A Catalyst for Urban Progression

Intervening within the Social Construct of New York City

Molly Bennett

University of Florida Spring 2019 An Undergraduate Honors Thesis Presented to the School of Architecture and the Honors Program at the University of Florida in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Bachelor of Design in Architecture with High or Highest Honors.

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© 2019 Molly Bennett

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Table of Contents

Abstract ……………………………………………………………………………..……………3

Introduction| The City ……………………………………………………..……………..4

Historical Context …………………………………………………………..……………….5

Converging Programs ……………………………………………………..……………… 5

Coexisting Building Elements …………………………………………………..………7

Subverse infrastructure ……………………………………………………………..……10

Façade …………………………………………………………………………………..………..11

Conclusion …………………………………………………………………………..………….12

Works Cited ……………………………………………………………………..……………..13

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Paul Gruber for his collaboration on this Design 7 Studio project and I will note that all images presented were created in collaboration with Paul Gruber. I would also like to thank Professor Donna Cohen for providing useful critique throughout the project and encouraging us to progress as designers. Lastly, I thank Professor Mark McGlothlin for acting as my Thesis Faculty Advisor and for his guidance throughout my undergraduate career.

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Abstract

This paper calls into question the stages of social and constructed progress in a city and in what ways change can be initiated. Through an urban intervention within Upper East Side Manhattan, a city block is re-imagined to include elements that promote unity within the diverse community and create a fissure in the heavily and tactfully constructed façade that surrounds this neighborhood in New York City. Incorporating programmatic components of the historic Frick Collection Museum with a news media hub and newspaper printing site that operates with the mission to reveal questionable acts in the currently cryptic world of the Upper East Side will incite give a voice to underrepresented members of the community. The exploration investigates how contrasting programs can be intertwined within the confines of a dense city block. This provoked the question: How can different spaces be defined architecturally in terms of access, public knowledge and program?

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The City

“The Metropolis is an addictive machine from which there is no escape.”

-Rem Koolhaas1

It is easy to become enthralled with the idealistic nature of a city. The fast-paced, emotionally-detached perpetual chaos can be appealing to some, the sensation of being alone while surrounded by turmoil draws people in. In reality, however, we must remember that the true beauty of an urban environment lies within each element that composes the atmosphere held within a city. The constant state of motion leaves a city in a constant state of transformation. As time progresses in a city, its occupants demand evolution, both physically and programmatically. Flexibility becomes a necessity and change is inevitable. In Delirious New York, Rem Koolhaas explains that “…the performance can never end or even progress in the conventional sense of dramatic plotting; it can only be the cyclic restatement of a single theme: creation and destruction irrevocably interlocked, endlessly reenacted.”2

In many cases, humans are limited by their surroundings and resources, causing people to live stagnant lives by refraining to advance their knowledge and experiences in the modern world. Architect and theorist Adolf Loos believes that these individuals are preventing overall theoretical progress by holding the general population back. He explains that “among ourselves there are unmodern people even in the cities, stragglers from the eighteenth century, who are horrified by a picture with purple shadows because they cannot yet see purple.” The metaphorical “purple paint” could be anything from freethinking to technological adaptations, all items that are shielded to the unmodern people by the veil of unfamiliarity.3 Without breaking through the screen, they are not able to form a contemporary perspective.

The Upper East Side of Manhattan is notorious for resisting change. In this project alone, there are many public opinions about how an addition should be approached for the museum. In the case of the Upper East Side, there is not a lack of resources to blame. Inhabitants choose to remain stagnant, attempting to preserve their control over the area by enforcing strict rules and regulations, both written and implied, within the community, making the prospect of constructing a new intervention daunting. Although people of this socioeconomic status could have anything within reach at any time, the underlying urge to remain where they feel comfortable trumps innovation. Part of this resistance is the need to feel in control, which is not reserved just for their public lives in the community, but also extends into their business ventures. The ability to control and manipulate a deal or situation to create the most lucrative

1 Rem Koolhaas, Delirious New York. 293. 2 Rem Koolhaas, Delirious New York. 15. 3 Adolf Loos, Ornament and Crime: Selected Essays. 21.

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outcome can become ingrained in one’s character, and it is difficult to relinquish that power once it has been reached.

