Learning Web-An Archeology of NYC
Critics-Raymond Abraham &
Diane Lewis
for
role
status
year
The Cooper Union
Student
Project
1987
Believing that an archeology of Manhattan should be distinct and therefore different than, for instance, an archeology of Rome, I became interested in the possibility of an “archeology of the present” of at least a very compressed time frame. I selected as a site the street, a portion of which I framed by photographing the events that occurred over the period of an hour. Of three photographed, two events where selected and superimposed to form the archeological record. A conceptual model was formulated based on the principle of the Mobius Band. The two events became correlated to the two sides of the band enabling them to retain their 2- dimensionality and autonomy while at the same time, becoming bound up in the 3-dimentional figure of the band.
The site is the land fill on Manhattan’s West Side. A single four story tenement on the site is preserved and integrated serving as a marker an connection between the intervention and the fabric of the city.
The program became defined as a “Learning Web” in the form of a day care center where elders and children are placed in each others care.
