Yael Hameiri
The Grid & Its Other
Without Beyond About Inside
Plan The Its Side & Ground Grid Other Chronotope
Between Names & Tunnels Playing and reality in the Refugee Camp Jabalia The Jabalia Refugee Camp and the Tunnels in Gaza are representations of literal and figurative questions of movement and its limitation. The refugee camp Jabalia is a new urban place, studied in the context of the Palestinian refugee problem at large. The paradox-in-definition between the space and time of the camp, where broken political and social narratives build its reality, forms the basis for dwelling. Located in the Gaza Strip near Gaza City, with the Israeli border on its other side, density and narrowness characterizes the Camp’s internal organization while implemented siege and blockade have defined its relationship to the world for 3 years and occupation for 60 years. Consequently, the Tunnels are a necessity where legal limits are crossed out; they are voided sections. Though physically separated, through the juxtaposition of the camp and the tunnels, a new play is conceived, maneuvering between the constraints of the Camp and the ‘eye’ of the tunnels. The project is an attempt to find and define the metaphoric tunnel space in the camp, but one that is a channel of hope, not economy. Like the tunnels, the spaces of the project provide alternative of moving beyond walls, and investigating the ground as an architectural material. However, as an opposition to the tunnel space, they are stationary, providing space of play and light.
THE JABALIA REFUGEE CAMP
Tunnel Zone TUNNEL ZONE
GAZA STRIP
GAZA CITY
MEDITERRANEAN SEA
GAZA
EGYPT
MEDITERRANEAN SEA
ISRAEL
GAZA
EGYPT
ISRAEL
THE JABALIA REFUGEE CAMP
A network of spaces is spread across the camp where there is no traffic and no buildings. The spaces are defined through a set of programmatic insertions and minimal formal acts, allowing the outdoors experience and the programmatic activities to coexist as an opposition to the camp concrete-shelter structures. The programs are meant to accommodate small theatrical spaces, graffiti and painting walls, reading spaces, and playgrounds. New pathways are defined in relation to the camps organic development; along side the roads that were carved in the 1920s by the Israeli army. They provide continuity in the chaotic built environment. Water channels will run at the side of the pathways as a narrative of this continuity, providing utilization of rainwater for kids play.
PROJECT PLAN
At the alley end
Along the cutout
Within a hole in the neighborhood’s density
Aside the passage In the heart of the block Submerging
Visual continuity
Elevating
Open enclosure
Flowing
Crossing
Carving Play
Theater of cross visual connections
Water Channel of continuity and flow, leading footsteps
Urban tree house
Safe passage overlooking traffic from an
The work is an attempt to trace those aspects of the situation that are systematically erased or ignored by making their presence undeniable, creating a path for view, through which the associated blindness could be examined. This mental blindness is the threshold communicated through the concrete physical questions of movement and crossings and is to be overcome by space for childhood and imagination.
Enacting Hiding
Climbing Resting
inhabitable bridge
Play in shade or reflection
Centralizing Water in a decentralized plan
Reading niche and space for secrets
6490 BC
6300 BC
1600 BD
Without Beyond About Inside
Plan The Its Side & Ground Grid Other Chronotope
Surfaces and Transformation
MAPPING OF MARKS THAT WERE LEFT ON THE GROUND BY LAKE AGASSIZ
On the land of the glacial lake: At the origins of the Red River of the North, Lake Traverse, once the south edge of lake Agassiz, recurring floods get closer and closer to the height of the historical lake. This relatively young basin is not deep enough to manage the quantities of water in the spring. Unusually, on this land of Agassiz, the streams of water are northbound. A Hydrodynamic reading of Flat land: The system transports the floodwater from the tributary area to a reservoir, operating on the scale of the marks left by lake Agassiz and applying it back on to the landscape. This subtle intervention activates movement of water using the volumetric potential of the site. On a land that is otherwise divided abstractedly by the Jeffersonian grid, a new mesh on the plan along with sectional movement gives it new identity born out of its own ground and history; permeability is an operating narrative. The part of the water system that is above the flood line holds the potential for a new settlement as a water organ, allowing excessive streams of water to run through and return to the system un-wasted.
SITE PLAN
SITE SECTION
PLROJECT PLAN
PLROJECT SECTION
Without Beyond About Inside
Plan The Its Side & Ground Grid Other Chronotope
On The Correction Line Site: A road is a direct expression of a pencil line; the Jeffersonian grid that divided the United States farmland into individual plots of land finds its limits in the totality of the North Dakota flat land. As the longitudinal lines get closer to each other, to maintain the rigidity of a system based on equality, a diversion from the grid is necessary. Between every four townships, a correction line was established in order to re-stretch the grid on the vast landscape. As it is imposed on the ground, the road that represents this line turns ninety degrees with no visible logic, as experienced by someone driving through. Then, shortly after, the road turns back to its original direction. The correction line is an attempt to fix the total abstraction of the grid system. Access: As one drives into the horizon and suddenly has to turn, this access road continues the original road as if there were no correction, and recreates the cross moment of the grid. This line further expresses the possibility of drawing a line on the land, and questions the original system by emphasizing its oddness, playing out the reality of a drawing, which becomes the reality of a place. The road reflects the distance of the correction and then dissolves into the landscape, turning toward the prevailing wind direction. SITE PLAN STUDY 1
Dwelling: A strong wind, the main character of the site, is registered on the ground, creating a variety of relations to the horizon line. The form of the house is based on the fundamental principles of a wind-breakfence: porosity and proportions. It dissolves into fragments, into the existing— shifted— road, allowing snowfall and wind to blow through, creating a broken line as a memory plow tills the ground frozen in space. The spaces in the house are dense and intimate, as a contrast to the vast flat land.
