THE GREEN GRID

Like the tree trunk, the past is pushed to its extents by the present to make room for the future. Manhattan is the present driven by a constant urgency by its creative implosion of development within its boundaries. It has an incomplete past and future; it is instead a constant process of expansion that returns within its boundaries. Manhattan’s character is a dynamic process of change where each static reflection is an incomplete representation. The city exists only in its motion and growth; any momentary pause of reflection disrupts its character, for it already encompasses so many in terms of cultures, habits, routines and day-to-day activities and lives of the inhabitants. Its proposal and understanding of the future, is the understanding of the present need or the present process of development that has remained constant from its origins. The approach is to understand what keeps it in motion and what will allow it to embrace it further. The concept explores the extension of the well-known Manhattan grid into an elevated Green Grid.

The Green Grid is based on the same urban fabric of the Manhattan grid; every turn and corner remains familiar and well known but its new beauty lies in its new perspective of the city. Its elevation allows an encouragement to live within it and travel with its growth through the cities famous heights. Not only does the pollution and bad air exponentially decline after as little as 10 stories, but also provides safe routes for the inhabitants to access the ever-rising buildings and employ a social typology of fire escapes. It’s a new sense of safety provided for the inhabitants, as well as a quicker access to the fresh air for the increased indoor office work. It is no new lifestyle, but a physical structure that encourages and presents ease of repose and pauses.

As the city continues to grow presently through its past mapping of urban fabric, its unique development design is employed in the future as a continuum of what is today through an actual physical growth and motion of greenery, park system and connectivity of the famous fragmentation of Manhattan.