Cultural Exchange, Wall Street, NYC
for
role
status
year
GSA
Principal
Competition Entry
1997
The competition focused on the changing character of lower Manhattan. What had long been solely a financial and business district governed by the 9 to 5 schedule, was, in recent years developing a residential base thereby becoming a 24-hour community. Additionally, new industries in media, arts and advertising had moved to the area which added to its diversity. The competition sought to create community facilities that would bring back the original “village” character of the district. Within the context of commoditized office space, the competition charge was to design a complex of civic amenities of non-commoditized information, interaction and exchange critical to the development of 24-hour community.
On the site of the original wall from which it got Wall Street got its name, the project proposes a bifurcated wooden wall which is cleaved along its longitudinal axis thereby enclosing an interior space of “exchange” with framed views of Trinity Church to the west, the East River to the east and the sky above. The building is constructed of scaffolding-grade timber structured on a packed earth plinth which serves as a foundation and raised and modulated ground plane.
The materiality of the structure, while making deliberate historic & phenomenological reference to the original site, was conceived as a cost effective and expedient solution for a temporary structure requiring ease of deployment and decommissioning. The project develops the axis of Wall Street in section from its entry at the west, as an architectural promenade that tours the various facilities of the “exchange”. The spiraling Ambulatories link Indoor & Outdoor Theaters and Exhibition Plazas, and a centralized Information Depot and Café as they ascend the three levels of the tiered-commons to an upper promontory offering views above the FDR toward the East River. The sequence of exhibition and performance spaces of this promenade, are distributed to maximize the potential for presenting the cultural artifacts in a nuanced dialogue and exchange.
