BIM

In the near future: Motivated by a Depression which has dragged on since the early 21st Century, New Yorkers overwhelmingly vote to repeal historic preservation laws and to enact a program of rapid construction, with the hopes of increased employment, investment, and available modern housing stock. Striving to become the first city ever completely designed using BIM software, the New York City planning commission embarks on an aggressive plan of three dimensional expansions…. As New York has developed, so too has the urban potential for events, difference, and freedom of experience. The Commissioners’ Grid of 1811 created a grid of equivalent blocks, each one floating free as part of the greater urban archipelago. Anything can happen, anywhere. With the development of the elevator, this freedom continued into three dimensions. Now, at any block in the city, in any building, anything can happen on any floor. Pools exist on top of bars, basketball courts on top of offices; murders below romance, and schools above prisons. With the advent of the subway, New Yorkers became free to travel across the city, connecting and disembarking at their leisure. Finally, the individual was free to connect and move across and through the world’s first truly free three dimensional city.

The space above Manhattan has become more and more malleable throughout time, and information and movement flow with increasing efficiency and speed. Eventually, New Yorkers will be able to travel seamlessly between buildings, events, boroughs, and programs. With individual existence increasingly oriented towards a virtual experience, buildings will cease to have windows and will instead become fully immersive digital environments. Site becomes irrelevant, efficiency is the only goal. If (rarely) the digital experience is not sufficient, people may move effortlessly across the city. Images of Central Park disappear as you suddenly find yourself there. Surrounded by trees, and listening to the sound of the birds chirping…. Free at last….

-

If the grid enabled freedom of program in two dimensions and the elevator in three; and the subway enabled nodal transportation across these free spaces, what could teleportation do? We propose this future means of transit not as something that will occur in the near future, but as a potential outlier, an edge condition. As transportation and information move more freely; as our personalities give way to our avatars; as buildings become more standardized and less inspired; as efficiency wins out over taste; as freedom is given away to capitalism; and opportunity is lost to competition, we posit that one day we will reach the ultimate summation of our society’s efforts. Our collective efforts are based on logic and emotions and it is possible to gleam some positive from them. However, by recognizing this boundary, we assert the opportunity for more, for difference, and for architecture.