Project by Gonzalo Caceres, Patrick Rodriguez
Urban Sanctuary leverages a rare East Village through-block site to generate a connective compound for newly arrived immigrants in New York City. The project’s primary social connector is a diagonal dog-leg stair that travels through the building mass, creating opportunities for interaction, exchange and support. Cyberneticist Gordon Pask’s concept of underspecified design whereby key aspects of a design are deliberatively left incomplete so that meaning, function and behavior emerge through interactions over time, this urban microcosm challenges conventional public-private dualities favoring instead an open-ended range of ‘semi-incomplete’ units encouraging flexible, integrative collectives to emerge. Workshops, learning incubators and a market space occupy the ‘underbelly’ of the cantilevered mass generating an active commercial hub along the street edge.