SECOND FLOOR PLAN
LONG SECTION 1
LONG SECTION 2
THIRD FLOOR PLAN
SITE ANALASYS
WIND FORCE & WIND BREAK FENCE ANALASYS
Without Beyond About Inside “The city’s gods, according to some people, live in the depths, in the black lake that feeds the underground streams. According to others, the gods live in the buckets that rise, suspended from a cable, as they appears over the edge of the wells, in the revolving pulleys, in the windlasses of the norias”… “This said, it is pointless trying to decide whether Zemobia is to be classified among happy cities or among the unhappy. It makes no sense to divide cities into these two species, but rather into another two: those that through the years and the changes continue to give their form to desires, and those in which desires either erase the city or are erased by it. “ Italo Calvino, Thin Cities: Invisible Cities
Plan The Its Side & Ground Grid Other Chronotope
The Poetic Potentiality of the Vertical City Under the Waldorf Astoria towers, between 49th and 50th Streets, the train-track continuity from Grand Central is terminated and shifts to continue under Park Avenue only, forming its structural character as a submerged urban bridge. As a reading of the train tracks and its underground supports, a secondary grid is stretched on the transitional block, between 50th and 51st streets, between Park Avenue and Lexington Avenue, structurally holding St. Bartholomew’s Church. On this conceptual and structural grid, as continuity to a ground level path between the two towers of the Waldorf Astoria, a wall runs through the middle of the block giving St. Bartholomew’s a second facade. A lower wall, defining the other side of the new urban pathway, is an exposure of an already existing stitch between the two parts of the block.
On the west side of the block, the church is supported by the exposed grid. Its courtyard, a vertical puncture in the grid, is a formed void, suggesting the roots and grounding of the tower on the other side of the block. The plan of the void is the plan of the tower, together forming a vertical continuity in which one could not be fully perceived without the other. The ground of the city is a built stratified platform with datum and possibilities below and above. The same attitude is expressed towards the block itself, which is thought of as a volumetric unit for potential choreography, rather than a container with limits.
ST. BARTHOLOMEW’S CHURCH WALDORF ASTORIA LOCATION
SECTION UNDER PARK AVENUE
SITE FOR THE SCULPTURE MUSEUM
N FLATIRON BUILDING
MADISON SQUARE PARK
Without Beyond About Inside
Plan The Its Side Ground Grid&Other Chronotope
The Diagonal Cut: Duet of Triangulated Sites The Dialogue of the Site as the definition for the program: The Flatiron building is an extrusion of a triangulated plan, but has no architectural implications for the specificity of its site in section. From some angels it is perceived as flat. The Flatiron building fulfills its site’s potential in plan, while the design for a museum across from it tests the sectional implications of the triangulated site. Intensifying the Site: Introducing a new focal point to its chaotic and crowded street level, coupled with opening the area surrounding it to pedestrians without subdivisions of traffic islands and side walks, creates a new coherent civic space on the site. Moreover, a sculpture garden, open to Madison Square Park, opens the majority of the street level to the public. The galleries: The exhibition space is contained within a volume that reflects a typical Manhattan 19th century apartment building, floating six stories above street level. The floors are adjustable horizontally so that they can accommodate different exhibitions. This also provides with the possibility for a dialogue between the different floors and allows a play with the light penetrating from above. Transparency: Surfaces of transparency are used to reflect cuts and shifts as revealed design operations. Transparent sections are also positioned in relation to the neighborhood and maintain, rather than interrupt, continuity and coherence of surfaces.
STUDY 1
STUDY 2
STUDY 3
PLAN: ENTRANCE LEVEL
PLAN: LOBBY AND OFFICES LEVEL
PLAN: OFFICES & GALLERIES LEVEL
PLAN: ROOF & GALLERIES LEVEL
The Diagonal Cut: Smart Station A Smart Station, used for the display and sale of the 2.5 m (98.4 in) long Fortwo Smart Car, located on an urban site at Houston and Lafayette in Manhattan. Two cars are located here, one outside for display, one inside for test-driving. The Smart Station has one employee, one exhibition space, and service space. This project brings ideas of shelter and technology into the context of this site and introduces it with a new scale. The station is an architectural dialogue between the neighborhoods load-bearing walls and billboards.
