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The Line Between Building and Street
from Orthopolis
by SCI-Arc
Our research also revealed a relatively recent trend in urban design that begins to integrate our conception of streets as another programmatic element often subsumed by buildings. This notion that flex community space better describes the street than as train tracks for cars leads us to some interesting explorations. Is it any accident that all these street building dialectical shifts took place in and around Manhattan?
But the longer term success of these ideas is predicated on an eventual
Image of Jane Jacobs43
transportational shift. Looking back to quintessential New York Typologies the buildings are shaped by and adapt to transportational constraints. Over a century ago, buildings had elevated living space so the windows could see above the piles of accumulated horse manure. If buildings could be shaped by the piles of horse manure, and streets galvanized by driving and parked cars, they could surely reclaim some of this territory and offer an approach to new transportation and habitation possibilities when these old parameters disappear.
1961 - DEATH AND LIFE OF GREAT AMERICAN CITIES - JANE JACOBS
This book repositions the street as a measure of the quality of the city, and suggests that beyond its role as a connector and unifier, it is ultimately a place to be in itself. This measure of urban success by the quality of street activity was an attack on architectural work that involved urban scale interventions where streets and corridor became harder to define.
Streets => Building
Basis for Stacked Utopia44
Jusseiu Library Model45 Image of Housing No. 1 Proposal46
1978 - DELIRIOUS NEW YORK: A RETROACTIVE MANIFESTO FOR MANHATTAN - REM KOOLHAUS
Koolhaus' manifesto and subsequent work at OMA explore the internalization of street into the building itself. Here the transplanting and rescaling of streets into buildings suppose that by replicating the formal typologies of streets in large buildings, that urban activity will be reproduced inside.
2011- HOUSING NO. 1 - THOUGHTS ON A WALKING CITY - MOS
This project speculates that streets may not even be necessary in dense nodes that are purely navigated by walking, and in fact one might be able to place the building in the street.
