Honorable Mention
2014 Skyscraper Competition
In the past few decades the
world economy has seen a global shift of industry and manufacturing eastwards
to the emerging markets of China and India purely for economic efficiency and
not innovation. The rate at which urban populations are expanding will impact
upon how we perceive the strategies of sustaining our cities with regards to
supply and demand. The rise of global cargo shipping has seen the ability of
local enterprises to move their businesses to areas of low labor costs but
sharp rises in oil prices is only enhancing the argument of more localized
production.
The population of New York
City is expected to grow to 9.4 million people in the next two decades and in
addition with a declining manufacturing industry, not aided by recent rezoning,
the pressure to support the proposed influx will only grow exponentially with
an ever-increasing reliance on imports. Dense cities such as New York, with a substantial
inventory of older factory structures have the capability to look at the new
innovative and flexible industrial methods to revive manufacturing locally and
regionally.
In constrained, urban
environments could certain import-reliant industries be designed to act
vertically to prevent unnecessary horizontal expanses of manufacturing
ultimately as a stimulus for urban and economic growth? How can a paradigmatic
architectural approach be adopted to support and promote local and city wide
manufacturing as a precedent for a new industrial urbanism?
The project aims to
investigate, in a world of free trade and rapid globalization, the possibility
of flexible alternatives to inefficient industrial sprawl by considering the
prospect of vertical manufacturing towers.
Vertiginous manufacturing
structures would be proposed in former areas of prominent industrial activity;
where struggling businesses are being forced further away from their consumers
due to higher rents and potential re-zoning uncertainty – Williamsburg, Long
Island City, Newtown Creek and Red Hook amongst others. The manufacturing hubs
would intend to act as a physical socio-political barrier to counter-act the
adverse affects of the current administration’s inadequate industrial
assistance and the onset of encroaching residential and commercial developments
in nearby Long Island City and Williamsburg.
Three 158m high towers
perched on the Newtown Creek peninsula in Queens aim to create a new
paradigmatic urbanism within the eclectic idiosyncrasy of the city. The
repeatable industrial cluster provides a range of flexible manufacturing spaces
that can accommodate small/ large-scale industries, be they labor intensive or
entirely mechanical, that would choose to locate in inner city New York. A vertical
assembly line running up the south of each tower accommodates large mechanical
industries that would otherwise have a huge footprint. An exterior mega
structural frame, variable large floor to ceiling heights and exterior
structural lift cores allow for maximum spatial allowance and adaptability. A
reintroduction of the iconic finger pier has been utilized in order to
re-establish alternate distribution methods that have become uncommon in the
city with 90m high projections into the East River to enable waterborne traffic
to once again freely interact directly with a large agglomeration of
manufacturers on a small footprint in the heart of the city.