THE WALL
The Jeffersonian Grid aimed to create a democratic space of individual freedom. Instead, it produced a neutral street with autonomous, separate and static buildings. Within these shells exist individualized worlds of diverse occupation. Amongst the grid of individual freedom, we identified certain accidental moments of blankness that we saw as something of value.
There are two primary acts: first, an obstruction in the city- a mass whose scale, orientation, and blankness is incongruous with the city and resists iconicity. Second, a series of spaces framed by this mass- neither objects, or spaces between objects, but spaces framed in relation to each other and their context.
Rather than generic, or prototypical spaces like that of the modern street, we conceive of these spaces as specific and multiple. Specific in their scales, enclosures, proportions, textures, hardnesses, colors and transparencies, and multiple in the sense that each is highly distinct offering choice and difference rather than idealized public space.
The spaces emerge from a process of found figuration, not designed exoticism. They function solely through relationality. Their performance is entirely reliant on the proximity and relation to each other and their neighboring buildings. They are overlapped, superimposed, aligned, divided, diametrically-opposed, wrapped around, stacked, and blended.
This high amount of diversity and choice of specific and multiple open spaces can serve the general public as well as house the trans-scalar ephemeral programs that exist within the Garment District of New York City.
The massive blank building suppresses the skyline and creates a background by which to read the individual buildings of the city and the created urban voids. Through a change of light, this apparently flat, solid monument reveals its depth and permeability. The interior of the wall is programmed with zones and bands that confront and slip past each other, and collect around another network of voids that serve as epicenters of ephemeral interaction between the building's occupants.
For ease of reference, the urban voids have been numbered 1 through 7, starting from the north end of the thoroughfare.
Project partner: Mark Nicholson, Instructor: Brian Price
