New York, New York
2001

Challenging the monoculture of bulky residential towers rising out of thin urban plazas, the unCity proposal probes the deep section of the East River’s edge for a new type of live/work, public/private urbanity. An excavated urban crust becomes a thick site full of civic and commercial life, above and below the street, inland to the heart of Manhattan and outward over the FDR to the river.

Dynamic loops of water filtering and reuse along with energy production tie together the social biologies of the slim towers with the multiple functions of the public plinth. Overlapping zones of eco-technologies and human ecology form a new type of urban ecotone. The juxtapositions create a healthy friction resulting in a rich complexity of life in the mesh between the city and the river.

Clients + Collaborators

Office of Metropolitan Architecture, Kohn Pederson Fox, Davis Brody Bond, Office of Toyo Ito, architects; OLIN, landscape architects; ARUP, engineers; 2X4, graphic designers