Let's meet at the Civic Center!

Abstract

The town halt as a type of architecture has become so prevalent that the term has been used to describe the activities that go on inside - namely, social gatherings of the public for purposes of discussion, question, and feedback to the governing body. The archetypes of the town hall, in the 12th century Italy, or 17th century New England, functioned not only as the municipal headquarters with offices and courts, but also in some cases included markets, church, warehouse, museum, pub, etc. Most importantly, it functioned as a meeting place for the public. However, as an architecture typology, the town hall does not scale as the municipality expands. The administrative parts of the town hall can grow or multiply proportionally with the population, but the public functions that were originally embedded in the architecture were either pushed out into the large plaza outside of the city hall, or disappeared entirely. This thesis project seeks to re-establish the ideologies of democracy manifested through the architectural typology of the town hall in New York City's Civic Center through creating small spaces for social discourse.