Programming on site

Grouping

As the site is big enough with almost 20 buildings, it could be separated in three groups in order to see how many of the new facilities should be grouped or repeated at each section.

Programming

 

Four of these features might be more important for Baruch Houses..

Community Centers are vital for NYCHA  programs in general as the people have to participate at common issues at least for 8 hours per month to sustain their position at the project. And of course it’s about training and organizing themselves to protect their rights and the place they live.

Secondly, agriculture as a function is also vital since people already try to grow their own vegetables and is also an occupation during free time. There are already garden programs where even seniors join. Of course this feature has a lot of potential since the site has a generous surface for hosting these kind of activities.

As a project of NYCHA Baruch Houses are receiving instructions or advice by them. So, there are the NYCHA programs which actually can be found on several projects. These programs are related to health, cultural, educational and training facilities and in order to maintain or even expand them there should be a system that can “host” them.

Finally, going back to the past and watching at the streams that were there, the idea of the water can be brought to present as a public path/swimming pool. The idea of public bath is not new also. There was one on site until 70s and people were actually using it not only for their hygiene or exercising but for art events.

The rest of them are less important facilities that can be found. Some them will appear once depending on their local or interlocal nature.

large scale system

The previous investigation can be applied to a variety of housing projects in the city. The steps (grid, networks) can be common but the design process might be different according to each building type. The intention also of the connection of the “NYCHA” stripe at LES with the rest of the city can be considered with the same technique.

 

site system

There are two types of connecting the “midpoints” which they will signify the location of specific features in site.

Interlocal is for connecting the site of public housing with the rest of the urban tissue. Local is for serving people on site for their own necessities and desires.

By connecting the points among the buildings a new way of diving the surface can mean the “extension” of each one of the towers.

The specific plan of each individual tower shows architects’ intentions to have the optimum light and ventilation for each apartment. So as this plan is significant to Baruch houses history, the “extended” area can reveal its own grid as a pattern for further actions.

Although there is no point beyond memories to reveal the exact old grid of the city, the idea of scaling down the site is really interesting and it could adapt as a logic to the new connections that already exist. By overlapping the “extended” areas of each tower the new grid can emerge as a buffer zone of programming among the buildings.

finding the midpoints

This is an investigation in order to define the “midpoints” on the site. Midpoints are these points among the buildings that can potentially show where a new feature in the unprogrammed site could emerge.

past vs present

These are some diagrams showing the different scale of existing situation and the past neighborhood. The towers look massive in front of the old “slums” of New York.