UN / SEEN
Center for Urban Infrastructure
Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation
Paradoxical Efficiency l Studio Marc Tsurumaki
Program: Public Space, Think Tank, Institution
Project Partner: Wo Wu
Project Year: Fall 2018
Location: New York, NY
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Ventilation towers for underground tunnels provided a new building the city. However, not many people know about its presence. The function is exclusive to itself, without any communication with the city. Many of them are disguised as buildings. In many cases, these towers are in spaces where they intersect with public parks. However, in often times, due to their exclusiveness, surrounding spaces are underutilized. The project seeks to create a symbiotic relationship between such urban infrastructure and public space.
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Robert Moses Playground is an under-utilized public park bisected by a ventilation tower of Queens Midtown Tunnel. It is also an endangered public space as the United Nation is trying to obtain the land. Proposed leaning mass which embraces the ventilation tower opens up a public ground toward the United Nation, recuperating the public function of the site. Ventilation ducts are rebuilt, revealing and celebrating their presence in the city. As a form of concrete columns, the ducts are used as a sponsor for the building structure.
The building itself becomes an infrastructure as it integrates urban infrastructure and weaves the public space. As a Center for Urban Infrastructure, it will challenge urban issues. The building is activated as a generator of urban effects, visualizing unseen nature of infrastructure through fields of phenomena.
In building scale, structural proposition sponsors programmatic logic of efficiency. Small compartmentalized spaces with short span are knowledge-making space. Big, high ceiling, long span spaces are knowledge-sharing space which allows flexibility of the space. Furniture scale architectural elements operates in relation to the large truss system, activating the use of exorbitant structure.
