Advanced Studio V: Fall 1997 Instructor: Joseph Giovannini The Hudson qua Central park Bodies of water bind as well as separate their shores, and if we think of the Hudson which has lost most of its commercial activity, as a link between New Jersey's riverfront and Manhattan's , then we can conceptualize it as an urban park with a ground of water. The shore, then, is not the terminus of land but the point of embarkation into a part. Many have reclaimed their waterfronts from traditional uses, but this studio would investigate the possibilities of an aquatic urbanism, both sides of the river serving as the edge of a water park, and as launching point into it. The studio would not suppress the multiple nature of the shores and water, but sustain and even cultivate them: big river boats would still ply the river, and the boulevards would still serve adjacent neighborhoods, but there would be activity vectors east west rather than just north south, blurring the waterfront and the water so that each is amphibious to the other in what becomes an event space. To contain the project, the students will focus on two areas - Hoboken in New Jersey and Manhattan's West Village and Chelsea - all well-defined, cohesive communities that will anchor the park, just as the Upper Eastside and Westside of Manhattan sustain Central Park. We are thinking here of the ground as the figure, and creating a figure figure relationship between land and water. The river is no long other, and no longer an unoccupiable void: the issue is to think of the condition of fluidity as a constant on which , and in which, to build, even in winter. Simultaneously, we are thinking of New Jersey as a figure rather than ground in what emerges as an equalizing relationship. The studio will be divided into several periods - a discovery period when students approach relevant agencies in New York and New Jersey for maps and documentation; a period to study current and possible infrastructure; a programming period when they will invent uses and events; and a design period, in which the maps and programming lead, though a process of cumulative layering, to an urban and architectural expression that is a park. Joseph Giovannini