Urban Efficiency

The site, NYC will be utilized as the testing environment. In the next 40 years, the world\’s population is forecast to increase by 50% with 66% of the world\’s population predicted to live in cities. New densities combined with new ways of living must emerge & its corollary, public space.With the possibility of forming public space through empty lots effectively depleted, public space will most likely only appear on the backs of new economic, spatial & zoning models paired with increased densities & selective demolition.The studio will look at forming new public space. As these spaces can and most likely will not have the opportunity to occupy the traditional ground plane, the actually lifting, excavating, suspending of these space bring to the forefront investigations into structure, light and environmental (micro-climates).Structurally, issues of tension, suspension, cantilever, light /heavy weight systems at various scales will be utilized. The luxury of daylight and its effect, not only on the new public surface itself but also on the spaces that are produced as a result of this intervention, needs be addressed with new materialities and surface modulations. Lastly, with the global increase of temperature, orientation, wind flow, surface topography/tectonics & materiality will be tested environmentally around issues of sustainability. The vertical component of the public surfaces at the micro, macro and intermediary scale becomes the defining factor shaping its structural, day-lighting, environmental and economic variables. Housing will be this vertical component.Housing will be family housing which demands public space in varying layers from public to private, open to close. Housing has a grain/module that allows for its own efficient aggregation and inherent logic yet, given its inherent need for scale to achieve a sustainable critical mass, has a capacity to perform, beyond the visual affect, to shape & define viable urban public space. Formally, housing will depart from its modernist morphology as positive object shifting towards/acting more as negative space, where its surfaces define and affect its adjacent environment.Students will study Urban Efficiency in terms of the making of new public space e.g. the High Line and the generation of additional square meterage on prebuilt lots & constructing viable economic models. The studio will work with experts from the fields of structure, lighting & sustainability.