RIGHTS TO THE CITY

Year Spring 2021 (Competition Winter 2021)
Location SOHO Manhattan, New York City
Advisor Angela Co + Shawn Amsler (Real Estate)
Team Nicholas Chung, Susana Quintero Vidales
Award NON-ARCHITECTURE Community 2050 // Honorable Mention

Given that the world’s growing population is increasingly on the move, it is critical to consider what the global city, the multi-cultural city, signals in relation to the changing dichotomy of foreign/local and foreigners/locals. This project unfolds with research topic, Right to the City, which disclose the on-going challenge with space ownership and the conflicting definition of “publicness”. The analysis on this issue topic led to the design and development of a high rise mixed-use building as community resilience strategy against gentrification occuring in NYC SoHo neighborhood. Designed with respect to issue seminar and real estate developments to balance between commercial housing
and affordable housing, this project proposes a new urban strategy that internalizes the vibrancy of NYC’s dense urbanity into a vertical configuration. By establishing a modular systematic approach, the vertical configuration can be deployed in any contexts, from ljplein neighborhoods to SoHo streets.

The method of organization will be manifested through a public-private entity, the community management trust (CMT), who owns the exclusive management rights of properties, and works with the city government to activate public spaces and programs as interconnecting tissues between properties. The goals of which are firstly the creation of a continuous commons that extends across the urban fabric, activating right to the city. The in residency program for small business owners can also benefit members of the community who are lower on the socioeconomic ladder by providing employment and opportunity for self actualization. Prospective businesses and low-income residents can submit in-residency applications to be reviewed by the CMT. They live and work in that space and ideally apprentices find economic security and selfactualization, businesses develop resiliency and integrate into the community, thus prompting developers to continue reinvesting into this system that provide jobs and boast commercial desirability.

The design proposes a mixed use vertical living that captures the vibrance of a dense city. Programmatic distribution would not be fixed, but will be particalized and allows for cross pollination on a granular level. Particalization and flexibility imply modular form with a discrete amount of infrastructural hierarchy.

These modules can serve as residential and workshop spaces, and further be combined for space efficiency or unexpected juxtapositions. The ad-hoc sensibility of inhabiting the space between modules extends onto their surfaces. As the community evolves, homogenize, splinter, the spaces are resurfaced to reflect those.


Re-Imagine Existing Typology

We strongly believe that normalizing constructive friction between all stakeholders is vital for the cities of tomorrow, especially given the increased polarization of ‘us’ and ‘them’, the prejudice and stereotyping forced upon migrants and immigrants, and a blasé attitude that more and more of us choose to adopt in response to the overwhelming amount of stimulation we now face in modern society.

Louis Kahn writes in The Rome Letters of 1954 that “the street is a room by agreement, a community is a room dedicated to the city for common use, and its ceiling is the sky.” The future of urban communities is in large part the facilitation of the right to the city, the right to contribute, the right to be recognized for your role in your community regardless of where you come from.