Mediating spaces : a jazz village for Paterson, New Jersey

Abstract

The object of my thesis is to make a place for Jazz in the Great Falls Historic District in Paterson, New Jersey. This project is a continuation of larger interests in the idea of "urban villages" and the nature and role of neighborhoods and communities in the larger urban context. I think of Paterson as a very physical city: the powerful waterfalls, the rugged palisades, the austere mill architecture and the intense urban life. The object, forged from these fragments by taking advantage of the opportunity that lies amongst these diverse elements. The object is actually a vehicle to explore and further define the idea of "mediating spaces". An idea that is drawn from my own urban experience and is directly associated to "street life" within a city. Inherent in this idea are themes of "journey" and "place". Themes which are defined architecturally by movement and connections, edges and adjacencies. The work contains two parallel or concurrent ideas: "Mediating Space" and "Progressive Discovery". This work begins to answer the question: What is the relationship of "mediating spaces" to "progressive discovery" ? First of all, the two ideas are connected by "movement": experiencing space as a series of relationships. Both are concerned with edges and adjacencies: the places where connections are made. "Mediating Spaces" pertain to the formal aspects of making connections, of building movement through space. "Progressive Discovery" pertains to the experience of places and spaces as a total "Gestalt". Progressive Discovery is an old idea brought from a previous theoretical construct, the present task now is to set it to an architectural score. The thesis is predominately concern with how to make mediating spaces on the urban scale. On this level mediating spaces serve to connect layers of a community: the institutional and the commonplace, the event and the everyday activity.