Manhattan 4000: A City Built on Ruin

MANHATTAN 4000 Part 01 Research: From Ruin to Sea Level Rise Marywood University School of Architecture l Master of Architecture Robert Miller

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Reseach Contents

RUIN - WHAT IT TIME’S INFLUENCE ON ARCHITECTURE?

ARCHITECTURE

LIFE DEATH

PLANT GROWTH ADAPTIVITY DETERIORATION

BIOLOGY VESTIGE WEATHERING

BIOLOGICAL BUILDING BIOMEMIC STRATEGIES

MATERIAL

PROCESS

TIME

PHILOSOPHY

SPECULATIVE REALISM ANTHROPOSCENE

PH

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GROWING FASHION MEAT HOUSE FAB TREE HOUSE

SUN WIND RAIN

HYSICS

GROWTH

CLIMATE CHANGE THEORY OF REALIVITY SHORT TERM LONG TERM

COASTAL FLOODING RISE IN TEMPERATURE SEA LEVEL RISE PAVILION ANCIENT ARCHITECTURE

“THE BIG U”

TEMPORARY ARCHITECTURE BURIAL

EMERGENCY HOUSING FORTIFICATION

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Introduction Sea level rise is a direct effect of the warming up of the Earth’s temperature caused by climate change. Although Earth does go through natural phases, like ice ages, the current situation we face has be expatiated by the human race since the Industrial Revolution with the design of the steam engine. Since then, carbon levels have continued to increase at an alarming rate as we continue to pollute, waste and leave things just to ruin. As human beings have continued to climb up the food chain, we have grown into a more anthropogenic mind set, in that we place ourselves in the center of the universe without regarding all of the other organisms which make up our environment.

as foundations for the new city on top. Sea level rise and climate change are real and something we have to begin to think about, Earth is responding to our actions, so now we must accept that and respond as well.

When buildings become abandoned and no longer used by human beings, nature begins to take back what was once hers. This is evident in the physical breaking down and weathering of the building material as well as the increased growth of plant life. Time becomes evident upon the building as the natural forces of sun, water, and wind act on the material and leave behind visible vestiges.

It is during this time that the building physically decays and typically becomes deemed as unusable anymore and is just left on its own to ruin. It is from this, that we see so many instances of abandoned buildings throughout varying urban fabrics across the world.

This thesis takes the current trend of adaptive reuse, which is becoming a very typical practice nowadays to combat abandonment, and expands it to a much larger scale, that of a full Urban Scale in Manhattan. This is achieved by looking at the rising sea level and designing for a time when all ice caps have completely melted, as this would become the worst case scenario. It can be noted that there are many designs and projects currently in the works to try and protect coastal cities, especially New York City, but these do not really address the larger issue. This is the equivalent to simply putting a band aid on the problem instead of looking at the bigger picture, that flood walls and levee systems will not hold back 230’ of water. Instead of trying to fight the water, it is time that we accept the flood and begin to design for that time.

Pairing the acceptance of the flood with concepts found in principles of adaptive reuse, Manhattan, and other at risk coastal cities, do not have to be completely destroyed or moved to another location. Buildings which are left after the increase of sea level are capable of being retrofitted as 04

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Ruin, especially in the context of architecture, can mean a plethora of things. Sometimes ruin is seen as hideous and ugly along with other negative associations such as decay, while on the opposite side of the spectrum ruin can be seen as beautiful and amazing with the association to growth. For the purpose of this thesis, I break ruin down into two main categories which all others fall: Life and Death.

In the context of architectural ruin, death here refers to the instance in which a piece of architecture begins to

physically break down and decay in time. Typically this can be attributed to a time when the program has moved out or ceased to exist and the architecture is no longer maintained and taken care of.

Before we can examine the life and death of a ruinous piece of architecture, we must first look at when and how a piece of architecture transitions into a ruin. This does not simply happen overnight, but is a rather long and drawn out process which occurs over the course time after the building no longer used.

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A piece of architecture begins to decay and die as soon as the construction process ends, but life of the building is prolonged through the proper maintenance and repair. In their essay “Give Me a Gun and I Will Make All Buildings Move: An ANT’s View of Architecture,” Bruno Latour and Albena Yaneva make some very strong points about this topic and how although it may appear to be, a building is not building is not a static object but a moving project, and that even once it has been built, it ages, it is transformed by its users, modified by all of what happens inside and outside, and that it will pass or be renovated,

altered and transformed beyond recognition.1 It is through these alterations that the life of the building is sustained and prolonged.