Without Beyond About Inside
Plan The Its Side & Ground Grid Other Chronotope
The Interior of the Block The originally uniformed rectilinear space in the heart of the Manhattan residential block changes constantly, reflecting the evolution of the built environment in relation to the grid. The interior of the block is a revealed latency hidden by the front facades; it is a space charged with the complexity of the contemporary city built environment. The city’s Other, between the exposed fastspeed avenue and the hermetic space of the small apartment, holds the potential for a new transitional space. Open to the street at moments, the spaces read as an urban continuity: an architecture of community.
PLROJECT PLAN
Without Beyond About Inside
FOUR-STORY COLUMN-BURIAL
Plan The Its Side & Ground Grid Other Chronotope
Porous City: Cemetery Bridge The Trinity Cemetery was moved uptown from Trinity Yard downtown, and later was separated between its east and west parts when Broadway was extended north. This deep cut penetrated the cemetery ground, and is reactivated every time the cemetery is experienced in speed through this axis, in contrast with its original pathways.
PLATFORM
The inhabitable bridge is a new part of the cemetery that connects its two parts above Broadway. It maintains 75 percent porosity to allow light into the avenue. It is a grid; a net of units, each one maintains these relations between solid and open plane. In each unit, a platform and pathway, and a four story column-burial. There are seven different positionings of the body in relation to the burial space. These are mirrored, giving fourteen plan conditions that are distributed, equal in number, across the occupiable rectilinear zone of the inhabitable bridge, while the pathways create continuity of movement, providing free pedestrian wandering. The structure of a Space Frame allows the plane of the cemetery to be light, where weight and its reflection stay below. Programs associated with the cemetery, ceremonial gathering space and a chapel, are hung from the Space Frame and opened up to the street level. The grid, the frame, and the porosity are associated with the ironframe structures from the time the original cemetery was built, and their frequent catching on fire. The bridge cemetery is a reflection on the relationship between the remained and reminder.
PLAN: CEMETERY BRIDGE OVER BROADWAY BETWEEN 153RD & 155TH STREET, MANHATTAN
The Cemetery: After Heterotopias
CEMETERY OVERVIEW: ABOVE BROADWAY
CEMETERY: VIEW FROM BROADWAY
The cemetery is the physical location of our future, of the past contributions to our memories by individuals we have lost, and the present reflection we have on the location of the ‘in between’ space of existence. In “Of Other Spaces,” Foucault uses the mirror as the first example of distinguishing where differences blur, where ‘Other Space’ starts. In the mirror example, we see ourselves in a different space, and therefore we return back to make sure we exist. I see this conceptual condition as a description of some qualities of the cemetery. What we see has implications of other spaces that are unreachable to us, and is defined only by the way we think of it. This spatial condition clarifies the way we perceive what we carry in our minds. Its importance is in evoking the projections of meaning and the reflections of it on our perspective. We then check upon our own existence, which is the service of the cemetery to our society. It reminds us of some aspect of our existence that would not be completely perceived without it, which is the spatial quality of our memories and the temporal qualities of our lives. Its space takes us outside of the city but its location is clearly within it. The reciprocal relationship with Broadway underlines the heterotopic condition of the cemetery to a greater extent. The brutal stream of traffic brings the city into the cemetery, penetrating the land of burial, so the two exist in the same space. I see Broadway as a window frame: maintaining the two parts divided, offering an imagery space implied by the very idea of their separation, while allowing them both to collapse into one picture plane. This act of bridging signifies opening that window of reflection rather than closing a gap.
Without Beyond About Inside The chronotope is “the intrinsic connectedness of temporal and spatial relationships that are artistically expressed in literature. .…It expresses the inseparability of space and time (time as the fourth dimension of space). We understand the chronotope as a formally constitutive category of literature. “ “In the literary chronotope, spatial and temporal indicators are fused into a one carefully-thought-out, concrete whole. Time, as it were, thickens, takes on flesh, and becomes artistically visible; likewise, space becomes charged and responsive to the movements of time, plot and history. This intersection of axes and fusion of indicators characterizes the artistic chronotope.”
Plan The Its Side & Ground Grid Other Chronotope
The Cycle of Information Two stationary locations The Chronotope here is an exploration of a sequence of spaces, the unfolding of time in space in relation to the two modes of stations. Time becomes simultaneous as it repeats itself in space, and measure becomes a function of its gained perspective. Simultaneous experience of times is emphasized by the volumetric suspension threshold, which keeps the internal circulation of spatial experience.
Mikhail Bakhtin: The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays: Forms of Time and of the Chronotope in the Novel
Data collection: observation – There are two rooms for surveillance: One is constricted and directional for one person only. The other is open to the observation of the entire site. Data Storage: Perspective – On the other side of the volumetric suspension threshold, observations are being recorded, the information becomes accessible through filters: sketches and notes. The room has a work area with two windows, and a long wall, which expands over time, to present the information. The process of storing images challenges one’s perspective by the time one returns to the collection area. A cyclic path creates a simultaneous experience of collecting and storing in which different times expand into a spatial experience.
LONG SECTION 1
LONG SECTION 2
The Grid & Its Other
STUDIES: PATH AND STATIONS
PROJECT PLAN AND PERSPECTIVES
Yael Hameiri