New York The Venice of (the) North America!

This project was for us an opportunity to dream about what NYC could potentially become in the long run, albeit in an utopist fashion. The Local scale would be focused on the Theater District. Since the concept of density is such a complicated, misunderstood, and often talked about subject in architecture today, we feel the Theater District / Midtown area is a pertinent choice. Simply put, our concept is to inject some “green” and some “blue” inside the city, in a continuous way. We decided to go from a global scale to a local scale. The global scale is symbolized by the longitudinal “gesture” of the green pathway. This pathway would be continuous, gliding its way through the urban fabric, from the edge of Manhattan (Battery Park) to the edge of Central Park (Grand Army Plaza). Along its path, it would attach itself to the major existing parks in the city. Not only would this pathway allow walking across the entire city freely from North to South, it would also create new urban blocks, truly shaped by this green pathway in an organic way.

The local scale is symbolized by the transversal “gesture” of the blue pathways, which are canals slicing the city organically from the East River to the West River. These canals would surely disrupt and scale down the current density of the Theater District / Midtown and that is the goal! Not only that, the creation of canals would help the circulation of water around New York City and bring new urban and architectural typologies, such as the ones in Amsterdam or Bruges.

The lost density would be added where it should: on the East River banks, where compact, tall and dense buildings would be erected.

To conclude, the “green” and the “blue” would bring an architectural and an urban richness to a city that is, despite its iconic urbanism, numerous parks and closeness to the water, a true breath of fresh air…INSIDE OF IT.