Manhattan Studio News 1

Week 1: Ses­sion 1, Tuesday, June 9, 2009

George Sweeney Office: 16th Floor, 49 West 38th Street

The first ses­sion was an intro­duc­tion to the eight-week stu­dio. After some gen­eral remarks about the twenty-seven year his­tory and pur­pose of the Man­hat­tan Stu­dio, Andrew Mac­Nair showed a first stage of research project study­ing the two sides of Cen­tral Park West. He showed two hun­dred pic­tures doc­u­ment­ing the west wall of build­ings in lin­ear sequence from north to south, and then the east wall of Cen­tral Park run­ning from south to north.

The dis­cus­sion was about the dialec­ti­cal line between the brown, mostly stone wall of build­ings fac­ing the green, tree wall of nature. The space in-between wall and tree is actu­ally more of a dialec­ti­cal zip­per than a clear-cut line. The mate­ri­al­ity of the west build­ings is car­ried across the street by the stones paving along each side of the side­walk, by the stone of stonewall defin­ing edge of the park, and by roads, entrances, pavil­ions punc­tu­at­ing the Cen­tral Park line in reg­u­lar, even fre­quent, brown, and gray stone works.

So too, the west side of the street has mostly a wall of build­ings but also has many green points as well as reg­u­lar street inter­sec­tions where tree lined blocks open up the west wall spa­tially and bring green trees right out to the edge of the block. So both sides of Cen­tral Park West have a pri­mary, appar­ently pure line of dif­fer­ence, yet also each side has a sec­ondary, sub­tle tex­ture of punc­tu­a­tions as echoes of mate­r­ial, form, color from the oppo­site wall across the street. This makes Cen­tral Park West more than a grand urban boule­vard. Here is a unique urban space, a kind of zip­per edge of com­pres­sion; echo and ric­o­chet where stone dances with trees.

MANHATTAN BACKSPACE

After the first ses­sion of the Man­hat­tan Stu­dio, George Sweeney took us out the back door of his office where we are hold­ing the stu­dio. It is located on the pent­house on six­teenth floor at West 38 Street in the Gar­ment Dis­trict. The first bal­cony we went onto was a small fire bal­cony look­ing north into the back­space behind his build­ing. The back space is inner void made by the build­ings along the four sides of this mid­town block – West 38 Street on the south, West 39 Street on the north, Sixth Avenue on the west, and Fifth Avenue on the east. The first view was of the back­sides of the many brick build­ings behind his build­ings. In a way, it is dark, dirty and dull – like the back­side of New York is sup­posed to be. It is sim­ply a hodge-podge of backs, no fronts. No body there. At least there’s no peo­ple, no one, not one to be seen – just a bunch of tall build­ings stand­ing – around. Stand­ing around the block with their backs turned in while their fronts look out. Nobody is really very inter­ested in the backs of build­ings. They are not fixed nor taken care of. They are not pre­served under land­mark laws.

Then we went up the building’s main stair to the next level, the open rooftop. Boom! Here we could see the full back­space in all direc­tions, in full length, width, depth and volup­tuous vol­ume. What a sight and what a stun­ning bang. To see this back­space in full vol­ume: what a hole! Is it a canyon carved out? Is it a deep sub­trac­tion? Who on earth made that? Yes, yes, yes.

It is the Man­hat­tan Canyon, tucked in-between quite basic, banal worker build­ings – offices, lofts, and light indus­trial fac­to­ries. While it looks craved and cut out of stone, it is left over, back­space — the remains of the New York zon­ing law. Left­overs as pos­i­tive space – mostly for light and air. There are not only no peo­ple, there is no ground – no back yards, no out door space, no back park­ing lots, just void space. Void space. Yes.

Here is Void Space. Raw. Crude. Dirty. Wild, Yet not unfet­tered, it is fet­tered by codes, rules, and laws of the city. F.A.R. — Floor to area ratio rule, Max­i­mum build­ing height limit, set back rules for sun­light angles, prop­erty set-backs for side and rear space between lots and buildings.

Back­space of 49 West 38th Street

The messy tan­gle of New York City laws is the main gen­er­a­tor of this sup­pos­edly log­i­cal back­space. It is not archi­tec­ture. It was not made by the laws of archi­tec­ture but by the law of the city. This back­space makes a lit­tle world – known yet unknown.

