Roosevelt Island, NYC

Abstract

(cont.) or ground. Setting a mediating datum will be necessary given the overwhelming horizontal datum set by the bridge.

A clear discontinuity with the larger city of New York and with the present community exists at the site. Accepting the fragmentation and aggregation (the unfinished quality) of the existing context represents the beginning of the design process. Promoting diversity, evoking sensuality through form and materiality and promoting a sense of heterogeneity will be interfused with the existing discontinuity. The design process shall be committed to a changing role in types and degrees of a variety of generative sources, depending on the relationships of these factors that arise when addressing the specific problem. All of the possible generative sources will be developed and assigned equal weight, developing numerous architectural elements or fragments. A temporary strategy requiring flexibility as to the role and the degree of influence of each of the sources will be developed and defined, Through these operations, a catalogue of inclusive solutions were made available and fused to produce a rational and calibrated design attitude. A programming and formal strategy evolved through discovery rather than irnplementation. Diagramming exercises mapping circulation, form plausibility, existing arid expected context and the hybrid program was developed with wellness as the point of programmatic departure. Reflecting both fact/science or tangible (subtly fixed generative) and intuition/idiosyncrasy or intangible (element of contradicting generative) the diagramming establishes points of formal/spatial departure. The design process will focus on a continuous matrix of architecture mediating between 'built' and 'found.' The built can be explained as that which dominates the sky or air. The found, explained as dominating surface