Project by George Guu and Taiga Amano
BIO-SHAFT reimagines Manhattan’s post-1901 new-law tenement houses by repurposing their shafts. It brings communal garden, ventilation, and light together through biomorphic connections, building science wisdoms, and contemporary technological inventions. The system takes shape through organic negotiations of neighbors, facilitates air circulation by mandating the basement as a cooling plenum, and disseminates light top-down via optic fibers threaded across weaved structural pipes. Fine-mesh skins over these pipes retain ‘ground’ for plantation while harvesting water from ‘air’.
It is a system that invites one to crawl away from individual cartesian-spaced rooms into a common biomorphic-formed garden. The continuous surface asks one to adapt creatively—to crawl, climb, sit, squat, recline, hug, warp, and bend. It does not guarantee safety but requires conscious, sensitive action, perhaps reminiscent of humanity’s ancient jungle past. This grafting of spatial experiences prompts a new hybrid environment for reflecting on the past and future.
Microclimates and micro-ecosystems within different shafts vary greatly, dependent on the neighborhood as a microcosm of society. They can thrive, deteriorate, be abandoned, be resurrected, or exist in peace, conflict, or equilibrium.