Who sees this back­space? Who cares? The own­ers of the build­ings must care because they own it. Or do they care? The peo­ple work­ing inside the build­ings must care. They need the light and air. They rent it. But, how much do they care; prob­a­bly not very much, ask them. They can tell you almost noth­ing about it, that.

Back­space of 49 West 38th Street

I never knew this back­space until this week. Now, that I have seen it, even briefly, I care. It fas­ci­nates me to see it acci­den­tally in the first ses­sion of the Man­hat­tan Stu­dio which is both about Man­hat­tan as sub­ject and Man­hat­tan as lens and about Man­hat­tan as a source, a resource, a ful­crum, a cat­a­lyst, a cat­a­pult, a launch­ing pad, a peb­ble in the pond, a rock, a bul­let and wedge, a dou­ble bladed sword, a beauty and a beast. See­ing it acci­den­tally, in George Sweeney’s last minute oh by the way offer makes this moment a kind of dis­cov­ery – an Aha Moment. We found it thanks to George who works there – or against, along side, above it. He and his office look out, down, across, through, into, and beyond the back­space. They work within almost all the urbane prepo­si­tional rela­tion­ships pos­si­ble at one time. The only one miss­ing seems to be under. To be taken to it, to see it in a glimpse once on floor six­teen, and then to go up and see it again on the roof – floor sev­en­teen – was at once wel­com­ing of George and his city, and con­fronta­tional, fac­ing into the void of the vast unknown – stand­ing still, alone, at dusk.

Week 1: Ses­sion 2, Thurs­day, June 11, 2009

Urban Office Archi­tects: Carlo Frugiuele

Frugiuele pre­sent­ing UOA’s work.

Carlo showed a series of chap­ters about his work start­ing with a rapid auto­bi­o­graphic story of cur­rent con­texts – where he lives and works – fam­ily, friends, office, and golf. Then he gave a pitch about golf and golf­ing in the life of an urban office archi­tect. Carlo prac­tices his swing and his putt in the office with faux ball and hole. He plays at the local pub­lic golf in the Bronx, where he occa­sion­ally books a room right next to the greens so he can play at 6 am before going down­town to work. With a great swing and good form, he then showed us a project for an urban gold course with com­pressed greens and stacked fair­ways as a project for the future of golf in the city.

Next, we saw his archi­tec­tural work both built and un-built – includ­ing a new White House for the Pres­i­dent in Wash­ing­ton, D.C., a house in the Bahamas, a dou­ble agri­cul­tural liv­ing and farm­ing house in China, a max­i­mized Tuscan-Mexican restau­rant on the Lower East Side, and a new, min­i­mal­ist flower shop up on Broad­way in the famous Apthorp on West 79 Street. Carlo ended with a project lit­er­ally stand­ing on the table – a new shoe. With sev­eral paper mod­els, made by Carlo and his two chil­dren as wrapped shoe skins, Carlo is work­ing out a pro­to­type for a new kind of walk­ing shoe — both sock, and skin, and sole. It is taut, light, strong, ele­gant, and about the future being here now already.

Urban Office Archi­tects: White House Competition

Urban Office Archi­tects: Shoe Designs

In our dis­cus­sion, it seems that Carlo is an archi­tect with two styles oper­at­ing at this time, some­times together, but usu­ally sep­a­rately – a con­trolled Ital­ian Ratio­nal­ist kind of tec­tonic, hard, crisp, abstract func­tion­al­ism; and, even ver­sus, an open, New Era Roman­ti­cism of wild, swoop­ing, expres­sive forms and spaces. When the two styles come together, such as in his pro­jec­tive house for an air­plane pilot, whom he calls an ‘avi­a­tor,’ we see a visual explo­sion within an imag­i­na­tive con­stel­la­tion: where love of whim, fan­tasy, dar­ing are inter­wo­ven with equal love of logic, mate­r­ial, struc­ture, detail and pre­ci­sion. While Carlo demon­strates a sim­ple, cool func­tion­al­ism in the China Farm­ing Houses, he obvi­ously rel­ishes a hot and pas­sion­ate architecture-gone-wild.

It is hard to know how much any of these projects cost. We all are com­ing out a wildly open-budget time into this new eco­nom­i­cal era. Let’s see what hap­pens next.