NYL (New York Living)

NYL (New York Living) is the Studio that will focus on the design of residential units in New York City.

We will explore the potential of information technology for the generation of dynamic organizational structures on the urban and architectural scale.

Implemented into the contemporary urban scene of New York City, the Studio will focus on innovative living-forms and will search for living modalities that are malleable enough to adapt to the changeable individual’s life-style.

We will analyze recent forms of social transformations, continuous re-inventions of the relation with the urban context, and uncovered possibilities of space perception.

Phase 1: Diagramming the site
The diagram is the beginning, is the key drawing that contains the entire project. The diagram expresses the idea of the project precisely. We will try to understand what a diagram is, working on a conceptual reading of the project-site and analyzing real conditions in a creative way.

Phase 2: Skins, surfaces and light

Manipulations of surfaces will intercept, trap, re-direct natural and artificial light, leading to new redefined spatialities.

An oriented surface, thought the skin design, will be affected, defined or dissolved by the movement of light/shadow across the interior and exterior spaces.

Through light, we will develop a comprehension of given “enclosures” by blurring their spatial boundaries, leading to a new redefined building expression.

The approach to this phase aims to apply the idea of the building skin as representation and communication.

The affect and the material used to construct these affects are interconnected. We will explore several key-conditions related to skin performance: sensation, experience, material organization, transformation, variation, modulation, geometry, pattern, texture, specific material choices and resulting architectural affects.

Phase 3: Integration

We will design a residential building in NYC with different types of units. The building will be a town-house and it will result from the combination of one-floor apartments with duplex-apartments, as synthesis of the previous phases.

The units should be interconnected in order to configure inhabitable, dynamic, interchangeable, and flexible organizational structures.

Parameters :

- Site constrains and site diagrams

- Given units modular dimensions (ex. 1, 1 1/2, 2 modules)

- Horizontal and vertical (stacking) combination of the units

- Variety of solid/void, in/out spaces

- Sectional interlocking possibilities

- Idea of adjacency between units, between nearby buildings

- Optimal floor plan study

- Structure, skin and material implementation.

Requirements:

Proceed by constructing both physical and virtual models and drawings according to the different episodes of the assignments. Develop spatial construct through a reciprocal series of 2D and 3D transformations using both computer generated and material projections.

3D Studio, Autocad, Photoshop, Illustrator, Acrobat.

Other requirements discussed in the syllabus.