Historical Context

Nearly every city is built upon ruins of its past, events that altered the path of the city forever, but also played a crucial role in the city’s identity and how it functions in the present.

Henry Clay Frick was a business man who operated during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. During the 1870’s, at the height of the industrial revolution, Frick made his fortune in the steel and coal industry of Pittsburgh and, at one point, nearly 80% of the coke utilized in Pittsburgh’s factories were sourced from his production sites. In 1882, Frick and Andrew Carnegie, both steel tycoons, formed a partnership between the H. C. Frick Coke Company and the Carnegie Brothers Steel Company. As the railway system expanded exponentially, the demand for their products grew and their businesses thrived. Frick denied union workers to work at his mines, causing the Homestead Strike in July 1892. 10 were killed and 60 were wounded during the violent strike, damaging Frick’s reputation. Frick’s relationship with Carnegie deteriorated over years of working together and they eventually parted ways, allowing Frick to become a director of J. P. Morgan's new United States Steel Corporation in New York City, where he lived until he died in 1919.4

Henry Clay Frick left behind his home on the Upper East Side, adjacent to Central Park, which he filled with his extensive European art collection, known today as the Frick Collection Museum. His questionable business dealings and mistreatment of minority workers prompt the question: Can an institution built on corruption serve as a substratum for social change?

Converging Programs

“A building has at least two lives - the one imagined by its maker and the life it lives afterward - and they are never the same.”

-Rem Koolhaas5

Currently, the Frick Collection Museum is calling for an addition to be designed, which would include the extension of gallery space and storage as well as a renovation of the second floor of the existing museum, which is not currently accessible to the public. The proposal we have designed, in addition to the expansion of the Frick Collection, includes a news media hub that produces both digital content and a regularly-printed newspaper that will be distributed

4 Henry Clay Frick. 5 Paul Fraioli, Reinventing the City.

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throughout Manhattan. In opposition to the origins of this museum, this news source will focus on exposing corrupt business dealings that are not typically public knowledge in an effort to protect the citizens of New York City and provide transparency where there is currently a heavy veil.

Coexisting Building Elements

In New York city today, program surpasses spatial limitations. No block is exactly the same, instead each holds within it a unique experience playing its role in the human perception of a city. Mapping the city programmatically would produce an intensely layered image due to the overlapping and interlocking utilizations of every inch of available space. To some, the infinite intersecting programs in a city can create a sense of homogeneity, with no one guiding itinerary. Breaking down the identity of the city to this scale allows us to understand how it functions on a human level, how it is experienced daily by its occupants. “The city becomes a mosaic of episodes, each with its own particular life span, that contest each other through the medium of the Grid.” 6

Developing extensions of the Frick Collection and designing other spaces within the remains of the city block presents many challenges through combining programs and creating a system that can operate seamlessly. The museum’s requested expansion elements include additional gallery space, an auditorium as well as art storage and conservation space, which will include an education element. The auditorium is elevated, floating above a transparent lobby space, giving way to the museum entry and expansion space. The semi-transparent façade and protruding volume of the auditorium make it a commanding presence on 70th Street. (see Figure 1)

Lying below the elevated volume of the auditorium, the entry sequence occurs within one of the two existing gardens on the museum’s property. The interruption in the typically solid edge of a Manhattan city block is a unique circumstance and certainly leaves an impact on the occupant. We decided to preserve and utilize the open space within the new design. To enter, one would slip between the garden and the transparent edge of the auditorium lobby, proceeding to a joint that prompts a choice between visiting the existing Frick Collection Museum or entering the new intervention, where one would experience an expanded gallery space, spaces for community involvement and learning, as well as access to the auditorium lobby and café.

6 Rem Koolhaas, Delirious New York. 21.

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Figure 1. Elevated auditorium with existing garden and entry sequence below.

The ground floor consists of a series of interlocking programs, including elements of the Frick Collection expansion as well as a few more contextually consistent spaces. (see Figure 2) There are retail spaces along Madison Avenue, keeping in line with the reputation of this iconic street, and a restaurant will occupy the corner of Madison Avenue and 71st Street, accessible from both the hotel lobby and the public avenue.

