I’m glad to participate in this competition and find the topic to be exciting and challenging.
New York City is known to have amassed one of the most monumental and diverse collection of skyscrapers in the world.
In my work I want to reflect changes in architecture which may occur in the nearest 20 years. I make an assumption that completing of Hudson West will be postponed due to current crisis in the world, so I put accent on technological progress which could happen during this time, and introduce more daring and unique solutions in architecture of new buildings. I decided to reject initial conservative view on future buildings taking into account such amazing buildings under construction as 53W53, 111W57, One57, 9 DeKalb Avenue, Tower Fifth, The Spiral, 2 World Trade Center and those ones which are already built in Hudson Yards. Moreover, keeping in mind the saying of Hudson Yards’ developer Stephen Ross to Fox5NY that Western Yard are “all with a different architect” I made a decision to showcase even more innovative design, which will become accustomed and form new skyline of the city by 2040.
My task here is to show influence of the most appealing, in my opinion, trends of architecture of tomorrow. I highlighted three of such trends: passenger drones as an evolutionary development of the public transportation system; sky bridges as the way to build public spaces as well as the amenities for residential buildings; kinetic structures or their elements as the possibility to accommodate buildings to certain conditions and future demands.
I consider The Related Companies L.P. to be as competent as nobody else to calculate demand for office and living spaces for the city. I am going to follow numbers of 4 mil GSF of residential and 2 mil GSF of office spaces as well as one school provided in press release.
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At the beginning of 19th century some artists envisaged New York to be crowded with towers linked by elevated walkways and flying machines roaming around. Even though this vision never came to be, the significant demand for space in urban areas, led to reimagining concept of sky-bridges. Inspired by such projects as American Copper Buildings on Manhattan and Raffles City Chongqing I want to reflect potential of sky-bridges in creating public spaces and range of amenities for residential buildings. To elevate this concept even more I’m going to place school in between two residential towers above the ground level to free more space for sport facilities.
The way I see, the most significant change in architecture will be caused by the birth of drone public transportation system. Though it could sound a bit as Sci-Fi concept, right now Uber is testing necessary technologies for their Uber Elevate program which is planned to be launched in 2023. Today it is called Uber Copter, which is a group of helipads around Manhattan, one of which is situated right in front of Hudson West. My futuristic vision of hundreds of drones entering buildings was shattered by simple calculations of demand for such machines. There are 5000 employees arriving at average office building every day, 23% by metro, 32% by cars, 28% on foot/bicycle/personal electric transport and others by buses and taxis. Even if flying by drone is as cheap as Uber promises, in my opinion it will only take as much as 25% of this passenger flow. Conducting the same calculations as for elevators in office buildings I found that there would be demand for 10-12 landing fields in the office building. But I have got a better idea – landing line, which will allow to integrate these facilities harmonically into a building without significant changes in common skyscraper appearance. For small and medium residential buildings, it will be enough 2 and 8 landing fields correspondingly. Those buildings which will not be able to build landing fields for some reasons, will have the opportunity to use drone station at former heliport place.
There are just a few kinetic buildings all over the world. They differ from common buildings in their ability to accommodate to different conditions and their extended capacities. The most recent built is The Shed at Hudson Yards. This masterpiece of architecture was designed to be responsive and adaptable. I got inspiration from this structure and chose to expand this concept in central building of my project The Crystal . More details will be provided soon.
In terms of current topic, I see a great possibility to show the influence of three advanced trends on architecture of tomorrow. And I am going to do my best to show the potential of every of them.