Human Bank

Critic: Erica Goetz

Semester: SP2015

Site: Long Island City, Queens, New York City

Size: 60,000 SF

Program: bank and zombie shelter

How can architecture school projects have real e ects? Can architecture function allegorically?

Since the advent of the bank, a secure and opaque house of valuables, money has become increasingly symbolic. You don’t see piles of money in most people’s houses, but you see their possessions, their grooming, the way they carry themselves, and you understand that in a bank somewhere they have a corresponding numeric value. Money, those numbers in servers, is no less central to the way we de ne ourselves and each other. We have bred a consumer culture in which the value of human life is determined by a series of bits and bytes, often abstracted from their meaning as commodity value. We hoard these numbers in banks, and securely build our image on the basis of an idea of wealth.

Once upon a time in Long Island City a valuable young investor commissioned a hungry young designer to build a bank. This bank would be a symbol of wealth and strength, opaque and fortress-like outside, with the lush cavity of scal belonging within. The bank would be a geode, the bank would be a cloister for the love and worship of immaterial wealth, or an electro-numerical god. The gentrifying populous would experience this modern value system – sleek ,beautiful, and digital. The building would be an experiential manifestation of high net worth – of self worth.

In this moment the end was already determined. The new bank ourished and grew, employees and customers enjoying exchanges of bytes and titles and satisfaction and security – opulence hoarded and hollowly at rest in ones and zeros. The bank's commodities were consumerism itself – and consume and consume they did, until the bio-cultural shifts bore in a new meaning for the word.

The outbreak of an unforeseen consequence bred a new generation of self-immolating capitalists, and the fuel of electronic worth, the esh and corporeal brain, became consumable commodity. Gradually the burden of scal worth dwindled, and those people who yet survived the changes inhabited the bank in a new way. The building was a fortress, a haven, a cloister. It became a vault for precious vitality, a human bank.

In the allegory of a Human Bank, a building that represents our monetary culture is built, experiences a period of moderate success, and then falls to a zombie apocalypse. Zombies are, after all, the ultimate self-destructive consumers. In light of this new threat, surviving humans take refuge in the bank — now human bank, now devoid of monetary responsibility. The bank’s advertised business becomes its real function: protecting people’s life

The zombie bank references traditional ideals of visual opacity in banks — thick, impenetrable walls — to reinforce the symbolic association with solidity and security. Inside, the customer is greeted by the bank’s commodity: its image: clean, white walls, open, green spaces. The space feels professional and modern, but welcoming and open at the same time. The work environment is pleasant and friendly, and even the employees are sold on this image of the bank’s humanity — while in reality it is in the business of quantifying human value mechanically

> Floor plans

Section of bank across time: rst, on left, as presentday bank, then moving right as zombies attack, and on the far right the building is repurposed as a safe haven for New York’s remaining humans. >

In contrast, after the apocalypse, the building becomes a true oasis. The ornamental features — the gardens and rain water system that feed them, the opaque walls — become the most necessary and functional parts of the building. The interiority allows for communication and observation, the walls keep the zombies at bay.