KITCHE.N.T.wine :

An Eco-Neighborhood Tower in Hell’s Kitchen, NY

The future of New York is a vertical one. The skyscraper was born here and now, 100 years later, it is necessary for the presence of this built typology to evolve along with the pressures of a world that has changed drastically since its inception. The response to spatial demands of a future, crowded city will cause us to reconsider how we organize our urban program space. We build up to accommodate a need for large amounts of space on small tracts of land. Comprising a mass comparable to 40 new York City blocks, [KitchE.N.T.wine] consists of 6,000 residential volumes, 1,200 individual commerce and exchange volumes, and a 57-story institutional, service, and pre-structural extension of the public realm that will occupy a base footprint equivalent to only 1.5 city blocks. A self-contained vertical neighborhood, the building is able to produce its own energy, manage its own waste, recycle its own resources, and generate its own monetary resources. Additionally, the extended groundscape creates a port terminal, a 3,200 foot-long green space, road infrastructure, transit connections, and space to extend its built form for future expansion and economic participation. The disparate urban-scale systems stem from north and south on axis with a new 18-block-long extension of New York City. This extension serves as both structural support and beginning of the vertical neighborhood. On this base are direct extensions of both New York’s land mass and its social infrastructure. The edge conditions of the commerce to the south and the residential to the north are left with an open terminus to allow future growth. It is this growth that was the catalyst for the discussion of a vertical neighborhood. As population increase becomes a more prevalent force, it will reshape our urban strategies. The inherent physicality of the skyscraper as a typological solution is obvious in its vertical form. The footprint of this project questions the role of the ground condition as it seemingly braids together out of existing urban fabric. The idea of extending ground mass and redrawing the coast line of New York is a tactic now inherent to the history of the city itself. This technique offers potential solutions to the limits of planned city space. The residential, commerce, and institutional “chords” of program allow continuous spatial and physical connections within them but, due to the synthesis of these chords at certain moments, also allow for interface to occur between discrete systems. These interfaces are similar to those that occur on the streets of the existing city. As residential systems shift into commercial zones and are met with dispersed institutional programs like libraries and schools a diverse condition associated with neighborhood living emerges. Rem Koolhaas’ statement regarding skyscrapers as isolated islands within the city is a condition to be avoided in the future. By integrating the elements necessary for a neighborhood experience to exist, [KitchE.N.T.wine]eradicates the feelings of alienation associated with high rise living. This is achieved by allowing the residential, commercial, and institutional systems to interface at key moments throughout the building. When these moments occur, hybridized moments like outdoor park space and open-air energy collection spaces occur that are completely interactive. These situations are not necessarily a part of high-rise living currently. The lack of this street setting in the vertical conditions within the city prompts a redesign of what the neighborhood of the future may be. Perhaps by 2090, when it is predicted that New York’s population will grow by 2 million people as its land mass inversely shrinks due to rising sea levels, the idea of neighborhoods growing up and not out will be typical. For now, [KitchE.N.T.wine] will be the prototype for this future pattern of growth.