Designed by Jae K. Kim of CoDeAU, the Form of Public Control project is aimed at being the 20th century’s notion of a skyscraper in Manhattan. As a symbolic individual in the city, it should be redefined due to the reinterpretation of the grid to accommodate more public amenities and facilitate the cultural contexts of Manhattan. Currently, the project is exhibited for the collateral event of the Venice Architecture Biennale, at Palazzo Bembo, which was invited from the Global Art Affairs Foundation. More images and architect’s description after the break.
These Days, pedestrian plazas, transportation infrastructure, and zoning resolution have given individuality to each part of the grid which used to be seemingly identical with little public provision. Especially, Mid-Manhattan shows this tendency clearly. Pedestrian activity and cultural programs of Theater District and Times Square has infiltrated into the strict grid and created Mid-Manhattan’s own public realm. In this regard, given the grid’s capacity for reinvention, how might architecture continue to adapt and response to today’s new change? Defying the conventional typology of a skyscraper, a stack of individual programs, the project is aiming to reimagine the typology of a skyscraper to address the building’s relationship with the urban fabric and respond to the existing street life and culture.
