habitable core
Public Spatial Infrastructure
GSAPP Fall 2020: Broadway Stories Studio
Instructor: Josh Uhl
TA: Wo Wu
Tools and Fabrication: Rhinoceros, Illustrator, Photoshop, PremierePro, casting, woodwork, laser cutting, foam cutting
Project Description
The Long Walk
The Waiting
Chronic Breakdowns
“Taking the stairs has become an unwanted routine for Connie Right and her children (…) On this day, one of the two elevators at their 16-story building was out of service.”
”Tenants like Angela Gonzalez, 76, have become inured to elevator problems.”
”It can take up to 20 min for an elevator, especially if another one is broken.”
The superstructure intervention generates new habitable public spaces as an extension of domesticity. The addition of new spaces is a manipulation of the shape and measurement of different staircases that create extrusions that contract and expand, absorbing, and dialoguing to various information of the city such as proximities, views, and noise.
Adding a core to the building's skin and allowing it to proliferate disrupts the typical vertical circulation. It also displaces the "body and soul" (Evans, 1978) of the community, creates opportunities for habitable and programmable spaces. Finally, the intervention's verticality creates a new horizontal plane in each floor, producing a spectrum of publicness from a tenant's bedroom to the new habitable space.
The 1:1 prototype explores construction and materiality. The tension steel cables become the structure that host surfaces and envelopes that suggest programmatic engagement.
The video portraits the daily life and the atmosphere in affordable houses in New York City. The first scenes contrast with the intervention that attempts to respond to this reality by adding a livable public space for the inhabitants.