Towering above the 2-storey museum elements, an L-shaped hotel will wrap around a news office, shrouding it from the city to its east and directing views towards Central Park. This suspended volume punctures the north façade of the hotel, projecting out over 71st Street and revealing itself to the Upper East Side. The news department will house the media hub that produces digital content about current news within New York City, while simultaneously working on a more cryptic agenda: the newspaper.

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Figure 2. Plan Diagrams highlighting programmatic zones within the project.

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Subverse Infrastructure

The printing production area is located below ground, allowing the newspaper to be processed and transported without drawing attention to its source. The space extends to occupy the full footprint below the museum, even puncturing through the museum within the central circulation space. The sequence of spaces includes the printing press, loading dock, and an observation space that overlooks the production line. (see Figures 3 and 4) These spaces are intended to be secretive, hidden within the vast network of spaces that exist below the city, intertwining and mirroring the existing grid above.

The loading dock exists on the northern side of the construct. 71st Street consists of townhomes and a community library, making it far less traveled than the more commercial 70th Street, and allowing for a subdued point of access to the spaces below. The entry to the Hotel also lies on this façade to allow privacy for those staying in the hotel as well as the staff working in the attached news office.

Figure 3. (top) Perspective collage of below-grade spaces including the printing production area, loading dock, and overlooking social space.

Figure 4. (Bottom) Clandestine Interactions- photo taken by Paul Gruber in the New York City subway

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Facade

In each element, the façade plays with transparencies and distortion, influencing what the viewer can and cannot view from the outside looking in. Various glass opacities are used within the façade of the auditorium, which faces 70th Street and overlooks the existing garden. The shifting planes of glass act as a composite screen, making it difficult for passersby to peer inside, especially since those who occupy cities are often in motion and rarely pause to truly look at a building or incident.

Text structure serves as a guiding measure in the design of the facade at various scales. At the street level, the storefronts of the retail spaces on Madison Avenue are treated as pages in a newspaper with lines of text informing the scale of the glass facade, distorting one’s view into stores until they reach the display windows, which extrude outward and are composed of a single pane of glass, giving pedestrians an unobstructed view inside. (see Figure 5) This also speaks to the manipulation of information, allowing the public to absorb only what they are allowed, the extents of which are determined by a select group of influential individuals in business. This phenomenon can easily be overlooked, especially in largely populated cities like New York City. The sheer amount of information and advertising one consumes daily is enough to overwhelm anyone, so many do not even think about what may lie behind the facades of these companies and brands, who is pulling the strings and how they are being affected.

Figure 5. Street-Level façade study for retail storefronts along Madison Avenue.

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Conclusion

“One cannot rely solely on present patterns, since these are constantly shifting, and only occur within present possibilities and constraints…”

-Eran Ben-Joseph7

This project prompts an exploration into time as one imagines the possibilities of how an intervention can alter the future urban fabric. Presently, the Frick Collection Museum holds intangible beauty within its walls in the form of artwork, while simultaneously representing a dark side to the world of wealthy business people and their impact on the community. The insertion of a news media hub that strives to reveal questionable acts in the currently cryptic world of the Upper East Side will incite a movement for justice within the community. Henry Clay Frick took advantage of the powerless and this news outlet will give them the voice they have been denied. The elements of the program that promote community inclusion, such as the auditorium, art education and conservation spaces, and extended museum spaces, are intended to make everyone feel welcomed into what was once an isolated zone, reserved for Manhattan’s elite.

Figure 6. Longitudinal section of intervention.

7 Eran Ben-Joseph, ReThinking a Lot. 105.

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Works Cited

1. Adolf Loos. Ornament and Crime: Selected Essays. Riverside, CA: Ariadne Press, 1998. 2. Eran Ben-Joseph. ReThinking a Lot: The Design and Culture of Parking. Cambridge: MIT

Press, 2012. 3. Fraioli, Paul. "Reinventing the City: An Interview with Architect Rem Koolhaas." The

Christian Science Monitor. July 20, 2012. 4. "Henry Clay Frick." Henry Clay Frick | The Frick Collection.

https://www.frick.org/about/history/henry_clay_frick. 5. Koolhaas, Rem. Delirious New York: A Retroactive Manifesto for Manhattan. Monacelli,

1994.