Welcome to the City of Serendipity.
Site: New York, NY
Critic: Dragana Zoric
Team: Eunice Lee, Jewel Pei
This urban planning proposal approaches the territorial controversy over Marx brothers playground through the eyes of a child. Through collages and montages, we investigated different ways a child understands and moves through a city through free explorations and misuses. Our goal was to find a common ground between development and democratic interest.
Like the Marx Brothers Playground, open spaces for public play is under a constant threat of redevelopment. Instead of resisting these developments, we proposed a legal mechanism to reclaim underused or abandoned spaces and infrastructure as urban playgrounds in an ever growing city. New developments on jointly operated playground sites could become starters of a larger network that spreads throughout the city, making the city into a network of play. The result is a city with multilayered urban grounds, unexpected obstacles and possibilities for interactions with the community. These interactions might inspire the city to share a childlike curiosity.
City of Serendipity
A vision for New York City, from the perspective of children.
“Nature”
The perception that landscape is a natural, unbuilt ground does not hold true in Manhattan. The once varied, rocky formation of the island of Manhattan has been graded and filled, replaced by a flat, artificial grid of infrastructure that defines both architecture and landscape. The image of nature is preserved in public landscapes like Central Park; however, the park is more a “series of manipulations and transformations performed on the nature saved by its designers” than an operation of preservation. The artificial lakes and (trans)planted plants are as engineered as any built architecture, carefully assembled into the visible and invisible infrastructure of the city.
“TDR”
A new development on the JOP site will require a nearby underused building be hollowed out and repurposed as an urban playground. In this case, the co-op building adjacent to the new high rise would be repurposed as an urban playground. This is a variation of the Transfer of Development Rights (TDR) program.
“Infrastructure”
In Manhattan, architecture and landscape operate as separate entities. The connection between these entities happen through urban infrastructure, both physical and informational. People are data points that carry knowledge about other parts of the city during their commute. The path of their movement is limited by the physical infrastructure, streets and subways. Other invisible networks of infrastructure, such as healthcare, education, communication, etc., are as important in supporting the everyday lives in the city. Without these infrastructures, architecture and landscape would float in an ocean of nothingness, unaware of the rest of the world. But through this complicated network that connects the individual happenings of architecture and landscape, the city is mapped and a narrative is established.
“Elevated Playgrounds“
New developments are rewarded with higher FAR if they provide elevated playgrounds by connecting roof gardens to existing roofs. The elevated playground activates unused rooftops and fire escapes as a network of play.
Play ground.
In the eyes of a child, the city is full of unknown territories and possibilities for exploration. Commercial spaces, lobbies, back alleys, pedestrian islands, and other public amenities can all be activated as network of playground.
