STUDIO: Future Ontological Formations
CRITICS: Danielle Willems & Abigail Coover HumE
This degree project explores a new typology for the architectural facade, developing a formation beyond its six initial states. In the near-future city, a Seventh Facade exists as a layered framework of spectacle and interaction generated from existing facades, occupying excess space within the built environment.
By forming a delicate interface between itself and existing facades, the urban hierarchy of public and private spaces are disrupted. The Seventh Facade links territories of privately owned public spaces (POPS) and air rights spaces (TDR), both of which influence the evolution of the city. The goal of this proposal is to allow users to ascend to spaces within this framework, making a permanent impact on the host city.
In disrupting the privatized spaces, the Seventh Facade navigates a buildable void, or “in between”. The zones within this void, such as existing air right spaces, are infiltrated to create new temporal regions that vary in response to shifts in flexible program. Conversely, the existing POPS are activated as a permanent volume that serves as zones of entry and exit into the larger system of proposed vertical transportation. This forms an aerial framework to the sidewalk below; taking root in the air shafts, underutilized alleyways, and courtyards of Midtown Manhattan, creating a new spatial typology that can reposition itself in other cities around the globe.