Architecture does not begin to transition into a ruinous state until it is no longer feasible to continue with the regular maintenance anymore. For modern day buildings, that time span is much shorter than larger architectural feats from the past. In the past, things were built to last examples being from Egypt, Rome, and Greece.

1Bruno Latour, Albena Yaneva, “Give Me a Gun and I Will Make All Buildings Move: An ANT’s View of Architecture,” Architectural Theories of the Environment: Posthuman Territory (New York: Routledge, 2013), 107-114

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As architecture transitions into ruin, it begins to really show its age through the weathering of the materials.

Mohsen Mostafavi and David Leatherbarrow write throughly about this process in their book On Weathering: The Life of Buildings in Time. Over time, the natural environment acts upon the outer surface of a building in such a way that its underlying materials are broken down.1 It is from the environment acting upon the surface of buildings that the material erodes and wears away, little by little. Erosion of the surface through weathering exposes newer surfaces of the same material in its depth, at once the erasure of one surface and the revelation of another.2 When the newer surface becomes revealed, it then becomes subject to further weathering which in turn leads to other visible changes like fading, warping and loosening of material bonds.

Once a building or program dies, it physically begins to break down as it sits empty and unused. While parts of the building are wearing away and breaking down, growth 1 Mostafavi, Mohsen, and David Leatherbarrow. On Weathering: The Life and Time of Buildings in Time. Cambridge, MA: MIT, 1993. Print.

2 Ibid

occurs simultaneously. Plant life begins to take control of the structure and creep its way up the facade until the building becomes unrecognizable. It is during this time that nature begins to take back what was once her own, as we as humans deem it no longer useful. If the function of a vicinity changes, its buildings may become unusable or unneeded while at other times, building technologies themselves become outdated or obsolete with respect to contemporary tastes or standards.1 We grow tired, or no longer useful of the building while nature takes full advantage of a place to grow again.

1 Cairns, Stephen, and Jane M. Jacobs. Buildings Must Die: A Perverse View of Architecture.

Cambridge: MIT, 2014. Print.

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Looking specifically now at the plant life and growth which occurs on ruin lead to the exploration of an architecture with a similar life span. An example being the Fab Tree House designed by Terreform ONE, seen below. In this design, Terreform ONE experiments with a building that is physically grown from organic matter and is then a biological entity in itself.

In order to achieve the form of a house, designers used the basis of a tree and then controlled its growth, using an ancient Japanese tradition of pleaching, so that the tree

would form to create a dome-like structure. The process is further explained in Super Cells: Building With Biology, but in essence, the tree trunks of this design provide the structure for an extruded ecosystem whose growth evolves over time.1 Since the materials are biological organisms in themselves, they will be capable of lasting for a certain amount of time before they expire and then biodegrade back into the ground.

Although this type of architecture would allow for the actual growing and using of biology which would 1 Tandon, Nina, and Mitchell Joachim. Super Cells: Building With Biology (TED Books Book 41).

N.p.: TED Conferences, 2014. Electronic.

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have the ability to decompose naturally and completely, it still goes along with the concept of humans taking control.

In this instance, we are physically manipulating nature to act in way that is beneficial to us and not necessarily what it wants to do. This leads to much larger problems.

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As human beings, we tend to forget how strong the forces of nature are capable of being and how much destruction is able to come from them. Whether the example be of ruin, when we no longer need to use a building, or growing architecture, when we try to control nature physically, human beings place themselves in higher regard than other organisms in the food chain. In today’s society the human race shares an anthropocentric mindset, in that we are the dominate and are the superior species and that everything in our environment should be used to better serve our needs. It is this type of thinking

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that allowed us to create such amounts of waste which is beginning to have to much larger effects upon our environment as a whole.

An example of this would Hurricane Sandy and the massive destruction it bestowed upon New York City and much of the Eastern Coast of the United States.

Superstorm Sandy exposed the region’s vulnerability to extreme weather: Sandy’s 14-foot storm surge overtopped sea walls; city blocks were inundated with 2 to 3 feet of flood water; damaging waves destroyed whole towns

along the New Jersey shore; and the storm knocked out power and wastewater treatment facilities across the region.1 Such destruction from Hurricane Sandy has caused for a rise in action against the flooding from ever growing stronger storm systems.

1 Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), Mitigation Assessment Team Report: Hurricane Sandy In New Jersey and New York, Building Performance Observations, Recommendations, and Technical Guidance, FEMA P-942, https://www.fema.gov/media-library/ assets/documents/85922.

