The majority of typology in Manhattan informs the typography. What was once a wild rocky landscape carved out over millions of years by violent glacial movement was softened and smoothed out to provide a more efficient street level and foundation for the city. In Inwood, the opposite tends to happen. Since the original inception and implementation of the grid, typology has responded to the typography creating moments where buildings stand perched on the top of rocks, teetering off the sides of cliffs, and engraved into rock. Historically agricultural homesteads left on landscape outcroppings above the city grid were called skyfarms. This typology becomes a rebellion against the city grid, conforming more to the city’s natural language than to the streetscape. The historical typology of a skyfarm is repurposed in a modern vernacular by embedding art studios and a jazz club into the existing rock outcropping. Mimicking naturally forming grooves and caverns in the rock, the informal auditorium and studio spaces are voided into the geology and mediate the bridge between the ultra-urban city grid and the natural habitat on top. Rubble blurs the boundary between geological formation and architecture.
