Chinatown Gateway
Client:
New York, NY |
How can our past become our future and how can our present simultaneously be globally applicable yet site specific. In this open competition these were our initial questions. We also questioned the fundamental concept of ‘Chinatown’. Where does it begin? What are its boundaries and limits? What has it come to mean in an age where we exist in a state of global saturation, or as Baudrillard said ‘living over each other in time.’ In forming a solution we considered the philosophical constructs of the Yin and Yang, the duality of harmonious opposites, as we endeavored to respond to the pragmatic program. This universally understood symbol expressing opposites as a way of presenting their interdependent realities. Both viable, both true, and both represent this neighborhood, now and through its ‘foreseeable future. Much of our solution proposes a world of the surreally ‘real’ nature directly juxtaposed to a sea of digital imagery. In the end, despite the high intentioned rhetoric this was an attempt to blind a community and offer a place to pause for both locals and visitors alike. Programmed for sitting, info kiosks, info booths, and green spaces.
