NY Personality
1 NY PERSONALITY 1.1 What does it make the image of New York as it is? 1.1.1 Hypertrophy hypertrophy [ha?p??tr?f?] n pl -phies (Medicine / Pathology) enlargement of an organ or part resulting from an increase in the size of the cells ”New York is hard, cynical, ruthless, even beyond other cities. From their early repression its children emerge sophisticated, both stunted and overdeveloped, perverted, premature, forced by the artificiality of their environment.” Ernest Gruening 1.1.2 Grid Only following few stricted rules it’s achievable the higest form of liberty.
There is no planning; only one environment for architecture. Everything is possible inside your own site.
1.1.3 Subtraction
The sculptural shape of the city is made by subtraction (shift back, zoning law) The voids of the city are made by privation (Central Park)
1.2 What does it make New York city-life as it is?
1.2.1 Flows Every day millions of people come in and out of the Manhattan island in the form of overlapped flows of mobility and informations. That flows design the inner structure of the city and the neighbourhoods, like the flow of water design the soil.
1.2.2 Cities within the city New York is not a multi-ethnic city, it’s a city of multiple ethnic communities. ”New York is the biggest collection of villages in the world” Alistair Cooke
1.2.3 Plugged City Manhattan dares its island nature: it is a metropolis due to the horizontal and vertical infrastructural system (bridges, subway, streets, lifts).
2 NEW YORK EVER AFTER
2.1 Present as a vision
Our present was one of the futures in the past.
Our present is the addiction of all the pasts.
New York present is the addiction of all the possible pasts.
Every different choice in history would have led to this present.
2.2 Commutative law of addition
Moving or deleting New York buildings doesn’t make the city change.
Skyscrapers can be built, demolished, replaced, modified, imagined or incomplete.
The image of the city remains the same.
2.3 Shores
As a river flowing generates its shores the main arteries of the city creates an archipelago where everybody feels safe in his community island.
Like in nature, the boundaries collect the highest grade of complexity and regenerative creativity.
2.4 Magma of possibilities
New York is the city of potentialities.
All the never-built totalizing projects feed the “magma of possibilities” that New York is.
The failure of that projects is necessary to keep the city adaptable to the contemporary:
New York refuses formal crystallization.
2.5 Gain the future
Change the image of NY implies change its meaning.
The only way to have a future is to preserve its essence.
New York can gain its own future only radicalizing its features.
“The image of the Manhattan skyline may stand for vitality, power, decadence, mystery, congestion, greatness or what you will, but in each case that sharp picture cristallizes and reinforce the meaning”. Kevin Lynch
3 SO WHAT?
3.1 (new) Few simple rules
Urban redevelopment: every building owner of Manhattan will be able to add floors and volume to every building provided that they will leave abandoned a number of floors (excepting structural manteinance) granted by the following formula.
(h+n) × 0.14 = v
if n = 10 then v = n / 2
where
h = number of floors of the building
n = number of new floors of the building
v = number of abandoned floors
A new vertical grid.
3.2 Archipelago of possibilities
Principal streets that now divides different neighbourgs must be progressively replaced by water canals.
The canals will emphasize neighbourhoud identity and when new secessions will appear new canals will be excavated.
3.3 Re-Connections
Metropolis life need more and more connections.
Archipelago status emphasize the connection needs.
Who bears new connections development can benefit of portions of new riverside areas.
New connections must be spatially overlayed: they must connect the islands and the voids.