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There are many different ways in which flood prevention can be attained, whether it be through an engineered object or a more natural approach. Two places in Europe that are always concerned with flooding are Venice, Italy and The Netherlands. Venice is essentially a city that has been built on piers which much of The Netherlands is composed of land that has been taken directly from the sea. In these instances, both have taken a more engineered approach in their efforts to keep the water out as opposed to trying to create a more natural defense to coastal flooding.

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Looking back now to New York City and Manhattan in particular, there was much focus on creating strategies to limit future flooding. In the aftermath of Superstorm Sandy, the Obama administration, in partnership with The Rockefeller Foundation, launched the innovative Rebuild

by Design (RBD) competition, which sought to inspire affected communities to rebuild differently in ways that would enhance their physical, economic, social, and environmental resilience.1 Below is an example of one strategy which will be implemented in Lower Manhattan

in an attempt to minimize flooding from future hurricanes and superstorms.

It is important to look back now on the previously discussed causes and effects of weathering. Weathering occurs when the natural elements wear away at material, and over the course of time, the material breaks down layer by layer, dependent of course on the material’s properties. This is essentially what took place, during a much shorter period of time and with more severity, when Hurricane Sandy swept through New York City. More

1 Rebuilding with Resilience: Lessons from the Rebuild by Design Competition After Hurricane Sandy. Rep. Georgetown Climate Center, 2016. Web. Feb. 2017.

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dense material, like stone, was able to withstand much of the driving forces of the water. This is in opposition to the weaker material, like glass, which was not capable of withstanding such forces.

Things built with stronger and more dense material are able to withstand forces, not only of nature but also of time. This connects back to the concept of ancient ruins and how they have been around for such long periods of time.

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An example of a more modern design using materials able to withstand, is the Leca Swimming Pools in Leรงa de Palmeira, Portugal by architect Alvaro Siza. These swimming pools use natural ocean water and high tides to fill them and create a contained pool. In order to achieve this, concrete was used to create an enclosed space which would be strong enough to hold up to the driving forces of water.

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One last example of a more natural flood prevention system can be found in Seoul, South Korea at the Cheonggyecheon River. This was once a natural waterway which ran through the heart of Seoul but was then completely covered up to be used for vehicular traffic. By doing this, flood waters now had no where to run to which caused much more flooding in the city.

The Cheonggyecheon River was then uncovered and a new river walk was designed adjacent to again bring importance back to it. This alleviated flooding as well as established a new urban intervention to the city.

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Before using some of the strategies researched and studied in order to try and come up with a different solution to the coastal flooding that will continue to effect Manhattan, I first looked back to what Manhattan was before human beings completely took over and built the city as we now see it today.

It was after a decade’s worth of research, done by the Wildlife Conservation Society, that the original ecology of Manhattan was uncovered. This was called the Manahatta Project, which has now lead the Welikia Project in order to uncover the rest of New York City’s original ecology.

When overlaying a map of present day Lower Manhattan with a map of 1609 Lower Manhattan, it becomes evident how much of this part of city was built out onto the water.

Then, when looking back upon the map created after Hurricane Sandy, it can be seen that most of the flooding occurred in areas that used to belong to the water which we have built upon. This gave rise to thinking about how a flood prevention system would seem to make most sense along the path that is the original coastline of the island of Manhattan.

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Following the original coastline of the island, and implementing a similar flood control system like that of the Cheonggyecheon River would allow for a new urban intervention during a typical day and allow for a place for flood waters during a hurricane. The problem with this design as opposed to the Cheonggyecheon River, is that the Cheonggyecheon River was already a naturally occurring waterway that was uncovered and reused to offset city flooding. This new design would introduce an entirely new system that would have to create an artificial waterway to flow even when there is no flooding.

STREET FLOODING_CURRENT CONDITION GROUND LINE

A major problem with trying to design for flood prevention is that it does not address the over arching problem that is causing the stronger storms to occur, climate change.

Trying to prevent the flood is essentially putting a band aid on the problem without addressing it. From climate change, there is a strong relationship between cumulative emissions and committed sea level. 1 Since eight of the ten largest cities are located on coasts, much of the world’s population will be effected by sea level rise.2 1 Strauss, Benjamin H., Scott Kulp, and Anders Levermann. “Carbon Choices Determine US Cities Committed to Futures below Sea Level.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 112.44 (2015): 13508-3513. Web. Feb. 2016.

2 Folger, Tim. “Oceans Will Rise Much More Than Predicted, NASA Says.” National Geographic.

N.p., 27 Aug. 2015. Web. Mar. 2017.

