Sunday, March 01, 2009

NEW AQUATIC BOULEVARD IN MANHATTAN ?



Dans le cadre de notre chantier Liquid City sur les nouveaux rapports entre la ville et la mer (voir ), nous avons pris comme hypothèse de travail, qu'avec la montée des océans Venise pourrait devenir un modèle urbain pour un certain nombre de villes, notamment Londres ou New-York.
Cette hypothèse venitienne avait aussi été la piste retenue par une équipe d'architectes et d'urbanistes lors concours lancé en 2006 par History Channel sur le thème " The City of the Future" (voir photo juste au dessus).

D'autres ont choisi d'aborder cette question des nouveaux rapports entre l'eau et New-York d'une façon moins catastrophiste. C'est notamment le cas d'une étudiante en architecture de la Rice University, Amanda Chin, qui a imaginé un Manhattan traversé par de vastes hydro-boulevards.



Manhattan's Annex: The Crosstown [of] Excess.

"Manhattan’s Annex is a proposal that reconsiders what excess means in the contemporary city. The twentieth century’s ‘Culture of Congestion’ – materialised in the skyscraper megablock – epitomised the metropolitan condition of excess through notions of profit [vertical density] and endless repetition [horizontal grid]. The skyscraper, born out of the material capabilities of steel and the mechanical properties of the elevator became the typology of urban excess and with it the “typology of exception”

Now, after a hundred years of profitable repetition, the exception has become the rule. Urban excess now just has glimpses of individual indulgence [from singular buildings to individualised junkie-ism]. Our present times demand for new paradigms that confront once more the sphere of normalcy on a metropolitan scale.

This thesis envisions the future metropolitan condition of excess through notions of loss [voids] and endless identification + exhibitionism [the network + the pool]. The waterscraper, born out of the environmental situation of rising waters and our need to address the Culture of Excess, will create urban conditions of void and identification where each subject will be able to abandon the atomized space of the skyscraper and join the collective space of flow. A new typology has been born.
"




PS / Sur Venise voir : Who now can stop the slow death of Venice ?