New York Forum

The main site response was to look at the horizontal movement of Hudson yards rail depot and surrounding Highline. This became the kick start for discussions surrounding the vertical and horizontal relationships between infrastructure and movement that exist in the city.

Ideas of connectivity and branching influenced the programme which was selected as a New York forum for the next generation z, who were looking for different ways of operating professionally and politically, then other institutions that currently exist in the city. Here the main site gesture became to work with the strong linearity the trains gave on the site, and weave between these lines a structure that dealt with different conditions from each direction of the site, and test both micro and macro scales of a filigree design language.

A public landscape floats above the trains. This provides the initial site platform, that transitions from horizontal to vertical through lines, that weave spaces both horizontally and vertically. The tracing of the line, becomes the key architectural driver, as floorplates emerge from the macro structure organically.

Circulation towards the back of the building provides connectivity for the Start-up office space, whilst nestled in the heart of the building lies the main forum space, that provides space for discussion, insulated by a thicket of fields of linear structural elements. Facades become testing ground for transitions between linearity and petals, that offer changeability and reversibility.