STREET FLOODING_DESIGNED CONDITION GROUND LINE

HIGHEST WATER LINE

HIGHEST WATER LINE

WATER LEVEL

WATER LEVEL

STORM SURGE

STORM SURGE

WIND

WIND

RAIN + 10 FT

GENERATOR TURBINE

DOWNSTREAM OUTLET

+ 10 FT

+ 10 FT

+ 10 FT

+ 10 FT

+ 10 FT

DESIGNED TYPICAL CONDITION PUBLIC PARK/ OUTDOOR SPACE

RAIN

+ 10 FT

PENSTOCK

DESIGNED FLOODED CONDITION

WATER RETENTION/ HYDRO POWER GENERATOR + 10 FT

GENERATOR

PENSTOCK

TURBINE

DOWNSTREAM OUTLET

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Sea Level Rise + 00 m

+ 03 m

2017

2100 24

+ 05 M

+ 10 M

2150

2200 25

+ 20 M

+ 30 M

2400

2750 26

+ 50 M

+ 70 M

3250

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MANHATTan 4000 Part 02 Design: A City Built on Ruin

Marywood University School of Architecture l Master of Architecture Robert Miller

Phase AA - Sky Bridges Phase AA begins by 2100, before sea level largely affects Manhattan with the implementation of Sky Bridges. These Sky Bridges connect adjacent buildings 230 feet above current sea level and are twenty feet thick to accomodate two floors of connection.

Phase bb - Piers Phase BB involves the adaptation of existing buildings into Piers which will structure New Ground and would begin by 2200. Piers will be created by filling buildings with concrete and/or buildings which have already been overcome with flooding.

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Phase CC - New Ground Phase CC occurs while the sea level continues to rise, but before all ice caps have completely melted, by 2400.

The Sky Bridges are converted into structural members and New Ground is completed. City services are then run through these connections.

Phase DD - New City Phase DD allows for the construction of new buildings on top of existing foundations by 4000. New construction must follow guidelines set forth regarding only building on existing foundations and no building directly on New Ground.

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Entertainment

Transportation

Central Park Central Park, previously used as a green getaway from the busy city, has now become transformed into a large blue sea to be used for similar programs as before. Since this large swath of water is protected from separate sides of the surrounding island, it could be used as a “stage� for areas of entertainment, both in the water and above in the air as well. This would also allow for a place to become used as something like a port so as to create a protective area that could be used to park water crafts, especially since cars would no longer be used as means of transportation.

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Nature: Trees

Nature: Grass

Upper East Side The entirety of New Ground will be covered in grass as to create as much green space as physically possible. It is evident that there will be very little to no ground near New Manhattan, so there is a necessity for as much “nature� as possible. This also includes vegetation, like trees, which will populate the New Ground as well. As evident in the plan above, there are certain areas of New Ground that have been punched out to allow for the creation of Water Pockets. In a neighborhood setting, these Water Pockets are capable of becoming a new center to each specific neighborhood.

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Gradiant Forest

Distint districts

Mid Town West Mid Town West will be transformed into a new agriculture zone which would be used to produce and raise crops to supply and support New Manhattan. There is large adequate spaces to be used as fields or space to allocate for vertical farming. There is also a Water Pocket and adjacent buildings that could be used to harvest and process fish. It can be seen here, as in other plans, the Gradient Forest which surrounds the entirety of New Manhattan to combat some of the strong storm surges which would batter the coast. These storm surges could also be used to harness energy to power the city.

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Memorialize Old City

Connection back to old

Financial District The Financial District of old Manhattan remains largely the same in program. This would be an area mainly devoted for areas of commerce, especially since it is on its own separate island, it could lead to a strong division of work and life. This would also be an area which one could imagine using to look back upon the old city, especially with a large Water Pocket which is situated above where the Twin Towers had once stood. This would establish a stronger connection of Old Manhattan to New Manhattan, both metaphysically and physically as well.

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Left to Ruin

Break down naturally

Lower East Side The Lower East Side is just one instance of many where New Ground does not cover, as this would create a lot of large empty space. In this example, buildings are just left to decay and break down all on their own from naturally occurring events. This kind of space could lead to an area for homeless or rouge residents to squat, as it would be a very undesirable place to dwell. The buildings and dwellings would become very unsafe and usable as storm surges would batter them without any protection.

Residents of this typology would also have to travel by water craft in order to reach the main island.

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KEY New Ground Surviving Buildings Water Pocket Transportation Track Teleportation Port Gradient Forest Transportation Tower