GR[O]UND
[collaboration with Lebbeus Woods]type: ephemeral urban instalation
location: Chase Bank HQ Plaza, Manhattan, NY
year: 2002
client: RIEA.ch
status: prevented instalation
project team: Mariano Arias-Diez, Lebbeus Woods,
Research Institute for Experimental Architecture
DESCRIPTION:
The site and subject for the project was Lower Manhattan in New York City.
The underlying theme is the GROUND as it exists in this part of the city.
Giving the german word, GRUND, that is the root of the english one, it is also the foundation of ideas that give a structure of reasons supporting urban life.
The proposal explored the nature of the "gr(o)und". This ground consists of pavements, sidewalks, arcades, plazas and other publicly accessible spaces, the sum of all these is called, simply, the street.
The street is the support for urban public life, a condenser of every social group; It emphasizes differences because it exposes them all together, making comparisons inevitable; it effaces differences because it is the common denominator whose structure and rules must be reckoned with by everyone. It is paradoxical and contradictory, the city space in which each person is most exposed but least acknowledged and known.
The street supports many objects instrumental to public life, these objects implement the various and often conflicting 'rules of the street', directing and shaping movement and activity, they are an architecture of the street and work together to keep the life of street kinetic and coherent.
The goal of the project was to use new tectonic elements to make a change in the gr(o)und in the given area of Lower Manhattan, for a particular, brief period of time.
"...A blue screen, an error in the system..." Wall Street can't allow system errors, everything is meticulously coordinated, and at the same time, security plays a big role on the functioning of those buildings and streets. This Buildings contain the economy of the world, and at the same time they are plagued with blue screens (construction barricades) that seem to hide something, screens that seem to be hiding errors, they are an error in the urban ground, the blue screen evidences the divorce between the two most used elements in an architectural composition: the vertical and the horizontal.
for more images and the full documentation of the project instalation, check the book GR[O]UND: workshop 2002, by Lebbeus Woods and Guy Lafranchi. Ed. Springer-Verlag, New York, USA.
