Towers in the Park, Revisited

Manhattan, New York City
Fall 2015 / GSD Semester 1.1
Professor Felipe Correa, w Chenghao Lyu and Juan Diego Izquierdo
Speculative Urban Design

The “Towers in the Park” urban model, however infamous and outdated, still holds value – it only needs to hybridize with two other dominant typologies in order to bring it into the 21st century, namely the courtyard and the mat typology. Collectively, they accomplish urbanistically what any single one type cannot: a spectrum of public to private spaces, pedestrian-oriented and scaled collective spaces, and individually privatized gardens, all without sacrificing density. This design speculation deploys such an urban model across 9 adjacent Manhattan blocks.  The result is a new residential topography perching atop a set of plinths, as if Beverly Hills has been spliced onto Manhattan.  Slim “pencil-towers” are deployed to absorb additional density without overriding the delicate scale of this undulating roofscape, thereby updating the “Towers in the Park” scheme.