New Paradigms of Residual Space

Overlooked lots; infrastructural opportunities like the High Line and its tributaries below the structure; performance agoras created out of the public spaces that surround the city’s cultural treasures; pop-up itinerant performances; floating operas, opening streets to help preserve restaurant use–these are some of the idiosyncratic initiatives that have begun to create new paradigms of both performance and everyday use. During the pandemic these thoughtful urban interventions have inspired physical and policy innovations and present a worthy challenge for planners, architects, urban designers, and urbanists generally to help redefine buildings, urban space, and the relationships between them to reconnect to the city’s network of amenities and circulation systems. Interviews and dialogues with significant architects, designers, performers, planners, and community stakeholders who are helping to recreate and celebrate the city’s inextinguishable vitality formed an integral part of the workshop. The opportunity to respond to the equity issues surrounding public space, performing arts, and access to culture was at the core of the workshop’s investigation and work.

The unanimous approval by the City Council to restart outdoor ticketed performing arts events and the ongoing Open Streets Program indicate that political support is already in place to reinvigorate New York City with broader opportunities for recreation, play, learning, dining, commerce, and the arts. The workshop leveraged existing initiatives, and potentially new ones, to propose a coordinated vision for residual space as part of the city’s recovery and permanent transformation.

This workshop included:

• Visual analysis
• Interviews and discussions with architects, urban planners, urban designers, community stakeholders, urbanists, performing arts subject area experts
• Sketches, models, and individual and team proposals for selected sites
• Field trips to MoMA PS1, East Harlem, the High Line, Long Island City, Astoria, and DUMBO, Brooklyn.

This residual space under the Metro North will be used as an open communal space for everyone in East Harlem, especially serving NYCHA residents and students at neighboring public schools. This open space will be mainly used as a picnic area where everyone can bring food from the food trucks and La Marqueta. The stage can be used as a performing area for local musicians and DJs as well as a workshop space for nutrition and Mexican cooking classes for youth. Amenities include tables, chairs, and an open stage with a foldable wall that can be also used as a seating area and art exhibition area in off-stage times. Mirror plates acting as a roof will brighten and enliven the space by capturing the sunlight and reflects it down to the overshadowed area as well as reflect the lights from Mexican-patterned light balls in the nighttime.

Surrounded by small retails and informal businesses in the commercial area, this passageway underneath the Manhattan Bridge in Chinatown can be regarded as a typical residual space. It is a place that many Chinatown locals and visitors pass by but few stop at. Given its location and the special demographic characteristics, the design started with analyzing the users during different times of the day and discusses different needs. The area will add greenery and sitting areas for visitors, implement organized space for vendors, attach Chinese lanterns as lighting infrastructures, provide dancing space for nighttime leisure for the surrounding communities, and reinforce the culture and identity of Chinatown.

West Harlem has incredible public parks, which are strung along the riverfront defined by Hudson River and Henry Hudson Parkway to the east. However, access to and connectivity between these parks are sparse and fragmented due to a series of elevated traffic infrastructure in between that acts as obstruction, which is further complicated by an existing disparity in jurisdictions of local, state, and federal levels among the parks. Three sites of residual space underneath the existing traffic infrastructure have been selected, to be activated as newly imagined gateways and channels between the parks by the means of visual and performance art. Not only are the residual spaces pulled out of abandonment and underutilization to benefit the nearby neighborhoods, but they would also serve as vehicles for connectivity between the communities and public spaces.