05 living structures at play
Despite the shared syntax, the interventions of Peir 40 and James J. Walker Park each take on a process of excavation and integration in response to their distinctive context, which respectively resulted in the form of a ruin and a shed.
Temporally, the excavation of Pier 40 is a one-way process of removing and diminishing the original structure. The ruination turns the piece of architecture into a mere multi-level landscape with slabs and posts; The assembly and reassembly of the
handball cage at James J Walker Park is contrarily a planned loop of structure and non-structure with itself as a means of construction, reinforcing its nature as a performative prop facilitating social interactions related to play.
In terms of urban scale performance, the excavated pier dissolves, and integrates into the constellation of 33 piers along the Hudson River. It now caters
to the larger public of Manhattan Island, meanwhile continuing to host youth league sports events. On the other hand, the integrated James J. Walker Park serves as the recreational center for the adjacent school and neighborhood.
The thesis is hence akin to what Van Eyck famously acclaimed in House is City and City is House: A city is not a city unless it is also a huge house- a house is a house only if it is also a tiny city.
Everyday structures relate to the cycle and recycle of architecture in New York City in the form of synecdoche: They are verbs that constitute a system
where a part has the totality of the whole and the whole exists in every found part of itself.
The old and the new share the same syntax derived from action, and in turn exert actions that operate across various scales from the object to the building to the city.
Transitive gestures speak to a language of architecture stripped bare. It proposes to leverage ordinary techniques of spatial regulation as a means to engage reality, to mediate the relation between people and space, constants and incidents. It is an architecture that enables conditions in which everyday life takes place, and is in turn given forms through such enabling.