FSM EAST RIVER PROJECT
Location: New York, New York
Year: 2001
In a
world of information flows and global transactions, a place to call home
acquires a new importance. Where do you want to live today? How can urban
living – from the comforts of an apartment to the infrastructures required to
interact with the city and world – be modeled for the speed of life in the
twenty-first century? What does New York living mean in a global society? Such
questions underlie our team’s thinking about this unique development
opportunity along the East River.
New York is the Cartesian city par excellence, a product of eighteenth- and nineteenth- century ingenuity and rationality. But Cartesian space can no longer define and explain the complexities of a wired world. The space of the computer is topological. It allows us to explain an image natural phenomena that cannot be imaged in Cartesian space. Topological space has allowed us to propose a new nature – one that is time – rather than space-based. Biogenetics, quantum mechanics, gravity flows are each based in this new condition of time.
Our two towers for this proposed new neighborhood extend the topological matrix vertically. The Towers begin at the top and bottom with two Cartesian squares: the one at the base from the Manhattan grid; the one at the top from the Queens grid across the river. These two squares are extruded to meet vertically in space, producing a torqued, vertical shaft. A time element is then added in the form of a compressive force, which acts on the top and bottom to produce the effect of a molten liquid flow at the middle of the tower, approximating and imaging a nature of time. This action gives the tower a three-part identity that inverts the traditional classical formulation of the skyscraper. Typically, towers have had a tripartite identity associated with base, shaft, and top. These towers are unique in the middle. The base and top are Cartesian, the “shaft’, a new nature marking the flow of time over its surface.
New York is the Cartesian city par excellence, a product of eighteenth- and nineteenth- century ingenuity and rationality. But Cartesian space can no longer define and explain the complexities of a wired world. The space of the computer is topological. It allows us to explain an image natural phenomena that cannot be imaged in Cartesian space. Topological space has allowed us to propose a new nature – one that is time – rather than space-based. Biogenetics, quantum mechanics, gravity flows are each based in this new condition of time.
Our two towers for this proposed new neighborhood extend the topological matrix vertically. The Towers begin at the top and bottom with two Cartesian squares: the one at the base from the Manhattan grid; the one at the top from the Queens grid across the river. These two squares are extruded to meet vertically in space, producing a torqued, vertical shaft. A time element is then added in the form of a compressive force, which acts on the top and bottom to produce the effect of a molten liquid flow at the middle of the tower, approximating and imaging a nature of time. This action gives the tower a three-part identity that inverts the traditional classical formulation of the skyscraper. Typically, towers have had a tripartite identity associated with base, shaft, and top. These towers are unique in the middle. The base and top are Cartesian, the “shaft’, a new nature marking the flow of time over its surface.
Concept
Drawings
Model photos
Images
