming the issue of art, architecture and science. first of all the regular architecture should be re-thought considering creating new life forms for people, people should be taken away from the cages of prizmatic skyscrapers and re-conceptualized by the doctrines of their ids. the lives of manhatteners / for sure, the people of manhattan are lonely. the type of new architecture changes its conventional type in a city like that. the houses change its function from being a pleaces to live in to storages and beds. the time spent in the homes gets decreased and -mostly the offices- and public spaces takes its place. you greet your guests, get socialized and at public places, the interaction with the city and the people ends when you close the door. because that is a city where nobody knows its neighbours. the new typologies of the houses so depending on the economy, people can not afford houses in nyc anymore. and that leads a new way of living to the people urban and suburbs problem, now the socializing time and place for the lonely people of nyc is the subways between their works and homes. publicity at its best / in this transforming post industrial era of manhattan, the most important landmarks maintains their existence by making manhatteners gain new behaviours day by day and sustain the old ones at changing public places endemic to the city, such as underground life of manhatten or, the poor lives of contemporary artist of manhattan who mostly lives in brooklyn. those typologies grow with the architecture of the city. so how to hold on to that is one of the question on that praxis, taking people out from their cubicles and present them a new form of life at the streets. a form for architecture that supplying new life forms / At the west side of , between the central park -the heart of the city and the water- Hudson river is a link where the grid is cut by Broadway. the post industrialist traces of the old railroads- high lines a new level for living other than ground, the relation with the river and the human from inside of the city are the new black of the city. the brick encounters with the light blue glass and a new plastic form of architecture is born like the paintings of Malevich's. this suprematist architecture creates a new publicity or this suprematist publicity gives birth to this architecture where the people is being lead with a flow through the sea. the use and the relation of the sea is being cut at different places of the city. the publicity should be a part of the building in the new architecture, the transparencies enhance participation. now the building is the part of the public space and the interaction with the people and the human splits from the ground level and continues their existence in different levels of manhattan, from underground, ground and the city skyline. the poetry about the building is that it is no longer a mass other than the life outisde, but its a part of the topography- creating a new topography with its beams and colons, walls and voids. the post industrialist- android life of the manhattener gains a new life form over here, where the community activits are not only the observor but a participator. “ Architecture as a synthesis of the new plasticism. In the new architecture, building is understood as a part, the sum of all the arts, in their most elementary manifestation, as their essence. It offers the possibility of thinking in four dimensions, i.e., the plastic architect, under which heading I also include the painter, has to construct in the new field, time-space. Since the new architecture does not permit any imagination (in the form of free painting or sculpture), the intention is to create from the outset a harmonic whole with all essential means, so that each architectural element plays a part in creating, on a practical and logical basis, a maximum of plastic expression without, at the same time, doing damage to the practical requirements.� Paris 1924 [From De Stijl, Vol. VI, No. 6/7, pp. 78-83] H.N.Abrams